A Summer of Barber

American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) spent formative summers of his youth at the Lake George estate Homeland under the guidance and influence of his aunt, contralto Louise Homer, and his uncle, composer Sidney Homer.  In 2010, the Sembrich plans to bring the music of this American master back to the shores of the lake that so influenced him all those decades ago.  Join us for a season-long commemoration of the centennial of his birth

Barber’s initials are used to indicate A SUMMER OF BARBER special event

2010 Sembrich Season Schedule —————

MADAME SEMBRICH’S TRAVELLING TEA SET

Wednesday, June 16 at 1:30 pm, $10

A Talk, Tea-tasting and Book-signing with Michael Harney of Harney & Sons Fine Teas

Come to the Sembrich to see Madame Sembrich’s travelling tea set on special display and to hear Michael Harney of Harney and Sons Fine Teas, one of the country’s leading authorities on the subject, talk about different teas (white, green, oolong & black), how they taste and why, with a little history, science and lots of fun thrown in.  Followed by a lakeside tea-tasting and book signing.

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YOUNG PERFORMERS SHOWCASE

Saturday, June 19 at 2 pm, FREE

The annual spotlight shines again on up-and-coming performers of the North Country in this popular yearly showcase concert featuring some of the region’s most promising young musicians.

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SEAGLE COLONY SEASON PREVIEW

Wednesday, June 23 at 1:30 pm, $10

Seagle Music Colony is the oldest summer vocal training program in the United States and the premier opera and musical theatre producing organization in the Adirondacks.  Sample selections from the Seagle’s 2010 exciting summer season, which includes performances of “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hello Dolly!” and “Carousel.”

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LAKE GEORGE OPERA APPRENTICES

Saturday, June 26 at 7:30 pm, $25

Barber’s “A Hand of Bridge” and other selections from American Opera

Lake George Opera has a rich and proud history celebrating the potential of opera as an American art form.    Join Young Artists program director John Douglas and the Lake George Opera Apprentice singers for a performance of Barber’s opera-in-miniature, “A Hand of Bridge” and for a tribute to former festival director, David Lloyd, featuring memorable moments from American Opera, including scenes from “Susannah,” “The Ballad of Baby Doe” and “Vanessa.

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BARBER: SUMMER OF 1927

Thursday, July 1 at 7:30 pm, $10

Barbara Heyman, author of the award-winning “Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music” brings us back to the summer of 1927, through a recently transcribed diary detailing the young composer’s 17^th year on Rogers Rock, where Barber and other students from the Curtis Institute of Music worked at a club on the north end of the lake. Come for this entertaining, informative portrait of the artist as a young man, retracing the influential summers that set young Barber on course for a career on the international music scene.

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 SILVER BAY ENSEMBLE

Wednesday, July 7 at 1:30 pm, $10

Each summer since 1998, the Silver Bay Ensemble, under the leadership of violinist Martin Meade, has been a part of the Sembrich summer music series. This season, the fine Ensemble returns to the studio in a program of selected chamber works, including a Trio by Jean Baptiste Loiellet.

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KNOXVILLE: SUMMER OF 1915

Saturday, July 10 at 7:30 pm, $20

An Evening of American Lyric Songs and Arias

with soprano Megan Weston

and pianist Michael Fennelly

Lyric soprano, Megan Weston, heard in previous seasons in traditional bel canto arias of singers Jenny Lind and Marcella Sembrich, turns her attention to American repertoire in this concert featuring “Knoxville: Summer of 1915”, Barber’s rhapsodic setting of James Agee’s nostalgic prologue to his novel “A Death in the Family”.  Also included on the program are Barber’s Opus 13 songs, “Sure on this shining night” (James Agee), “A Nun Takes the Veil” (Gerard Manley Hopkins), “Nocturne” (Frederic Prokosch) and “The Secrets of the Old” (W.B. Yeats), as well as a set of arias from American opera.  Pianist Michael Fennelly takes a solo turn with a performance of Barber’s dynamic, exciting suite, “Excursions” for piano.

