{"id":272872,"date":"2023-06-14T13:39:23","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T19:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/?p=272872"},"modified":"2023-07-27T12:42:19","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T18:42:19","slug":"kalena-bovell-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/kalena-bovell-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Concert Conductor Kalena Bovell: &#8220;Come Have Fun &#038; Leave Excited&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Talented conductor Kalena Bovell will lead our 2023 Family Concert, which includes Prokofiev&#8217;s <em>Peter and the Wolf, <\/em>Eric Whitacre&#8217;s<em> Goodnight Moon, <\/em>Samuel Coleridge-Taylor&#8217;s &#8220;Danse N<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00e8gre<\/span>,&#8221; and a suite from Bizet&#8217;s <em>Carmen<\/em>. Learn more about this concert and Kalena&#8217;s approach to conducting.<\/h4>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kalena Bovell, Conductor for Family Concert: Peter and the Wolf (2023)\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SEAQQ5LeNk8?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Colorado Music Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good morning! My name is Erica Reid, I&#8217;m with the Colorado Music Festival, and today I am talking with poet and speaker and conductor Kalena Bovell. Kalena, I know you are hard at work with a number of projects. Can you tell us where you are right now, what you&#8217;re working on at the moment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena Bovell: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, firstly, hi, nice to meet you!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hello!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hello. So I&#8217;m actually in Toronto right now, or Toron<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, still have no idea how you say it. And I have been here since May 15, conducting the production of Scott Joplin&#8217;s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tolive.com\/Event-Details-Page\/reference\/Treemonisha-2023\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Treemonisha<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And what&#8217;s really cool is that this Canadian production is the 10th performance in the <em>history<\/em> of the work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So it&#8217;s a really special moment. And then something that was kind of unbeknownst to me is that I randomly made history, in that I&#8217;m the first Black woman to conduct opera in Canada. I was kind of like, &#8220;Oh!&#8221; I mean, I said yes because I thought it was a really cool project and it was one that I believed in, but then to also have that attributed to it, I was like, &#8220;Oh, okay. Well, that&#8217;s pretty awesome.&#8221; So yes, I&#8217;m in Toronto right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kind of a bummer to have to set that record, but congratulations! [laughs] I can see how it&#8217;s both celebratory and not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena:<\/b> [laughs] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, right? Because I mean one, you&#8217;re like, &#8220;That&#8217;s such a tremendous honor.&#8221; And then you also ask yourself, &#8220;But we&#8217;re still having firsts in 2023,&#8221; right? Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You&#8217;re also in our Music Director Peter Oundjian&#8217;s stomping ground. So, that&#8217;s kind of fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, exactly. Yeah, that&#8217;s right because he had Toronto Symphony.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. For 14 years I think, yeah. So anyway, you are conducting for us in early July, on July 2nd, you&#8217;re conducting our <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Family Concert<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which includes music such as Prokofiev&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How will you approach that concert, which is for families and young children? Will you approach it differently as with the operas and things that you&#8217;re dealing with, or how will you come at the family concert?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, honestly, I approach concerts the same in that you&#8217;re trying to establish connection with an audience. And my approach to conducting and my approach to anyone that I work with is just empowerment and uplifting. And so I would hope that any audience that comes to this concert just wants to have a good time because also, if you&#8217;re not having fun with what you&#8217;re doing, then why are you doing what you&#8217;re doing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. That is a great answer. I love that. We spoke to your narrator, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/janae-burris-2023\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Janae Burris<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve had a chance to meet her or not. She&#8217;s wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We talked a little bit about her approach to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which she has wanted to narrate since she was a young girl and first heard it in school.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, how cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you look forward to conducting <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">? Do you have an attachment to that, or any comment on that piece?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it&#8217;s actually funny. This is my first time conducting <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And I&#8217;ll be honest, before this opportunity, I had never heard the piece in its entirety.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So for me and who I am and my learning style, I just listened to a bunch of different recordings. One, to see what narrators do, and also just to get a feel for the piece. So I&#8217;m definitely excited because <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is, I guess, I don&#8217;t want to say\u2014the OG kind of family story, right? When you think about it. I mean, whenever you think family concerts, people immediately gravitate towards <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> because it&#8217;s still relatively accessible. It&#8217;s still such a fun piece.