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| City of Portland Maine |
Lewis Kaplan, co-founder and longtime artistic director of the
Bowdoin International Music Festival, plans to launch an early summer
classical music festival in Portland that will celebrate the music of
Johann Sebastian Bach and add to Portland’s growing reputation as a
destination for classical music.
The inaugural
Portland Bach Festival
will run June 19-24 at churches in Portland and Falmouth. One concert,
“Bach and Beer,” will be scheduled outdoors on the waterfront and
feature Portland craft beers.
“I just started thinking, ‘I want to do more,’ ” said Kaplan, 82, who
left Bowdoin after 50 years, during which he made the festival a leader
in the education and refinement of young musicians from around the
globe. “I am not retired, and I thought … Portland would be a very good
place to do it, that the time was right.”
Portland will now be able to boast a summer full of classical music:
the Bach festival in June, PORTopera in July and the Portland Chamber
Music Festival in August. In addition, the Portland Symphony Orchestra’s
reputation as a regional orchestra continues to grow, and the chamber
festival is expanding to year-round programming.
Kaplan,
senior professor of violin and chamber music at The Juilliard School,
has had a long-term love affair with Bach. The festival will include
four performances in baroque and modern styles, along with lectures and
master classes.
There will be collaborations among musicians from Maine,
New York and Europe, as well as performances by two Maine-based chamber
vocal ensembles, the Oratorio Chorale and the St. Mary Schola.
Concerts are scheduled for The Episcopal Church of St. Mary on
Foreside Road in Falmouth and the intimate Emmanuel Chapel at St. Luke’s
Cathedral in Portland.
Appropriate performance spaces are key to the festival’s success, said Kaplan, who lives in New York and Brunswick.
“We live in a crazy world, and that is not an outrageous statement,”
he said by phone from New York. “The idea of performing in a sanctified
area and people finding peace and solace with some of the greatest music
ever written, is reason enough to make this festival.”
Emily Isaacson, artistic director of the Oratorio Chorale, will serve as associate artistic director of the festival.
She is a Brunswick native who now lives in Portland.
The festival will enrich the cultural offerings of the city, she said.
“Portland has become a world-class city, and a world-class city
deserves world-class art,” Isaacson said. “People are coming to our
state to see the incredible landscape, to enjoy the charm of our
cobblestone streets and to dine in our fabulous restaurants. We want
them to come for world-class music as well.”
Kaplan agreed. “The New York Times just wrote about Portland as a
food destination,” he said. “Many of my friends in New York are looking
for a reason to come to Portland.”
The festival benefits from Kaplan’s contacts in the music world. As
he did when he ran the Bowdoin festival, he has recruited a dozen “major
performers” from the United States and Europe, including Ariadne
Daskalakis, a baroque and modern violinist from Germany; John Ferrillo,
principal oboist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and Beiliang Zhu,
who won the first prize and the Audience Award at the International Bach
Competition in Leipzig in 2012.
Maine performers are Bruce Fithian, a tenor and director of the St.
Mary Schola; organist Ray Cornils; and Amanda Hardy, first oboist of the
Portland Symphony. The Oratorio Chorale will serve as choir in
residence.
“We want to be measured against any of the top performers in the
world,” Kaplan said. “These concerts had better be damned good from the
start. That’s our standard.”
Kaplan said the festival will become an annual event.
Read
more: Portland Bach Festival will help put city on map as classical
music destination - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram
