Notes from David Yang

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“Even if they cut off both my hands and I have to hold my pen in my teeth

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Running a music festival is very much a group effort.

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Tickets are now officially on sale for our 21st Season.

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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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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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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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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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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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I’ve wanted to program this incredible, weird, and magical piece for ages.

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

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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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March is coming, spring is not far behind, and that means piano recital.

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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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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.

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If Bach is God, Beethoven is Man.

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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.

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Just think what was going in the Roaring '20s in art, literature, science, politics, society.

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Why can’t I get enough of sad music?

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You’re going to have to indulge me in this week’s post just a bit.

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In 1982 I received the best birthday present of all time: a Sony Walkman WM-R2.

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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.

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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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David Yang reflects on 10 years with a string trio.

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REFLECTIONS ON NCMF SUMMER 2019: A Visual Portrait

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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.

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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.

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Last year the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away at the age of 91.

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Is there such a thing as a perfect piece of music?

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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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This summer we’ll be performing Shostakovich’s String Quartet in Eb Major, No. 9.

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Summer 2022 features arguably the most perfect of Mozart’s perfect quartets, the C Major (K.465).

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Does anyone in Newburyport really need an introduction to Rhina?

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A taste, a scent, can trigger memories, but how about music?

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‍‍I started cooking in grad school when I procured a copy of Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook.”

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Tickets for the 2021 NCMF Winter Baroque concert have gone live and, as promised, the concert will be a doozy.

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