It has been a record-breaking summer at Newport Classical, with most of our 27 concerts at capacity during the Newport Classical Music Festival this month. We have heard from many of the 120 musicians who have performed here, who also perform at festivals around the world, that coming to Newport is a highlight of their summer. We are so grateful for the warm Newport welcome that our community and visitors have given them.
The 55th Newport Classical Music Festival comes to a close this weekend with two performances on Saturday and two performances on Sunday, and there are a limited number of tickets available – although they are selling fast! If you cannot join us this weekend, we look forward to seeing you throughout the year at our monthly Newport Classical Chamber Series concerts which run from September through June. We will be announcing the Chamber Series schedule on July 24, with tickets available starting on July 30.
This Saturday, July 20, Newport Classical Festival Artist pianist Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner performs at 3 p.m. at the historic Emmanuel Church in downtown Newport, known for its breathtaking English Gothic Revival architecture that enhances the acoustic ambiance. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gifted virtuoso,” Llewellyn quickly became a beloved artist at the Newport Classical Music Festival last summer, bringing technical prowess and passion to every electrifying chamber music concert he performed. In this solo appearance, he performs music by Chopin, Beethoven, Rubio, Velázquez, and Rachmaninoff.
On Saturday evening at 8 p.m. at The Breakers, PUBLIQuartet and special guest mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier give the world premiere of a new work that Newport Classical has commissioned from 2024 Composer-in-Residence Clarice Assad, as part of our ongoing commissioning initiative. A bold composer, a brilliant pianist, and an inventive vocalist, Clarice’s theatrical composition Whispers from the Pirate Queen explores the timeless bond between two remarkable women: Grace O’Malley, the legendary 16th-century Irish pirate queen, and Anne Hutchinson, the influential Puritan spiritual leader and pioneer of the 17th century who lived for a time on Aquidneck Island. To meet Clarice and learn more about her new work and the inspiration behind it, join us at 11 a.m. Saturday morning for a free Composer Talk at Emmanuel Church Library. PUBLIQuartet’s concert also features What is American, a captivating reimagination of Dvořák’s American Quartet, blending classical melodies with blues, jazz, and rock influences, as well as music by Vijay Iyer, Duke Ellington, and Julia Perry.
Coincidentally, both concerts on the closing day of the Newport Classical Music Festival this Sunday, July 21, celebrate new albums. The vibrant percussion quartet Sō Percussion and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw will perform music from their album recently released on the Nonesuch label, Rectangles and Circumstance, at The Colony House at 11 a.m.. The Festival’s closing night concert at 8 p.m. at The Breakers features Lara Downes in music from her forthcoming album “THIS LAND,” which will be released by Pentatone on Aug. 23. Lara, who is Performance Today’s Classical Woman of the Year, most recently performed at the Festival in 2021, and we cannot wait to have her back.
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Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for her last album with Sō Percussion, in 2022. At The Colony House on Sunday, Caroline and Sō will marry chamber music and storytelling with a unique program blending voice and percussion quartet in music from their new album, Rectangles and Circumstance. The concert will take listeners on a journey through verses from 19th-century poems by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake, as well as by the musicians themselves. The Guardian recently raved that the album, “led by Shaw’s haunting breathiness,” is “mesmerizingly beautiful.”
After her sold-out Newport Classical performance in 2021, the pioneering pianist Lara Downes returns to Newport for the Festival finale. The cultural visionary hailed as “a musical ray of hope” by NBC News presents music from her album “THIS LAND,” reflecting on 100 years of American transformation. With music by Scott Joplin, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Paul Simon, the program celebrates the imagination, resilience, and resistance of the American spirit.
Lara says of “THIS LAND,” “This collection of music old and new sings of the beauty of this land, but also of our buried secrets and hidden stories, our hard times and broken dreams, and wasted futures. And, of our stubborn hope that keeps us going even when the road ahead seems treacherous and twisting. These songs are here to remind us that we can’t ever see what lies just around the bend – what might be waiting, just out of sight, something bright and beautiful, and well worth this long journey.”
I hope you will join us for Lara Downes’ insightful and inspiring grand finale to our 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival, at The Breakers this Sunday. Tickets for the closing weekend of the Newport Classical Music Festival are on sale via our website at www.newportclassical.org/music-festival.
Gillian Fox is the executive director of Newport Classical. Her column appears monthly in The Newport Daily News and online at newportri.com
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