The Festival Artists are coming to Kenai/Soldotna!

When: February 7, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Where: Soldotna Christ Lutheran Church
For more info and tickets, please click here

Once again Paul Rosenthal has gathered talented musicians from around the world to share their ability and knowledge of chamber music with us.

The Performing Arts Society is proud to present the Sitka Summer Music Festival Musicians brought to you by Paul Rosenthal. Each year the town of Sitka welcomes musicians from all over the world to share their talents with young and old alike. They play for the pure enjoyment of the music and bring magic to Sitka in the process.

For Paul Rosenthal, the magic of this beautiful music is something that should be shared by everyone. And so, he brings the talented musicians to various small communities throughout Alaska to perform for those who rarely get to see such amazing music.

Come out and enjoy a night of beautiful melodies and heart wrenching performances. You cannot miss the power of this great chamber music spectacular. Watch the musicians perform with the passion and exhilaration that only comes when great musicians come together as one.

Festival Artists come to Talkeetna!

The Denali Arts Council is Hosting the Sitka Summer Music Festival Artists:

When: Wednesday, February 9th at 7pm
Where: The Hanger, doors open at 6:30
Cost: General Admission $12 / Lodging Guests $11 / DAC Member $10

Join us for a spectacular evening with world-renowned musicians Jeffrey Solow (cello) and Yoni Levyatov (piano). The Sitka Summer Music Festival is delighted to brighten your winter with the best in classical music. The program includes works of Shostakovich, Rozsa, Chopin and the Greatful Dead. Yes, the Dead! Come inside, warm up, and enjoy a note of summer in the middle of winter! Hosted by Music Academy

To buy tickets, please click here.

Join us for our 40th Anniversary this summer!!

This summer will be the Sitka Summer Music Festival's 40th Anniversary. This will also be Paul Rosenthal's last summer with the Festival. He and Artistic Director Designate, have a lot of extra everything planned for this summer. We will have almost as 2x as many artists in town, as well as extra artists and extra events. If you would like to see a preliminary calendar of events, please click here.

And, call Bobi Rinehart with any questions at 907-747-6774.

9/18 SOLD OUT! BONUS Performance added Friday 9/17!!! Do not miss it!

Saturday's performance (9/18) of the Bach Suites is SOLD OUT. Due to massive demand, we are adding a bonus performance on Friday (9/17 at 7pm, Grant Hall, Anchorage). Do not miss this once in a life-time opportunity! Tickets are on-sale now at www.CenterTix.net.

Zuill Bailey's Cello Suites Kick off the Alaska Airlines Autumn Classics!

The excitement is building as the Festival enters its 40th year anniversary season.

During the 2010 summer series, Zuill Bailey’s incredible CD of the Bach Cello Suites shot to number one status in classical sales all over the world (and number 7 on the general charts, including all music!). Come to APU's Grant Hall and experience these gorgeous, mind-blowing works in one concert extravaganza!

Zuill is an internationally renowned cellist who is making a major commitment to Alaska as the upcoming Artistic Director of the Sitka Summer Music Festival. For one-night only he will present all six of the glorious Bach Suites for Unaccompanied cello. You CANNOT miss this concert on September 18. To celebrate, we will be offering an optional appetizer and drink event during intermission.

This year's scrumptious three-concert weekend will feature Sitka Festival founders Paul Rosenthal and pianist Doris Stevenson with longtime Festival favorite, cellist Eugene Osadchy.

Friday night will get us off to a wonderful start. It will feature sonatas by Beethoven and Debussy, and the concert will conclude with Russian romantic master Anton Arensky's most popular work, his gorgeous piano trio, full of beautiful melodies and lush harmonies.

Saturday night's fabulous chamber music buffet will open with Beethoven's first published work, an irresistible piano trio that took Vienna by storm. Then it's a salute to the Bohemians as Paul and Doris play the folk-influenced and adventurous Janacek violin sonata. The concert concludes with one of chamber music's epic masterpieces, the powerful, emotionally riveting Smetana Piano Trio.

Sunday afternoon cellist Eugene Osadchy has arranged four of the beloved Shostakovich Piano preludes as duets for cello and violin. Cap off your weekend by allowing our team of fabulous artists to transport you with two remarkable chamber masterworks - the final piano trio by Brahms, a defiant, wild, and forceful piece, and the 2010 Autumn Classics will end with the incomparable, glorious final trio by melodic genius Franz Schubert.

I hope that you will join us!

