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Berkshire High Peaks Festival 2025

Berkshire High Peaks Festival 2025—On the Campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA, Situated in the Beautiful and Culturally Dynamic Berkshire Hills

“One World—A Harmonic Convergence”: Performances, Master Classes and Gifted Musicians on the Cusp of Careers; Folk-infused Classics at The Guthrie Center, Chesterwood, Berkshire Busk! and Kellogg Music Center, July 23 – August 3

GREAT BARRINGTON, MA: Berkshire High Peaks Festival, the educational initiative of Close Encounters With Music, will mount its 16th annual season on the bucolic campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in the heart of Great Barrington. At the core of the festival are over 50 international students of exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishment who gather for intensive study, are coached as part of performing ensembles and enjoy discussions and workshops by renowned pedagogues and notable figures in the music world as they prepare for professional lives. 

Alumni have gone on to careers in conducting, teaching, and arts administration.  They are members of chamber music ensembles, orchestras and perform as soloists. Over 750 young musicians have been inspired by the High Peaks program, many on full or partial scholarships.

For audiences and listeners, High Peaks offers wall-to-wall performances as participants—strings, pianists and vocalists—showcase their talent at venues around the Berkshires, including the Guthrie Center, Chesterwood and the Kellogg Music Center, alongside their mentors. High Peaks participants also make their debut at Main Stage at Berkshire Busk! during Festival Latino—a joyful, high-energy evening of music in downtown Great Barrington.

The ten-day festival, directed by internationally acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, will continue to make its offerings of “Moonlight Sonatas” concerts, lectures and master classes open to the public. Hanani and his renowned colleagues infuse students with love and enthusiasm for their musical vocation, instilling in them an appreciation for past traditions and a spirit of adventure and discovery—as well as connecting them to the Berkshire community and beyond with daily events. Highlights include performances of Close Encounters With Music’s 2002 commissioned work by superstar composer Osvaldo Golijov “How Slow the Wind,” Peter Warlock’s Suite Capriol, Dvorak’s “American” Quartet, Ginastera’s “Pampeana” and other repertoire demonstrating direct links from folk traditions that have fed into classical masterworks. A trifecta of farewell concerts throughout the afternoon and evening on August 2 concludes the 2025 Festival. 

“We are committed to bringing the very best artists and leading pedagogues to continue this musical tradition, here in the breathtaking environment that inspired generations of writers, artists and musicians,” says Hanani.

Guest faculty/performers include violinists Peter Zazofsky, First Prize winner of the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Competition; Katie Lansdale, winner of grand prizes at Fischoff and Yellow Springs national competitions, and Ari Isaacman-Beck, first violin of the Dalí String Quartet. Violists are Anthony Devroye of the Avalon Quartet and Helena Baillie prizewinner in Munich ARD, Banff and Tertis competitions. Vocal faculty include Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes, baritone Kerry Wilkerson and opera director and conductor Jay Lesenger, who directed John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles at Glimmerglass Opera. Returning piano faculty members are Alexander Shtarkman, a Van Cliburn Competition winner and Peabody Institute Professor, and Gila Goldstein, director of piano studies at Brown. Diego Fainguersch, principal cellist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, and Yehuda Hanani, currently on the faculty of Mannes College in New York City will coach and inspire cellists in the program.

“Music from High Peaks” has been presented in popular concert locations, including the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA; Orpheum Theater in Tannersville, NY; Basilica Hudson; the New York State Museum in Albany; Bridge Street Theater in Catskill, NY; the Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville, NY, and many others. This July, in addition to the concerts that are scheduled at the Kellogg Music Center of Simon’s Rock, performances take place at Berkshire Busk! in Great Barrington, Chesterwood in Stockbridge, at The Guthrie Center in Housatonic, and in Tannersville, NY.

The following events are open to the public:

Thursday, July 24

1:30 PM – Master Class Gila Goldstein (Longy School of Music), piano

Friday, July 25

1:30 PM – Master Class Anthony Devroye (Avalon Quartet), viola

Saturday, July 26

1:30 PM – Master Class Peter Zazofsky (Boston Univ.), violin

6:30 PM – Mainstage at Berkshire Busk!, Great Barrington, MA

Sunday, July 27

3:00 PM – Music from High Peaks – Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA

Monday, July 28

1:30 PM – Master Class Yehuda Hanani (Mannes College), cello

7:00 PM – Moonlight Sonatas (High Peaks Residents & Faculty Perform)

Tuesday, July 29

1:30 PM – Master Class Alexander Shtarkman (Peabody Conservatory), piano

7:30 PM – “One World – A Harmonic Convergence” – The Guthrie Center, Housatonic, MA

Wednesday, July 30

1:30 PM – Master Class – Danielle Talamantes (Metropolitan Opera) and Kerry Wilkerson (George Mason Univ.), vocalists

7:30 PM – Moonlight Sonatas (High Peaks Residents & Faculty Perform)

Thursday, July 31

1:30 PM – Opera Talk – Jay Lesenger (Opera Director / Conductor)

7:30 PM – Moonlight Sonatas (High Peaks Residents & Faculty Perform)

Friday, August 1

3:00 PM – Music from High Peaks – Tannersville, NY (private event)

7:30 PM – Moonlight Sonatas (High Peaks Residents & Faculty Perform)

Saturday, August 2

10:30 AM – Farewell Sonatas (High Peaks Residents Perform)

2:00 PM – Farewell Sonatas (High Peaks Residents Perform)

7:00 PM – Farewell Sonatas (High Peaks Residents Perform)

The Berkshire High Peaks schedule can be found at cewm.org/high-peaks-calendar. Contact Caitlin Marsden McNeill with questions: [email protected], 917.392.0969.

