Quadruple the Fun and Laughs

The second week of the Music Academy’s Summer Festival lineup goes from strength to strength.

Hahn Hall on the 10-acre Miraflores campus was the venue for the String Quartet showcase featuring the Vela Quartet – violinists Aaron You-Xin Li and Harin Kang, violist Vincenzo Keawe Calcagno, and cellist Hamzah Zaidi – kicking off the highly entertaining concert with works by Smetana and Bartok.

Quatuor Genial – violinists PoYu Lee and Oliver Leitner, violist Torron Pfeffer, and cellist Calire Park – followed with works by Bartók and Beethoven.

Quatuor des Reves – violinists Beau Henson and Whitney Takata, violist Kenneth Fujii, and cellist Miles Tatsuo Goosby – wrapped up the show with works by Frank and Dvořák.

Just 24 hours later, Mosher guest artist Anthony McGill, comedian Kimberly Clark, and pianist Kyle P. Walker provided an evening of comedy, conversation, and the clarinet with McGill, a 2020 Avery Fisher recipient and the first African American principal member of the New York Philharmonic, and Clark, also a clarinetist, reminiscing about growing up as people of color honoring the power of a music education.

The creative program featured American music, including works by Bernstein and Hailstork.

Next it was the Lobero Theatre when mezzo-soprano Marianne Ruel sang Brahms with violist Joshua Kail and pianist Tamar Sanikidze before the Takács Quartet, who also performed during the festival’s first week, played a string sextet Tchaikovsky work “Souvenir de Florence” with Madeleine Pintoff on viola and Sarah Chong on cello.

The concert concluded with works by Parsi, Torroba, and Chapi sung by soprano Ana María Martínez accompanied by pianist John Churchill.

The week ended gloriously with the Academy Festival Orchestra, conducted by Frenchman Stéphane Denève, performing Symphonie Fantastique with works by Berlioz, sung by mezzo-soprano and Lehrer Vocal Institute co-chair Sasha Cooke, a two-time Grammy winner who has performed with more than 80 symphonies worldwide.

She is a graduate of the Music Academy and the New York’s Juilliard School, while Denève is music director of the St. Louis Symphony and former chief conductor of the Brussels Philharmonic.

The concert was in memory of regular first-concert conductor Larry Rachleff, who died last August at the age of 67 after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was music director of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra for 21 years.