Monadnock Music


2022 Summer Festival Program

Letters

From the Artistic Director

Rafael Popper-Keizer credit:Yoon S Byun

Dear friends of Monadnock Music,

It is a true joy to welcome you to our 2022 Summer Season! This year is special for me: it marks not only our triumphant return to “business as usual” – and how we have missed the beauty of our local churches and meetinghouses – but also my 20th year performing with Monadnock Music. Over the course of these two decades, I have forged many lasting friendships, watched my two children grow to young adulthood, and witnessed firsthand the transformative power of music: to educate, to better understand ourselves and others, to allow us space to reflect and heal.

We are thrilled to add to our concert lineup this season a series of family concerts: three presentations of Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate’s Moonstrike, a retelling of American Indian legends for string quartet and narrator. We are also returning to the Peterborough Town House for the first time in several years to present two glorious large-scale chamber works, Franz Schubert’s Octet, and Josef Miroslav Weber’s Septet “From My Life”: both dazzlingly rich offerings with the grandeur and scope of a chamber orchestra. Our free village concerts – the core of our mission since Monadnock Music’s founding – continue to showcase both the old and new, as well as the familiar and unfamiliar. A few highlights for me: Richard Strauss’s piano quartet, a passionate early masterpiece in the vein of his violin sonata; Margaret Bonds’ ravishing setting of four Edna St. Vincent Millay poems; Louis Spohr’s gloriously suave Duo for two violins; a brilliant arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for organ (!); the rich bass-baritone sonority of the low strings concert (that combination of viola, cello, bass – pure magic); and our final village concert, featuring string quartets by three extraordinary women from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally, our special presentation of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ is something I had originally slated for our 2020 season. We now offer this searingly beautiful sequence of seven slow movements as a meditation on the hardships and losses of the past two and a half years.

As ever, we are grateful beyond words to the community that sustains Monadnock Music, without which we could not exist – to our musicians, our staff and board, and our supporters and friends. Thank you so much for your generosity and fellowship – I look forward to seeing you this summer!

Rafael Popper-Keizer

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From the Board Chair

Paul Venezia and his daughter Bella

Hello, and welcome to Monadnock Music’s 2022 season!

As we all do with every new year, I found myself eagerly and impatiently awaiting Spring. It seems to have arrived and sped clear through into summer weather, but the important parts showed up as promised. The trees in bud, perennials emerging, bees buzzing, and well, the muddy roads and the rains that make it all possible. Also arriving with the spring is the Monadnock Music event schedule that we worked on throughout the winter – and we have a simply fantastic slate of music and performances lined up for 2022.

We’ve all made it through two very challenging years in 2020 and 2021, and I’m very happy to say that Monadnock Music in 2022 is a strong and vibrant organization with a steady focus on our mission of producing and promoting exceptional musical experiences and live performances throughout the Monadnock region.

At the core of Monadnock Music, responsible for handling all of the myriad moving parts of the organization is our highly motivated and extremely dedicated Executive Director Laina Barakat. She handled all of the curveballs thrown at us by Covid and other challenges with aplomb. We wouldn’t be where we are as an organization without her.

And the same is true of our very talented and accomplished Artistic Director Rafael Popper-Keizer. He has architected a superb series of concerts for this year, with a wide range of composers and styles to both provide the comfort and familiarity of legendary pieces, but to also include newer or perhaps lesser-known composers.

We have also expanded our board of directors, adding several new faces in Lundy Lewis, PhD, a musician and Professor at SNHU with a long list of accomplishments in music and technology, and Christine Paryl, a music educator, multi-instrumentalist, and long-time performer with multiple musical groups in Illinois and Toronto, and who now calls Amherst home. I highly suggest you read their full bios on the Monadnock Music website. An organization like this relies on the dedication, participation, and energy of the board members, and we are very fortunate to have a group of people with all of those qualities and more.

So as I sit, writing this letter while my daughter and her friends prepare for another rite of spring, the prom, and listening to the birdsong outside my window, I’m thankful for the faithful arrival of spring and all it brings, and thankful for all of the people that make Monadnock Music possible – most importantly our members.

So thank you all, may your spring and summer ring with music and nature, and I look forward to seeing you at many of our concerts this summer.

Enjoy!

Paul Venezia

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From the Executive Director

Laina Barakat

Dear Friends,

Although we are still in the throes of this pandemic, I am so grateful to return to some normalcy this summer. With our concerts back in the meetinghouses and churches of our region, and some light socializing at receptions following the concerts, we are close to the magic of pre-pandemic times. We are still of course committed to providing a safe environment for all.

We return as new people, changed by this moment in history, but still enriched in the same way by the arts. Composers from today and yesteryear connect and enliven us just as before, perhaps more. I will cherish the opportunities to sit close with my loved ones at the theatre and in performance halls. This summer will feel new and exciting, no matter how many years our tradition of free Village Concerts has been handed down. We also welcome back for the first time in several years a Town House Concert! These concerts really allow us to provide something unparalleled to the region. It is through your support that we have been able to showcase this type of concert this year.

We need Memberships now more than ever. Our Supper Club has some extraordinary events this summer. Joining at the $500 level and above automatically gives you access to these exclusive gatherings. This is our way to foster an intimate community around our love of music, and show our appreciation of your support. Please note our special event with artist Alexander Gassel - just one of the many special events for Supper Club Members.

Coming out of some very challenging years, times are time for all of us. Please help support how you can. Perhaps for you that is inviting new friends to our free Village Concerts, sharing our website and events on social media, sending an email to local lovers of cultural happenings, or bringing your children and grandchildren to a concert! Help us expand our audiences so our music reaches more ears than ever, and our mission is carried further despite the hardships!

Yours in the music,

Laina Barakat

Executive Director

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Supported by:

Eat More Cake Frisky Cow Gelato The Laughing Gull Sole’s B.A.R. Arthur Getz Trust Ayer Fund Eppes-Jefferson Foundation Grimshaw Gudewicz Charitable Foundation James Burgess Boote Fund Merrill Family Charitable Foundation New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Penates and our Members