March/April 2005

Spring Fling

With dozens of performances in eight cities, this year’s Virginia Arts Festival promises excitment for all

by Montague Gammon III

Delight and awe. It’s spring in Hampton Roads again, and that means it’s time to delight in yet another freshly awesome array of artists brought in by the Virginia Arts Festival. Eight, count them (in the accompanying schedule), eight Hampton Roads cities host performances by dozens of world-class performers, for Round #2: Your Ticket to the Masters.

Itzhak Perlman, arguably the premiere violin virtuoso in the world, Garrison Keillor, one of America’s great humorists, and the Martha Graham Dance Company, whose name is as grand as any other in the dance world—all converge on the region. Season subscription holders—anyone who buys tickets to four or more performances at a time—get first shot at the precious Perlman and Keillor tickets and get a 15 percent discount on the shows in their self-designed Subscription Series.

Pianist Andre-Michel Schub is back to head up yet another series of extraordinary chamber music. Virginia Symphony Music Director JoAnn Falletta joins with stage director Lesley Ferris for a blend of Shakespeare’s poetry and Mendelssohn’s music in Midsummer Night’s Dream. As part of A Tchaikovsky Spectacular, at the Festival’s close, Falletta conducts the 1812 Overture in Williamsburg, where there are lots of real cannon.

Double Emmy award-winning composer John Duffy inaugurates a new venue for the study and performance of new serious music by young composers, promising that the John Duffy Composers Institute will be a place where much more than just music happens. There’s a new Jazz Festival at the freshly refurbished Granby Theatre, so the greatest American contribution to musical art forms gets its due as well. The beloved show tunes of Gershwin, Rodgers and Bernstein come to Williamsburg as Broadway Under the Stars, guided by the baton of Broadway and New York City Center conductor, and Norfolk native, Rob Fisher.

Families get a musical version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, straight from the Kennedy Center in DC. The innovative Imani Winds, in addition to playing the newly rebuilt Attucks Theatre, have scheduled a special concert for young people at the Children’s Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth.

Also at the Children’s Museum, a very unique one-man show called Blue Hair, with Peter Cutts, showcases the talents of a remarkable storyteller and performer of a thousand facets. The popular pageantry of the Virginia International Tattoo with its massed bands, drill teams, acrobatics, dance and choral acts, will pull folks from all across the country into Scope for an evening that pays special tribute to the veterans of World War II.

From the Top, Public Radio International’s special show about young musicians, broadcasts live from the Harrison Opera House, and National Public Radio will again be taping our chamber music concerts for later broadcast.

How could we leave out the organ concert by Paul Jacobs, chairman of that department at the Juilliard School? Chamber music by The Eroica Trio? The very original Canadian Brass? JoAnn Falletta playing guitar, with special guests The Tidewater Guitar Orchestra? The Rhythm Project? There are more dance companies, including Mexico’s Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli de Veracruz, Madrid’s Noche Flamenca, and the Richmond Ballet. There’s more chamber music—The Smithsonian Chamber Players, and Tokyo String Quartet, who play some of the most valuable instruments in the world. There’s the Virginia Beer Festival at Town Point Park. A new venue is the Ferguson Arts Center at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. And for the first time, the city of Suffolk hosts an Arts Festival performance when Philadephia’s cutting edge Koresh Dance Company performs at the King’s Fork High School before hitting Phi Beta Kappa Hall in Williamsburg.

It’s all on the Festival’s web site, www.vafest.com, with more detail. The Festival has a Box Office in MacArthur Center Mall, and some very helpful staff members who will answer questions at 757-282-2800, and who will book your tickets at 757-282-2822. For toll-free dialing, use 877-741-ARTS (2787).

For additional coverage including special interviews with the artists performing at the 2005 Virginia Arts Festival,

For the rest of this story, you can order the March/Arpil 2005 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine.