Tag Archives: chamber music

Joshua Roman’s All-Star Cello Extravaganza Rolls Into Town Hall

Joshua Roman and an all-cello ensemble perform music by Mason Bates, Richard Strauss, Astor Piazzolla, Hector Villa-Lobos, Arvo Pärt, and Led Zeppelin at Town Hall Seattle on Tuesday, June 19, 2012, at 7:30 p.m.

Cellist Joshua Roman has been making waves in Seattle since 2006, when he was named principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony. After a two-year tenure with the Symphony, Roman left to pursue a solo career, but has remained a strong force in the local classical music scene. As artistic director of Town Hall’s popular TownMusic concert series, he’s brought innovative classical music programming to Seattle audiences, with a special focus on new music and emerging artists.

The 2011-12 TownMusic season concludes this Tuesday with an all-star cello concert featuring Roman and seven prominent local cellists. The diverse program spans centuries and genres, including Strauss art songs, Piazzolla tangos, and a Led Zeppelin cover arranged by Roman himself. Performances feature a variety of cello ensembles, ranging from solo cellist to cello octet.

Joshua Roman (Photo: Tina Su)

The highlight of the evening will be the world premiere of a work for solo cello by composer Mason Bates, continuing the TownMusic tradition of premiering a commissioned work at the final concert of each season. An acclaimed performer, composer, and DJ, Bates is taking the classical music world by storm with his unique blend of orchestral and electronic sounds.

Roman plans to carry TownMusic’s winning blend of ambitious programming, exciting new works, and emerging talent into the upcoming 2012-13 season. “Next season will retain the diversity of style and era that has been showcased in previous seasons, but with a few twists,” he said, writing from Nova Scotia, where he recently completed a two-week residence at the Scotia Festival of Music. “There will be familiar faces as well as some new ones that we’re excited to introduce to Seattle.”

Although next season’s lineup won’t be revealed until Tuesday’s concert, Roman hinted at the surprises in store. “We’re adding the element of humor. It’s something which we can all relate to, and is often overlooked during our pursuit of the ‘seriousness’ in music.”

TownMusic’s owes much of its success to Roman’s fresh perspective on classical music. To him, it’s a continually evolving art form that honors the past while adapting to the current cultural climate. “If you really look at the history of classical music over the last few centuries, rather than just the last 50-60 years, you see that one of its biggest strengths has been the ability to adapt to cultural changes and needs. Sometimes ahead of the curve, and sometimes with a bit of a lag, but always changing.”

This viewpoint has inspired him in the choices he’s made with TownMusic. The series offers something for everyone, from world-class performances of chamber music favorites to genre-blending new works inspired by rock, pop, electronica, and jazz. Often, music representing these two extremes appears in the same concert program.

Roman emphasizes the importance of experimentation in his role as TownMusic artistic director. “There is a way of thinking that is ‘this is how it’s been done, and so it should always be done this way’, but I think that is an unproductive mode to be in. These days, as orchestras are trying new things every season, its easy to see the need for flexibility as a presenter.”

The concept of flexibility extends to Roman’s view of himself as a performer. “I think we need to be adapting more as musicians. The era of recording changed the game and brought new levels of technical proficiency and competition to all corners of the music world, but in the pursuit of ‘perfection’ some important musical elements can become undervalued. Great musicians of the past wrote, played, and presented music, even if they were better at one than the others.”

Roman stresses the importance of these skills to today’s classical musicians. “In my own experience, writing music has helped me understand more of how a composer might think, and therefore enhanced my interpretations and ability to focus on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ in music, not just try to hit each note perfectly.”

Tuesday’s concert perfectly embodies Roman’s philosophy of musical flexibility, incorporating his talents as a performer, arranger, and concert presenter. Though he will be performing as a soloist, Roman is also enthusiastic about his role as a collaborative musician. “I’ve chosen some points during the concert to highlight the other cellists in the core quartet, so I’ll get to play ‘second fiddle’ on several of the pieces, something I’m really looking forward to.”

The concert isn’t just an opportunity to grow musically. For Roman, it’s a labor of love. “(It’s) something I have wanted to put on at Town Hall Seattle for a few years now,” he said. The concert pays tribute to the cello, showcasing what Roman describes as “its inherent range of expressivity, color, and sexiness”. “The cello is not only a unique voice, but a versatile one, so the repertoire was chosen to reflect this ability to be vocal, to be rhythmic, to be ethereal, and to rock out.”

