Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival Celebrates 45th Season

The Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival (CCCMF) will celebrate its 45th summer season with a series of live performances July 30 to Aug. 16. The concerts will take place in five venues from Falmouth to Wellfleet, including two performances at Chatham’s First Congregational Church.

This year’s festival is centered around the string quartet. Each week will feature back-to-back concerts by today’s leading string quartets: Borromeo, Ying, and Escher. Other festival highlights include a season-opening free jazz concert, the Cape Cod debut of Tangent Winds and more.

Jon Manasse, co-artistic director since 2006 along with Jon Nakamatsu, recalled his first experience with the CCCMF as a recent graduate of The Juilliard School back in 1988, when he visited with his chamber music coach, classical collaborative pianist Samuel Sanders. Sanders founded the CCCMF back in 1979 and was the festival’s first artistic director.

“It was the first time I came to the Cape,” Manasse said. “I was lucky to have had him as a chamber music coach at Juilliard, and lucky that he really liked me. It was a big boost to have a prominent figure in music — a collaborator with Itzhak Perlman and others, a faculty member at Juilliard who helped establish the master’s degree program in accompaniment there — take a shine to me and invite me to the festival.”

Manasse, now a professor at Juilliard, looks forward to sharing the beneficial effects of live music shared in person with an audience he refers to as the festival’s Cape Cod family.

“Nobody talks about politics or fights in the concert hall,” Manasse said. “The vibrations of the sound do something to the body and brain. They truly enhance body chemistry. It’s real, and at the same time it’s inexplicable. But we need to experience it; we don’t need to understand it. Hearing certain sounds arranged in a certain way, transported from the musicians on the stage to the listener’s ear and into their soul, make you cry, smile, or weep. It has to make the world a better place. That is our role as your artistic directors, to bring this connection together.”

The festival begins Tuesday, July 30 at 7 p.m. with Jazz at the Seashore: Dizzy and the Duke, a free outdoor community concert at the Cape Cod National Seashore Visitors’ Center in Eastham. This year’s program features Dan Block (Juilliard Jazz Studies Program faculty) and friends performing an evening of jazz standards by Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and more.

On Thursday, Aug. 1 and Friday, Aug. 2 at 5:30 p.m. the Borromeo String Quartet will perform a double-header at Falmouth Academy Simon Center for the Arts and the Wellfleet First Congregational Church, respectively. Returning to the festival for the 34th time by popular demand, the Borromeo String Quartet features Nicholas Kitchen on violin, Kristopher Tong on violin, Melissa Reardon on viola and Yeesun Kim on cello.

On Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 5 and 6 at 5:30 p.m. it’s Ying Quartet’s turn to perform a double-header, this time at Chatham’s First Congregational Church and Cotuit Center for the Arts, respectively. Grammy Award-winning Ying Quartet features Robin Scott on violin, Janet Ying on violin, Phillip Ying on viola, David Ying on cello and Brian Zeger on piano (Aug. 5 only). This will be Ying Quartet’s third appearance in the festival.

On Friday, Aug. 9 at 5:30 p.m. Tangent Winds and Jon Nakamatsu will make their festival debut at the Wellfleet First Congregational Church. Tangent Winds features James Blanchard on flute, Jonathan Gentry on oboe, Alec Manasse on clarinet, Shelby Nugent on horn, Steven Palacio on bassoon and festival co-artistic director Jon Nakamatsu on piano.

Don’t miss “A Family Affair,” a special concert on Monday, Aug. 12 at 5:30 p.m. at Chatham’s First Congregational Church. Festival co-artistic director Jon Manasse will pick up his clarinet to join a collection of his skilled and talented family members, including festival favorite cellist Julian Schwarz, his wife Marika Bournaki (celebrated concert pianist), Jon Manasse’s award-winning sons Alec and Jordan Manasse on clarinet and piano, his nephew Zachary Silberschlag (principal trumpet of the Israel Philharmonic), Carmit Zori on violin, Julian Schwartz on cello, and festival co-artistic director Jon Nakamatsu on piano. The program will include a variety of works by Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Dvořák, and Mendelssohn, as well as by living composers Svante Henryson and Stanley Friedman.

“‘A Family Affair’ is a nod to the festival’s whole Cape family,” Manasse said. “It so happens that I have a lot of family members who are fantastic musicians, truly. So we thought, let's do a family concert! Let’s make it for our whole Cape family. Our audience members, our sponsors, our board members, our wonderful volunteers and everyone who has made the Cape such a beautiful oasis for us.”

The festival will finish with three concerts by the Escher String Quartet, returning to the festival for the fifth time. The concerts will take place on Tuesday, Aug. 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Cotuit Center for the Arts; on Thursday, Aug. 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the Falmouth Academy Simon Center for the Arts; and on Friday, Aug. 16 at 5:30 p.m. at the Wellfleet First Congregational Church. The Escher String Quartet features Adam Barnett-Hart on violin, Brendan Speltz on violin, Pierre Lapointe on viola, Brook Speltz on cello, Jon Manasse on clarinet (Aug. 15-16 only) and Jon Nakamatsu on piano (Aug. 15-16 only).

For more information, including the complete festival schedule, visit www.capecodchambermusic.org.