Tippet Rise OPUS 2017 is the second compilation album to emerge from the summer music season at Montana’s Tippet Rise Arts Center, which features performance spaces of acoustic perfection amidst a sculpture-laden terrain of awe-inspiring beauty, nestled against a backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains near Yellowstone National Park. From the PENTATONE Oxingale Series, Tippet Rise OPUS 2017 inhabits the sphere of Daydreams, a sculpture by Patrick Dougherty where natural saplings organically emerge out of an eroding schoolhouse.

In this whimsical, imaginary world, composers open a visionary portal to the past and future. In the jazz-infused FIRST CLUB DATE, a world premiere by Aaron Jay Kernis and a Tippet Rise commission, cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Andrea Lam illuminate the musical playground of a boy on the cusp of manhood. The new work is dedicated to Haimovitz and the composer’s cellist-son Jonah, with double-entendre movement titles like “Puppy Love” and “Matt’s Monkish Machinations.” Violinist Caroline Goulding and pianist David Fung embody the youthful spirit of George Enescu’s Impressions from Childhood, while a pastoral mood reigns in Eugène Bozza’s Image for solo flute, performed by Jessica Sindell. An epic expansiveness saturates Red Arc / Blue Veil by John Luther Adams, featuring electronics and a wide array of sounds from pianist Vicky Chow and percussionist Doug Perkins. Opening the album is Jeffrey Kahane’s hopeful America the Beautiful, performed on piano by the composer himself, while works by Chopin and Bach, performed by pianists Yevgeny Sudbin and Anne-Marie McDermott, anchor the program with their sheer beauty and virtuosity.