FISHTAIL, MONT.- Poised on the ridges and rolling fields where the Beartooth Mountains touch Montana’s big sky, the new Tippet Rise Art Center will open to the public in summer 2016, offering local residents and international visitors a uniquely resonant experience of great classical music, nestled among sculptures and buildings that hug the land like natural formations. Founded by life-long philanthropists and artists Cathy and Peter Halstead, Tippet Rise will celebrate the union of land, art, architecture and music, bringing concerts by world-renowned musicians and specially commissioned sculptural structures to an 11,500-acre working ranch outside Fishtail, Montana, midway between Billings and the edge of Yellowstone National Park.

Performance venues include the rustic-looking but acoustically ideal Olivier Barn, the open-air Tiara (a wooden acoustic shell of innovative design) and at a later date a performance space and installation called Tabula Acustica, designed to look as if it were sheltered by an outcropping of rock. These venues will share Tippet Rise with site-specific installations of wood-and-earth-based sculpture by the distinguished artists Patrick Dougherty and Stephen Talasnik; raw-surfaced, quasi-architectural gateway structures and shelters that rear up from the earth like primitive markers, created by the innovative Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa); and two now-classic music-themed sculptures by Mark di Suvero, each tucked into its own valley.

Director Alban Bassuet, recognized internationally for crafting exceptional performance spaces and collaborating with mold-breaking artists such as James Turrell, Lou Reed and Ai Wei Wei, leads the planning, design and curatorial program at Tippet Rise. Music Director Christopher O’Riley, acclaimed pianist and host of NPR’s “From the Top,” is organizing the performance season, bringing to the schedule the imaginative, often genre-crossing programming for which he is widely known.

Cathy and Peter Halstead said, “Here on the last American frontier, in this setting of unmatched beauty, we want to restore a connection that has almost been forgotten in today’s cities, but that for centuries was the source of power and profundity in music, art and architecture—the link between elemental harmonies in nature and the hidden patterns in great art. We hope to make Tippet Rise Art Center a place where music and art ring true—for the performers and artists themselves, for our wonderful local community here in southern Montana and for visitors from around the globe. With the collaboration of our great project team and the participation of some of the world’s most extraordinary musicians, sculptors and architects, we look forward to welcoming the public and inaugurating our first performance season in summer 2016.”

Within the next few months, Tippet Rise will announce the schedule for its first concert season. In advance of the public opening, Tippet Rise has already welcomed neighbors in Fishtail, Red Lodge and Billings to introductory events and has begun hosting programs for students from local schools and young adults from nearby colleges and universities.

Performance Spaces at Tippet Rise
At the time of its opening, Tippet Rise will feature two principal performance venues, the Olivier Barn and the Tiara, with design concept and acoustics developed by Alban Bassuet in collaboration with a team of engineers from Arup. Local timber craftsmen Gunnstock Timber Frames have served as lead architect for the projects.

The scale and proportions of the 150-seat Olivier Barn were inspired by the powerful performance spaces where Haydn and Mozart expected their works would be performed. A contemporary innovation—a high ceiling suspended above the boxlike space—lends an elevated, ethereal character to the deeply resonant acoustics, but is designed to mimic the pitched roof of a traditional wood barn. The rustic modesty of this design helps to establish an informal atmosphere and dissolve the barrier between performers and audience. The Olivier Barn is also home to Tippet Rise’s visitor’s center, a state-of-the-art screening room equipped for 4K high-definition film projection and 3D immersive sound installations. Tippet Rise is applying for LEED Platinum certification for the Olivier Barn.

During the warmer months, the 100-seat Tiara will serve as Tippet Rise’s main performance space. A moveable acoustic shell without walls, the Tiara features a partial ceiling whose corners re-direct sound toward the audience, creating vibrant and enveloping acoustics. The design allows for 360° views of the rolling hills, with the Beartooth Mountains in the distance.

