daily festival recaps
- Music@Menlo Wraps Up Spectacular Sixth Season (August 08)
- Voices of Our Time (August 07)
- "without whom we would be mute" (August 06)
- Just Another Day at Music@Menlo (August 05)
- Private Music Made Public (August 04)
- Modernist Marathon (August 03)
- The Musical Imagination (August 03)
- Delicious Dissonance (August 01)
- What Ithaka Means (August 01)
- Romantic Cadence (July 30)
- Brahms the Progressive (July 30)
- "Vissi d'arte..." (July 29)
- "...and all the world is fresh and bright again." (July 27)
- Festive Day, Romantic Evening (July 27)
- Open House (July 25)
- "Origins of Modern String Playing" and Today's Rising Stars (July 25)
- Classical Bookends (July 23)
- Lesser Gives More (July 22)
- Fame is the Spur (July 22)
- Yes! (and Bird! and Bach!) (July 20)
- Baroque Heroics (July 19)
- Towards Bach (July 18)
- A Grand Beginning (July 17)
Just Another Day at Music@Menlo
Posted: August 05
Music@Menlo’s “day off” was anything but. Despite a rare day sans concert, the festival remained in high gear on Tuesday. At the afternoon master class, led by the incomparable Gary Graffman, Chamber Music Institute pianists Nicholas van Poucke and Liza Stepanova dazzled a standing-room-only audience in Stent Family Hall with virtuosic solo works by Liszt and Schumann. The students of the Chamber Music Institute continued their intensive course of rehearsals and coaching sessions in preparation for the season’s final set of Prelude Performances and Koret Young Performers Concerts, while the festival’s senior artists rehearsed for the summer’s final concert program, “Music Now: Voices of Our Time.” In the late afternoon, violinist Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo Quartet led an impromptu Cafe Conversation in Martin Family Hall, discussing the methods (and demonstrating the technological savvy) he has developed to document his quartet’s performances; the talk served as an interesting lesson to the Institute artists in using technology towards their artistic and professional development. Following Nicholas’s demonstration, Michael Steinberg, in response to popular demand from the Institute artists, led a second poetry reading workshop. The evening ended with an intimate chamber music reading among festival artists, students, staff, and guests.
Festival favorite Ara Guzelimian makes his much-anticipated return to Music@Menlo on Wednesday night to lead the summer’s final Encounter, “Future Forward: Exploring the Here and Now” (7:30 p.m., Martin Family Hall). The event will feature special guest appearances by visiting composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, and Kenneth Frazelle, whose music will be performed by the International Program artists at Thursday and Friday evenings’ Prelude Performances. Their music will also be spotlighted at “Music Now: Voices of Our Time;” the program includes the world premiere of Kenneth Frazelle’s Piano Trio, commissioned by Music@Menlo. There is a limited number of tickets still available—don’t miss out on this historic musical event!