The Portland Chamber Music Festival celebrates its seventeenth season August 12th to 21st with five concerts at the Abromson Center on the Portland campus of the University of Southern Maine.
Highlights of the season include an Opening Night concert August 12th focusing on chamber music with harp and featuring Bridget Kibbey, winner of a 2004 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Featured repertoire later in the season includes what Artistic Co-Director Jennifer Elowitch describes as the “arguably underappreciated” Dohnanyi Piano Quintet in C minor, the Loeffler Two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola and piano, and the Prokofiev Quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and bass. Beloved masterpieces include the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, the Schumann Piano Quartet, and the Dvorak String Sextet.
The festival has twice been awarded grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for its commitment to new American music. Grammy-winning composer Chen Yi’s August 14th appearance includes an onstage interview with Maine public radio host Suzanne Nance and a performance of Happy Rain on a Spring Night for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Other featured composers for 2010 include Dan Sonenberg and Andrew List, who will be in attendance to introduce their works.
PCMF’s annual Free Children’s Concert — August 15th at noon — includes a performance of Karim Al-Zand’s “Red Pajamas” narrated by Suzanne Nance. For the first time, the event also includes pre-concert play activities in the lobby hosted by the Peekaboo Children’s Center.
PCMF’s 2010 returning performers include cellist Marc Johnson, recently retired cellist of the Vermeer Quartet; cellist Natasha Brofsky of the Peabody Trio and the New England Conservatory faculty; renowned oboist Peggy Pearson of Emmanuel Music and Winsor Music; flutist Elizabeth Mann of the Orpheus Ensemble and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; and Jonathan Vinocour, the new Principal Viola of the San Francisco Symphony. New to the festival will be violinist and contemporary music advocate Miranda Cuckson and cellist Ronald Feldman, conductor of the orchestra at Williams College.
Wright Express is the Premiere Corporate Underwriter for the 2010 Portland Chamber Music Festival. The festival’s Media Sponsor is the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.
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