“Michael Gandolfi has returned to his garden of delights,” writes John von Rhein in Tuesday’s (8/2) Chicago Tribune. “The American composer is perhaps best known for his open-ended orchestral suite ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation,’ inspired by the eponymous, 30-acre garden designed by the American-born architect Charles Jencks in collaboration with his late wife, Maggie Keswick, in the scenic Borders region of Scotland…. ‘The Cosmic Garden in Bloom,’ the newest section of his evolving opus, will receive its world premiere by the Grant Park Orchestra, under principal conductor Carlos Kalmar, at concerts Friday and Saturday nights … [Gandolfi] created ‘The Cosmic Garden in Bloom’ as both a freestanding work and as a segment of the whole, he said. Each of its two sections was inspired by recent structural additions to the garden. ‘Octagonia’ evokes an eight-sided building that houses a library. ‘The Comet Bridge’ is a musical counterpart to a steel footbridge that traverses the enormous blanket of green…. ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation’ stands … as a suite in 13 movements and 85 minutes. But Gandolfi doesn’t expect all 13 to be played in a single concert, indeed, he invites conductors to select and order their own sequences.”
Posted August 4, 2016
