‘Fugue’ finale

Token Creek Chamber Music Festival returns for one more fall event

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Along Highway 19 northeast of Madison in the town of Burke, there’s a house with a concert stage that’s affectionately called “the Barn.” Not far away are other small structures, including a caretaker studio, composer’s studio, a rehearsal studio, and a renovated chicken coop that is now an apartment where you might stay if you were visiting for a while. This is the home of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, returning for its 33rd season from Sept. 4-11.

If you turn to the open fields across from these structures and follow your gaze as far as your eyes can see, they would span about 10 acres of natural habitat. In the mornings you might see mist above the fields, and you might even see a crane or two.

This is part of the land and family farm where famed violinist Rose Mary Harbison was raised by her parents, Alice and Dan Pedersen, homesteaders who purchased the land with mostly borrowed money in 1933. “I’m a farm girl,” says Rose Mary. “I know how to plow the back 40,” a phrase used to describe the undeveloped acreage on a farm.

Her husband, John Harbison, is considered one of the major composers of the 20th and 21st centuries and has won countless awards for his compositions, including a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy nomination. Also a violist, pianist and conductor, he sometimes writes his string quartets, song cycles and symphonies in the composer’s studio on the farm, a quiet place to get ideas and hear the music in his head.

The romance between the farm girl and the scholar, who was raised in a Princeton University neighborhood, had a rocky start. “ I am totally devoted to John, and he’s a very big deal, but when I first met him I thought he was an arrogant twit,” says Rose Mary. “And then I found out that the arrogant twit could really compose,” she continues. “And then I reluctantly fell madly in love with him, and his music has been the centerpiece of my life.” John has written many compositions for her.

The couple’s mutual love of music and their fondness for gathering with others to exchange ideas eventually led them to form the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival in 1989 when John won a MacArthur Fellowship. He used the winnings (about $305,000) to refurbish the farm’s various buildings and convert the farmhouse into an intimate concert hall that became the festival Barn, which seats about 100 people. “There’s a stage and balcony,” says Rose Mary. “Outside, there are fields, woods, streams and a pond. It’s perfection.” Through the years, the festival has attracted first-class musicians from near and far to play dazzling performances of classical music and jazz during the waning days of summer.

The Harbisons traveled back to the farm for these festivals since they spent most of the year in Boston, close to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where John was professor of music history, composition and performance from 1969 until his retirement in 2021. While at MIT he became Institute Professor, a prestigious title bestowed on few. He is now Institute Professor Emeritus.

John and Rose Mary say that this festival season will be the last in the format that audiences have come to know and love: four music programs, usually with a jazz segment, over about a 10-day period in late summer.

But executive director Sarah Schaffer, who has been with the festival since 1997, emphasizes that only the current structure of the festival is ending. “It’s changing, it’s slowing down, but it’s not ending,” she says. “The ideal scenario is that John and Rose Mary will be vibrantly involved in planning future festivals.”

The Harbisons shared highlights from the upcoming festival with Isthmus by phone from Boston. The festival is titled “Twilight Etchings,” an introspective title that John says reflects his interest in light and shadow as well as a nod to the last strains of the festival. You can attend in person or virtually. Tickets can be purchased on the festival’s website.

“There won’t be a jazz program this season, but there will be Haydn trios that we love and love to play,” he says. “And we’re finally getting to the end of Bach’s Art of the Fugue.” Made up of 14 fugues and four canons, the Art of the Fugue is almost three hours long, so it has been performed piecemeal over several festivals. John will play the last three fugues from the collection on the piano, as part of the Sept. 4 program

There will also be two world premieres of John’s music, presented on Sept. 7. One is a piece originally written for viola and string quartet inspired by the works of award-winning artist Nona Hershey, who specializes in printmaking. “Nona approached me with a print about 6 feet wide,” says John. “I found its structural shape and composed a piece with a similar musical shape.” The print will be displayed at the festival so the audience can see the art and hear the music. Hershey plans to attend, and John adds that she’ll be interested in this area since Madison is a major center for printmaking.

The second premiere is a song cycle inspired by the poetry of Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück. The cycle is based on her most recent poems, one of which is titled “Winter Journey,” a reflection on a sister’s death. Glück uses simple images to explore complex feelings. Soprano Kendra Colton and pianist Kayo Iwama perform.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations are a testament to what can be accomplished if you stick with it. A simple aria blossoms into 30 variations, each with a different message for the listener. Pianist and long-time festival performer Robert Levin will perform the Variations during the Sept. 10 program.

The final concert on Sept. 11 will be a barnstormer, according to the festival’s brochure. “Saint-Saëns’ Introduction et rondo capriccioso is wild and virtuosic,” says Rose Mary, who will play the work. “I usually settle for more disciplined pieces like the music of Bach.” But she’ll go all out for this final concert and John will accompany her on the piano. Rachmaninoff’s romantic Piano Concerto No. 2 will wrap things up. Originally written for piano and orchestra, pianist Robert Levin and his wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, will play it as a duo piano work.

When I leave the Barn with strains of the music still in my ears, I feel like I’ve left a quiet retreat away from the hustle and bustle of things. Though the festivals are ending in the current format, what will their future be? Schaffer says that many succession models have been discussed.

The Harbisons are now in their 80s. Besides being the artistic directors of the festival, they are also board members and performers. “It’s all about what it takes to get the festival up and running,” says John. “We’re tiring out. The board is tiring out, and their duties are very broad and take a lot of time.” Rose Mary adds that some board members, like Harriet Thiele Statz, have been there since the beginning.

The Harbisons would like to keep the Barn, the composing studio, and other buildings in the area where we enjoy the festivals as a place for music performances and other events. “The Barn is suitable as a public place for all kinds of public meetings,” says Rose Mary. “It could be a place for serious conversations.”

Besides the 10 acres that we see outside the Barn, the Harbisons own 100 more acres. They would like to preserve those acres from development, but they have not yet decided how to do it. The land is currently under the jurisdiction of the town of Burke, and portions of it have been annexed to other municipalities. The town is scheduled to be dissolved by 2036.

“There’s a lot of development going on in the town of Burke,” says Schaffer. “When they come back for the festival this summer, I think Rose Mary will be shocked at what she sees.”

Rose Mary is trying to save their land from development so that surrounding communities can enjoy the natural beauty that enhances cultural experiences like the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival.

“I love the land,” she says. “And I love everything that has been lost.”