Roman relishes this opportunity to collaborate with others who share his passion for the cello. Among the cellists joining him on stage are several Seattle Symphony members, including current principal cellist Efe Baltacigil. It’ll be a veritable Seattle cello family reunion. “It is a great joy to work with colleagues you haven’t seen in awhile. Cellists tend to be a cool bunch of musicians to hang with!”

Approaching ecstasy Pours Cavafy’s Poetry into Liquid Bones in Suits

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The Esoteric's Eric Banks and Whim W'Him's Olivier Wevers (Photo: Bruce Weber)

Lucien Postlewaite and Kaori Nakamura in rehearsal for Whim W'Him's Approaching Ecstasy (Photo: MvB)

Lucien Postlewaite and Andrew Bartee in rehearsal for Whim W'Him's Approaching Ecstasy (Photo: MvB)

The troupe in rehearsal for Whim W'Him's Approaching Ecstasy (Photo: MvB)

The troupe in rehearsal for Whim W'Him's Approaching Ecstasy (Photo: MvB)

Tory Peil and Jim Kent in rehearsal for Whim W'Him's Approaching Ecstasy (Photo: MvB)

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For fans of Whim W’Him and The Esoterics (not to mention the St. Helens String Quartet), the arts event of the year is nearly here. This weekend, May 18 to 20 (and the 18th is already sold out), the groups present a new work steeped in history and in contemporary concerns: Approaching ecstasy (at Intiman Theatre; tickets: $15-$125).

Employing the diaristic poetry of Alexandria’s genius loci, Constantine Cavafy, Approaching ecstasy unites a capella chorus, music and voices, and dance to create “expressions of fear, hope, remembered love, and excruciating beauty.” Not entirely coincidentally, you might be struck by how Cavafy’s only semi-coded poetry–scenes from life as a gay man living in Egypt, a man who turned 37 in 1900–resonates in today’s contentious air.

There’s no question that Cavafy is a major poet, but his reputation had to wait until society caught up to him. Though he worked as a nondescript ministry clerk for years, Cavafy made of his poetry a treasure house of the erotic, sensual, visceral–every fleeting thing that shot through the body, he trapped not in amber but in ink, refusing (as Auden later wrote of him) “to pretend that his memories of moments of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.”

O body, remember not only how much you were loved,
Remember not only the beds where you reclined,
But also remember the desires that you awakened in others:
Desires that glowed brightly in their eyes,
And trembled in their voices, desires that,
For whatever reason, vanished.

He was killed by cancer of the larynx, after enduring a tracheotomy that left him voiceless. The Esoterics’ polymathic founder, Eric Banks, has set set eighteen of Cavafy’s poems. Audiences will hear them first in English, sung a capella in Banks’s new, singer-friendly translation, and then in Greek, with the St. Helens String Quartet performing with The Esoterics chorale. “We’re kind of a Greek chorus,” said Banks, who is the kind of person who will make that pun.

It’s a canny way to let the audience attend to the poetry and dance, separately, and in unison.

The project has been simmering, in a way, for about four years, since Banks traveled to Egypt himself. He and Whim W’Him’s Olivier Wevers were introduced years ago by a mutual friend on staff at Pacific Northwest Ballet. They initially met up backstage at McCaw Hall, and made plans to have a longer conversation. “When we met, I had Cavafy’s poems with me,” Banks told me, after a Whim W’Him rehearsal, “and I just showed a few of them to Olivier, and he immediately lit up.”

“Then there was a long wait, because we needed to get the funding. I won a Seattle City Artists grant to write the piece, and we won more money to pay for the players.” But lining up the schedules of Whim W’Him (and PNB, which employs some of the troupe), The Esoterics, and their founders, took even more time. “The past two years was, like, come on, let’s do this, let’s figure out,” said Wevers. “But it was important that it was done well, that we didn’t just throw it together.”

“We finally figured out a date well in advance that would work,” said Banks, “and it was May 2012.”

