“On Wednesday morning at the Tidal Basin [in Washington, D.C.], members of the Boulder Philharmonic were enveloped in the most delightful kind of showers imaginable,” writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in Friday’s (3/31) New York Times. “Seated under Japanese cherry trees near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial … a quintet of wind soloists was playing a breezy minuet by Haydn while periodic gusts of wind shook loose hundreds of petals … The musicians were playing in the park as part of Shift, a new weeklong festival of American orchestras presented by Washington Performing Arts and the Kennedy Center. Running through Saturday, this is the inaugural edition of what is planned as a yearly showcase of ensembles from around the country. It is also the reincarnation of the Spring for Music festival, which had a popular four-year run at Carnegie Hall before running out of funding in 2014. Judging by the events I witnessed over the course of two days, the shift in location has preserved much of the earlier festival’s joy and artistic excellence.… The current festival features the North Carolina Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Brooklyn-based orchestral collective the Knights in addition to the Boulder ensemble.”
Posted April 3, 2017
