Festival Focus: Book of Longing

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: The Book of Longing represents the mind-melding of two of the greatest musical masterminds of our time: Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass. Cohen’s poetry is personal, passionate, brutally honest, spiritual, and irreverent. When asked about the style of music, whether it was classical, or jazz, or cabaret, or pop, Cohen replied, “It’s Glassical.” Indeed, Glass brings his quintessential sound to the poems while illuminating the text in gorgeous ways throughout.

Why you should go: It’s a rarity! Our chamber concerts are usually deliciously low-maintenance. This concert, however, has a narrator, 4 amplified singers, 8 instrumentalists, 3 synthesizers, a battery of percussion, lighting, sound, sets and props. This is BIG ART, friends… and a work that has been a dream of mine to produce for a long time!

You’ll love it if you love: Personal storytelling by a multitude of great artists.

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Don’t miss the final weekend of the Austin Chamber Music Festival—check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! Save money on tickets for the whole weekend with our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Invoke & The Tale of the Fox

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: Invoke is one of the most innovative chamber ensembles in the country. They are singular and unique, and their approach to music-making knows NO boundaries. Literally, they are always creating new sounds with new techniques and instrumental combinations and they have transformed the string quartet genre. It’ll be particularly enthralling to hear them in their newly created score to the 1930s film, The Tale of the Fox. Invoke wrote this score for chamber orchestra, and advanced students from ACMC’s Summer Workshop will join the quartet to perform during the film screening. This will be musical storytelling to the extreme!

Why you should go: The combination of live music and film is rare and WONDERFUL! Experiencing new sounds with visual delights will take you to a total sense of artistic immersion. You’ll get a singular experience that you’ll rave about for years to come!

You’ll love it if you love: Music… movies… air-conditioning… popcorn. And you’ll love it if you love being delighted and transported. How can you resist?

Get Details

Don’t miss the final weekend of the Austin Chamber Music Festival—check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! Save money on tickets for the whole weekend with our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: The country’s most renowned and influential chamber music society? What’s not great about it?! It will be a thrill to hear New York’s finest chamber musicians in Austin’s own Bates Recital Hall… an amazing and unique treat to close our eyes and hear the sounds of Lincoln Center.

Why you should go: Our festival often leans heavily on the repertoire of string quartets and piano trios, but this concert is lovingly different. In this concert, we’ll get to experience the most quintessential repertoire written for a quintet of wind players plus piano, by Beethoven, Françaix, Ligeti, Poulenc and Reicha. The sounds, textures, rhythms, and colors will present unexpected and rare delights that you will not want to miss!

You’ll love it if you love: The best of the best presenting sonic surprises and unexpected delights!

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Michelle and the rest of the ACMC team are looking forward to continuing our Festival with you this weekend! Check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Andre Hayward & Friends

Guest Notes from Golden Hornet Artistic Director Graham Reynolds

What’s great about it: Andre has collected an amazing array of Black composers and players from Texas, New York, and beyond, with backgrounds in jazz, classical, and more. Each has a unique personal voice and the whole experience will be unlike any other during the festival.

Why you should go: You should go to hear fantastic music, to support Black artists, and to hear the unique sound of a small big band meets chamber music ensemble.

You’ll love it if you love: You’ll love this if you love jazz, if you love classical, if you love strings, if you love horns, if you want to be surprised at how contemporary composition can be accessible and ground breaking at the same time.

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Thanks to Golden Hornet Artistic Director Graham Reynolds for being our Festival Focus guest writer this week! The ACMC team is looking forward to co-presenting Andre Hayward & Friends with Golden Hornet on July 16, as part of the Austin Chamber Music Festival. Check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Peter Bay & Festival Chamber Orchestra

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: Opening the Festival with our chamber orchestra is always the most celebratory thing!  We celebrate Austin’s superlative local talent, led by the incomparable Peter Bay, and always program music that is sure to bring a wide grin to all faces.  This year we’re excited to feature Austin’s most dashing violinist, Patrice Calixte, in a virtuosic role as concertmaster and soloist.

Why you should go: The music… always the music!  It’ll be a divine treat to hear Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in its original instrumentation—its effervescence and charm never fails to impress.  And, I’m super excited to juxtapose Mozart’s A Major Piano Concerto with the A Major Violin Concerto by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.  Joseph Bologne and Mozart met in Paris in 1778 and both had profound influences on each other.  You’ll love hearing these works and the stories behind them.

You’ll love it if you love: Highly energetic and joyous chamber music, played by an excited and exuberant group.  This concert always hits a high note!

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Michelle and the rest of the ACMC team are looking forward to sharing these concerts with you, starting THIS weekend! Check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Boyd Meets Girl

Guest Notes from ACG Artistic Director Joe Williams

What’s great about it: Gramophone just hailed the new album by Boyd Meets Girl as “Beguiling… fascinating… enchanting…” and I totally agree. Boyd Meets Girl is all about charm. The husband and wife duo brings together the delightful combination of cello and classical guitar. Their music is at turns intimate, soulful and danceable with a welcoming ease that brings you in.

