The Tucson Desert Song Festival will have its first world premiere at the 2020 festival next January.
And it will be followed up in 2021 with a second world premiere as part of the festival’s new TDSF Wesley Green Composer Project.
Richard Danielpour and Jake Heggie are the first composers commissioned to create new works for the festival. Danielpour, one of the country’s most in-demand composers, is first up with a set of songs for Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann. Jake Heggie, regarded as one of the world’s leading opera composers (“Dead Man Walking,” “Moby Dick”), is writing a set of art songs that will be premiered in 2021 by an as-yet-to-be-named vocalist.
The commissioning program namesake Green, a retired East Coast insurance adjuster, provided the initial funding for what TDSF Executive Director George Hanson hopes will be a regular festival feature.
“When (festival co-founder) Jack Forsyth and I talked, it was obvious to us both that if we were to have a major festival thought of in the same breath as the Sante Fe Opera, we would have to be active in commissioning,” Hanson said.
“There’s a whole lot of wonderful music that hasn’t yet been written and I want to help some of that come out,” said Green, who has supported Tucson’s classical music community, including the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, since he and his late wife, Pearl, moved to Tucson from Connecticut in 2003.
The 76-year-old Green has been a self-professed music aficionado throughout his life. He played piano in his youth and he and his wife both sang in community choirs.
“It’s a long-standing relationship,” he said of his love for music. “I was neither good enough nor did I have the kind of ability to commit to the hours of practice that it would have taken to be good enough.”
He and his wife moved to Tucson when he retired because the weather was better for his wife’s arthritis, he said. The first thing that struck the couple was the level of culture in Tucson, from professional opera and theater to the symphony, university and Arizona Friends.
“Back in New England we still think of Tucson as the wild, wild West and rodeo. It was an incredible surprise to find the tremendous cultural life,” he said.
When his wife died of cancer about 10 years ago, Green supported a commission with the Arizona Friends in her memory. Over the past several years, he participated in a couple other Friends commissions. All told, he’s invested thousands of dollars in the efforts, but the song festival commission is probably his largest in terms of prestige.
“I think probably in terms of national recognition today, this has got to be bigger,” he said, referring to Danielpour and Heggie’s reputations.
Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Thomas Hampson, Frederica von Stade and Dawn Upshaw are among the artists who have commissioned Danielpour; Heggie has collaborated with celebrated vocalists including Kiri Te Kanawa, Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Ben Heppner and Bryn Terfel.
Hanson said that Danielpour and Heggie needed little convincing to partner with the song festival, something Hanson chalks up to the event’s growing reputation that’s been spread by vocalists who have participated in its first five years.
“When major performers and major composers say yes, that means we’re really getting somewhere,” he said.
“I think it’s awesome” that Danielpour agreed, added Green. “He is simply an outstanding composer and is recognized as such. I like his music. And that’s the bottom line.”
