Tippet Rise Art Center Opens for the Season on July 5

Starting July 5, 2019, Tippet Rise Art Center will welcome the public for its fourth summer, offering tours of its monumental outdoor sculptures and architectural structures on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Visitors can explore the 12,000-acre working ranch via 10.5 miles of hiking and biking trails, or by shuttle van. This year, visitors can also explore a new scenic pavilion, Xylem, designed by celebrated architect Francis Kéré. The pavilion, which will be inaugurated on July 13, is the first site-specific commission to be added to the art center's collection since Tippet Rise opened in 2016.

The summer's concert season will begin July 12 and continue for seven weeks, through September 7, 2019. The season brings together accomplished artists and up-and-coming stars for 23 indoor and outdoor recitals and chamber music performances, which will span more than four centuries of repertoire.

Tippet Rise co-founders Peter and Cathy Halstead said, "We are eager to welcome our incredible visitors to Tippet Rise again this summer. The fourth season offers a variety of special experiences from world premieres to Francis Kéré's new gathering place-a quiet place to contemplate nature. We are thrilled to have collaborated with Francis on such a meaningful piece of architecture. We also hope that this pavilion will forever create a link between Montana and Burkina Faso, where the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation is supporting the completion of a secondary school built in Francis's unique, context-specific language."

Francis Kéré said, "Standing on the high meadow of Tippet Rise Art Center, looking out at the mountains under a vast sky, people can face nature at its widest scale. But with this pavilion, Tippet Rise offers a more intimate experience of its landscape within a quiet shelter, where people can access the most secret part of nature: the heart of the trees. I am honored that Peter and Cathy Halstead invited me to contribute to their magnificent art center, and I am deeply grateful for their generosity in linking the creation of this pavilion to the construction of a new school in my home of Burkina Faso."

Xylem, Designed by Francis Kéré
World-renowned architect Francis Kéré has designed Tippet Rise's new 2,100-square-foot pavilion, Xylem, drawing inspiration from the wooden and straw toguna structures sacred in Dogon communities in West Africa. Nestled in a grove of aspen and cottonwood trees beside Grove Creek and the art center's central campus, Xylem is constructed of locally and sustainably sourced ponderosa and lodgepole pine and features a canopy of vertical logs, which filters shafts of light onto the seating areas. The seating elements' organic shapes are inspired in part by abstract paintings that artist and Tippet Rise co-founder Cathy Halstead created based on forms of microscopic life, in addition to the sinuous topography of the surrounding hills. Visitors to Tippet Rise may gather within Xylem to converse or contemplate the views, or sit and meditate in solitude. From time to time, programs will be hosted in the pavilion, including poetry readings and musical performances.

In keeping with the educational mission of Tippet Rise, the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation is supporting Francis Kéré in building environmentally sustainable and climatically appropriate schools in West Africa by funding the construction of a new school he has designed in his birthplace, the village of Gando in Burkina Faso. Opening in January 2020, the Naaba Belem Goumma Secondary School will accommodate approximately 1,000 students. More details about the school, which is named for Kéré's father, are available here.

Fourth Concert Season
The summer concert series will begin with performances of Beethoven and Brahms by theGryphon Trio, which will then be joined by flutist Brandon Patrick George in works by Haydn, Debussy, Ravel, and Steve Reich. A highlight of the fourth season is the world premiere of a Tippet Rise commission, John Luther Adams's Lines Made By Walking (String Quartet No. 5), to be performed by JACK Quartet. Another highlight is a performance by internationally acclaimed pianist Stephen Hough, who will return to Tippet Rise to present a program of works by Bach, Chopin, Busoni and Liszt along with his own Sonata No. 4 (Vida Breve).

The St. Lawrence String Quartet and Julien Brocal, named 2018 Newcomer by BBC Music Magazine, also return to Tippet Rise in 2019. Brocal will perform the world premiere of three of his own compositions along with works by both Chopin and Bach. Other artists who are returning include celebrated pianist Behzod Abduraimov, the Rolston String Quartet, and seasoned Tippet Rise performer Jenny Chen, who recently made her Carnegie Hall debut and will perform an ambitious selection of pieces by Chopin and Beethoven.

