Norfolk Chamber Music Festival Announces 2013 Season

The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, presented by the Yale School of Music, celebrates its 72nd season this year with performances and residencies by six internationally esteemed string quartets alongside students and young professionals from around the world. From June 22 to August 17 Norfolk will host a roster of string quartets including: the Artis Quartet, the Brentano Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, the Jasper String Quartet, the Keller Quartet, and the Tokyo String Quartet. The Tokyo String Quartet, which is retiring this year, will play its last concert on July 6 at the festival. And on August 3 the Emerson String Quartet will perform its New York area debut concert with the group's new cellist, Paul Watkins.

Norfolk director Paul Hawkshaw says, "Our mission at Norfolk is to cultivate the performance and teaching of chamber music at the highest level. We always want our audiences, students, and performing artists to have fun exploring the chamber music repertoire, and this year we are especially fortunate to have a truly international group of performers for our audiences to enjoy."

Opening the 2013 festival on Saturday, June 22 is a choral program by the Yale Choral Artists, a new ensemble of 24 professional singers from around the country under the direction of the Yale Glee Club's Jeffrey Douma. The Choral Artists will perform All Night Vigil (Vespers) by Sergei Rachmaninov along with a shorter work by Pavel Chesnokov, Salvation is Created.

From July 5 to August 17 Norfolk will host a six-week Chamber Music Session. Among the twelve concerts each Friday and Saturday night in July and August is a presentation of Franz Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise performed by pianist Peter Frankl and baritone Randall Scarlata on Friday, July 12.

The Norfolk Festival, under the leadership of Paul Hawkshaw since 2004, includes a New Music Workshop led by composer Martin Bresnick, a Lecture series, a Young Artists' Performance Series, Festival Artist concerts (Friday and Saturday nights), and a Family Day on July 14 that includes a performance of Yale's Javanese ensemble, Gamelan Suprabanggo. This year's festival concludes on August 17 with a performance of works for chorus and orchestra from the Renaissance to the contemporary by the Norfolk Festival Chorus and Orchestra directed by Simon Carrington.

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