Philadelphia to host three major new-music events

Like a perfect storm, three big new-music events are simultaneously converging on Philadelphia, all but unbeknownst to one another.

June's unofficial new-music festival has the Opera Company of Philadelphia giving the U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra June 3-12 at the Kimmel Center, while the company's former chorus master, Donald Nally, unfurls his Month of Moderns Festival with the Crossing choir June 5, 18, and 26 at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. The synergy continues with Bowerbird's June 4-12 American Sublime festival, devoted to composer Morton Feldman in venues all over Philadelphia. Ironically, the time slots were chosen to avoid competition from high-profile events in the regular concert season.

Any one of these events would have been unthinkable as recently as 1999, when the Philadelphia Orchestra caused a minor scandal by announcing a 100th-anniversary season with nothing but 20th-century music. And these June events aren't the sort of new music that's easily mistaken for old music. Phaedra, which will be performed at the Kimmel Center's smaller Perelman Theater, is hard-core Henze.

"Is Philadelphia ready? I think so," said Robert Driver, stage director of the production and artistic director of the company. "You wouldn't believe the number of people who have come to me excited about everything we've done at the Perelman [including Berg's Wozzeck and Golijov's Ainadamar]. And not all of them young. I had three subscribers - ancient, holding onto each other, literally - ask me to keep bringing in these unusual experiences."

Nally recalled, "I used to sit with Robert Driver and say, 'Can't we please do a piece of new music? Please?' And he would say, 'Ha! Ha! Ha! That's so clever!' "

Yet all along, Driver was warning board members that risks had to be taken, successful or not: "Otherwise we'll drown in our own popularity. People will get tired of Tosca. It will happen."

And now, said Nally, "For whatever reason, audiences are saying, 'Lead me to it.' "