Savannah Music Festival Extends Violinist Daniel Hope's Contract

After nine years of serving as Associate Artistic Director at the Savannah Music Festival (SMF), violinist Daniel Hope's contract has been extended for three more years beginning in FY 2013. Mr. Hope's contributions to chamber music programming at SMF have helped bring the organization international notoriety as one of America's most distinctive cross-genre festivals.

SMF Executive & Artistic Director Rob Gibson met Daniel Hope after seeing him perform at The Metropolitan Museum with the Beaux Arts Trio in 2002. Since 2004, Mr. Hope's "Daniel Hope & Friends" series has brought together a mix of musicians from the U.S. and Europe (Kristian Bezuidenhout, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Keith Robinson, SebastIan Knauer, Eric Kim, Lorenza Borrani, Benny Kim, Philip Dukes, CarlaMaria Rodrigues, JoNathan Cohen and others), collaborating with special guests such as the Emerson String Quartet, Jeffrey Kahane, Mark O'Connor, David Russell, Gabriela Montero, Menahem Pressler, Mark Padmore and Gautier Capucon. Mr. Hope works with Rob Gibson to program that series, along with the "Music at 11" series of late morning classical recitals that began in 2011.

Daniel Hope has also performed in several original SMF productions, including "An Evening with Beethoven" with Mia Farrow and the Beaux Arts Trio, premieres of works by former Police drummer Stewart Copeland and such composers as Roxanna Panufnik, Alexandra du Bois and Uri Caine. Crossover performances have placed Hope in original SMF productions including "Gershwin for Lovers", "East Meets West" (echoing his teacher Yehudi Menuhin's seminal performance with Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar), Pandit Shivkumar Sharma with Zakir Hussain, and Edgar Meyer's "Short Trip Home."