Saturday, September 11 at 7:00PM (Sitka)
Sitka Performing Arts Center
Tickets available at www.sitkamusicfestival.org or Old Harbor Books

Thursday, September 16 at 8:00PM (Fairbanks) in partnership with the FSO
Davis Concert Hall
Ticket information available at www.sitkamusicfestival.org or www.fairbankssymphony.org

Saturday, September 18 at 7:00PM (Anchorage)
Alaska Pacific University's Grant Hall
Tickets available at www.sitkamusicfestival.org or at www.centertix.com

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 24-15 (Anchorage)
Alaska Pacific University's Grant Hall
Tickets available at www.sitkamusicfestival.org or at www.centertix.com

SSMF Concert Conversations #3 by Susan Wingrove

How can this be happening? We have reached the final two events for what has been an incredible 2010 Sitka Summer Music Festival! In addition to the wonderful concerts featuring artists who play the music with such joy and passion, there have been some delightful new events, like the Larkspur gatherings and movie night. Time is simply flying, and as much as I have tried to slow the days down and savor every moment of every activity, (for example, who will ever forget the image of Armen playing his cello for the bears!) we have finally reached the ending. And what an ending it will be…

Tonight’s last chance for a free (donations happily accepted) music-related movie is a gem. Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 is a 2007 documentary that was broadcast on PBS last fall, and I was really upset to miss it. I am going to be in line very early at the Totem Park Visitors Center tonight to make sure I can get in for the 7 p.m showing. The grand piano on the stage at the Centennial Building is one of these superb hand-crafted instruments – and every Steinway has a soundboard made of Sitka spruce! Each piano takes 12 months to build and includes 12,000 parts. But, the movie is much more than just an exploration of the construction process, it also examines how extraor-dinary the relationship can be between an artist and an instrument. LA Times reviewer Kenneth Turan enthusiastically wrote that Note by Note is “a meditation on the making of pianos and the making of music. A process that is very much like falling in love.”

The concert Friday night will provide a perfect and soul-satisfying ending to this three-week feast of great performances. The concert will open with Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso,” published in 1815. This remarkable work sets the precedent for the astonishing creativity of Beethoven’s final years. E.T.A. Hoffman (who wrote the 1816 tale The Nutcracker which later became a legendary ballet) said of this quartet, “Beethoven’s music arouses awe, fear, horror, pain, and awakens that endless yearning that is the very essence of romanticism.” Many of the composer’s colleagues claimed that Shakespeare’s Othello had a tremendous effect on the score. German musicologist Arnhold Schering even goes so far as to suggest the following provocative scenario: “The opening movement depicts Othello’s insanely jealous rage tinged with bittersweet reflection and Desdemona’s uncomprehending protest. Allegretto opens with a serene, continuously flowing melody with dark undercurrents and harmonic blurring – this is Desdemona’s self-doubt in a dialogue with her maid. The Scherzo represents Othello’s murderous resolve as he stands over his sleeping wife. Piu allegro is simple poetry in which Othello reluctantly kisses her farewell. At the slow introduction to the last movement, Desdemona awakes. Her sleepy trusting, however, soon gives way to mortal fear as the tragedy unfolds. Surprisingly, after such a turbulent finale, the quartet ends with a coda of pure comedy.” American composer Randall Thompson aptly concluded, “No bottle of champagne was ever opened at a better time.”

Next on the program is an early work by Richard Strauss, the Violin Sonata in E Flat Major, Op. 18. Famous for his operas and orchestral works (Der Rosenkavalier, Salome, Don Juan, and Also Sprach Zarathustra – the famous opening popularized in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey), the youthful sonata (age 24) was the last sonata he ever wrote. The lush score is passionate and romantic – this is sure to be an audience-pleaser!

The work that Artistic Director Paul Rosenthal chose to conclude the concert, and this year’s Festival, is a major chamber masterpiece – Franz Schubert’s sublime String Quintet in C Major, Op. 163. Unbelievably, this work was composed during the final intense months of Schubert’s short life – he died in 1828 at age 31. The piece was published in 1850, and many musicians think this is arguably the finest quintet ever written. Beloved chamber music historian Arthur Cohn declared, “There is not a flaw in this jewel.” Highlights include the gorgeous opening movement, a slow movement that has been described as having the most terrifying mood in the literature of chamber music, featuring the instruments in their darker registers, and the haunting Scherzo with musical colors of tramping horses and hints of folk songs. Schubert’s friend Anton Schneider eloquently summarized the finale; “After a long retirement into the depths of his soul, having laid bare its secrets, he wanted to leave us with the impression that his solitary hours had given a place to the ordinary everyday man.” A release from grief, the work ends almost mischievously – a heartfelt affirmation of life.

Join violinist William Preucil and me for the preconcert chat Friday at 7:30 pm – and then at 8:15 we will enjoy the exciting final event of the 2010 Sitka Summer Music Festival. It has been three weeks of such pleasure – please drop everything and head to the last concert to show your support of these amazing artists and receive the priceless gift of well-played and heartfelt music. And next June, the SSMF 40^th anniversary!

