{"id":74946,"date":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/kingston-chamber-music-festival-marks-natalie-zhus-10th-anniversary-as-artistic-director\/"},"modified":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","slug":"kingston-chamber-music-festival-marks-natalie-zhus-10th-anniversary-as-artistic-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2019\/07\/kingston-chamber-music-festival-marks-natalie-zhus-10th-anniversary-as-artistic-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingston Chamber Music Festival marks Natalie Zhu\u2019s 10th anniversary as artistic director"},"content":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 17, 2019 \u2013 Last year, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival celebrated its 30th<\/sup> anniversary with six special concerts, including the premiere of three commissioned compositions and a closing night that featured a 22-piece chamber orchestra.<\/p>\n

This year, the festival, which opens July 24 in the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Fine Arts Center concert hall, will celebrate pianist Natalie Zhu\u2019s 10th<\/sup> anniversary as artistic director.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a fantastic experience to be able to do this wonderful job for as long as I have,\u201d says Zhu, who has performed at Kingston since 2004 and took over as director from founder David Kim in 2009. \u201cI\u2019m blessed to have a team and community that supports our vision with passion and action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The highlight of this year\u2019s festival may be the two performances by three-time Grammy Award-winner Hilary Hahn, who made her long-awaited Kingston debut last year. But she\u2019s just one of many renowned musicians on the bill \u2013 including prolific composer and accomplished pianist Lera Auerbach, flutist Mimi Stillman, clarinetist Igor Begelman, violinists Juliette Kang and Noah Geller and the Curtis On Tour Ensemble from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. See the full schedule and ticket information.<\/a><\/p>\n

While the six subscription concerts \u2013 July 24, 26, 28 and 31 and Aug. 2 and 4, all in the Fine Arts\u2019 concert hall \u2013 will showcase the music of such 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> century legends as Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, there will be numerous works by contemporary composers such as David Ludwig, Edgar Meyer and Aaron Copland, along with two co-commissioned pieces that will premiere at the festival.<\/p>\n

In planning each year\u2019s lineup, Zhu says she looks to mix favorite compositions with \u201cwonderful works\u201d that get lesser exposure, while also searching for new and interesting compositions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always the music first. Mixing performers is also an art form by itself. I\u2019m lucky to have someone at home who\u2019s an excellent source of ideas when it comes to finding matching musicians, not just among themselves, but with music as well,\u201d says Zhu, referring to her husband, violist Che-Hung Chen, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.<\/p>\n

The festival will again bring together Zhu and Hahn, products of the Curtis Institute who performed together for 10 years early in their careers and have continued to collaborate at festivals and on tours over the years. Hahn, 39, who earned a major recording contract by age 16 and was Time<\/em> magazine\u2019s top young classical musician at age 21, is in demand around the world and has released 25 recordings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no violinist in the world today quite like Hilary Hahn. She is widely regarded as one of the most daring and intense artists of our time,\u201d said Zhu. \u201cLast summer, we heard Hilary\u2019s Bach violin concertos, which have been hailed as thrilling, incendiary and one of the wonders of the Western world. This summer, our audience in Kingston will get a rare chance to hear Hilary performing chamber music literatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Aug. 2, Hahn will perform Samuel Barber\u2019s Adagio for Strings and Brahms\u2019 Piano Trio in B Major. In the festival finale on Sunday, Aug. 4, she will perform Copland\u2019s Appalachian Spring for 13 Players. The closing show will also showcase Hahn alongside pianist Lera Auerbach on Auerbach\u2019s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Auerbach wrote the piece, co-commissioned by the Kingston festival and the Skaneateles Festival in New York, specifically for Hahn. (Both of the festival\u2019s final two concerts have already sold out.)<\/p>\n

Zhu, who will perform in each of the final four concerts, shares the stage with Hahn for the Brahms\u2019 Piano Trio and Appalachian Spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is truly one of my closest and dearest friends,\u201d said Zhu. \u201cWe grew up together and have been through so much. I really treasure the trust between us. I\u2019m not bragging when I say that we could go on stage blindfolded and play perfectly together.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, July 28, the festival will also debut a co-commissioned piece by Jonathan Bailey Holland, an alumnus of the Curtis Institute. Holland\u2019s String Quartet and Percussion will feature rising stars Garrett Arney and Mari Yoshinaga, percussionists who make up Arx Duo, and a string quartet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolland\u2019s idea was not to create a work that highlighted the two percussionists using the quartet as accompaniment, or vice versa, but as a work that integrates the two ensembles,\u201d says Zhu. \u201cThis work is about the hybrid ensemble that is created by thinking of the combination of instruments as a single ensemble, expanding the concept of the quartet to something more than just four strings, just as the word orchestra can mean a range of possible instrumental combinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kingston Chamber Music Festival runs from July 24-Aug. 4. Weekday shows start at 7:30 p.m. and the two Sunday shows start at 4 p.m. All shows are in the concert hall at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Fine Arts Center, 105 Upper College Road, Kingston. Tickets are $30, $15 for people under age 30 (ID required). For tickets and more information, visit the festival\u2019s <\/em>website<\/em><\/a> or call the box office at (401) 308-3614. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 17, 2019 \u2013 Last year, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary with six special concerts, including the premiere of three commissioned compositions and a closing night that featured a 22-piece chamber orchestra. This year, the festival, which opens July 24 in the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Fine Arts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}