A special festival weekend will be held August 23-25, featuring Artistic Advisor and pianistPedja Muzijevic joined by seven musicians-Benjamin Beilman, Jennifer Frautschi, Ayane Kozasa, Anthony Manzo, Nathan Schram, James Austin Smith, and Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir-who will be in residence for five concerts. They will perform solo and chamber music by Telemann, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Dvo?ák, Dohnányi, Berio, and Reich.

Tippet Rise will cap its season by welcoming members of Ensemble Connect, a two-year fellowship program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. These rising young talents will showcase pieces by Boccherini, Kodály, Brahms, Mozart, Paul Wiancko, Alexandra Gardner, and David Bruce. Piano duo Anderson & Roe will perform the last concert of the season with a program of Mozart, Stravinsky, Piazzolla, and Paul Schoenfield, along with the duo's arrangements of the ballet music from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Suite, and their own Hallelujah Variations (Variations on a Theme by Leonard Cohen).

Click here for more detailed information on the concert season.

The Tippet Rise Art Center Experience
Tippet Rise Art Center celebrates the union of land, art, architecture, and music. Performances take place primarily in the 150-seat Olivier Music Barn, its scale and proportions inspired by the intimate and acoustically pristine concert spaces of the 18th century where Haydn's and Mozart's works were performed. Pre-concert lectures are presented at Tiara, a 100-seat outdoor acoustic shell. Weather permitting, Saturday morning concerts take place at the open-air Domo (2016), a 98-foot-long, 16-foot-tall, acoustically rich sculptural structure designed byEnsamble Studio.

The new pavilion by Francis Kéré joins other large-scale works at Tippet Rise by acclaimed artists and architects. Site-specific artworks set within the landscape include two other sculptural structures by the innovative Ensamble Studio, including the 25-foot-tall Beartooth Portal,composed of two vertical rocklike forms, 29 feet tall, that lean together at the top; and the similarly designed 26-foot-tall Inverted Portal. Tippet Rise is also home to Daydreams (2015) by Patrick Dougherty and Satellite #5: Pioneer (2016) by Stephen Talasnik.

Also set in the landscape are two monumental works by the internationally renowned sculptorMark di Suvero, Beethoven's Quartet (2003) and Proverb (2002) and two works byAlexander Calder on loan from the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,Two Discs (1965) and Stainless Stealer (1966). Two works by Modernist painter Isabelle Johnson, an original owner of part of the land on which the art center is situated, have been acquired by Tippet Rise and hang in the Olivier Music Barn. Additionally, two smaller works by Stephen Talasnik frame the Olivier Music Barn's performance space-Galaxy (2014) andArcheology (2012).

During the summer season in Will's Shed, concert ticketholders and tour guests can purchase morning pastries, coffee and tea, lunch and dinner options, as well as wine and craft beer. All fare is prepared by Cordon Bleu-trained Chef Nick Goldman and Chef Wendi Reed of Wild Flower Kitchen.

Getting to Tippet Rise Art Center
Located in Stillwater County, Tippet Rise is approximately one hour southwest of Billings, two hours southeast of Bozeman, and two-and-a-half hours north of Yellowstone National Park. It is served by two major airports: Billings Logan International Airport and Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport.

Ticketing Information
Concert tickets are $10 each for adults, and free to anyone 21 and under. Tickets for the season's performances were available through a randomized drawing. Tickets returned to the box office are available on a first come, first serve basis and will be placed for sale on the website. For additional information, please visit tippetrise.org.

Sculpture tours at Tippet Rise via shuttle van are $10 each for adults and free to anyone 21 and under and are available first-come, first-serve (space is limited). Hiking and biking at the art center are free for everyone. Prior registration via the Tippet Rise website is required for all visitors.

For those who are unable to attend concerts in person, the Olivier Music Barn is equipped with state-of-the-art recording technology, and recorded performances are added regularly to the Tippet Rise website and to the art center's YouTube channel.

 

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