An Evening of Beethoven

This concert will include an all Beethoven program – a Violin Sonata, Cello Sonata and Piano Trio. Spanning the composers life from early to middle to late.

Program
Sonata for Violin and Piano #5 in F, Op. 24 “Spring”
Sonata for Cello and Piano #5 in D, Op. 102, #2
Piano Trio in D, Op. 70, #1 “Ghost”

Artists
Violinist: Arturo Delmoni
Cellist: Peter Sanders
Pianist: Adrienne Kim

For more information about this concert or other events in the festival, please visit the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival website at www.centralvtchambermusicfest.org

Celebrate Vermont’s Celtic and French Canadian heritage with traditional—and sometimes not so traditional—music and dance. Each year more than 70 exceptional musicians are drawn from New England, Canada, and the British Isles. Concerts, music and dance workshops, children’s activities, and open dancing unfold on six continuous stages from noon to midnight. Food and drink provided by the area’s finest chefs and breweries. The festival takes place in downtown Randolph, Vermont in Chandler Music Hall and Gallery, in all-weather tents on both sides of Main Street, and in historic Bethany Church. Main Street is closed to traffic, and the festival site becomes an intimate pedestrian village.

We are delighted to announce the New World Festival premieres of two young award-winning groups, É.T.É. and Spintuition. Three young musicians with varied musical backgrounds unite their creative and artistic forces to form the group É.T.É. that offers a dynamic and modern vision of Québec traditional music. They were awarded “Discovery of the Year 2017-2018” at the Gala des PRIX Opus.

Spintuitionis a New England band that blends creativity and tradition into tight harmony and joyous rhythms. These young musicians have crafted a compelling mixture of spicy new tunes and glorious old favorites in the styles of trad-Irish, French-Canadian, and Old Time. In 2019, the band tied for first place in the Young Traditions Vermont contest in Burlington.

John Doyle fans will be happy to hear that he’ll be back, this year with Solas accordionist Mick McAuley and Oisín McAuley of the Irish group Danú.

Yann Falquet, Pascal Gemme, and Nicholas Williams bring their intricate fiddle, flute and accordion work, gorgeous vocal harmonies, energetic foot percussion and guitar accompaniment to the festival. Over the past 18 years the trad Québécois group Genticorum has become a fixture on the international world, trad, folk and Celtic music circuit. The band’s six albums met with critical acclaim in Canada, the United States and Europe, assuring the band a brilliant future. Known for its energy and its stage presence, Genticorum has given more than a 1000 concerts in more than 15 countries.

One of the New World Festival favorites, with a Juno-winning  Best Instrumental Album of 2017, The Fretless, is a young, innovative band that melds the worlds of Celtic, folk and chamber music into an amazing and unique sound with intricate arrangements and percussive chopping.  The quartet’s follow up to their 2017 Juno-winning third album goes back to their roots, and their new record is 90% Irish traditional tunes.

You can listen to Live at the Artfarm, the new record here and Bird’s Nest their Juno-winner here.

TheFretless.com/music

The Fretless

• 2017 Juno award for Instrumental Album of the Year
• 2014 CFMA Ensemble of the Year
• 2014 WCMA Instrumental Album of the Year
• 2012 CFMA Ensemble of the Year
• 2012 CFMA Instrumental Group of the Year
• 2012 WCMA Instrumental Album of the Year

The new and widely popular Boston-based quartet features four distinct voices clustered around a single microphone, their tightly-arranged tunes drawing from the unexpected, including strains of bluegrass, classical, and even barbershop. Accompanied by an arsenal of classical strings, guitars, mandolin, and percussion, these four close friends swap

“It’s over now / The flag is sunk / The world has flattened out,” are the first words of Extralife, the new album by Boston-based quartet Darlingside. While the band’s critically acclaimed 2015 release Birds Say was steeped in nostalgia and the conviction of youth, Extralife grapples with dystopian realities and uncertain futures. Whether ambling down a sidewalk during the apocalypse or getting stuck in a video game for eternity, the band asks, sometimes cynically, sometimes playfully: what comes next? Their erstwhile innocence is now bloodshot for the better.

Hope arrives in the form of Darlingside’s signature superpower harmonies, drawing frequent comparisons to late-60’s era groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash; Simon & Garfunkel; and The Byrds. And yet, their penchant for science fiction and speculative futurism counteracts any urge to pigeonhole their aesthetic as “retro”. The four close friends construct every piece of their music collaboratively, pooling musical and lyrical ideas so that each song bears the imprint of four different writing voices. NPR Music dubs the result “exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop”, and calls Extralife “perfectly crafted”.

