Online Exclusive: OK Mozart Festival
In partnership with Rose State Live, an annual
performing arts series at Rose State College, The OK Mozart Festival of
Bartlesville presents The 2011 OK MOZART OKC Series featuring Grammy-winning
artists Joshua Bell with the Amici New York Orchestra, the Carolina Chocolate
Drops, and the Turtle Island Quartet, along with the Alloy Orchestra performing
“Metropolis.”
Shows will run from June 13-15, and a grand
finale performance by Joshua Bell June 19. All events take place at the
Rose State College Performing Arts Theatre located at 6000 Trosper Road in
Midwest City. The schedule for the OKC series is available at www.rose.edu/rose-state-live.
“Rose
State College is honored to be associated with OK MOZART for its inaugural
season in Oklahoma City,” said John Cain, the college’s director of marketing
and public relations. “Providing a range
of diverse cultural entertainment is an important aspect of how the college
supports our community, and we are thrilled to be able to present such highly
acclaimed performers on our campus.”
Tickets for the OKC series may be purchased at the Civic
Center box office located at 201 N. Walker Ave. in downtown OKC, by phone at
405-297-2264, online at www.myticketoffice.com
and at the Rose State College Performing Arts Theatre box office two hours
before show time the day of a performance ONLY. Full series packages are
on sale now, with individual performance tickets to go on sale April 7.
A
Top-Ranked Festival
From modest beginnings in 1983 as a three-concert series,
the annual OK Mozart Festival is ranked on a par with the Aspen Music Festival,
New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival and San Francisco’s Midsummer Mozart Festival
— quite an accomplishment for the small town of Bartlesville in the heartland
of America.
It was in 1983 that
Ransom Wilson and the orchestra he founded made a performance stop in
Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Here, the
musicians found a charming, cosmopolitan town with a magnificent performing
arts center that held one of the finest concert halls in the country. The OK MOZART Festival was born of this
fortunate discovery.
The
premiere season was enthusiastically acclaimed, and over the years the Festival
grew expansively, last year playing host to more than 22,000 visitors from 33
states and several foreign countries, resulting in an annual economic impact of
$7 million to this region.
Ransom Wilson served as the Artistic Director of the
Festival for 21 seasons. Currently OKM Festival veteran, Adria Benjamin, Amici
New York violist and music professor, serves as Orchestra Artistic Director and
Paul Neubauer, a world-renowned chamber music violist, serves as Chamber Music
Artistic Director.
Today, OK MOZART is led by Executive Director, Shane
Jewell, an innovative arts administrator who has taken the OK MOZART Festival
to a new level. In addition to building upon the success of offering three
distinct series of entertainment options, the 2011 OK MOZART Festival
introduces the new OKC Series featuring a Grand Finale Encore with Joshua Bell.
The
2011 Festival marks another momentous year in the history of the festival. For the first time ever OK MOZART will offer
four concerts in the Oklahoma City area in the Rose State College Performing
Arts Theatre during the same week as the Bartlesville performances. These artists will perform in both
communities making OK MOZART the only music festival in the country to hold
simultaneous performances in multiple cities.
This is a major step in the expansion of the festival that will help
solidify OK MOZART as Oklahoma’s Premier Music Festival and make it possible to
sustain and grow through a tough economic time for arts organizations around
the country.
“As we prepare to celebrate OK MOZART’s 27th Anniversary
it is amazing to reflect on how far this annual Festival has come,” Jewell
notes. “From its inaugural year as a
three-day event, to the full-fledged ten-day Festival of today, OK MOZART
remains one of Oklahoma’s unique cultural assets. The 2011 Festival marks our
27th season of bringing world-class musicians and concert artists to
Bartlesville, and now the Oklahoma City area, for an internationally recognized
event like none other in the region.”
Talented
Performers, Amazing Performances
Adding much anticipation to this year’s Festival is the
Grand Finale Encore – “An Afternoon with Joshua Bell”. OKM’s resident orchestra, Amici New York, and
guest conductor, Gustav Meier will perform with Joshua Bell for what will be a
truly memorable event. For more than two
decades, Joshua Bell has enchanted audiences worldwide with his breathtaking
virtuosity and tone of rare beauty. His restless curiosity and multifaceted
musical interests have taken him in exciting new directions that have earned
him the rare title of “classical music superstar.” The musicians of Amici New York have toured
Asia, Europe and the United States, and have appeared in series at Lincoln
Center, Carnegie Hall, City Center and the Metropolitan Museum. The orchestra
comprises members of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera in New
York and numerous other orchestras throughout the country and world. These talented musicians continue to return
year after year as the resident orchestra for the OK MOZART Festival.
Lending additional excitement, the Alloy Orchestra, using
13 differently tuned horseshoes, 157 plumbing pipes, pots, pans, junkyard
findings and musical saws, as well as accordions, clarinets, keyboards and
drums, will accompany a screening of Fritz Lang’s seminal 1927 film, “Metropolis”. Roger Ebert calls Alloy Orchestra, “the best
in the world for accompanying silent films”.
Also appearing will be Turtle Island Quartet. Winner of
the 2006 and 2008 GRAMMY®-Awards for Best Classical Crossover
category, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary
American musical styles. By devising a performance practice that honors both,
the state of the art has inevitably been redefined. Cellist nonpareil Yo-Yo Ma
has proclaimed TIQ to be “a unified voice that truly breaks new ground –
authentic and passionate – a reflection of some of the most creative
music-making today.” This evening they
will highlight performances from a recent album, reinventing songs from the
legendary guitarist, songwriter and performer, Jimi Hendrix.
Rounding out OK MOZART’S OKC
Series lineup will be the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The members of Carolina
Chocolate Drops come from diverse musical backgrounds, sharing singing duties
and swapping instruments throughout their sets. Employing a range of
traditional string-band instruments: several banjos, a fiddle, a ceramic jug,
bones and a kazoo, to name a few, band members are focused on a modern twist to
traditional string folk music. The
Carolina Chocolate Drops won the GRAMMY® in February of 2011 for
Best Traditional Folk Album.
“We look forward to presenting one of the most exciting
and diverse seasons ever in OK MOZART’s history, as well as hosting an
ever-growing audience as a result of our efforts to expand the appeal of the
concert series through a broader variety of programming,” says Shane Jewell.
The OK MOZART
International Festival takes place every June in Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
and is made possible through the support of the Oklahoma Arts Council, the
National Endowment for the Arts, Allied Arts & Humanities Council of
Bartlesville, ConocoPhillips, ABB, Accenture and individual, corporate and
foundation patrons throughout the USA.
This year OK MOZART was nominated by the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits
for the Oklahoma Nonprofit Excellence Award.
In addition to its internationally-acclaimed classical
and chamber music concert series, OK MOZART presents a variety of performing
arts, including dance, jazz, pops and Broadway show tunes, as well as a full
program of related cultural events throughout the annual nine-day Festival.
These include many daytime Showcase Events — mini-concerts, talks and tours.
The OK MOZART Festival is produced by OK MOZART, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3)
organization.
For more information on the Festival,
visit www.okmozart.com. To learn more about patron
benefits and sponsorship opportunities, call the OKM
Festival office at 918-336-9900.
Rose
State College, located in Midwest City, Oklahoma, supports over 13,000
traditional and adult students annually at its 120-acre campus. Almost 60 associate degree and
skilled-occupational programs are available, many of which prepare students for
completion of a bachelor’s degree.