The score was completed in early 2012. Banks wrote the a capella segments first, then commandeered a piano and sang them, so that Wevers could hear what he was aiming for. (“I just asked for lots of colors and contrasts,” interjected Wevers, as the voluble Banks paused mid-story. “Eric is very symmetrical, and I’m very asymmetrical in the way I work. We pushed and pulled each other, both trusting that the other had something valid.”) Later, Wevers got updates via sound files. Choreography on the dancers started just four weeks ago.

Cavafy’s poetry, pulled from the course of 33 years of his writing, isn’t presented chronologically–“It was an arc of emotions that we were looking for,” explained Wevers. Visually, candles are used to represent days in a life; at the end, there’s only one candle left, and Cavafy is alone with the “flickering flame of memory” (danced with a mesmerizing, endless phrasing, even in rehearsal, by Kaori Nakamura).

When I mentioned this last part to Wevers, he got excited about what he called “liquid bones”: “In classical ballet, it’s often about all these poses that you do,” he said. “With the great choreographers, you don’t see transitions really, every movement leads to another movement.”

39 different vignettes transpire over the course of the 86-minute show (with no intermission). Banks described it as “trysts, hook-ups, and hiding” shading into a more interior, contemplative world as the work goes on, Cavafy transmuting his life into something ethereal, fantastic. Even “creepy,” Wevers added, referring to Banks’s music for “Obstacles.” To Banks’s raised eyebrow he responded, “No! Creepy is great.” (It’s a vignette that portrays Cavafy’s frustrated wish for a world in which he could be free.) Gavin Borchert previews what to expect musically.

The dancers might offer a more narrow-eyed appraisal of the composition, which Banks cheerfully described as in “all lopsided Arabic meters. They’re dancing in thirteen, and seven, and ten….” A new face is Shane Ohmer (of the Bad Boys of Dance’s “Rock the Ballet”), but otherwise it’s Lucien Postlewaite, Kaori Nakamura, Chalnessa Eames, Tory Peil, Andrew Bartee, and Jim Kent.

Wevers’ choreography, balletic for Nakamura and Postlewaite’s duets, contrasts with a kind of grappling match between Bartee and Postlewaite (“human slipknots,” says Michael Upchurch–ah, le mot juste!), the densely intertwined, ankle-teasing pairing of Eames and Peil. At rehearsal last weekend, Wevers was mostly attending to details: “You’re being pulled back by your arms, not your hands,” he told the dancers. To Ohmer: “And just allonger over there…”

Whim W’Him is working again with set designer Casey Curran, who has created a moveable box that travels with the dancers; it’s at once a frame, showing them off, and a restraint. It recapitulates the framing, and restraints, of Cavafy’s poetry, which at once put his life on view and–circulated among friends–kept it carefully contained.

Classical Music Remixed: Alarm Will Sound at Town Hall

Alarm Will Sound performs music by the Beatles, Aphex Twin, John Adams, Edgard Varèse, Stefan Freund, and Matt Marks at Town Hall Seattle on Thursday, April 26 at 7:30pm.

Strange rumblings are shaking the classical music world these days. Today’s musicians and composers are branching out from the traditional works of the classical canon, venturing further afield in search of new influences and collaborations. Increasingly, the music they write and perform crosses boundaries and blends genres, challenging our expectations of classical music.

The members of New York based ensemble Alarm Will Sound are pioneers at the cutting edge of these exciting changes. The group’s twenty musicians are all well-versed in the classical tradition, but draw influence from a broad spectrum of sounds. Their diverse repertoire includes pieces by modern classical composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, acoustic arrangements of works by electronica legend Aphex Twin, and even covers of the Beatles.

The group’s creative and experimental flair makes shifts between genres a breeze. “As a chamber orchestra, our sound has the full range of instrumental colors and, at the same time, the rhythmic flexibility of a band,” says composer and co-founder Gavin Chuck.

Alarm Will Sound (Photo: Naomi White)

Chuck founded Alarm Will Sound in 2001 with a group of fellow graduates from the Eastman School of Music. “We started Alarm Will Sound because there wasn’t a large ensemble dedicated to touring contemporary classical music in the USA.”

In the past decade, that simple mission has grown into a full-scale movement devoted to “adventurous, genre-bending projects and performances”. In 2010, Alarm Will Sound collaborated with indie darlings the Dirty Projectors for three performances at major classical concert halls in London, New York, and Los Angeles.