Darlingside perform all of their music around a single vocal microphone, inviting audiences into a lush, intimate world where four voices are truly one. Their 2016 performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival “earned an ecstatic reception and turned them into instant stars”, according to The Daily Telegraph. The band tours regularly throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, and Europe.

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The VSO joins leaf-peepers on the road in late September, visiting intimate and historic venues across the state with our “Made in Vermont” chamber orchestra tour. This season marks Jaime Laredo’s 20^th anniversary as Music Director, and he’s excited to conduct a program that features Ifetayo Ali, a teenage cellist from the Sphinx Program, playing Haydn’s famous C Major Concerto. (Her teachers think she could be the next Yo-Yo Ma!) Also in the spotlight is our own wonderful principal flutist, Melissa Mielens, with a concerto by Francois Devienne, often called “the Mozart of the flute.” In our third year of collaboration with the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, we pair a world premiere commission from composer Matthew Evan Taylor with a screening of a new film by Jeremy Lee MacKenzie. The program opens with Bartók’s lively Romanian Folk Dances.

PROGRAM

BARTÓK – Romanian Folk Dances

DEVIENNE – Flute Concerto No. 2

MATTHEW EVAN TAYLOR – The Greatest Night (World Premiere Commission)

HAYDN – Cello Concerto in C Major

IFETAYO ALI

Ifetayo Ali-Landing, age 16, began her musical studies on the violin and switched to cello at the age of 4. Her teachers and coaches have included Lucinda Ali-Landing, Megan Lauterbach, and Martine Benmann at the Hyde Park Suzuki Institute in Chicago, as well as Tahirah Whittington, Oleksa Mycyk, and Hans Jørgen Jensen. Click here for full artist bio.

MELISSA MIELENS

Melissa Mielens, hailed in reviews for her “eloquence,” and “ethereal flute lines,” is the principal flute with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of Indian Hill. Click here for full artist bio.

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken”

When John initiated the Will the Circle Be Unbroken* album with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band it brought together the icons of Bluegrass, Country, and West coast country rock: Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, Roy Acuff, Junior Huskey, Oswald Kirby Vassar Clements, and Maybelle Carter. Six hot August Nashville recording days produced this benchmark album, relevant to this day (Amazon top-30 still!).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

McEuen has now assembled a unique cast for a special night to share the music and memories of the landmark Will the Circle Be Unbroken record and his incredible career with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The cast includes:

Les Thompson    bass, vocals, bouzouki    an original NGDB founding member

John Cable guitar/vocals/mandolin also toured Russia as NGDB member.

Matt Cartsonis     vocals/mandola/guitar  25- year music partner with John 

All join host John McEuen, with his banjo, guitar, fiddle and mandolin, as they share (in front of the screen) hits and stories behind the music, leading up to that magic time when three generations came together. The Library of Congress inducted the multi-platinum ‘Circle’ as one of “…the most important American recordings” (it’s also in the Grammy Hall of Fame).

His multi-media show with archival photographs, film, (including 8mm footage from 1967), Circle session photos, narrative (and early) NGDB music takes us on his 50+ year journey – interwoven with Dirt Band favorites, hot bluegrass, ….

A unique part of the show covers the 1977 Russia trip, and what happened behind the Iron Curtain to the first American band to tour there – 28 sold out shows.

The evening features classic NGDB favorites and music from McEuen’s new highly praised record – Made in Brooklyn – on Chesky Records. (Stereophile Magazine’s Record of the Month; also honored with Best America album by the Independent Music Awards, March 2018). The audience sees the entire span of John McEuen’s years in music, and is taken back through some of the best years of their lives.

Some of the show’s music includes:    Mr. Bojangles         Some of Shelly’s Blues   Dance Little Jean         Keep on the Sunny Side          Will the Circle Be Unbroken     House at Pooh Corner   Earl’s Breakdown  Wreck on the Hiway   Cannonball Rag   Dismal Swamp     Way Downtown          I Saw the Light  Acoustic Traveller    Fingerbuster    Long Hard Road    Grand Ole Opry song  

 *“One of the most important records to come out of Nashville…” Chet Flippo Rolling Stone John’s first book (released May 2018) The Life I’ve Picked, has over 60 5-star reviews on Amazon.  John was recently inducted in to the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame
check out www.johnmceuen.com