2025 Festival Preview

SUMMER 2025: An American Century 

America came into its own in the last century, changing from an artistic backwater to a cultural superpower. NCMF 2025 includes a broad range of 20th Century American classical voices, from popularly-inclined composers like Aaron Copland to abstract works by the likes of Elliot Carter. Some of this summer’s composers, like Jerome Kern, made a living writing hit musicals with lush orchestral scores like Show Boat. Others, like John Cage, conceived of the thought-provoking/outrage-inducing 4’33 which challenged the very definition of what music is. George Gershwin, in works like Summertime from Porgy and Bess or Lullaby tried to bridge the gap between so-called high art and entertainment. Even jazz, our native musical tradition, wasn’t immune to the conflicting pull of these forces.  The diverse viewpoints that were a hallmark of a nation founded by immigrants have not always coexisted comfortably and cruel ironies abounded: popular composers were blacklisted for communist sympathies while ultra-abstract composers were promoted in CIA-funded concerts.

This summer represents a mini-overview of the multiple directions classical music has taken. Opening night on Saturday, August 9^th, is an all-American clarinet recital with music of Copland, Ives, Bernstein, Barber, and Gershwin. This is followed by a Salon concert of music and conversation in a private home on Wednesday, August 13^th that includes a pre-concert interview with Todd Palmer, and post-concert discussion with the artists and audience. Like the night before, Thursday’s concert in Amesbury also features Argentinean-American composer Osvaldo Golijov’s wild klezmer clarinet quintet, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind\ paired with the darkest piece in a major key that I know, Mozart’s autumnal clarinet quintet. I’ve also slipped in composer Guillaume Connesson’s jazzy Disco toccata.

On Friday, August 15^th, we’ll hold the popular Nachtmusik in a new location, St. Anna’s chapel on High Street. For the final St. Paul’s concert (Saturday), nothing makes more sense for this American-flavored season than to feature Guthrie Ramsey, our 2025 Composer-in-Residence, jazz pianist, and music historian extraordinaire. He has written a work for string quartet and jazz singer, which his daughter, soprano Bridget Ramsey, will perform with us. The piece, Beat Chick: Tunes for Hettie Jones, is a tribute to Bridget’s grandmother, the legendary beat poet and Mid-century cultural center of gravity, Hettie Jones, who passed away last year. 

The father-daughter duo will also perform Gershwin’s Summertime and a spiritual by the Queen of Folk, Joan Baez. Anchoring that concert is none other than Beethoven’s Opus 127, one of the master’s late, great, string quartets that went on to re-shape the direction of classical music. 

Our final concert will be something completely new that I am calling NCMF: Cabaret! Held upstairs at The Joy Nest in the Tannery, the concert will consist of two mixed sets where Guthrie and Bridget will let loose with keyboards and voice, alternating with the strings performing some deliciously rare quartets by Gershwin and Kern including All The Things You Are and Smoke Gets in your Eyes. We’ll then come together and perform Beat Chick a second time. 

Like the big, messy, and complicated country it springs from, American music has a big, messy, and complicated history, and it will all be on display this summer in Newburyport. 

David Yang, Artistic Director