Celebrity Series & Happy Hour

CELEBRITY SERIES & HEIFETZ HAPPY HOUR

FRIDAYS AT 5:00 PM HAPPY HOUR; 6:00 PM CONCERT

$40 (includes tickets for food and beverage) A Friday night tradition in Staunton! Experience the world-renowned artistry of our virtuosic Heifetz Institute faculty members in carefully conceived 75-minute programs. Each concert is preceded by a Happy Hour under the big Heifetz tent on nearby Page Terrace, designed to showcase the best regional wines and artisan foods. Page Terrace, Francis Auditorium, Mary Baldwin University, 227 E. Frederick Street

JULY 1: Voilà Viola!

Sponsored by Muse Vineyards

JULY 15: Busoni, Beethoven, & The Blue Shore of Silence

Our Friday night series of riveting Heifetz faculty concerts begins with a pair of performances featuring the instrument sometimes called the “Cinderella of the Orchestra,” and concludes with the oh-so-charming and sunny String Sextet by composer (and violist!) Antonin Dvoˇrák. “God himself must have been walking the Czech Lands when his humble servant Dvorˇák bequeathed to us a work of such excellence and sanctity,” in the words of conductor Václav Talich.

JULY 8: Follies & Finales

Sponsored by Barren Ridge Vineyards

Dating from the 1600s, La Folia, translated as “folly,”or “madness,” is one of the most durable and downright maddening tunes in all of Western music. More than 150 composers have written variations on the tune, none more brilliantly than Antonio Vivaldi. Violinist Ilya Kaler follows with a pair of works from the pen of Fritz Kreisler, the second of which is the Viennese composer’s final composition. Felix Mendelssohn’s final published chamber work—his magnificent String Quintet, Op. 87, concludes the program, which also features a rare performance of a captivating Piano Trio by Armenian composer Arno Babadjanian.

Sponsored by Yelping Dog Wine

No Heifetz Celebrity Series is complete without an appearance by the legendary Shmuel Ashkenasi! The Heifetz Chamber Music Seminar icon offers up a rare performance of Ferrucio Busoni’s Violin Sonata No. 2, “structurally owing to Beethoven and thematically challenging Bach.” Beethoven in fact will conclude the program with the Virginia premiere of Artistic Director Nicholas Kitchen’s remarkable arrangement of the Eighth Symphony. And to begin, you’ll hear some brand-new settings of poetry by Pablo Neruda, the product of an innovative commissioning project by faculty artist Francesca DePasquale.

JULY 22: Sui Generis— Original & Unique

Sponsored by Barboursville Vineyards

“Nature bestowed on me a certain talent and also a little something that enables me to use this talent. Deep inside I possess a minuscule, invisible motor that allows me to accomplish a task in ten minutes, that would take others an hour or more. Thanks to it, I run, not walk. I speak fast, even my pulse beats faster than normal, and I was born two months premature.” In this concert devoted to singular talents and compositions, you’ll hear the energy and quickened pace of the utterly original Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz realized by violinist Grigory Kalinovsky and pianist Seonmi Lee, an astonishing new cello quartet by 20-year old Jaylin Vinson, and a chamber masterwork by Brahms anchored by pianist Rohan De Silva. And our concert will begin with a tribute to the unique vision and artistry of our founder Daniel Heifetz.

JULY 29: All Hail Hailstork

Sponsored by Jump Mountain Vineyard

We are thrilled to welcome Adolphus Hailstork, emeritus professor at Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University, and often referred to as “The Dean of African-American Composers,” as the Heifetz Institute’s very first Composer-In-Residence (see bio on page 39). Hailstork describes his style as ‘cultural hybridity,’ borrowing both from European and Black American traditions. In that spirit, our program both celebrates Hailstork and honors that ‘hybridity’ with music born on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as his own String Quartet No. 2, “Variations on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

AUGUST 5: Brahms Bids Farewell

Sponsored by Barren Ridge Vineyards & F&M Bank

Johannes Brahms intended his Op. 111 String Quintet to be his swan song, writing to his publisher, “with this letter you can bid farewell to my music.” And Brahms held nothing back, creating “...an extraordinary work, one of the finest in Brahms’s oeuvre and therefore all of chamber music: exuberant, elegant, subtle, original and unmistakably Brahms in nearly every bar.” In our final Celebrity Series, our renowned Heifetz faculty take their leave with Brahms, after a round of solo performances both brilliant and poignant.