IN GOOD TASTE
A turkey tour
There’s a lot to be thankful for this holiday season in Santa Fe, and there are plenty of options if you’re in search of a proper Thanksgiving meal that you don’t have to prepare yourself. That way, you won’t have to do the dishes, but you can still wrestle your brother for the wishbone and ask Aunt Edna to pass the cranberry sauce.
Following is a sampling of places to get your Turkey Day fix.
The DIY Edition: Whole Foods
Want to stage your own feast without getting your hands dirty? Whole Foods will cater your Thanksgiving meal, as long as you place your order 48 hours ahead of your pickup time. A feast for four people — including a roast turkey, green beans, potatoes, and stuffing — costs $99, and the grocer offers organic meal options and packages for larger parties.
753 Cerrillos Road. 505-992-1700; wholefoodsmarket.com /shop/CER/3559
Steakhouse Turkey: Rio Chama Prime Steakhouse
Rio Chama opens its doors from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving to serve a three-course prix fixe meal for $75 per person. The first course offers a choice of salad or soup, and the main course options are turkey breast, prime rib, salmon, and pumpkin risotto. Rio Chama also offers Thanksgiving To-Go packages; orders must be placed by Friday, November 17.
414 Old Santa Fe Trail. 505-955-0765; sfnm.co/4665MFd
The Classic: La Plazuela at La Fonda
Celebrate the holiday with a walk through the Plaza and a tour for your taste buds. La Plazuela’s three-course Thanksgiving meal for $82 per person offers intense variety in its main-dish selections; choose turkey, prime rib, sea bass, green chile lobster mac and cheese, or even enchiladas and beef bourguignon. Desserts include pumpkin pie and flan.
100 E. San Francisco Street. For reservations: 505-699-1883 or holidays@lafondasantafe.com
Turkey Roulade: Santacafé
Executive chef Dale Kester serves his turkey breast rolled along with mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, and cranberry sauce. Other entrees include seared salmon, cauliflower risotto, filet mignon, lamb loin, and pork loin. The $100 prix fixe is charged when you make the reservation; the only charge on the night of the dinner is for drinks.
231 Washington Avenue. Reservations at opentable.com /r/santacafe-santa-fe
Italian Style: Osteria D’Assisi
Here’s a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving with a Mediterranean flair. You’ll find turkey on the $99 prix fixe menu, but there’s also steak, risotto, ravioli, branzino, and a squash-and-broccolini dish. Desserts include caramelized pumpkin mousse, pecan pie, and a dish called Chocolate Decadence.
58 S. Federal Place. 505-986-5858; opentable.com/osteria-d-assisi for reservations
The Splurge: Thanksgiving at the Compound
Want to try one of Santa Fe’s best restaurants on one of its most heralded nights? Get your palate ready for The Compound’s $145 prix fixe menu, where main course options include roast turkey, beef tenderloin, salmon Wellington, osso buco, polenta, and pork tenderloin. The Compound also offers a $35 prix fixe for children with a choice of turkey, chicken, or macaroni.
653 Canyon Road. 505-982-4353; compoundrestaurant.com /thanksgiving-2023
— Spencer Fordin
WINTER MARKETS
The gift of art
Maybe you missed the busy summer season of arts markets in Santa Fe. If so, here’s your chance to make up for lost time.
The International Folk Art Market will hold its annual Holiday Pop-up sale Friday, November 17, through Sunday, November 19, at its headquarters on Cerrillos Road, which means you’ll have an early opportunity to shop for holiday gifts in the form of textiles, jewelry, paintings, and more.
One week later, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts will present its Winter Indian Market, which will feature the work of more than 150 juried artists. The Winter Indian Market will take place at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center November 25-26. — S.F.
CLASSICAL NOTES
Pulling off an improbable pairing
The migratory path for Swedish nightingales seems to have changed this fall, with two of the finest — soprano Camilla Tilling and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter — stopping over in Santa Fe for concerts during their travels. On October 25, Tilling offered a charming art song program based on the later life of Jenny Lind, the famed “Swedish Nightingale” of the 19th century. Now it’s von Otter’s turn, joining forces with the Brooklyn Rider string quartet for Songs of Love and Death, presented by Santa Fe Pro Musica, on Sunday, November 19.
The ingenious program weaves together three strands of music, Franz Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet No. 14, two sets of contemporary songs composed by Rufus Wainwright, and selections from Schubert’s elegiac song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey). The Washington Post wrote of it, “Not every singer could bring this off. You need one who can approach all music without prejudice and simply communicate through song, a rare gift.”
It’s the second collaboration between von Otter and Brooklyn Rider, which was co-founded by Santa Fe Pro Musica Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen, and it sprang directly out of the success of their first joint venture — a 2016 album and subsequent tour called So Many Things.
Anne Sofie von Otter joins the Brooklyn Rider string quartet for a performance at the Lensic on Sunday, November 19. Photo Courtesy Harrison Parrott Group
The mezzo is just as eclectic in her musical outlook as Brooklyn Rider is in theirs; So Many Things featured songs by classically oriented composers including John Adams, Caroline Shaw, and Nico Muhly, and by A-list pop composers including Sting, Elvis Costello, Björk, and Wainwright.
“Songs of Love and Death was totally Johnny Gandelsman’s idea,” von Otter says, crediting the Brooklyn Rider second violinist. “We were trying to find something fresh, and he said, ‘Let’s do Rufus Wainwright and Schubert!’ We had just done one of his songs on the album, had worked with him at the Bergen Festival and the Verbier Festival, and we all enjoyed his presence and his writing.”
