Source Song Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary with concerts

For classical singers, the long and the short of it is that you either lend your voice to expansive, evening-length operas and oratorios or you see if you can engage an audience within a few minutes with a song.

Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski has long known that the shortest distance to a listener's heart was the right path for her.

"My voice teachers knew I really liked to succeed immediately," she said with a laugh while talking from her Minneapolis home. "With art song, you can immediately put your own instincts into it. And a short attention span helps. I really appreciate the economy of words and music."

That fascination with the fast manner in which a song can grab a listener has led to Osowski not only taking home prizes from international song competitions in Heidelberg, Germany, London and Montreal, but inspired her to found the annual Source Song Festival. It brings composers, singers and pianists together to create new songs and be mentored by veterans of the field. And she knew it had to be in Minneapolis.

"There's long been this culture of creativity here and trying things without losing a lot of sleep over it," she said. "It was a very discerning audience in Minneapolis, but they were also very kind. Trying out a festival in Minneapolis, with all the composers we have, all the writers, it just seemed the next step."

The Source Song Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary (Aug. 7-11) with evening concerts and days full of master classes and workshops that are open to the public, all at Westminster Hall in downtown Minneapolis.

Monday night's opening concert will be a celebration of Minnesota's place in the world of song, as Osowski and a host of other exceptional singers perform songs by such Minnesota composers as Dominick Argento, Libby Larsen and Stephen Paulus. Another highlight comes Thursday evening, when a star of the international opera stage, soprano Tamara Wilson, performs with tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and collaborative pianist Warren Jones.

Osowski looks back upon Wilson's 2019 recital as one of the highlights of Source's first decade — "It was a case where your whole atoms vibrate, the way she sings" — along with a concert so big that it needed to be moved to the University of Minnesota's 1,126-seat Ted Mann Concert Hall.

"It was Dominick Argento Day in the state of Minnesota in 2016," she said. "Dominick was still with us at that time. He'd been known for his operas, but to really focus on his song with a lot of his students present was really special."

Among the students of song who have benefited from mentorship at Source is composer Paul John Rudoi.

"I remember having a session with Libby Larsen," Rudoi said last week. "She spoke to me about the importance of feeling a song, connecting with the way the words are spoken, the inflection, the shapes they make. It's led to more musical, meaningful melodies and rhythms in my music."

"There are not many opportunities for pianists to have such direct access to work with living composers," said another Source participant, pianist Seoyon MacDonald. "Such interactions dissolved my fear and the mystery around composers. Source taught me that the art song is created by five essential forces: poet, composer, pianist, singer and audience."

The five will come together for five days at Westminster.

Source Song Festival

When: Songs by Minnesota composers, 7:30 p.m. Mon.; premieres by Source composers, 7:30 p.m. Wed.; soprano Tamara Wilson, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and pianist Warren Jones, 7:30 p.m. Thu.; Source singers and pianists premiere new works, 7:30 p.m. Fri.; also daily public master classes and workshops

Where: Westminster Hall, Nicollet Mall and Alice Rainville Place, Mpls.

Tickets: Free-$25, available at sourcesongfestival.org.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.