Stoughton Chamber Music Festival

Kent Sweitzer
A 2019 Stoughton Chamber Music Festival performance.
Schedule:
Preview Concert and Interview with AD Madlen Breckbill and composer Micah Behr, August 12 at 7:00 PM, Grand Inspired, 501 E Main St, Stoughton. Free.
CHILDREN’S CONCERT: Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Candace Fleming: August 13 at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, Bjoin Park E Wilson St, Stoughton. Free.
CYCLES: August 19 at 7:30 pm and August 21 at 3:00 pm, Chorus Public House, 154 W Main St, Stoughton. $10 Student, $25 General
INTERPLAY: August 27 at 7:30 pm, Stoughton Opera House, 381 E Main St, Stoughton. $10 Student, $25 General
INTERPLAY mini: August 28 at 3:00 pm, Simmering Barn, 858 County Highway N, Stoughton. $10 Student, $20 General
media release: The Stoughton Chamber Music Festival announces CYCLES & INTERPLAY, featuring ten brilliant artists in five performances this August.
“For this year’s festival, we’re taking an immersive curatorial approach,” says Festival Artistic Director Madlen Breckbill. “Each of our two main-stage programs tackles a different concept, expressed through exciting and diverse music.”
Opening the 2022 Stoughton Chamber Music Festival, CYCLES carries the listener through one ceaseless loop — gradually shifting between stillness and motion, calm and distress, harmony and discord. CYCLES features a fully-immersive sonic experience, as listeners will sit in a circle around the musicians and feel the music’s gradual shift into an unpredictable soundscape before returning to a place of calm & harmony.
With music spanning nearly 350 years, CYCLES presents works by Wynton Marsalis, Caroline Shaw, among others, and features the world premiere of two new compositions by SCMF Composer-in-Residence Micah Behr.
“Both of our concerts bring together works that at first seem unrelated. With our second program, INTERPLAY, we want to explore what music can be found at the intersection of freedom and refinement?” asks Breckbill. For hundreds of years, the most brilliant artists have sought inspiration in the wild beauty of folk music. With INTERPLAY, the musicians of the Stoughton Chamber Music Festival explore these vibrant connections. Pairing the richly-hued poetry and folk-tinged virtuosity of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet with raucous and vivacious arrangements of Hungarian folk music, INTERPLAY is a sumptuous feast for the senses.
Each concert will be performed twice, and the Stoughton Opera House performance of INTERPLAY will also be viewable via livestream. The festival will also be presenting two free performances of its children’s program with local storyteller Kay Elmsley Weeden, on August 13th, 2022.
The SCMF artistic roster includes: Madlen Breckbill, violin and viola; Micah Behr viola, piano, and composer; Teddy Wiggins, violin; Alex Norris, violin; Laila Zakzook, viola; Greta Breckbill, viola; Phillip Bergman, cello; Zou Zou Robidoux, cello and arranger; Brad Cherwin, clarinet; and Kay Elmsley Weeden, storyteller.
The Stoughton Chamber Music Festival is presented with generous support from Dane Arts.
The Stoughton Chamber Music Festival, now entering its 4th year of programming, creates vital opportunities for brilliant early-career classical musicians, and shares expressive and engaging performances of diverse repertoire to local listeners.