“Cathy and I have always felt that the most amazing concerts we’ve attended have been outdoors, sometimes during quirks of weather,” Peter Halstead said. “One of the most memorable was a rainy evening at the Venetian Theater at Caramoor, when Ivo Pogorelić invited the audience to take shelter onstage. Standing around the piano at eye level with Pogorelić, we felt as if we’d been invited into the artist’s home—and the rain, instead of drowning out the music, became a gorgeous accompaniment to it. That’s the kind of experience we want to offer people at Tippet Rise.”

Contemporary Art in the Landscape
At Tippet Rise Art Center, there is no clear line between the performance venues, the commissioned works of site-specific contemporary sculpture and the landscape. Blurring the lines between architecture, sculpture and land art, all parts of the built environment blend into the natural setting, embodying the same connection between earth, sky and the human body that is essential to the experience of music at Tippet Rise.

Among the sculptural structures that will take shape throughout the art center are the commissioned gateways, markers and roadside shelters by Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa) that will create a visual narrative for visitors as they explore Tippet Rise. Three such works will be in place at the time of the opening, each made using steel-reinforced concrete that is cast within molds dug into the land, then raised up like ancient cromlechs. The inaugural works are the 25-foot-tall Beartooth Porta, composed of two vertical rocklike forms that stand approximately 25 feet apart at ground level and lean together at the top; the similarly designed 26-foot-tall Inverted Porta; and the 98-foot-long, 16-foot-tall Domo, an undulating horizontal form that contains a series of three cavities, each large enough to shelter a person.

Ensamble Studio also has produced concepts for a performance venue and installation space named Tabula Acustica, to be built at a later phase in the development of Tippet Rise. Confounding the distinctions between human artifice and the natural world, the open-sided Tabula Acustica has a form that resembles both an outcropping of rock and the stark remnants of an ancient civilization.

Tippet Rise has commissioned the site-specific Daydreams from sculptor Patrick Dougherty. An artist known for monumental environmental works and architecturally scaled sculptures made with natural materials and primitive building techniques, Dougherty has installed his works at institutions including the Phillips Collection, the Aspen Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, the High Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Nasher Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Rinjyo-in Temple in Chiba, Japan. At Tippet Rise, he collaborated with JXM & Associates LLC and CTA architects, both based in Bozeman, to build a base structure resembling an 18th century style prairie school. Using compositions of locally sourced willow saplings and sticks, Dougherty’s Daydreams wraps across the outside of the school, resembling imaginary students leaning against the walls, and evoking the dreamlike atmosphere that sometimes settles over a class.

Tippet Rise has commissioned sculptor Stephen Talasnik to create a series of nomadic wooden structures, collectively titled Satellite, that will be sited throughout the art center. The first the series, Pioneer, named for the 1960s space-probe project, serves as an expression of Tippet Rise’s mission of exploration. Known early in his career for his drawings, which were exhibited and collected by institutions including the Albertina and the British Museum, Talasnik began to make sculptures in the early 2000s, based on his knowledge of architectural model-making and the homespun engineering with indigenous materials that he had observed during extensive travels in East Asia. His sculptures and environmentally scaled works have been exhibited at Storm King Art Center, Japan Society (New York) and the State Museums of Berlin, and his works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Tippet Rise is also home to two monumental works by the internationally renowned sculptor Mark di Suvero: Beethoven’s Quartet (2003, steel and stainless steel, 24 9/16 ft. x 30 ft. x 23 1/4 ft.) and Proverb (2002, painted Cor-ten steel, 60 ft x 17 11/16 ft. x 31 1/2 ft.). Each is sited within its own valley to give visitors the exceptional opportunity to view the work in a pristine natural environment, enjoying the primal resonance of Beethoven’s Quartet (which may be played with hammers, like a steel drum) and the inherent motion of Proverb (which has a pendulum element that moves like a metronome, creating a steady tempo between nature and art). A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, di Suvero has exhibited his sculptures throughout the United States, Japan, Australia and Europe (where he was the first living artist to exhibit in the Jardin de Tuileries and the Esplanades des Invalides in Paris). His works are in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and Storm King Art Center, among other institutions.