End of Summer Celebration Flyer

End-of-Summer Celebration and Auction

Saturday, September 18, 2021, 12-4 PM

http://www.cewm.org/

Please join Close Encounters With Music for an End-of-Summer Celebration and Auction. You will enjoy beautiful vistas, a scrumptious lunch, an appearance by the PRISM quartet (saxophones). and an auction of exciting items to bid on, including:

– Dinner for two at Cafe Boulud at Blantyre

– A consultation with a master gardener to design, improve, and plan your garden

– Performance for you and your guests by the Berkshire Jazz Collective

– Works by painters, ceramists and photographers Paul Chaleff, Arthur Yanoff, Kenro and Yumiko Izu, Hans Heuberger, and more

–A “care package” from Jane Iredale Cosmetics

–Conversations with fascinating writers, thinkers, scientists, including Wall Street Journal columnist and author Lance Morrow and Nobel Prize winner Joachim Frank

The event is to support Close Encounters With Music’s programs in 2021-2022, a season that features the Gold Medalist of the recent Van Cliburn Competition; first oboist of the New York Philharmonic; Cuban dancer Irene Rodriguez in a  Spanish and Latin American evening; a rescheduled world premiere of a newly commissioned piece; “Roaring Twenties: Paris, Berlin, New York” with vocalists William Ferguson and Blythe Gaissert; the a cappella vocalists Skylark; guitarist Eliot Fisk in “Folk and Baroque” as well as many returning favorite performers and beloved chamber music works.  

PRISM Saxophones will perform in a tent.  Event address will be given upon purchase of tickets. Tickets are $80.00 and can be purchased HERE.

Intriguing programs of great beauty and breadth have distinguished the PRISM Quartet as one of America’s foremost chamber ensembles. “A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM has been presented by Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of USIA and USArtists International. PRISM has also appeared as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned nearly 300 works by eminent composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Julia Wolfe, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipients Tyshawn Sorey, Bright Sheng, and Miguel Zenón; and US Artists Fellow Susie Ibarra. PRISM’s discography is extensive, with releases on Albany, BMOP/Sound, ECM, innova, Koch, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, Orange Mountain Music, and its own label, XAS Records. The Fifth Century, PRISM’s ECM recording with The Crossing, was awarded a 2018 Grammy for Best Choral Performance.

Close Encounters With Music offered a series of virtual programs starting last July to keep the music going through out the pandemic. The decision was made to present the Berkshire High Peaks Festival virtually for the first time ever in Summer 2020, followed by an August live-streamed concert, “From Bach to Bachianas,” a guitar/cello recital featuring Eliot Fisk and Yehuda Hanani on stage in an empty Mahaiwe Theater. These and the October through April concerts that followed (“The French Connection,” A Night at the Opera,” Debussy and Brahms with the Escher Quartet, “Forever Bach – the Cello Suites,” Sebastians Baroque Ensemble) remain available for viewing on cewm.org, mahaiwe.org, and both organizations’ YouTube channels, and have collected thousands of views.

Two magical outdoor programs titled “Wine & Song,” took place on May 23 and June 13 at Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox featuring vocalists Emily Marvosh, Sonja Tengblad, pianist Joseph Turbessi and the a cappella jazz ensemble West Side Five.

“We are hopeful that we can begin a gradual return to concert presentation as we know it on November 21—in person, and with a live audience at the Mahaiwe—with a rousing celebratory program postponed from June of 2020,” says Yehuda Hanani.  “This will feature our long-awaited world premiere of Tamar Muskal’s work for tabla, hip hop artist, two cellos and children’s chorus.  We look forward to welcoming everyone to the Great Reopening!” 

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music is in its 29th year of presenting music and other programming to audiences in the Berkshires and beyond. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich and enlighten the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time — Joan Tower, Judith Zaimont, Lera Auerbach, Tamar Muskal, Thea Musgrave, Robert Beaser, Kenji Bunch, Osvaldo Golijov, John Musto, and Paul Schoenfield among others — to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers who appear regularly with Close Encounters includes: pianists, Roman Rabinovich, Soyeon Kate Lee, Inna Faliks, Max Levinson and Michael Chertock; violinists, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Vadim Gluzman, Julian Rachlin, Peter Zazofsky, Itamar Zorman and Hagai Shaham; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Danielle Talamantes and Kelley O’Connor; the Muir, Manhattan, Ariel, Vermeer, Escher, Avalon, Hugo Wolf, Dover string quartets; and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Sam Waterston, Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs. Close Encounters With Music programs have been presented across the U.S. and Canada—Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Omaha, Cincinnati, Calgary, Detroit, at the Frick Collection and Merkin Hall in New York City, at The Clark in Williamstown, at Tanglewood and in Great Barrington, Mass., as well as the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Summer performances have taken place at the New York State Museum, Basilica Hudson, Orpheum Theatre in Tannersville, and in the orchard at Olana.  The Berkshire High Peaks Festival takes place each July at Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., as the educational initiative of Close Encounters With Music with fifty international students in residence for an immersive course of study and performance.

HOW TO REACH US

Close Encounters With Music

Post Office Box 34

Great Barrington, MA 01230

800.843.0778

Web: www.cewm.org

CEWM e-mail: [email protected]  

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