Well, the 2009 edition of the Sunriver Music Festival is complete. I’m back home, the laundry is being done, the house vacuumed, and the obligatory pizza ordered for delivery. The final weekend of concerts was held at the Tower Theater in Bend, rather than the Great Hall in Sunriver Resort. This was due to the resort’s business being down by close to 30 percent, and so they couldn’t afford the $50,000 of lost income from taking the Great Hall out of circulation for our use for a second weekend. In addition, the board of the music festival were anxious to build their audience and sponsor/donor base by tapping into the Bend audiences left orphaned by the sudden collapse of the Cascade Festival in spring of 2008.
SRMF musicians during the break at the Tower Theater Friday evening.
Each concert featured another of our fine principal players in solo roles with the orchestra. On Friday night, principal flutist Adam Kuenzel played Bach’s Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1068. He played a modern version of the wooden flute that might have been much like what Bach would have heard (though it would be hard to imagine a Bach contemporary playing with as much technical and musical assurance as Kuenzel did). On Saturday night, principal trumpeter Jeffrey Work played an astonishingly musical and technically brilliant account of Hummel’s Concerto in E major. My wife said that Jeff is a string player in a trumpet player’s body, which is high praise coming from a cellist! It was truly some of the best trumpet playing I’ve heard anywhere – live or recorded. We’re so lucky to have Jeff in the ranks of the Sunriver Orchestra, and in the Oregon Symphony.
Dress rehearsal in the Tower Theater Saturday morning.