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 THE PRIMA DONNA AND THE PAINTER

Wednesday, July 14 at 1:30 pm, $5

 A Lecture by Professor Neil A. Chassman

 The Intersection of the Art of Peter Schwarzburg

and the Estate of Marcella Sembrich  

The 20^th century American artist Peter Schwarzburg found on Lake George, in Bolton Landing and at the estate of Marcella Sembrich inspiration for his profound thinking and for his painting. He executed nearly one hundred works from scenic Sembrich point facing the Lake and the Sagamore Hotel.  Professor Chassman will guide us through an unforgettable visual journey through the works of Mr. Schwarzburg, who combined distinctly American and European traditions with a striking freshness and a powerful, sensitive individuality

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JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, Seagle Colony’s Children’s Opera

Friday, July 16 at 10 am, Bolton Central School, FREE

This operatic re-telling of the classic fairy-tale story combines music from Gounod’s opera Faust with the story’s larger-than-life characters and the message that love and friendship are more important than materials goods.  This 30-minute show will be sure to please audiences of all ages.

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Davydov/Fanning Cello and Piano Duo: “Influence and Inspiration”

Saturday, July 17 at 7:30 pm, $20

Barber was deeply inspired by his studies of the works of Bach, Chopin and Fauré.  This concert by the Davydov/Fanning Duo will illuminate these important influences in Barber’s music in a program that includes Nocturnes for solo piano by Chopin, Faure and Barber and sonatas for cello and piano by Debussy and Barber. Of special interest is a performance of Ernest Stires’ “Pieces of Eight” for cello and piano.  Stires, who was Barber’s cousin (and who himself mentored Trey Anastasio, lead guitartist for the rock band PHISH) always acknowledged the profound inspiration he derived from Barber’s music.

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BARBARIAN PRINCESS:

Martha Graham, Barber & “Cave of the Heart”

Wednesday, July 21 at 1:30 pm, $5
A Video Lecture with Aaron Sherber, Music Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company

Martha Graham’s 1946 dance “Cave of the Heart”, set to a commissioned
score by Samuel Barber, portrays the story of the sorceress Medea, who Graham described as a “barbarian princess.”

Join  Aaron Sherber, music director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, for a
discussion of the relationship between music and dance in this powerful
work.   A video screening of the complete ballet performed by
the Martha Graham Dance Company follows.

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 A WEEKEND WITH EVELYN LEAR

In the tradition of Madame Sembrich, internationally celebrated soprano Evelyn Lear comes to the studio in the role of master teacher to the young vocalists of RESONANZ, an intensive training program for singers out of Albany, founded by Metropolitan Opera mezzo soprano, Heidi Skok and featured recently in Classical Singer magazine. Weekend events include:

Saturday, July 24 at 1 pm: MASTER CLASS, $10

Saturday, July 24 at 7:30 pm: CONCERT featuring the SINGERS of RESONANZ, $20

Sunday, July 25 at 1 pm:  Video presentation & MASTER CLASS, $10

SEATING IS LIMITED FOR ALL EVENTS.

Make reservations early.

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A HOMER FAMILY REUNION

Featuring the Hyperion String Quartet, Baritone Christopher Herbert

With guest artist, Sarah Liebowitz, piano

Saturday, July 31 at 7:30 pm, $25

Barber biographer Barbara Heyman writes:

“Aiding and abetting Barber’s mission were his maternal aunt, the famous opera singer, Louise Homer and her husband, the composer Sidney Homer.  Homer is one of the heroes in Barber’s story: the wisdom and optimism that he transmitted to his nephew for more than twenty-five years fostered Sam Barber’s mission, supported his inclination to adhere unwaveringly to the Romantic style, and inspired the direction of his intellectual development.  It is rare that a mentor can sustain his influence for as long as Homer did.”

We pay tribute to this profound influence of the Homers in this special concert featuring the Hyperion Quartet and baritone Christopher Herbert in performances of Barber’s String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11 (the centerpiece of this quartet is the famous “Adagio for Strings”), “Dover Beach” and a movement from Sidney Homer’s Piano Trio, performed by Homer grand-daughter, pianist Sarah Liebowitz.

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OLD GLORY, NEW GLORY: THE FORGING OF AMERICAN OPERA

A Lecture by Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Wednesday, August 4 at 1:30 pm, $5

Starting in the early days of the Spanish Conquistadores, opera has made a persistent effort to set down roots in the New World.  This presentation, including many recordings, both rare and surprising, will trace American Opera’s long, hard, but ultimately successful road from the 17th to the 21st centuries.  Along the way we will hear selections from both familiar and unfamiliar operas by American composers, revealing the many streams of inspiration that have blended to create a distinctive American School.

