The Charles Ives Festival

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His exuberant, pioneering personality, his love of the popular and religious music of his childhood, and his rigorous training in European classical forms combined to create the first quintessentially American classical music.

Ann Arbor's Charles Ives American Music Festival, now in its third year, echoes Ives's remarkable productivity and his proclivity for combining disparate elements in his music. What began in 2005 as pianist Kathryn Goodson's dissertation recital grew last year to a weekend of concerts — it will stretch to three days this year, Friday through Sunday, February 16 through 18 — presented by the Phoenix Ensemble and the Peter Sparling Dance Company. This year's festival features internationally famed musicians (and local legends) Bill Bolcom and Joan Morris.

Bolcom and Morris were also instrumental in convincing Goodson, the festival's artistic director, to invite soprano Helen Boatwright, who performs on Saturday. In 1954 Boatwright recorded what are still considered to be the definitive interpretations of many Ives songs. Today, at ninety, she is still performing, still in great voice, and still, in Bolcom's admiring words, "a very feisty lady."