New Works by Mohammed Fairouz Set for 2015 Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival
Over the past three decades, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival has become known as an “impressive festival that balances the tried and true with the adventurous and mixes established performers with rising talent,” in the words of The New York Times.
Charged with momentum from the launch of BCMF Spring, the festival’s first spring series of two concerts, the 32nd season of Long Island’s longest-running classical music festival presents 11 concerts July 29 – August 23, 2015. This summer’s lively mix features a new work by Mohammed Fairouz that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, a new piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts that is a reflection on Robin Williams‘ impish brilliance, Pink Floyd’s Roger Watersnarrating a Stravinsky masterpiece, an all-French program for the festival’s free outdoor opening event, gems of the chamber music repertoire from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, and more. (Full program listings follow below.)
Also new this summer are the festival’s newest CDs, the fifth and sixth on the BCMF Records label. Seascapes is devoted entirely to the music of Kevin Puts, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose music has been a BCMF favorite. BCMF Live 2014 features two highlights from last summer’s festival, including the world premiere of Howard Shore‘s A Palace Upon the Ruins for Mezzo-Soprano, Flute, Cello, Piano, Harp, and Percussion, a BCMF co-commission. Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 in its rarely recorded original instrumentation for nonet rounds out the recording. Both discs will be released in July, and will be available for purchase at all BCMF concerts and online at www.bcmf.org/media/recordings/, iTunes, and other online outlets.
Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival founder and Artistic Director Marya Martin said, “Our 32nd festival tells many stories, including that of the relationship between Bach and Mendelssohn, and, in programs that feature the great piano quintets of Schumann and Brahms, the influence on both those composers by Clara Schumann; Philippe Hersant’s Heliades, which tells the Greek myth of the Heliades and their sad fate through music; and a world premiere of a piece written just for me by BCMF favorite Kevin Puts, which itself was inspired by the brilliant and much beloved Robin Williams. These are just a few of the stories we will tell, and we hope our audiences will find many more to take home and share.”
The new work by Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz, Deep Rivers for voice and wind quintet, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches as well as the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The texts include poetry by Langston Hughes, the Black Civil War Soldier’s Chant, and the traditional American spiritual “Deep River” with a new melody by Fairouz. The featured soloist, baritoneSidney Outlaw, also sang the work’s world premiere in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 6 of this year. Deep Rivers is part of an all-American program also including music by Bernstein, Copland, and Gershwin that will take place at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill – the BCMF’s second Parrish collaboration. The concert will be prefaced by a pre-concert conversation with Fairouz available to all ticket holders.
Kevin Puts calls his Rounds for Robin for flute and piano “a short tribute to Robin Williams, at turns impish, florid, rhapsodic and brooding. It was written for and is dedicated to Marya Martin.” This piece is also one of four featured on the new BCMF Records release (see below).
Other festival highlights include a performance of The Soldier’s Tale, Stravinsky’s theatrical piece about a wayward, fiddle-playing soldier and his dealings with the devil, narrated by Roger Waters, the co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd, using English-language texts that Waters himself has adapted; the musicians includeStephen Williamson, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; and Arnaud Sussmann, violin. A singular program of solo Bach works features performers Anthony Marwood, violin; Richard O’Neill, viola; and Orion Weiss, piano. Violinist Ani Kavafian, who performed in the inaugural Bridgehampton festival in 1984, performs Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio with Orion Weiss and Clive Greensmith, cello.
In addition, a performance of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, featuring amongst its players Cynthia Phelps, viola; and Carter Brey, cello, is joined on the program by Pierre Jalbert’s 2002 Visual Abstract for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. “Bach & Mendelssohn” features Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in D major and Mendelssohn’s famed Octet. And Frank Huang, the newly named New York Philharmonic concertmaster, is featured in two programs performing quintets of Brahms and Schumann as well as music by Boccherini, Haydn, and Sibelius.
Tickets go on sale May 11 and may be purchased on the festival’s website, www.bcmf.org, or by calling 212-741-9403 before July 22; after July 23 call 631-537-6368. A student ticket price of $10, introduced this spring, will be available for most concerts.