This Thursday evening, Alarm Will Sound makes their Seattle debut at Town Hall, performing music by the Beatles, Aphex Twin, John Adams, and Edgard Varèse. Chuck notes that the program is tailor-made with variety in mind. “Whenever we play a city for the first time, we want to present the diversity of styles that exist today, so there’s a lot of contrast on the program.”

Much of that contrast lies in the increasingly blurred line between acoustic and electronic music. The oldest piece on the program is an arrangement of Edgard Varèse’s Poème électronique, an experimental electronic work composed for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Chuck says the piece is a fun challenge for the ensemble. “(It’s) wild to play live because it requires stretching our acoustic instruments to produce analogs of electronic sounds.”

In 2005, Alarm Will Sound released Acoustica, an album of live-performance arrangements of pieces by electronica artist Aphex Twin. Since then, acoustic reinterpretations of Aphex Twin’s electronic stylings have been a staple at Alarm Will Sound performances.

At Thursday’s concert, the ensemble pairs Aphex Twin with another work that crosses electro-acoustic boundaries: their arrangement of the Beatles’ “Revolution 9″. “As if that stylistic variety weren’t enough,” says Chuck, “two songs by members of the band bend genres even further: Stefan Freund’s ‘Drowning’ is a dark take on the rock ballad. And Matt Marks’ ‘A Song for Wade (This is Not That Song)’ mashes up 1950s doo-wop, Doris Day and—of all things—The Carpenters.”

Between their busy ensemble touring schedule and individual musical endeavors, Alarm Will Sound is developing a multimedia production of John Cage’s Song Books, a groundbreaking work that combines acoustic and electronic songs with theatrical performances. They’ll present Song Books in Cork, Ireland, Amsterdam, and New York City this summer.

The project has helped Alarm Will Sound grow as an ensemble. Chuck notes that Song Books‘ multimedia format “calls on each of us to push ourselves as performers beyond playing our instruments.” The production also jives well with the ensemble’s mission. “Song Books is essentially a theatrical event that grows out of Cage’s belief that music is inherently linked to action and vice-versa. That’s an inspirational philosophy and one that’s motivated all the work we’ve done to innovate concert-hall conventions.”

Chuck predicts that such innovations will become more commonplace. “I think that all genres, including classical music, will continue to increasingly cross-pollinate.” Nowadays, Alarm Will Sound isn’t alone in their genre-bending experimentation. In the local scene, the youthful Seattle Rock Orchestra gives pop/rock favorites a symphonic spin. The ensemble has become a favorite with Seattle audiences, who regularly pack venues to hear the group’s reinterpretations of Stevie Wonder, Queen, and Radiohead.

This success shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us. According to Chuck, the future of classical music lies in collaborative, multi-genre endeavors that feed the creative curiosity of today’s listeners. “Musicians and audiences are hungry for music that has both directness and depth, that has an immediate impact and also makes you want to explore its complexity further. Hybrid, post-genre work tends to emerge from the kind of serious play that I see our generation reveling in.”

What Makes the Emerson String Quartet Great?

(Photo: Emerson String Quartet)

The Emerson String Quartet returned to Meany Theater Tuesday night, performing for the 21st time in their long history with the UW International Chamber Music series(they first came in 1988). The four players—Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violins; Lawrence Dutton, viola, and David Finckel, cello—have been together as a quartet since 1979, the group having been started in 1976 with Setzer and Drucker, Dutton joining them the following year and Finckel in ’79.

Together they are considered one of the world’s great ensembles, and next season will be the last with this lineup. Finckel is retiring to pursue his myriad other activities, notably the artistic directorship with Wu Han of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The esteemed Welsh cellist Paul Watkins—soloist, chamber musician and conductor–replaces Finckel after the 2012-2013 season.

But why is the Emerson considered so eminent in its field? It emerged early on as a remarkable group, so it isn’t just longevity–though obviously playing together for 33 years helps the members to know each others’ musical views very well and to have the intuition of a long marriage.

Listening to their performance Tuesday left me thinking that what makes the Emerson great is as much what they don’t do as what they do.

