What do John Denver, Dave Brubeck, Abba, Judy Collins and the world-renowned classical pianist Jonathan Biss all have in common? Their music will be played and celebrated this year at Arizona Musicfest, America’s premier winter music festival.
Arizona Musicfest presents top artists of classical, chamber, opera, jazz, blues, pop, folk, Broadway and even country-western music for six weeks beginning in February every year. From a 2,000-seat church in North Scottsdale, to the Grayhawk Fairway, to the sanctuary at Temple Chai, Arizona Musicfest uses a variety of unique venues to showcase some of the most exciting musical artists in the world.
“We embrace all different kinds of music,” says Executive Director Allan Naplan, an opera singer turned arts administrator, who has run heavy-hitter opera companies from Houston to Pittsburgh to Minnesota. Naplan was tapped to run Arizona Musicfest in February of 2013 when he and his wife, Christina, also an opera singer, and their two boys, Jonah and Elliot, moved to Phoenix. “In one year,” Naplan tells me, “we have already more than doubled last year’s ticket sales.”
When the Naplans moved to Phoenix last year, they ended up buying a home five minutes from Temple Chai. Naplan introduced himself to Temple Chai Executive Director Joe Miller and offered his services as a cantorial soloist. Miller jumped on the opportunity, and now you can enjoy Naplan’s amazing voice most Friday nights at Temple Chai’s Kabbalat Shabbat service. And on the “it’s kind of weird scale,” without them knowing it, the house the Naplans bought used to be owned by the temple’s former cantor. Talk about “beshert.”
As for Musicfest, one of the first things Naplan did upon arriving in the Valley was to expand Musicfest’s venues. For example, with Jewish pianist Jonathan Biss, widely considered one of the world’s finest virtuosos, coming to town, Naplan thought why not house the Feb. 11 concert in a synagogue? “It just makes sense,” offers Naplan. Biss, who will have just played Carnegie Hall a month prior to his Arizona debut, comes from a family of esteemed musicians. His mother, Israeli-born violinist Miriam Fried, was the daughter of Holocaust survivors, just one of the reasons Biss believes his Jewish identity is a vital part of who he is. His father is the well-known conductor and violist Paul Biss, and his grandmother was the famous Russian cellist, Raya Garbousova. In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Biss talked about his Jewish identity. “I think it oozes from my every pore,” he affirmed. “I regard the importance that the arts, music especially, had in our household as a Jewish-related quality and, because that’s so central to my life, that’s big.” He’s even including a work entitled “Játékok” by contemporary Hungarian Jewish composer, Gyorgy Kurtag, in his upcoming recital. Kurtag is best known for his work “Kafka Fragments,” which includes movements titled “Hasidic Dance” and “Penetrant Judisch.”
