News

Michael Brown's March 2020 performances are postponed. David conveys the sad news but offers some suggestions for music to lessen the corona virus anxiety.

With Michael Brown performance and discussion coming up, David Yang reflects on composers and the act of composing.

March is coming, spring is not far behind, and that means piano recital. I’m pleased to report that Michael Brown will be returning for a concert (Saturday, March 28) and, the next day, a demonstration on musical interpretation (Sunday morning, March 29).

David Yang reflects on 10 years with a string trio

Playing baroque music is a kind of going back to the basic ingredients of our art form. The groundwork for rampant chromaticism and atonality, tone poems, symphonies of a thousand, even epic operatic cycles, was laid down well over three hundred years ago. The Baroque era is when classical music coalesced into the art form we recognize today. And the music of the baroque is as sophisticated and profound as anything that followed.

With Jay Reise’s retirement concert at the University of Pennsylvania coming up in a few days, I thought this would be a good time to look back at one of the most extraordinary pieces I have ever commissioned. Jay was Newburyport Chamber Music Festival’s composer-in-residence in 2015. Based on a Japanese folk tale with Rip van Winkle overtones, “The Gift to Urashima Tarō” was the result of a collaboration between NCMF and EXIT Dance.

REFLECTIONS ON NCMF SUMMER 2019: A Visual Portrait

In advance of this summer’s festival, Artistic Director David Yang offers some of his program notes on the repertoire: Robert Bradshaw Commission

I’ve wanted to program this incredible, weird, and magical piece for ages. Written in 1976, French composer Henri Dutilleux’s “Ainsi la nuit” (Thus the Night) has become a modern classic.

After another successful Book Salon on Tuesday, June 18th focusing on Shostakovich and the book "The Noise of Time" (by Julian Barnes), David Yang offered the program note for Shostakovich’s 6th String Quartet featured on the festival this summer.

In advance of this summer’s festival, Artistic Director David Yang is sending out some of the program notes he has written on the repertoire, in this instance Mozart’s String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421.

An Introduction to Summer Season #18 (August 2019) - Part I (Part II will contain links to all the pieces.

David Yang reflects on conversation with and performance by Michael Brown.

David Yang shares some of Michael Brown's favorite performances by other artists of the works on Michael's March 30th NCMF concert.

2019: Our 18th Season begins with Michael Brown, pianist and composer.

NCMF in the Media

October update from one our 2018 artists and preview of Winter Baroque 2018