Von Otter describes Wainwright as “hyper-musical and hyper-gifted in every way,” adding, “Some of his songs we’re doing have that jewel-box aspect that a Schubert song can have, where just subtle shifts in harmony make the whole world change. And I love the times when he goes in a French chanson direction.” Trois Valses Anglaises (Three English Waltzes) and the three Songs for Lulu are the Wainwright works on the program, all in arrangements by Jacobsen.
The Winterreise selections and the 1817 Schubert song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”), which provided the main theme of the death-haunted quartet’s second movement, are in commissioned arrangements from Osvaldo Golijov. (Santa Fe Opera-goers of long standing will remember Golijov’s well-received Ainadamar from 2005 and von Otter’s sly, thought-provoking take on the title role in Carmen from 2006.)
For both von Otter and Jacobsen, an appreciation of Schubert lieder came relatively late. “When I was younger,” she says, “the songs didn’t really speak to me, but now they do. So that’s, I think, learning by doing slowly.” Schubert’s chamber music clicked very early for Jacobsen (“I was playing his string quintet when I was 11”) as did opera (his father was a longtime member of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra), but “the intimate world of lieder didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks until much later, in my late 20s.”
“The way the songs are interspersed with the ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet, it feels like a new oratorio,” Jacobsen says. “That’s the best way I can describe that feeling of going through this journey.” Von Otter acknowledged there was some skepticism around the extensive European tour of the project last spring. “I think many people wondered, ‘Schubert and Rufus Wainwright? What’s that all about?’”
“But they were totally convinced,” she adds, “Every time, people loved it. It went down really, really well.”
The Santa Fe performance is part of a tour that began with the American premiere of Songs of Love and Death on November 9 in Saratoga Springs, New York. Further European performances of it are planned for next spring. To see and hear von Otter and Brooklyn Rider performing Kate Bush’s “Pi” from So Many Things, go to youtube.com/watch?v=FJ8y3Q3-BGw. — Mark Tiarks/For The New Mexican
FAIRS & FIESTAS
Fantastic fiber
If you have a hankering for fine handicrafts, you’ll find it all at the 11th annual Fall Fiber Fiesta. Dozens of talented New Mexico craftspeople will converge on the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Center for the state’s largest fiber art showcase Friday, November 17, through Sunday, November 19.
Thousands of visitors are expected to attend the three-day event, which will feature creations of all kinds, including homemade baskets, fine woven shawls, ornaments, placemats, handspun yarn, and more. All artists who will be displaying their wares are part of the New Mexico Fiber Arts Center.
“New Mexico has an amazing fiber arts community,” says Amanda Speer, the education and media coordinator for the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center. “It’s super-rewarding to be part of it.”
Speer sells scarves, shawls, ponchos, and clothing as part of the Warp Zone Weaving collective along with her partner Dain Daller.
She says she first started working in fiber arts about a decade ago and began selling her products eight years ago. The artists who are producing work for the Fiesta may have been working on their pieces for months; Speer says the event is by far the fiber arts group’s biggest show of the year.
The New Mexico Fiber Arts Center offers instructional classes year-round as well as a program where anyone can Walk In and Weave for $80, plus materials. No previous experience is required, and if you make a reservation, you can receive instruction and finish a piece in one session. — S.F.
HOLIDAY CLASSIC
Hallelujah!
In a venerable local tradition, the Santa Fe Symphony is first out of the gate for holiday entertainment with its pre-Thanksgiving performances of George Frideric Handel’s most beloved oratorio, Messiah. It’s given this year in a somewhat abridged version with a running time of about 2½ hours. (Don’t worry, the “Hallelujah” Chorus is still in.)
It was a success at Dublin’s Musick Hall when it premiered on April 13, 1742, but was such a flop in London a year later that Handel canceled three of six scheduled performances at Covent Garden’s Theatre Royal.
It was also controversial. More than a few clergymen and critics considered Messiah blasphemous, since it was performed in theaters by opera singers and it quoted directly from scripture.
Handel made some significant revisions to it between 1742 and 1745, but the piece didn’t catch on until 1750, with a performance of it in the chapel of London’s Foundling Hospital. Ironically, later performances of Messiah at Westminster Abbey were objected to on the grounds that a “publick entertainment” from the sordid theater world shouldn’t be allowed in a consecrated space.
For the Santa Fe Symphony performances, guest conductor Thomas Heuser leads the orchestra, chorus, and a quartet of vocalists who have recently taken part in the Santa Fe Opera’s apprentice program for singers — soprano Caitlin Gotimer, mezzo-soprano Kathleen Felty, tenor Philippe L’Esperance, and bass-baritone Cory McGee. — M.T.
ART OF NATURE
Gila makers
The world’s first designated wilderness area is ready for its close-up.
The Gila National Forest is looking for a few good artists to help commemorate its 100th anniversary, and you have two more weeks to get in on the competition. The Gila Wilderness Centennial Poster Contest wraps up December 1, and submissions are required to embody one or more of the following five characteristics: untrammeled, natural, undeveloped, opportunities for solitude, and primitive, unconfined recreation.
Entries must be anonymous and submitted without signature; artists are required to include an artwork submittal form and a statement on what the Gila Wilderness means to them. All artists whose work is chosen to be part of a poster will be granted a $100 honorarium.
More info can be found at sfnm.co/GilaContest. — S.F.