SSMF Concert Conversations #2 by Susan Wingrove

Friday night’s opening concert for the 2010 Sitka Summer Music Festival was absolutely fabulous, and Sunday’s Family Concert was a smashing success and tons of fun for all. Wow! So now it’s time for the next round of events, and since we have been lucky enough to enjoy some perfect sunny days, you have no excuses for staying home and gardening (or fishing, playing soccer or softball). Tonight is the first of the Festival’s new free Movie Nights at 7 p.m. at the Sitka Visitor Center Theatre at the edge of Totem Park. The film “True Lies” features cellist Armen Ksajikian as a terrorist limo driver AND he also plays the music for his own death scene. Come get ALL the details from Armen and enjoy the movie! (Families, take note: The feature is “R” rated.)

Friday night’s 8:30 p.m. concert opens with a gorgeous string quartet for the unusual combination of violin (Paul Rosenthal), viola (Marcus Thompson), and two cellos (Armen Ksajikian and Eugene Osadchy) by Russian master Anton Arensky. The work is dedicated to his mentor Tschaikowsky, and the beautiful themes throughout the piece reflect the influences of Russian church music and one of Tschaikowsky’s songs.

Next on the program, pianist Jerome Lowenthal will perform Two Nocturnes, Op. 27, and the Piano Sonata No. 2 by Frederic Chopin. This is Chopin’s two-hundredth birthday year, and Sitka audiences can celebrate by hearing several of his most beautiful piano solos. Piano historian James Huneker described the first Nocturne as having “the gloomiest and grandest of Chopin’s moody canvasses” and the second, which features an especially lovely melody and delicate ornamentation, “a song of the sweet summer of two souls.” Two years after Chopin wrote what was to become his most famous piece, the eerie Marche Funebre, which I guarantee will be instantly recognizable to everyone at the concert, he added three more movements to frame the haunting march, creating a dramatic, landmark sonata. Pianist Anton Rubenstein described the short but stunningly effective final movement as “winds of night sweeping over churchyard graves.”

Friday’s concert will conclude with the lush, impassioned Piano Quartet in E Flat Major, Op. 47, by Robert Schumann. The featured musicians include Frederieke Saeijs (violin), Pamela Goldsmith (viola), Eugene Osadchy (cello) and Ursula Oppens (piano). All I need to tell you is that this is one of chamber music’s rich masterpieces – and the entire concert will be another heartfelt event. My guest at the pre-concert lecture at 7:30 pm will be violist Marcus Thompson, a longtime Festival artist and a wonderful friend. Please join us for some fun facts about the music, composers, and Marcus!

Join me and cellist Zuill Bailey at the Sitka Library on Sunday evening at 6:30 for the annual Yummy Lullaby program. Special guests will include Gordon the Bear and his good friend Purple Bunny. Last year’s story about Gordon’s journey from his cozy bed in Totem Park to attend a Sitka Festival concert was a fun adventure, so wear your pajamas and join us for more stories, music, and cookies!

Tuesday night’s 7:30 pm concert begins with the return of dynamic artists Ik Hwan Bae (violin) and Sung Mi Im (piano) playing Franz Schubert’s Rondo Brillant. This virtuosic, richly scored piece places great demands on the artists and it’s just glorious to hear. The couple will also perform Capriccio by Danish composer Niels Gade; he was one of the most important Danish musicians in the 19^th century. This charming work is brilliant, elegant, and entertaining – an audience-pleasing gem.

We have a final chance to hear the unusual grouping of three cellos this year in one of the most gorgeous works for this combination of instruments, Requiem for Three Cellos and Piano by David Popper; Zuill Bailey, Evan Drachman, and Jeffrey Solow will be joined by pianist Doris Stevenson. Last on the program will be the remarkable String Quartet in C Major, K.465 “Dissonant” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This inventive, harmonically adventurous quartet was dedicated to his inspiring friend Haydn.

The second Classics at Larkspur will start at 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening. Join a few of the Festival artists for intriguing conversation and live music while enjoying a beverage and some delectable treats. This is a new event for the 2010 Festival, and last week’s attendees had a terrific time! And don’t forget that there will be a free brown-bag lunch concert on Thursday at noon at the First Presbyterian Church…you are welcome to bring food or just sit and enjoy the music while others eat their sandwiches. It’s always fun to see which artists will appear and hear a few details from them about the music they will play. The musicians are simply fantastic!

As you can see, there are concerts/activities for a wide range of musical interests and all ages this week at the 2010 Sitka Summer Music Festival. So, head to the Centennial Building on Friday and Tuesday evenings, and our other locations for Movie night, Classics at Larkspur, Yummy Lullabies, and the Brown Bag concert! Sitka has some of the world’s finest musicians in town. Don’t miss a note of what they have to share!