Ives at Indiana University

Ives image courtesy Charles Ives Papers / Irving S. Gilmore Music Library / Yale University

Indiana University is having what looks like an amazing Charles Ives festival from September 30 to October 8. Here's a chunk of the press release:

Throughout 2024 - the sesquicentenary of the birth of America's first great classical composer, Charles Ives - celebrations of the man and his work continue to proliferate - panels, colloquia, recordings, videos and concerts abound. The largest and most impressive of these efforts by far is an entire festival to be held in Bloomington, Indiana from 30 September through 08 October at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Titled Charles Ives at 150: Music, Imagination and American Culture, the festival is organized by eminent Ives scholar J. Peter Burkholder, and author/broadcaster/producer Joseph Horowitz. Years in preparation, Charles Ives at 150 - all of its events over a 9-day period - will be offered free to all attendees. Registration (available through the festival website) is recommended, to enable festival updates on important details.

Highlights of Charles Ives at 150 include masterfully curated and themed concert programs with in-concert commentaries, colloquia, panels, and a round table discussion on performing the Concord Sonata. Featured artists include, among others, baritone William Sharp, pianists Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish and Steven Mayer, violinist Stefan Jackiw, and the Pacifica Quartet. Concerts include performances of Ives's Second and Third Symphonies, Three Places in New England (including a new visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff which helps audiences hear the events and images Ives describes), both string quartets, all three piano sonatas, all four violin sonatas, dozens of songs, and works for piano, chorus, and concert band.

Festival talks include presentations on "Ives and the Visual" by art historian Tim Barringer and "Charles Ives's Civil War" by Civil War historian Allen Guelzo, alongside talks by historian Alan Lessoff, musicologist Denise Von Glahn, Ives editor James B. Sinclair, Ives biographer Jan Swafford, geographer Mark Sciuchetti, and music theorists Chelsey Hamm, Derek G. Myler, and David Thurmaier.

The complete program of the festival can be found on the festival website: https://go.iu.edu/ives