PRESS RELEASE

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PressRelease2008.pdf

The Seal Bay Festival—P.O. Box 824, Vinalhaven, Maine 04863, (207) 863-2230

PRESS RELEASE

The ninth biennial Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music will be held from June 2 to June 14, 2008, presenting concerts and workshops in Maine’s south and mid-coast re-gion. Concerts will feature recent chamber music by American composers, and workshops will explore the creative process with regional artists, musicians and school students. Per-formers in residence will include the Cassatt String Quartet and pianist Adrienne Kim of New York. Composers in residence will include Sebastian Currier (New York City), Libby Larsen (Minneapolis, MN), Sally Lamb (Ithaca, NY), and BarbaraWhite (Princeton Univer-sity). Workshops will be led by Barbara White (also a clarinetist) and festival associate di-rector Nicolas Scherzinger (composer and saxophonist from Syracuse University).

The concerts will be held at Smith Hokanson Hall on Vinalhaven (Tuesday, June 10, 7:30 p.m.), at the University of Maine’s Hutchinson Center in Belfast (Wednesday, June 11, 8:00 p.m.), in the Farnsworth Museum Auditorium in Rockland (Thursday, June 12, 8:00 p.m.) and the Gallery Barn in Ogunquit (Friday, June 13, 8 p.m.) A workshop/performance for school children from North Haven and Vinalhaven will be held at the Vinalhaven School (Thursday, June 5, from 9 a.m. to noon). A colloquium with festival musicians and regional visual and performing artists will be held at the Waterfall Arts Center (Wednesday afternoon, June 11, at 1:30p.m., with reception to follow).

Concert programs will include the world premiere of Quiet Time for string quartet by Sebastian Currier (recent winner of the international Grawemeyer Award and the Berlin Prize, both in composition); the world premiere of a new string quartet by Libby Larsen (former Composer-in-Residence with the Minnesota Orchestra and co-founder of the American Com-posers Forum); Subito for violin, cello and piano by Sally Lamb (Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Ithaca College), and Reliquary for solo piano by Barbara White (Associate Professor of Music Composition at Princeton University). Libby Larsen’s new quartet was commissioned by Meet The Composer, Inc.

In addition, the June 10 concert on Vinalhaven will also include a structured improvisation by a group of students from the Vinalhaven and North Haven Schools. At all four concerts, all composers on the program will be in attendance and will introduce their own works.

Tickets: For the concerts on Vinalhaven (Smith Hokanson Hall at Vinalhaven Highschool) and in Belfast (Umaine Hutchinson Center, 80 Belmont Avenue, Belfast), there is a suggested donation of $10. Tickets for the Rockland concert (Farnsworth Museum Auditorium, 16 Museum Street, Rockland) are $14, $12 if purchased in advance, $10 for senior citizens, and free for students 18 and under. Tickets for the Ogunquit concert (Barn Gallery, Shore Road and Bourne Lane, Ogunquit) are $16, $14 if purchased in advance, $12 for senior citizens, and free for students 18 and under. A portion of the proceeds from the Vinalhaven concert will be donated to Partners in Island Education (PIE), a community organization dedicated to improving educational facilities and opportunities for island school children.

Co-Directors of the Seal Bay Festival are Daniel S. Godfrey (Composer-in-Residence at the Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music), and Steven Stucky (Given Foundation Pro-fessor of Music at Cornell University, New Music Advisor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music). Associate Director of the festival is Nicolas Scherzinger (Associate Professor of Music at Syracuse University). Also on the festival board is composer John Duffy, who is founder and retired director Meet the Composer, Inc., who currently lives in Camden, Maine.

For further information about the concerts on Vinalhaven and in Belfast and Rockland, please contact Daniel S. Godfrey at (315) 727-8196 or call the Seal Bay Festival after May 30 at (207) 863-2230. For further information about the concert at the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, please call (207) 646-7055. Information may also be found on the festival website at
www.sealbayfestival.org.