Cascade Quartet opens season with Chester's Aaberg

Press release

GREAT FALLS - The Cascade Quartet, resident quartet of the Great Falls Symphony, kicks off its season with a pair of concerts featuring Grammy-nominated pianist Philip Aaberg of Chester.

Aaberg will perform a quintet he composed for the Cascade Quartet and first performed with them in 2007. Concerts are Friday evening, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. Both performances will be held at First Congregational Church, 2900 Ninth Ave. S. in Great Falls.

Individual tickets are available at $15 for adults and $5 for students.

A seven-concert pass for the Great Falls Symphony Chamber Series is $75 for adults and $25 for students; a four-concert pass is $45 for adults and $16 for students; a concert family package is for admission for one adult and one student is $15 and a bring-a-friend package gaining admission for two adults, available online only, is $25.

Tickets can be purchased online at http://chambermusicseries.org or at the door.

The concert will begin with a brief and humorous scherzo by American musical pioneer Charles Ives. Filling out the first half will be a quartet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his Quartet in G Major, often called the "Spring" quartet owing to its cheerful mood and high energy.

The second half of the program will open with "A Day at the Fair" by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. This piece, which has all the fun and hurly-burly of a Mexican fair, will be introduced by the quartet's newest member, violinist Luis Salazar, who was born in Mexico. Salazar is filling in for the quartet's longtime violinist, Mary Papoulis, who is on sabbatical.

The concert concludes with the Aaberg quintet, which the composer describes as having "the influences of African-American music, Native American language, machine rhythms, and West Coast contemporary music." In particular, there are frequent references to the sounds of trains - Aaberg grew up in Chester and loved to hear their sound - as well as tips of the hat to such diverse sources as jazz great Charlie Parker and traditional cowboy songs.

Grammy and Emmy nominated composer Philip Aaberg of Chester, Montana, is known worldwide for his compositions that evoke the spaciousness and beauty of the Western landscape.

It was Aaberg's mother who first noticed her son's musical talent early on. He began playing music at age four. By the time he was 15, he traveled on the train tweleve hours one-way every two weeks from Chester to Spokane, Washington, to study with Margaret Saunders Ott, a Julliard-trained pianist and teacher who was chair of the piano department at Whitmorth College. Early on, Aaberg displayed an eclectic taste in music and, along with the piano, he played drums and organ in a garage rock band that he and his brother started while in high school. He also played in symphonies across Montana before heading off to college.

Aaberg's abilities later earned him a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship and Harvard National Scholarship at Harvard College, where he received a Bachelor in Arts degree in music.

His musical career is as diverse and expansive as the Montana landscape he calls home. After graduating from Harvard, Aaberg later moved to San Francisco, California, to make pop and rock records. He played solo and in small combos in San Francisco blues clubs until joining the Elvin Bishop Group in 1973. He first appeared on the national scene as keyboardist with The Elvin Bishop Band. He toured with the band for four years and played on several of their albums.

Aaberg later toured with Peter Gabriel and recorded with the Doobie Brothers, Kenny Rogers and Vince Gill. He began composing his own music seriously in 1985. Shortly after, he signed with Windham Hill Records and released the influential and critically-applauded solo album "High Plains," which garnered him international acclaim. It was a solo piano suite that brought elements of blues, bluegrass, rock, and new music to his meditative compositions. It showcased his eclectic musical background. It was an immediate hit.

His second album, "Live from Montana," earned Aaberg a Grammy nomination for Best New Age Album in 2002. It was recorded in the Chester High School gymnasium, where Aaberg played basketball years before. Shortly afterward, he moved back to Chester for good with his wife, Patty, and their son, Jake, to form his own label, Sweetgrass Music, named for the hills north of his hometown.

Aaberg has played with the Boston Pops, participated in the Marlboro Chamber Music Festival, premiered contemporary compositions with the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and performed on more than 200 albums and on PBS' "All-American Jazz," which also earned him an Emmy nomination. Another Emmy nomination followed in 2008, for his soundtrack for "Class C: The Only Game in Town," produced by Montana PBS.

Since returning to Chester, the Aabergs founded Arts Without Borders, a statewide nonprofit that provides music and arts lessons and deepens experiences in the arts for children in Montana communities. Through this label he has endeavored to produce music that "connects a global audience to the sweeping landscape of the West." Throughout his career, Aaberg has produced music that consistently translated Montana's farms, ranches, and native cultures into "musical concepts" and has "forged a unique keyboard style that paints an audible portrait of his home state."

Aaberg has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Montana Governor's Award for the Arts, Montana Arts Council Artists Innovation Award, an honorary doctorate in music from Montana State University in 2013, the Montana Governor's Humanities Award, and he was named Montana's Treasured Artist in 2016. He also serves on the Ucross Foundation selection committee, the Montana Tourism Advisory Council, and the District 4 Human Resources Development Council. Aaberg's monthly radio program, "Of the West: Creativity & Sense of Place," can be heard across Montana on Yellowstone Public Radio and http://www.ofthewest.net .

With its depth of sound, insightful interpretations, and genre-bending performances, the Cascade Quartet has enriched communities across Montana and the Northwest for more than three decades. They are praised for their cross-discipline collaborations and have worked closely with multi-media artists, dancers, choirs, world percussionists and jazz artists. Noted past collaborations include Yo Yo Ma, the Ying Quartet, and Grammy nominee Philip Aaberg. Visit http://cascadequartet.org for more information.

The mission of the Great Falls Symphony is to infuse cultural vibrancy into the Great Falls community through transformative music events and education programs. The organization strives to be an essential cultural asset in north central Montana that raises the quality of life for its citizens through outstanding performing arts programs.

The Great Falls Symphony includes a 75-member semi-professional orchestra, a one hundred member symphonic choir and two professional resident ensembles, the Cascade Quartet and Chinook Winds, made up of nine core orchestral musicians, and a youth orchestra program established in 1996, which supports two student orchestras and more than 100 young musicians grades six through 12 from Great Falls and surrounding areas.

These components offer a rich and diverse mix of activities that include orchestra, choral, chamber and educational concerts which reach up to 40,000 people annually.

The Great Falls Symphony presents a six-concert series every year, and plays host to a variety of guest artists and resident composers.

The Cascade Quartet and Chinook Winds present 14 concerts on the Symphony's Chamber Music Series in Great Falls in addition to traveling an average of 4,500 miles each year performing concerts and educational programs throughout the northwest United States. To fulfill a state and regional mission, the Great Falls Symphony places the highest priority upon programs that provide state-wide education and outreach. Two youth matinees are presented each season by the orchestra and have served far more than 115,000 students from the public, private and home schools in a 100-mile region of central Montana.