WHAT IS THE HARVARD MUSIC FESTIVAL? The Harvard Music Festival is an annual, weeklong chamber music festival — open to the public, in Harvard Massachusetts — for musicians to be coached by established performers and educators from the Boston area. This event is designed to attract young professionally-bound musicians as well as experienced amateurs who focus on learning and improving chamber music skills and knowledge. Musician ensembles work during the week to perfect a chosen piece and participate in daily preparation, rehearsal, coaching and masterclasses, culminating in a live concert performance for a community audience. The public is invited to observe rehearsals and masterclasses and provide feedback to musicians, in order to stretch them in their discipline. All weekday sessions are FREE to the public, although donations are welcome.
COACHES & GUEST SPEAKERS Our coaches help musicians improve their understanding of the work and how to impart emotion when playing. They are highly respected in their disciplines and in addition to working with each ensemble, they provide individual instruction to musicians. Specialists are also hired to focus on helping musicians with: breathing and movement while performing; effectively introducing (through words) a piece of music to an audience; and interpreting feelings evoked in listeners. These workshops offer necessary skills as musicians advance toward becoming professionals performing for an audience on a larger stage.
FESTIVAL GOALS The festival’s primary goal is to build connections within and beyond the community, through the shared experience of music making, listening, and performance. Key to achieving this is the instruction coaches provide to ensembles, as well as to musicians individually. Audiences auditing rehearsal and coaching sessions throughout the week can follow the musicians’ progress and gain appreciation for individual pieces – as well as for the time and work invested in the process – as they observe musicians and coaches working together. A secondary goal has been to foster a deep appreciation – by both musicians and audience members – of music-making and engaged collective listening, and to introduce the community to musicians from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The audience is welcomed to observe the musicians’ process and build relationships with them at a personal level, through curiosity and interactive engagement. The event has become a place of learning, making, teaching – a time for shared appreciation of the creative arts.
JUNE 21 (Tuesday) 4:00 – 6:00pm
2022 Harvard Music Festival – Open Masterclass
Listen in as ensembles play a part of their performance piece for a coach and a small audience. FREE (donations welcomed).
JUNE 23 (Thursday) 7:00 – 9:00pm
2022 Harvard Music Festival – Music Salon
An informal house concert, where musicians will share brief excerpts from works they are rehearsing for performance. FREE (donations welcomed).
JUNE 25 (Saturday) 7:30pm
2022 Harvard Music Festival – Celebration Concert
After a week of rehearsing and coaching, musicians present their final performances! SUGGESTED DONATION AT THE DOOR: $20.
Unitarian Universalist Church Sanctuary (9 Ayer Road)
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Building (7 Elm Street)
Congregational Church Sanctuary & Fellowship Hall (5 Still River Road)
Over the past two years, communities have struggled to connect without sharing space. As we come back together, we want to take time to focus on what happens when we all share space together.
Performances of Jackson Mac Low’s Asymmetries (chance poems that can be played as music) are different every time. The poems themselves are nonsensical, and there’s no specific goal or correct outcome from each performance, but because people are gathered, listening, and relating, the sensation of meaning always emerges. As if by magic, meaning arises simply from events sharing time and space.
Community members are invited to participate in the performance, either as readers or observers. No professional experience is necessary; an interest in the work and desire to perform it is enough.
After a long time apart, we look forward to gathering and to creating meaning together.
Those interested in participating in the performance can attend one or both of the coaching sessions that the Music Festival musicians will be attending, in preparation for Friday night’s performance. These sessions will be:
MONDAY, JUNE 20 7:30-8:30 pm
and
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 4:00-6:00pm
Both coaching sessions and the Friday night performance will be held at the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church at 9 Ayer Road in Harvard, MA.
