Weekend of Chamber Music features local teens

ROSCOE/CENTRAL VALLEY, NY — Monticello High School students are featured at this week’s Weekend of Chamber Music (WCM), playing works by renowned composer Nicholas Maw, of whose music the Financial Times has written “…the pieces caress, ravish, astound and seriously engage the ear.”

At the weekend’s “At Work and Play Behind the Notes” session at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, July 15 at Big Twig Studios in Roscoe, Maw will hear the students perform music they’ve been working on throughout the year with their WCM artist coaches. An open rehearsal of Maw’s music for piano and flute by WCM’s professional musicians follows. Admission is free and audiences are encouraged to follow the scores, ask questions and participate in the workshop.

WCM dedicates its chamber music festival to Maw’s 70th birthday, and he’s been on hand for all the events held throughout the Catskill region this summer.

The weekend concert program explores the ‘fleet moods’ theme with Schumann’s Three Romances for flute and piano; Beethoven’s take on Mozart in Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute for Piano and Cello, and two of Maw’s character sketches from Personae for solo piano, with Tannis Gibson playing movements I and V. In the Washington Post, Joseph McLellan said the sketches’ “…arpeggios and great, crashing chords demand phenomenal technique and reward it with phenomenal music.”

The concert on Saturday, July 16, is at 8:00 p.m. at Big Twig Studio in Roscoe, near Tennanah Lake. The following day the concert goes “On the Road” at 3:00 p.m. at the United Methodist Church, Smith Clove Road in Central Valley.

Admission is free on Fridays, and all programs are free for children and students with ID. Saturday concerts are $25 at the door, but discounts are available if you reserve three or more tickets in advance. Sunday concerts are $15.

For more information call 845/932-8527, visit wcmconcerts.org, or email info@wcmconcerts.org.