The group performed the late Mozart quartets known as the “King of Prussia:” No. 21 in D Major, No. 22 in B-flat Major, and No. 23 in F Major, plus the Adagio and Fugue, K. 546, and for encore, Mozart’s arrangement of the Bach Fugue in E Major from his Well-Tempered Clavier.

The performance was typical Emerson: that is, close devotion to the style of the composer’s times, with elegance and expression in an era when letting it all hang out was not an appropriate option. There was plenty of energy when required, but it was produced without digging into the strings with force or causing inelegant scritching sounds. They didn’t use long bow strokes when they were not needed. Often a small bow elicited as much lovely sound at a suitable volume, and the smaller bow left more time to shape the sound coming out.

They all used a similar vibrato, not anything frenetic and not all the time. Their tone quality matched, as did the intensity of their playing, with the ebb and flow of the musical line giving one or another prominence. For these quartets, written as a commission from a good amateur cellist who happened to be Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, Mozart gave plenty of prominence to the cello line. There were times in this performance where it seemed as though Finckel almost overstepped the line, his cello sang with such resonance.

While the Emerson has no doubt played these quartets many times, the performance sounded freshly minted. Clearly, much thought has gone into just how to play them to bring out Mozart’s wishes, but equally, the players have played together so often that their presentation is relaxed and easy. They have no need to prove anything about themselves.

Phrase endings were meticulously shaped, each one just the right length and dynamic.

This isn‘t to say the performance was perfect. There were a few minor glitches here and there. But, when recordings have been spliced to absolute technical perfection, we know it isn’t that perfection which makes a performance great. It’s musical understanding matched to excellent technical ability, and that the Emerson has in spades.

Classical Revolution Brings Chamber Music to Your Local Cafe

Classical Revolution hosts a chamber music jam at Faire Gallery & Cafe on Monday, March 5, at 8 p.m. More details are available on the Classical Revolution event page. Parnassus Project and Classical Revolution present an evening of French chamber music at Cafe Cesura on Friday, March 9, at 7 p.m. More details are available on the Parnassus Project site. Both events are free and open to all.

Classical Revolution is a network of classical musicians devoted to the goal of making live classical music more accessible to a diverse audience. The group brings chamber music to the relaxed atmosphere of neighborhood cafes and gathering places. Born in 2006 at Revolution Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District, Classical Revolution has since spread around the world, with active chapters in cities throughout North America and Europe.

A chamber music jam at Faire Gallery & Cafe (Photo: Brandon Vance for Classical Revolution Seattle)

The typical Classical Revolution event is a “chamber music jam”, where local musicians gather at a bar or cafe to play through well-known works from the chamber music repertoire. Pieces are chosen on the spot, depending on the instruments available.

Despite the fact that performances are mostly non-rehearsed, the caliber of playing is quite high. Most of the musicians are professionals or experienced amateurs who have a great deal of experience playing in chamber music ensembles.

Rather than emphasizing a formal, polished performance, Classical Revolution focuses on bridging the gap between musicians and audience members, bringing chamber music to a casual setting and building a community among local musicians.

The Seattle chapter of Classical Revolution was formed in 2011. The group holds free chamber music jams on the first Monday of every month at Faire Gallery & Cafe on Capitol Hill. The atmosphere is friendly and casual–performances are interspersed with chatting, banter, and coffee. It’s like a social hour for Seattle’s classical music community, providing a unique opportunity to mingle with local musicians and see them in action in an informal setting.

This month’s Classical Revolution Seattle event centered around the music of Felix Mendelssohn, in celebration of the composer’s birthday. About a dozen musicians gathered at Faire to read through some of Mendelssohn’s popular works for strings, including the Octet for four violins, two violas, and two cellos.

Next month’s gathering, slated for the evening of March 5, will focus on works by Debussy, Ravel, and Bartok. On March 9, the Classical Revolution chapter will team up with musicians from the newly-formed Parnassus Project for a concert at Bellevue’s Cafe Cesura. The event features a program of French chamber music followed by a chamber music jam.

A Winter Festival of Chamber Music, Featuring Some Rarely Performed Works

Seattle Chamber Music Festival

For 31 years, Seattle has been blessed for a month every summer with some of the best chamber music performances in the country, and for a decade and more, a long weekend of more of the same in the winter. Founding artistic director and cellist Toby Saks of Seattle Chamber Music Society recently presided over a seamless turnover of leadership to violinist James Ehnes, a long-time player with both summer and winter festivals. This past weekend was the first with his stamp on it.

