From July 8 to August 4, 2013, the Atlantic Music Festival triumphantly returns to the Colby College campus for its fifth consecutive season. Continuing the tradition set forth in past years, internationally recognized artists and rising stars from all over the world will congregate in Waterville, Maine to partake in an inspiring musical experience, presenting beloved classical masterpieces alongside inventive and iconoclastic new works by today’s composers.
The Festival continues its tradition of offering all of its concerts completely free of charge as a gift to the community. Furthermore, with the renewal of I Am Four Years Old campaign, the Festival is donating 100% of its concert proceeds to the Maine Children’s Home for Little Wanderers. The Maine Children’s Home was chosen for its efforts in providing aid to families and children, strengthening families, providing for underprivileged children, and instilling hope. Its services include adoption, counseling, Teen Parent School Program, Early Care and Education for 57 children ages 0-5, Summer Camp Scholarship program that will send 120 children to camp, and a Christmas assistance program that served 1,664 children in 2012. Through this campaign, the Festival continues its vision of sustaining a public reaffirmation of its core values, cultivating awareness of the musicians’ place within the community and exploring the musicians’ response to violence, social injustice, or illness. For more information about the campaign and about past sponsorships, please visit the I Am Four Years Old campaign page.
The curtain officially rises on Saturday, July 13, 2013, at the Lorimer Chapel with Delaware Symphony’s Maestro David Amado conducting the AMF Orchestra, led by internationally renowned concertmaster Dennis Kim. Introducing a season filled with unique and inspiring works, the 7:00 PM concert features Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, followed by Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For this last number, singers from the AMF Opera Workshop will join the AMF Orchestra.
AMF offers two additional orchestral concerts, conducted by Jonathan Schiffman and Benjamin Shwartz, respectively. Both orchestra concerts feature piano concertos, the first performed by the winner of the Piano Concerto Competition, and the concluding concert with pianist Alice Sara Ott, celebrated for the freedom and fluidity of her approach. The Chamber Music Series resumes every Wednesday and Friday at 7:00 PM beginning June 17, 2013, while the Salon Series, now Salon @ The Bar, returns to a new on-campus location, the Marchese Blue Light Pub. Audiences can enjoy food and drinks and listen to a variety of chamber and solo favorites in this informal setting. In addition, the Festival’s Institute Programs (the Composition Program, Opera Workshop, and the Piano Institute and Seminar) have not-to-be-missed concerts highlighting some of the best and the brightest artists on the classical music scene. The Festival also presents a new program, the Future Music Lab, designed to immerse gifted musicians into the world of new music technologies. Led by award-winning violinist and composer Mari Kimura, the project is an official collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. Viewers can experience the latest innovations in new music performance at Salon @ The Bar throughout the season.
For more information about AMF 2013, including the complete schedule of events, please visit the Festival website at www.atlanticmusicfestival.org, or call the Festival office at 1-888-704-1311.
