In four concerts, ALL THE WRONG NOTES: Charles Ives at 150 celebrates the 150th anniversary of composer, keyboardist, actuary, and businessman Charles Ives. Largely rejected in his youth, this native son of green New England famously gained renown only later in life and is today remembered as an iconoclast of American music. Ives’ musical agenda might best be summed up by the Connecticut minister who programmed Ives over the protests of his congregation: “God gets awfully tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.” Ives was a relentless visionary yet also a traditionalist, worshiping Beethoven and turning up his nose at Ravel and Schoenberg, whose music he claimed he never heard. Described variously as “gibberish,” “impossible,” like “awfully indigestible food,” Ives’ works draw directly from European techniques and suffuses them with the spirit and sounds of early 20th-century America, quoting popular tunes, band music, revival hymns, barn dances, and ragtime, invoking memories of holidays and parades alongside references to Transcendentalist philosophy. 

For the first concert on Oct. 20, Ives’ birthday, we are excited to welcome beloved American pianist Gilbert Kalish, who opens the festival with Ives’ First Piano Sonata alongside a selection of songs performed by Rachel Schutz and Xak Bjerken. Between pieces, baritone and student conductor Anthony Washington will lead the audience in a singalong of some of the hymns that Ives borrowed and transfigured in the First Sonata.