Opening Lecture: Robert Ainsley
In 1968, German composer Hans Werner Henze read Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave, an historical novel based the life of Esteban Montejo, and was inspired by the book to travel to Cuba, where he encountered a unique hybrid of African and Spanish musical cultures.
The 2010 Greenwich Music Festival follows Henze on his musical journey through Cuba, culminating in Henze’s theatrical setting of Montejo’s story, The Runaway Slave (El Cimarrón). GMF Principal Conductor Robert Ainsley will introduce the season, providing musical and historical context for the style and content that emerged from Henze’s trip.
Mr. Ainsley’s annual lecture is an event not to be missed.
Tuesday June 8, 8:00PM
8:00pm - 9:15pm
The Meeting Room
Greenwich Arts Council
299 Greenwich Avenue
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Tickets:
$10 General Admission
Students Admitted Free
Lecturer Robert Ainsley
About Robert Ainsley:
“Robert Ainsley delivered wonderfully lively, idiomatic conducting of the International Contemporary Ensemble, accentuating the bubbly saxophone-piano-banjo rhythms while fully exploring the broader melodic scope of the sequences focusing on love and mortality.”
Eric Myers, Opera
“Festival cofounder and conductor Robert Ainsley argued in an admirable spoken introduction that Ullmann’s work must be treated not as a requiem but as a vibrant, multiply allusive work enjoyable on its own terms. The best proof of this came in the fine playing of the International Contemporary Ensemble under his aegis…”
David Shengold, Opera News