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Collaboration highlights Summer Music Festival Wednesday
The Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues its weekly series of 7:30 p.m. Wednesday free concerts on May 29 in Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church with “Musical Mosaic,” a performance by cellist Eric Edberg and pianist Claude Cymerman, both emeritus professors of the DePauw School of Music, and joined by cellist Peter Kim, a 2017 DePauw graduate, in two of the works.
Short pieces by Vivaldi (the exciting Concerto for Two Cellos), Fauré, Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and the great violinist Fritz Kreisler will be featured, along with a set of tango-inspired compositions. Cymerman and Edberg will also be playing Wednesday afternoon for the children in the Summer Enrichment Program, also hosted by Gobin.
The festival, now in its 15th season of “bringing the community together with friends making music for friends,” is supported by an endowment at the Putnam County Community Foundation (started by Joanne Kissinger and her family), a grant from the Putnam County Convention and Visitors Bureau and financial and in-kind donations from area businesses, including the Inn at DePauw and Bridges Craft Pizza and Wine Bar (providing refreshments at the concerts).
The festival is Putnam County’s only indoor summer concert series. Each performance features professional musicians with national and international careers, as well as rising young artists.
“Claude and I have fallen in love with playing short pieces,” says Edberg, the festival’s founding artistic director, “and we have had a great time exploring music both familiar and new to us as we put this program together.
“Five or six years ago I had a realization that concerts, especially in a small town, can be as much of a celebration of friendship and community as they are about the experience of professionally-performed music. That’s when our motto ‘friends making music for friends’ was born, and that mission continues to inspire us. Last week, we had a ‘taste of things to come’ with a variety-show format featuring the local Putnam County-based professional musicians who are performing later this summer.
“This week, it’s Claude and me, who have been making music together since April 1988 - over 31 years! We’ve both played all over the world, yet there’s nothing like sharing our music making with our friends and loved ones in this incredible community. And it’s a thrill to include our young colleague Peter Kim, who graduated from DePauw in 2017, just received his of Masters of Music from IU, and is performing regularly with the Indianapolis and St. Louis symphonies.”
A native of France, pianist Claude Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors. After winning national and international competitions, including the grand prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök. The late French President Georges Pompidou, in a special ceremony, recognized him as “Outstanding Pianist.” Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as a soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco chamber orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel and is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC.
Eric Edberg recently toured the southwest U.S.A. and France promoting his CD “Restless Meditations,” works for cello and piano by Hovhaness and Barber, with pianist John Kamfonas. The founding artistic director of the Greencastle Summer Music Festival, Edberg’s commitment to creativity, imagination and music as a mode of personal connection and community building has led him to explore alternative concert formats, free improvisation and drum circle facilitation. At DePauw, he played a key role in creating the 21st Century Musician Initiative, and he has given improvisation workshops and cello masterclasses at many institutions, including the Interlochen Arts Camp and the Juilliard School. He studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Juilliard School, the Peabody Conservatory, SUNY Stony Brook and Florida State University. His teachers included the legendary cellists Denis Brott, Leonard Rose and Barnard Greenhouse.
Cellist Peter Kim is a graduate of the DePauw University School of Music and a former student of Eric Edberg. He has performed in many venues like the White House, Walt Disney Concert Hall and has had multiple opportunities to play with the Indianapolis and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras as a substitute cellist. In 2019, he graduated from Indiana University, receiving his Masters of Music in Cello Performance. He will continue his studies in the fall as a Doctor of Music Candidate in Cello Performance at Indiana University studying with Peter Stumpf.