Notes from David Yang

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After marinating indoors for the better part of a year and a half, we’ve all been desperate for live music. Et voilà – this summer, every concert sold out.

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When I was a teenager, I got a job one summer working as a bike messenger in New York.

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This summer we’ll be performing Shostakovich’s String Quartet in Eb Major, No. 9. Following are my notes from the program.

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Set aside Wednesday, August 4 to Sunday, August 15 because NCMF is on for summer 2021 with six concerts in six days.

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REFLECTIONS ON NCMF SUMMER 2019: A Visual Portrait

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David Yang reflects on 10 years with a string trio.

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Is there such a thing as a perfect piece of music? Not too long nor too short, melodious not saccharine,

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I'm proud of the work we did to make August 2020 a success in the midst of COVID-19 with events both live and virtual. The highlight was undoubtedly the "quartet caroling" around town.

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I love winter: the low afternoon sun, footsteps crunching on new snow, huddling in bed under a comforter, that unusual pink night sky that signals snow.

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Sunday, June 6 the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival is back in action.

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

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After a Book Salon focusing on Shostakovich and the "The Noise of Time" by Julian Barnes, here are David Yang's program notes for Shostakovich’s 6th String Quartet featured this summer.

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Artistic Director David Yang's notes on the new piece for 2019.

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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.

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Just think what was going in the Roaring '20s in art, literature, science, politics, society. The rule book had been thrown out the window following the war to end all wars.  

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In preparation for his March 30th solo piano recital, I asked Michael to share some of his favorite performances by other artists of works on his upcoming concert program.

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The first LP I ever owned was a collection of marches by John Philip Sousa...

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David chats with Sébastien van Kuijk, a Festival Artist in August 2019 whose 2020 visit here was foiled by COVID-19

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It seems that around this time of year people are specifically drawn to reassuring music.

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

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

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An Introduction to Summer Season #18.

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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.

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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.

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Playing baroque music is a kind of going back to the basic ingredients of our art form.

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As we all hunker down indoors, “socially distanced” and grimly tracking the progress of COVID-19 across our communities, I thought some kind of distraction might be welcome.

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While we all sit at home in our pajamas struggling to recall what day of the week it is, let’s look back at an extraordinary solo piano recital at St. Paul’s in 2016 when friend of the festival, Amy Yang, brought the house down with “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

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If Bach is God, Beethoven is Man. Where Bach speaks of eternal truths and the mysteries of the universe. Beethoven defines the essence of what it is to be human.

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Recently I’ve noticed the call of a Very Loud Bird I don’t recall hearing outside my window in the morning. It is entirely likely it’s been there all along, I just never had the space to listen pre-lockdown.

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Some of you have been wondering what we are going to do this summer with COVID-19 followed by the foundation-rocking and (hopefully) transformative events of the last few weeks.

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David talks with composer Ania Vu about her background and new composition for the Winter Baroque concert.

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Last year the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away at the age of 91. You might not recognize the name but I’ll wager you know his music.

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You may have seen me around Newburyport or playing viola in the summer concert: my name is Alessandra, and I am David's younger daughter.

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Architecture runs in my family: my parents met in architecture school and both worked in the profession before going on to other fields ...

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With Winter Baroque squarely behind us, I thought I’d take off my Artistic Director hat and put on another.

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Decades ago I read “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking and dimly remember a passage where he said the concept of infinity is beyond the capacity of the human brain to conceptualize.

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Distant echoes, the vast roof overhead - I feel a slight chill and sense of awe when I walk into a cathedral. I get the same feeling of immensity when I listen to Bach’s sixth cello suite, a work the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich called “a symphony for solo cello.”

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Despite general weirdness everywhere, we’re determined to make NCMF 2020 joyful with many festival-related events - some live, some virtual.

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For the last nineteen years, Newburyport Chamber Music Festival has taken over the town for a week or two every August.As we experience a summer unlike any other, I wanted to revisit 2019, one of the best seasons we’ve had.

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This summer I will occasionally post conversations with the artists who were scheduled to come to Newburyport this summer.

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In 1982 I received the best birthday present of all time: a Sony Walkman WM-R2. Oh man, putting those earphones on….You know those stories about the audience reaction in 1895 at the screening of the first motion picture?

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The pain started as a dull ache in my abdomen around New Rochelle; by Stamford I was doubled over in agony.

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You’re going to have to indulge me in this week’s post just a bit. You see, when we started the festival in 2001 I hoped Newburyport would become a kind of second home for my family and me.

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Why can’t I get enough of sad music? My daughters hate to sit near me at the opera because I have been known to cry uncontrollably and it feels so good.

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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).

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The good news -- but also bad news -- is that there's only one ticket left to Michael Brown’s upcoming piano recital in Newbury.