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Festival aims to revive chamber music in August
Directors also see new program as way to bring more people to Old Salem museums
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Published: June 17, 2008
Fans of locally performed chamber music will be able to hear it again in August.
A new festival, called the Carolina Summer Music Festival, will be presented Aug. 14-31 by Old Salem Museum & Gardens and the Carolina Chamber Symphony Players of Winston-Salem.
The festival will be announced at 11 a.m. today in Gray Auditorium at the Old Salem Visitors Center. Gray Auditorium will be the site of several festival concerts, with the others scheduled for Reynolda House, Jon Kuhn Gallery and Zevely House. Tickets for festival concerts -- with the exception of the Zevely concert, which includes dinner -- are $15, or $10 for seniors and $5 for students.
"We're going to push to make (the festival) a permanent part of the rotations of other festivals that are cropping up," said Bill Benton, the president of the chamber symphony players' board.
Joe Mount, one of the festival's three artistic directors, said that Carolina Summer Music will fill a niche once held by the Foothills Chamber Music Festival, which was held for years in August but ended in 2005 because of a lack of money.
Mount said that the Foothills festival "proved there's a demand" for chamber music in August, when nearby festivals have come to an end and schools and arts organizations are still on summer break.
Lee French, the chief executive of Old Salem Inc., said he sees the festival as a way of bringing more people to Old Salem's museums. He said that the festival's daytime concerts will be included in an all-in-one ticket to Old Salem.
"It's a wonderful marriage," French said of Old Salem's involvement with the festival.
The festival's artistic directors -- Mount, violinist Jacqui Carrasco and flutist Elizabeth Ransom -- have come up with eclectic programming.
Individual performances will be devoted to Gershwin; such French composers as Ravel and Faure; music by Moravians and others in Revolutionary War-era Salem; and Nielsen and Beethoven. There will also be a couple of children's concerts and a "Festival Sampler."
"We're packaging concepts," Mount said. "There's no overarching theme…. We're trying different styles, different themes, different venues. But our main base is Old Salem."
This year's festival will cost $37,000. Benton said that the funding has been secured from donors, foundations and the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.
The goal of future festivals, he said, will be to underwrite about 35 percent to 40 percent of the concerts' costs with ticket income, with the rest coming from donations. In a couple of years, if all goes as planned, the festival will have "ammunition to go after sponsors," Benton said.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
■ For more information about the festival, call 366-682-8524 or go www.carolinasummermusicfestival.org.
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