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then just the overarching story of it. I mean, it&#8217;s a young boy who goes out into the meadow and has these adventures. And I think the beauty of that, especially in today&#8217;s society, is that we&#8217;re all so attached to our technology, right? But then to see this story where it&#8217;s just a kid being a kid and to bring that to families, I think there&#8217;s something rather beautiful about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think you&#8217;re going to have a lot of fun with Janae. Her first child is around one year old and she&#8217;s already a performer and a spoken word artist and it&#8217;s going to be a really fun, unique <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I think every <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> becomes really unique because of that narration piece and the approach to it. So I think it&#8217;ll be really fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So the other pieces on our <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">family program<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodnight Moon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which is set to music by Eric Whitacre; we have a suite from Bizet&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; and we have an overture from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">African Suite<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Do you have any thoughts on those other pieces or why they might be good introductions to children, to the world of music?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodnight Moon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is based on a <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/goodnight-moon-margaret-wise-brown\/15026812?ean=9780694003617\">book<\/a> of the same name, and it&#8217;s again, another really cute story of a young bunny who\u2014basically his bedroom is covered, painted green. And he says goodnight to every single item in his bedroom before going to sleep. And I think that&#8217;s absolutely adorable. And when you think about that message, it&#8217;s just gratitude and appreciation for what you have and for the things that are around you. And I think, again, why it&#8217;s so important to introduce that story to audiences is because we need to teach&#8230; We don&#8217;t need to <em>teach<\/em>, but it&#8217;s important that kids learn about gratitude and grace.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then also Eric Whitacre is considered a rock star in the choral music world. So to also be able to program a piece by Eric Whitacre is absolutely fantastic because I love his music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Same with the Coleridge-Taylor. I mean, I have been a huge Coleridge-Taylor fan since I first discovered his <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ballade<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, ooh, maybe almost a decade ago. And so with the \u201cDanse N\u00e8gre,\u201d it&#8217;s an overture that&#8217;s very fast. It&#8217;s very fun. I mean, it&#8217;s about six minutes long and he takes you through so many different moods. It starts off very fast, rambunctious, in your face. And then there&#8217;s this really lovely slow, melodic, lyrical section. And then again, Coleridge-Taylor being Coleridge-Taylor, he comes back to that fast, rambunctious section.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But he also, whenever he writes, he uses&#8230; He always finds a way to interject his culture or to include his culture within his pieces. So that might be done with some of the instrumentation that he uses, or even the way he writes his melodies using some of the offbeat rhythms, meaning rhythms that don&#8217;t necessarily line up with where a beat should. So, I love that he kind of puts who he is into his music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the importance of that for me is just self-acceptance, meaning that everything is for every<em>one<\/em>. And that&#8217;s what I love about Coleridge-Taylor&#8217;s music, because he was a Black British composer living in London, and I know, I believe that when he was coming up as a young musician, he wasn&#8217;t accepted at first. He was still trying to find his own voice, but to see him find his voice through music, I think there&#8217;s something fantastic about that. And I would love to share that with audiences in that it&#8217;s okay to not know who you are, but eventually you will discover who you are.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, I love hearing this. It sounds like a program, such a diverse program in terms of mood and energy, like you&#8217;re talking about gratitude and grace, and you&#8217;re talking about self-acceptance, and I&#8217;m also hearing rhythm and dance and fun. And it just seems like it sort of crosses the board, it&#8217;s going to be a varied program, which is great, I think, for those young attention spans we&#8217;re always trying to capture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, definitely. Because then you look at the Bizet suite from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I mean, every person knows <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> because every person has watched a commercial that has the \u201cToreador\u201d music scene in it. And so with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it comes from an opera, but it takes you through so many different moods, whether it&#8217;s fast, lively, slow, melodic, lyrical. