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Summer Music Festival to open 11th season at Gobin Wednesday
The 2015 Greencastle Summer Music Festival opens its 11th season of "bringing the community together with friends making music for friends" Wednesday, May 27 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.
The festival features free performances by top professional musicians from Indiana and beyond, each with national or international careers.
The festival is funded through individual donations, the Greencastle Summer Music Festival Endowment at the Putnam County Community Foundation, and support from local businesses, including the Inn at DePauw.
Wednesday's opening Kissinger Family Concert begins at 7:30 p.m. and celebrates the start of "Summer in the City" with a multi-genre celebration of music by George Gershwin (including "Rhapsody in Blue," "Summertime" and other songs) as well as Antonio Vivaldi ("Summer" from "The Four Seasons") and the Argentinian tango master Astor Piazzolla.
Performers include local favorites (in alphabetical order) pianist Claude Cymerman, violinist Erica Dicker, folk singer Bobbie Lancaster, blues legend Tad Robinson, clarinetist Randy Salman, jazz pianist Steve Snyder and saxophonist George Wolfe.
"I'm really excited about this season," said Eric Edberg, the DePauw music professor who is the festival's founding artistic director. "This first concert represents our increasingly diverse programming, featuring a folk singer (Bobbie), the internationally celebrated blues artist Tad Robinson, and a number of School of Music faculty (Claude, Erica, Randy and Steve). And as always, it's a relaxed, interactive and engaging experience where the performers talk with the audience, and we celebrate community and friendship as much as we do the music itself."
The rest of the festival's 2015 season includes the following events (a full schedule, more information and updates are available at greencastlemusic.org and facebook.com/greencastlesummermusic):
June 3 -- "Some of My Best Friends Are ..." with Pianist Justin Kolb Praised by the New York Times for "engaging spiritedness and a flashy technique," the virtuoso pianist and storyteller presents music including Liszt, Wagner, Debuss, and Copland's "El Salon Mexico" as he regales with stories of musical friendships.
June 10 -- The Silk Road Ensemble Musicians from around the world combine American, African, Arabic, Celtic, European classical and Indian traditions in an innovative program, the faculty concert for the SilkRoad Global Musician Workshop at DePauw. Co-presented by the DePauw School of Music, this performance will take place in Kresge Auditorium in the Green Center for the Performing Arts.
June 13 (11 a.m.) -- For and By Kids! James Hardwick, Bobbie Lancaster and Mike Van Rensselaer plus young Putnam County performers present an interactive children's concert in the new "Music Squared" space on Greencastle's courthouse square.
June 17 -- The More Friends the Merrier ISO associate concertmaster Phil Palermo joins pianist Claude Cymerman, DePauw faculty violist Nicole Brockmann, and cellist Eric Edberg in a duet by Beethoven, a scintillating trio by Dohnanyi, and Gabriel Fauré's masterpiece, the "Quartet for Piano and Strings in C Minor."
June 24 -- Antonio and the No-Hit Wonders The Vivaldi Project, featuring violinist Allison Edberg Nyquist, shares string trio music by Antonio Vivaldi and fantastic early composers you haven't heard of yet -- but will be glad you did.
July 1 -- TKO: Taka Knocks It Out of the Park The much-heralded Japanese pianist Taka Kigawa returns to his "midwestern home" to perform music by Bach, Stravinsky and Ligeti and is joined by Eric Edberg the tuneful and exciting cello/piano sonata by Sergei Prokoffiev.
July 8 -- Ludwig and the Archduke Indianapolis Symphony violinist Patrick Dalton Holmes and Chilean pianist Eugenio Urrutia are joined by cellist Edberg for an all-Beethoven evening, featuring the composer's most famous trio, the "Archduke."
July 15-- The Viennese Melting Pot: Barbara Paré, soprano and Tony Weinstein, piano Songs by Brahms, Strauss and Mahler. Vienna was an amazing melting pot when this music was composed and performed. This is the sound world of Klimt, Kofka, and Freud: luscious, exquisite, idiosyncratic and decadently sensuous. This concert is sponsored by friends of the late Gail Hurst, a great friend and supporter of the Festival.
July 22 --A Summer Evening in Buenos Aires: Escape from Greencastle as the Grammy-winning Argentinian pianist Fernando Otero returns by popular demand, joined by cellist Edberg.
July 29 -- Be Our Guests! Clarinetist Gareth Guest is joined by his daughters Maia Guest (star of the Netflix series "Granite Flats") and violinist Allison Edberg Nyquist, granddaughter Kullan Edberg (actress with New York's Battalion Theater), and old friend Claude Cymerman for an evening of English poetry and music, inspired by the PBS series "Downton Abbey."
Aug. 5 --The Turning Point A special evening with singer/songwriter, actor, and storyteller Tim Grimm, featuring music from his best-selling album "The Turning Point."
Aug. 12 -- The Breeze Bends the Grass This critically-acclaimed music theater event features the lives of four women artists from the early 20th century.
Aug. 19 -- Our American from Paris The brilliant classical and improvising pianist Jon Kamfonas, raised in Pennsylvania and now living in Paris, returns to finish off the season with classical music, improvisations, and, of course, a little Gershwin.
The Greencastle Summer Music Festival series of free concerts will continue each Wednesday through Aug. 19.