Performing chamber music at a summer music festival

Each summer while The Florida Orchestra is on hiatus my husband and I travel to North Carolina to play and teach at Eastern Music Festival, a summer music festival for high school and college students from around the country. As faculty members, we teach weekly lessons to the students and coach them in chamber ensembles. We also play in the faculty orchestra and perform chamber music with other faculty members.

This summer I performed several well-known pieces of chamber music, as well as other music that is less well known, including the Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp by Claude Debussy, and Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Part, pictured above as the featured image.

The faculty members at Eastern Music Festival travel from all over the country to perform and teach, and it is a joy to get to know new people as well as see old friends every year. I had never played chamber music with either the flutist or the violist in the Debussy Trio, and it was a pleasure to work with and get to know both of them.

I also performed a piece for steel pan and harp by Andy Akiho called Karakurenai with my husband, who is a frequent chamber music partner and collaborator with me on commissions of new music for harp and percussion. Karakurenai is a beautiful, mesmerizing piece of music written for two players to play completely in unison with each other. It was a challenging piece of music to learn, but it is very beautiful and we enjoyed it immensely, as did the audience.

We are looking forward to returning to St. Petersburg at the end of July when the festival ends. It is always sad to say goodbye to our summer friends and colleagues, but we look forward to seeing them next summer, and we are also looking forward to coming home!

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