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Big Sky 2019
a photo journey
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Our annual residency in Big Sky has come to a close and we say goodbye to Montana with melancholy and gratitude. After five summer residencies at The Warren Miller Performing Arts Center (WMPAC), we have fallen completely in love with Montana, Montanans, and mountains.
Once we adjust to singing at 7000 feet, our Big Sky experience is like none other: the music-making is awesome, the communing is meaningful, the possibilities are endless, and the new friends we make are forever.
Big Sky 2019 was full of new ideas, adventures, and craziness! We gave more performances, sang for longer durations, and traveled further than ever before.
Join us in looking back on our time in Montana.
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The Arc in the Sky @ Tinworks
We began with a concert at Tinworks Art in Bozeman, with Bozeman's own Aoide Chamber Singers, performing in Chris Fraser's installation Asterisms. While singing Kile Smith's The Arc in the Sky, we glowed under a veil of thousands of pinpoints of light (tiny holes drilled in the tin roof), moving slowly over us as they reflected the movement of the sun across the Montana horizon.
More on Chris's installation Asterisms here.
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Ranch Life
We then journeyed to Red Cliff Meadows, the remote ranch of Jill and Loren Bough where we slept in tents, floated in the Smith River, explored 3000-year old petroglyphs laid down by our predecessors, and made a little video with our friends at Four/Ten Media (more on that at another time).
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Harvest at the Farm
Next, on the way to Fort Benton, we made a stop in Highwood, MT at the farm of June and Dennis Bough and experienced the harvest with its giant combines from the middle of the wheat fields. We even sang in a grain bin!
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Fort Benton: Grand Union Hotel
A night in the historic Grand Union Hotel (opened 7 years prior to Montana's statehood), including a meal on the shore of the Missouri River, a mini-concert on the hotel's grand staircase, and bowling!
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Montaña
Back in Big Sky, we returned to Installment 2 of our multi-year project with composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. (Who would've thought we'd be singing "I wanna be a cowboy" in counterpoint?) Throughout the 3.5 hour "concert," the audience flowed freely through the rooms of WMPAC, taking in Michael's energetic, kaleidoscopic music and Bill's repurposed historical footage of farming, Native Americans, life in the Old West, and a Grizzly Bear-cam.
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Learn more about Montaña, and watch performance excerpts from last year (we'll get this year's video up as soon as we have it!)
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| Montaña information video |
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| Montaña excerpts (Year 1, 2018) |
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Thank you to John Zirkle at WMPAC, Jill and Loren Bough, June and Dennis Bough, Pam and John Flach who take care of our vittles from BYWOM (what we think is Big Sky's best restaurant!), all the terrific artists of Aoide Chamber Singers and their conductor Andrew Major, Eli Ridgeway at Tinworks and Kate Anderson at Story Miller Art, our friends at the Huntley Lodge at Big Sky Resort, the staff at the Grand Union Hotel at Fort Benton, the Yellowstone Club Community Foundation and the staff at the Yellowstone Club, and thanks to everyone who worked so hard and gave so much to make 2019 a truly unbelievable experience.
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New music only happens through your support.
Please consider joining our end-of-season campaign by giving here:
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