Grant Park Music Festival 2018: Book 2

IN 2014, WILLIAM BOLCOM HELPED MARK

THE GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL’S 80TH

ANNIVERSARY

with a weeklong residency

that culminated in the world premiere of

Millennium: Concerto-Fantasia

, specially

commissioned by the Festival. This season,

we return the honor by celebrating the 80th

birthday of this distinguished American

composer, whose relationship with the Festival

stretches back to 1986, when we presented

one of the first performances of his epic

setting of William Blake’s

Songs of Innocence

and of Experience

in the United States.

In July, Bolcom comes back for a weeklong residency that concludes with

the Festival premieres of his Symphony No. 4, “The Rose” and “Machine”

from his Symphony No. 5. In another homecoming of sorts, the concerts

will reunite the composer with longtime collaborator and guest conductor

Dennis Russell Davies, who helmed the world premieres of three Bolcom

operas commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago between 1992 and 2004.

Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Music and recipient of multiple

Grammy Awards and the National Medal of Arts, Bolcom has enjoyed

an extraordinarily rich and varied career as a composer of symphonic,

chamber, operatic, vocal, choral, cabaret, and ragtime music. As a pianist, he

has also performed and recorded his own works with his wife and musical

partner, Joan Morris. The second movement of Symphony No 4—a setting

of the poem “The Rose” by Theodore Roethke—was conceived for her.

“As a quintessential American music festival, we’re honored to celebrate a

quintessential American composer,” says Festival President and CEO Paul

Winberg. “These concerts highlight two of William Bolcom’s longstanding

artistic partnerships. Maestro Davies has championed Bolcom’s music for

many years and encouraged us to present these two works. And Joan

Morris not only inspired ‘The Rose’ but went on to record it with Leonard

Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. So these performances promise to

be especially meaningful, both for the composer and for Festival audiences.”

Come join the Festival in wishing William Bolcom a very happy birthday!

2 0 1 8 G R AN T PA R K MU S I C F E S T I VA L

MANY HAPPY RETURNS:

CELEBRATING WILLIAM BOLCOM

William Bolcom Birthday Celebration Concerts

also featuring Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5

July 6, 6:30 PM and July 7, 7:30 PM