Manchester Music Festival announces 50th anniversary season
MANCHESTER JOURNAL - January 3, 2024
Conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn is seen at Manchester Music Festival in 2017. The festival has announced its 50th anniversary season.
Photo provided by Timothy Peters
MANCHESTER — The Manchester Music Festival announces its upcoming 50th anniversary season, set to take place in Summer 2024, under the direction of its new artistic director, Philip Setzer, founding member of the Emerson String Quartet.
The five-week festival runs from July 11 to Aug. 8, and plays a significant role in the cultural enrichment of the southwestern Vermont community.
“The theme of our 2024 Festival is called “The Romantic Journey,” said Setzer. “I have always thought of a series of thematically linked concerts and events, as a journey — one that both increases our knowledge and deepens our enjoyment of these great works of Art.”
The 2024 Festival season will include over 30 events: concerts, masterclasses, lectures, and outreach programs all focused on “The Romantic Journey” theme. Collectively, they will explore the definition and roots of Romanticism, taking audiences on a musical odyssey from Beethoven to Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms and onward to Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and more.
This journey will take audiences all the way to a newly commissioned work by Sarah Kirkland Snider, exploring Romanticism from the viewpoint of today. Snider has been hailed as “one of today's most compelling composers for the human voice” by NPR, who possesses “an unerring knack for breathtaking beauty,” according to The New Yorker.
Featured artists in the 2024 season include: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Artistic Directors Wu Han and David Finckel; pianists Gilles Vonsattel, Jeewon Park, Jenny Lin, and Vassily Primakov; celebrated clarinetist David Shifrin; Emerson String Quartet members violist Lawrence Dutton and Philip Setzer; cellists Ed Aaron and Colin Carr; violist Matthew Lipman; Calidore String Quartet cellist Estelle Choi; New York Philharmonic principal harpist Nancy Allen; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra violinist Sarah Crocker Vonsattel; Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist alum Sara Couden; and Metropolitan Opera star soprano Christine Goerke.
In addition to these performances and events, the Manchester Music Festival offers a full-scholarship Young Artists Program for string players and pianists ages 18 to 26 during the festival season.
This year marks the inaugural two-year Young Artists program. Previously a one-year program, the new extension will allow young musicians the opportunity to further engage with a faculty of world-renowned artists, intensively studying and performing chamber music at a high level to enhance their craft. The festival will also present concerts featuring these Young Artists in a special program called “Given a Chance”— romantic works of underrepresented composers who have struggled to have their voices heard.
The full festival schedule will be announced at a later date. For more information about the Manchester Music Festival and updates on the 2024 season, visit mmfvt.org.