A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra to Perform at Grafton's White Church, 2/9

A Far Cry, the superbly talented and highly popular young chamber orchestra from Boston, will play at the White Church (55 Main Street) in Grafton, VT on Sunday, February 9, 2014, from 3-5 p.m. This is a program presented by the not-for-profit Grafton Music Festival.

The innovative, conductor-less string orchestra will perform a program called "Melting Pot", a rich musical celebration of the diverse American experience that explores the question: what is American music? A bold suite of Old-World inspired "new immigrant" music from the streets of Brooklyn by Ljova Zhurbin rubs shoulders with a double concerto by Kip Jones that brings the American fiddling tradition into the twentieth century. Rounding out the program is a hymn by Charles Ives and a new arrangement of Antonin Dvorak's "American" quintet arranged for an orchestra, written as he was first experiencing the New World.

As part of Grafton Music Festival's effort to promote Grafton through music and the arts in the area, Liisa Kissel, Executive Director of the Grafton Music Festival, has invited A Far Cry performers the opportunity to stay in Grafton for their annual retreat. Kissel says: "For the last three years, it's been a thrill to watch how these young musicians blend creativity with discipline. They will be going places."

A Far Cry's violist Sarah Darling says: "We engage in some of our most meaningful work of the season-work that could only be accomplished in a place that brings us together and inspires us. We spend our few days in Vermont working through and finalizing our set of concert programs for the following year- an intense process that demands everyone's full participation and concentration. We arrive in Vermont with a "vault" full of dozens of programs, and leave with one coherent and beautifully organized concert season. It's incredibly fun, but not easy. "

According to the New York Times, the self-conducted orchestra "brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied." The Boston Globe describes the group as "Virtuosity...irresistible energy..."

A Far Cry was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of 17 young professional musicians - the Criers - and since the beginning has fostered those personalities, developing an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. By expanding the boundaries of orchestral repertoire and experimenting with the ways music is prepared, performed, and experienced, A Far Cry has been embraced throughout the world with more than three hundred performances coast to coast and across the globe, five albums, and a powerful presence on the internet.

The Criers are proud to call Boston home, and maintain strong roots in the city, rehearsing at their storefront music center in Jamaica Plain and fulfilling the role of Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Collaborating with local students through an educational partnership with the New England Conservatory, A Far Cry aims to pass on the spirit of collaboratively empowered music to the next generation.

Tickets are available at the Grafton Village Store, at Misty Valley Books in Chester, and online at brattleborotix.com. For more information call 802-843-2447 or see www.afarcry.org.

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