Trevor Neal
Special to The Newport Daily News
This summer’s Newport Classical Music Festival was a wonderful success, drawing nearly 7,500 attendees to 27 concerts in Newport’s stunning mansions and historic venues over the course of three weeks in July. While our team has been catching our breath and relishing the last days of summer, we are excited to be preparing for the third year of our nine-concert Chamber Series. Our Chamber Series concerts are held monthly at our home venue, Newport Classical Recital Hall on Dearborn Street, on Friday nights at 7:30 p.m. from September through June. We can’t wait to share these performances by world-class musicians with Newport audiences.
The Chamber Series opens on Sept. 1 with a performance by Young Concert Artists on Tour. Young Concert Artists (YCA) is an organization that for 60 years has identified and supported extraordinary young musicians at the start of their professional careers, and YCA’s touring programs showcase today’s emerging star performers from around the world. Chinese violinist Lun Li (who also joined us this summer in Newport as a Festival Artist), Spanish/Dutch pianist Albert Cano Smit, American bass-baritone Joseph Parrish (who performed our Classical Lieder program this summer), and American tenor Daniel McGrew join forces on our stage for a concert featuring the unusual combination of voice with violin and piano. Their exciting program will take us from Felix Mendelssohn’s Germany in 1844, through Julian Anderson’s Great Britain in 1995.
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Bassoonist Eleni Katz and pianist Evren Ozel will take our stage on March 22 in a program celebrating the many facets of the bassoon, featuring music by Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Coleridge-Taylor, and more. Hailed for her virtuosity and vibrant musical spirit, Eleni Katz has established herself as a prominent soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. She is a winner of the 2022 Concert Artist Guild Competition. Eleni trained as a classical singer, and believes that the bassoon should, “emulate the organic nature of the human voice,” as she puts it. It’s no surprise then, that The Royal Gazette, describes her playing as, “uncannily human.”