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> suite definitely has something for everyone, and I know audiences are going to love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It sounds like there will also be a mix of the familiar with the maybe new-to-you. You&#8217;re likely to hear something you&#8217;ve recognized before as well as something that&#8217;s going to be a new favorite, maybe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most definitely. And I think that&#8217;s also part of our jobs as a musician, and something that I take very seriously as a conductor, which is introducing people to music they didn&#8217;t know they needed to hear. And the fact that Colorado Music Festival also, we curated this program together to be able to do just that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, to start out with the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carmen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and then take people through this road of the Coleridge-Taylor, followed by Eric Whitacre, which I&#8217;m sure most people will not have heard before. And then closing it with something that&#8217;s familiar, with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I mean, it&#8217;s a lovely little journey, I think.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. I just keep thinking about, so again, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/janae-burris-2023\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Janae Burris<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was talking about how she fell in love with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as a child and has been waiting all this time to get a chance to read it or whatever. You will be a lot of children&#8217;s first memories of some of these pieces of music, that maybe decades later they are playing in their band or they are exploring in different ways. I think that&#8217;s one of my favorite things about the Family Concert is beginning families\u2019 or children&#8217;s traditions with music and giving them their first exposure to pieces that they may love for the rest of their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most definitely, yeah. And I think overall, that&#8217;s the beauty of music. I was going to say classical music, but at the end of the day, that&#8217;s the beauty of music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Well, before I let you go, I want to ask you about poetry, because I was really excited to talk to you because I&#8217;m a poet. Anybody who&#8217;s watched any of these videos has had to suffer through listening about poetry. [laughs] So I just wanted to ask quickly, how do your poetry practices and your music practices, are they separate for you? Do they work together? Can you comment on that at all?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think they definitely work together. The classical music sometimes was very hard for me before because as just a poet, words are very important. And I don&#8217;t always listen to classical music. I mean, I&#8217;m a huge death metal head. So, I tend to listen to metal and alternative. And when people have that similar reaction, it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Well, how?&#8221; And I said, &#8220;Because it&#8217;s all about the words for me.&#8221; It&#8217;s about the emotion and what&#8217;s going on behind the text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so for me, for poetry, it helps me with conducting because I&#8217;m able to craft stories and I&#8217;m able to put words and text through different sections in the score. So with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it&#8217;s simple because he put the text for you. But for the \u201cDanse N\u00e8gre\u201d by Coleridge-Taylor, I&#8217;m actually crafting a story so that when I get to certain sections, oh, I know this is what&#8217;s going on in my head. So if anything, I feel like being a poet and a creative just enhances what I do as a conductor because it allows me to tap into another medium of my creative side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That must also come into play when you&#8217;re conducting opera and things like that, to be able to honor the text as much as the music itself. I think that it must really come into play at that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most definitely. And what was interesting is the, excuse me, the Scott Joplin was and is my very first opera. And so to not have experience with it before, I mean, I had many conversations with friends who conduct opera, and I just said, &#8220;How do you approach this?&#8221; And they all said, &#8220;It starts with the text.&#8221; I read the libretto like it was a book, and I just read it backwards and forwards trying to understand the meaning. And you&#8217;re absolutely right. It&#8217;s like at the end of the day, the music is there to enhance the drama of the text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. And I think the same is true\u2014I mean, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is sort of an opera in a way. It&#8217;s sort of a small opera of its own, kind of. Well anyway, thank you. This has just been really fascinating to get to know you. I think our <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Family Concert<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sounds like one of our best. Just sounds like a thrill ride. It is on Sunday, July 2nd at 10:30. It&#8217;s about a 45-minute concert for those young attention spans we were talking about. Is there anything else you&#8217;d like to say before we sign off?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. What I&#8217;d like to say is I want people to come have fun, enjoy, and hopefully they leave excited to just listen to more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Festival: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. All right. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thanks for spending time with us this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Kalena: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talented conductor Kalena Bovell will lead our 2023 Family Concert, which includes Prokofiev&#8217;s Peter and the Wolf, Eric Whitacre&#8217;s Goodnight Moon, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor&#8217;s &#8220;Danse N\u00e8gre,&#8221; and a suite from Bizet&#8217;s Carmen. Learn more about this concert and Kalena&#8217;s approach to conducting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":272873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}