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CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON PIANO RECITAL:

“From Beethoven to Barber”

Saturday, August 7 at 7:30 pm, $25

After enthralling Sembrich audiences with his “Chopin and the Bel Canto tradition” and “Franz Liszt: A Spiritual Journey,” American concert pianist Christopher Johnson returns to explore his most epic musical journey yet — “From Beethoven to Barber.” The program begins Beethoven’s brilliant and heroic “Waldstein” piano sonata — a work that represents the height of the Classical tradition.  Departing from this Classical tradition, Debussy’s “Clair de lune” emanates a complete change of color and prepares Ravel’s “La Valse” — a complex work representing the mysterious birth, glamorous apex, and tragic decay of the “Viennese Waltz” through the eyes of a French composer just following the First World War.
Sitting alone in the second half like a monumental symphony, Samuel Barber’s Sonata for Piano is without doubt, the most celebrated piano sonata ever written by an American composer.  The sonata alone represents an epic musical journey, as this Neo-Romantic blockbuster gleans inspiration from traditions not only Germanic and French, but Russian and South American as well.  From the tragic and poignant first movement to the mysteriously haunting third movement, the music points to the inevitable direction of Barber’s great climatic showdown and pianistic legacy — the fourth movement, a virtuoso, four-voice fugue.

Visit Christopher Johnson’s Website

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BEL CANTO SINGERS

Wednesday, August 11 at 7:30 pm, $20

Each summer the Sembrich is proud to welcome the young artists of the Bel Canto Institute to present a concert of songs and arias at the studio museum following their four weeks of vocal study abroad in Florence, Italy, under the expert guidance of Institute founder, Jane Klaviter.  The Bel Canto Institute offers to today’s generation of young singers the same type of intensive instruction that Madame Sembrich championed decades ago, here in her teaching studio on Lake George.

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SUMMER MUSIC: Melodic Masterworks for Winds

Sunday, August 15 at 7:30 pm, $25

Featuring Wind Players from the Philadelphia Orchestra:

David Cramer, flute, Richard Woodhams, oboe, Samuel Caviezel, clarinet,

Jeffrey Lang, horn and Mark Gigliotti, bassoon

With David Pasbrig, piano & Philip Kates, violin

Two melodic masterworks of twentieth-century wind repertoire, Barber’s “Summer Music” and Poulenc’s “Sextet for winds and piano” along with Barber’s “Canzona” for flute and piano and Mozart’s exquisite “Quintet in E-flat Major” are featured works on this program, showcasing the brilliant winds of the “Fabulous Philadelphians.”

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VIDEO: “Copland and the American Sound”

This operatic re-telling of the classic fairy-tale story combines music from Gounod’s opera Faust with the story’s larger-than-life characters and the message that love and friendship are more important than materials goods.  This 30-minute show will be sure to please audiences of all ages.

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CANTORES MINORES
Friday, August 20 at 7:30 pm, Location To Be Announced,  Donation

The Warsaw Archdiocesan Cathedral Men’s and Boys’ Choir

David Troiano, tenor soloist

Michael Oczko, accompanist

Joseph A. Herter, conductor

Following their celebrated appearance in Bolton Landing in the summer of 2001, the voices of Cantores Minores return to the region for a program of Polish and American music, including works by Chopin, Moniuszko, Gorecki, Paderewski, Mikuli and Giannini.

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MARY ANN McCORMICK, Mezzo-soprano:

A Tribute to Louise Homer

Saturday, August 28 at 7:30, $20

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Mary Ann McCormick returns to the Sembrich to pay tribute to famed contralto Louise Homer in a recital that will focus on the composers and repertoire in which Homer was well known, including German lieder, American art song and operatic arias.  Also featured will be “Hermit Songs” by Homer’s nephew, Samuel Barber, a cycle of songs based on a collection of verse by medieval Irish monks.

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TO BE SUNG ON THE WATER

An Evening of American Choral Music with the Lyric Consort

Saturday, September 4 at 7:30, $25

Join us lakeside to conclude this summer of music with Barber’s “To Be Sung On the Water,” “Sure on this Shining Night” and selections from “Reincarnations” along with a survey of other notable American choral works, rendered by the superb a cappella voices of this highly-praised vocal ensemble.