norfolk Chamber Music Festival–Yale Summer School of Music

Welcome

melvin chen

It’s about time!  We are so excited to finally welcome you back into the Music Shed after two long years. The special relationship between the Festival Artists, Fellows, and our Norfolk supporters is one that we deeply appreciate. To celebrate our return, you will find a season packed with wonderful music performed by our esteemed Festival Artists and amazingly talented Fellows.

Our theme for this summer is It’s About Time, and explores all aspects of that phrase. It reminds us of things that we have missed in the past two years, highlights ideas that need to happen, and illuminates composers’ perception and conception of time. Most of all, it’s an indication of our desire and hope for the return of live musical performance after an interruption due to the pandemic.

It’s fitting that we open our season with a focus on Musical Bridges, as we seek to embrace and expand chamber music’s role in making connections. Having musical superstar Wu Man with us for Angel Lam’s premiere underscores the importance of this project — as a founding member of the Silk Road Ensemble, Wu Man has been making these musical connections for much of her career.

There are too many highlights to list, but you will be pleased to see familiar names like the Brentano Quartet, pianist Boris Berman, and bassoonist Frank Morelli among faces new to Norfolk such as the Dover Quartet and pianist Natalie Zhu. Lecturer Paul Berry will be back with his Friday pre-concert talks, this summer joined by his colleagues from Yale, Lynette Bowring and Robert Holzer.

The can’t-miss event of the summer will be our Piano Extravaganza—you’ll have the rare opportunity to witness four pianos on stage as I am joined by Dean Robert Blocker and our piano Fellows in a program featuring Bach’s concerto for four keyboards. It will be quite a spectacle!

I’m so looking forward to greeting you personally this summer in the Music Shed.  It will be so heartwarming to have everyone back there—Fellows, Festival Artists, and you. It’s about time!

Melvin Chen

Melvin Chen,
Director 

It's About Time

7/8  Belated Beethoven Birthday.  A belated celebrationf the composer’s 250th birthday in 2020.

7/22  Women Through the Ages.  Female composers’ influences in chamber music through the centuries.

7/29  Norfolk Then and Now.  Spotlighting composers who were at the Music Shed to hear their works performed.

8/5  Music for Peace.  A program written in war and yearning for peace.

8/12  Directions.  This concert speaks to a composer’s use of time as an element of their works.

8/13  What’s New is Old.  A look at how a twentieth century composer used old Baroque ideas and forms in their music.