Four concerts were presented at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall. As has been the usual format, three have been a free recital followed by a paid-for performance, the two together being a generous serving of music. The fourth has usually been a special concert: This time it was Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong in a concert-long violin and piano recital.

James Ehnes

Instead of three recitals, each featuring one musician, Ehnes chose to feature music, specifically the three string quartets of Brahms, played by the same four musicians. At the Friday and Sunday performances, with Quartets Nos. 2 and 3, Ehnes played first violin, Amy Schwartz Moretti, second violin; Richard O’Neill, viola; and Robert deMaine, cello.

The four have played at these festivals often, and have chosen to play together outside it in an informal alliance (something that must be hard to arrange: Moretti lives in Macon, Georgia; O’Neill divides his time between California and Korea; deMaine is based in Detroit; and Ehnes, a Canadian, leads a peripatetic existence around the world).

It showed in their excellent ensemble work and similarity of approach. In Friday’s concert, they also played together in Bartók’s Quartet No. 4, surprisingly its first appearance at any SCMS concert, giving a superb performance, highlighted by their sure feeling for the music and their ease in conveying that to the audience.

Ehnes particularly wanted to find music never played before at these festivals, and he found some for each concert. This was a rare delight. As well as the Bartók on Friday, the second Brahms quartet was new to the festival; plus two pieces for piano quartet by Richard Strauss, Arabische Tanz and Liebesliebchen; and a Meditation on an old Czech Chorale, St Wenceslas, by Suk, while the concert was anchored by Mahler’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in A Minor to start and ended with Beethoven’s Trio for violin, cello, and piano in E-Flat Major.

Ehnes’ group performed the Suk, a beautiful work close to an elegy in atmosphere. Mahler’s is an astonishingly mature work for a 15-year-old. While it owes a debt to Brahms, it’s by no means a slavishly derivative piece, but strong in its own right. This and the Strauss were played by Scott Yoo, violin; Roberto Diaz, viola; Bion Tsang, cello; and Andrew Armstrong, piano, with warmth and sensitivity.

Violinist Erin Keefe, cellist Edward Arron, and pianist William Wolfram undertook the Beethoven. Wolfram performed as close to the style of the time as would be possible on a modern piano. His articulation and light touch brought an airiness to the work which gave it a carefree appeal. Keefe matched him in style though Arron tended to be a bit over-emphatic.

Sunday’s concert was devoted to Dvořák, with two works not heard at the festivals before, Prokofiev’s Sonata for cello and piano in C Major, and Brahms’ Viola Quintet for Strings in G Minor as a grand finale. Prokofiev wrote the sonata for Rostropovich, who he admired very much, and Arron and Wolfram played it here. The gorgeous sonority of Arron’s tone sang particularly on the lower strings of the cello, where much of this sonata lies, and he and Wolfram brought out the work’s appeal and charm, its depth and richness.

Quintessentially Dvořák, the five little Bagatelles are light and pure delight. Written for a harmonium (Armstrong), two violins (Yoo and Ehnes) and a cello (Tsang), they are often played with a piano instead, but the festival was able to borrow a fine harmonium from Tacoma organist David Dahl. The piano is a percussion instrument; the harmonium is a small portable organ with air pumped by pedal through pipes, and it has several stops. It changes the atmosphere of the music completely.

Armstrong and Wolfram performed the other Dvořák work, Silent Woods (Klid) for piano four hands, often not 100-percent together, particularly in the slower stately section. This is something difficult to achieve at any time without the intuition which comes from years of playing together, but otherwise it came off well, as did the Brahms Quintet with Schwartz Moretti, Keefe, Diaz, O’Neill, and deMaine.

Virtually full and enthusiastic houses attended both well-designed programs, and the playing was as usual of the first rank throughout. This year’s summer festival will run from July 2 to 27, and next winter the festival, running from January 19 to 27, will be expanded from four concerts to six.

Two of the musicians have received prestigious appointments since their last appearances with the festival here: Keefe has been appointed concertmaster of the Minnesota Symphony, and Diaz is now president and CEO of the Curtis Institute of Music.