Preview: Brett Mitchell and the Colorado Symphony welcome composer Kevin Puts

Kevin Puts will attend the second night of the Colorado Symphony's performance of Symphony No. 2 under the baton of Music Director Designate Brett Mitchell. (Photo by David White)

Westword (Denver) has published an interview with composer Kevin Puts in advance of the Colorado Symphony's performances of his Second Symphony this weekend under the baton of Music Director Designate Brett Mitchell:

What happens when you juxtapose Ludwig Van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, an orchestral masterpiece whose sublime grandeur seems impossible to rival, with contemporary composer Kevin Puts's much gentler (albeit not that gentle) Symphony No. 2, a modern orchestral work written in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks?

Audiences will find out tonight, January 27, and tomorrow, January 28, when the Colorado Symphony performs both, conducted by Music Director Designate Brett Mitchell....

[Kevin Puts:] "The orchestral world tends to be very backward-looking. The thing is, [Colorado Symphony Music Director Designate] Brett Mitchell, who I've known for quite some time, he and I love works of the past. We'll sit there, talking and playing them on the piano for each other for hours. I'm most interested in what is possible today, what can be said today, the music that hasn't been written yet or that is being written right now. Brett is a real advocate for new music. It's not something he just thinks he should do. He really believes it."

To read the complete article, please click here.