Why you should go: By hearing a song by Beyonce next to one by Schubert—all played brilliantly—we can perceive a broader picture of music. One that is alive and vivid, and has so much more in common than not—just like every one of us! The first time Austin Classical Guitar presented Boyd Meets Girl was in May 2021. We streamed their concert live from a hip little listening room in Brooklyn, NY where the duo is based. During that performance, they showcased a brilliantly eclectic program. They moved from Debussy to The Beatles and they did it with authenticity and refinement.

You’ll love it if you love: Amazing skill of mashing up the unexpected and sublime. I am so looking forward to sharing this experience with you and thrilled to be presenting them with our dear friends at Austin Chamber Music Center.

Get Details

Thanks to Austin Classical Guitar Artistic Director Joe Williams for being our Festival Focus guest writer this week! The ACMC team is looking forward to co-presenting Boyd Meets Girl with ACG on July 23, as part of the Austin Chamber Music Festival. Check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: The Winter’s Tale

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: Our combination of live chamber music set to Shakespeare’s scenes is a unique and innovative concept. This year we’re taking on the passion, jealousy, and redemption of The Winter’s Tale and giving it an icy and exciting live soundtrack with works by Rachmaninov, Grieg, Smetana, and Tchaikovsky. Each season, we find this to be one of our most immersive and transformative concerts, and this year will be no different!

Why you should go: This performance will be an incredible delight for all the senses. Placing stellar musicians together with dramatic actors enlivens both art forms and you’ll be caught in a whirlwind of story-telling and emotions. I like to think of these integrated events as “Chamber Music PLUS”… or “Shakespeare PLUS.” Expressive amplification and powerful immersion.

You’ll love it if you love: Having your expectations wayyyyyy exceeded. Audiences are always commenting about how much they love this collaboration… about how much more they enjoy Shakespeare because of the music, and how much more they enjoy chamber music because of the dramatic impulse. Indeed, if you love music within a dramatic context, you are going to LOVE this performance!

Get Details

Stay tuned for more Festival Focus features from Michelle in the coming weeks! The whole ACMC team is looking forward to sharing these concerts with you in July; check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Pacifica Quartet

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: “Phenomenal,” “brilliant,” “astonishing,” “gripping,” and “breathtaking.” These are the words that have been used to describe the Pacifica Quartet, and with multiple Grammys under their belt, they will join us in Austin on July 17 to perform landmark works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Jennifer Higdon, and Antonin Dvorak. Hearing one of the world’s finest quartets play music of the masters will be unforgettable.

Why you should go: When we had to forgo plans for a live Festival in 2020, missing the Pacifica Quartet saddened me the most. Truly, they are a group that I have been wanting to bring to Austin to perform for years, and now that we have the chance, I think it’s going to be more exuberant than ever. This will be our redemption concert! Hurrah!

You’ll love it if you love: On-the-edge-of-your-seat playing, fueled by passion, commitment, and unbridled energy. The sparkle and delight of Haydn’s “Sun” Quartet, the evocative and immersive images of Jennifer Higdon’s “Voices,” the earthy and fulfilling quality of Dvorak’s final string quartet… All of these will carry you into a world of total musical transcendence. Come get lost with me!

Get Details

Stay tuned for more Festival Focus features from Michelle in the coming weeks! The whole ACMC team is looking forward to sharing these concerts with you in July; check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.

Festival Focus: Merz Trio

Notes from ACMC Artistic Director Michelle Schumann

What’s great about it: The Merz Trio (rhymes with the German word Herz: “hair-tz”) is the newest and most stunning piano trio on the chamber music scene. Do you want to know what prizes they’ve won? Sheesh, the question is… what haven’t they won!? The list goes on and on: Naumburg, Fischoff, Concert Artists Guild, Chesapeake. What does this tell you? Not only do I love them, but so do the top vetters, impresarios, and leaders in the chamber music world! You’re not going to want to miss their Austin debut.

Why you should go: Merz Trio creates vibrantly dynamic programming which juxtaposes classical standards, new music, and their own arrangements of familiar and forgotten works, fluidly interwoven and guided with speaking from the Trio’s members. On July 9, we’ll hear their arrangements of gorgeous songs by Alma Mahler and Alban Berg along with Ravel’s La Valse (you’ll need to hear this live to believe it!) interspersed with quintessential piano trios by Beethoven and Brahms. Sounds like magic to me.

You’ll love it if you love: Creative, thoughtful programming, guided by charming discussion and interesting anecdotes, all the while brilliantly performed by virtuoso superstars. Oh come on, how can you resist this?!?

Get Details

Stay tuned for more Festival Focus features from Michelle in the coming weeks! The whole ACMC team is looking forward to sharing these concerts with you in July; check out the full lineup on our Festival page and reserve your tickets now! If you’re buying tickets for three events or more, don’t forget to order our flexible discount packages.