BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Bowdoin Music Festival - ECPv5.10.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Bowdoin Music Festival X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Bowdoin Music Festival BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20260308T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20261101T060000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T110000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T120000 DTSTAMP:20260906T011259 CREATED:20260527T030541Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260802T134124Z UID:24413-1785927600-1785931200@www.bowdoinfestival.org SUMMARY:Meet the Composer: Katherine Balch DESCRIPTION:MEET THE COMPOSER: Katherine Balch \nDuring this talk\, composer Katherine Balch will discuss her work and creative process. You can hear her piece musica spolia performed by Festival Fellows during our Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music on Thursday\, July 9. \nThis event is via a Zoom Webinar; we hope you will join the conversation online! \n— \nAbout Katherine Balch \nCalled “spellbinding” (Seen and Heard International) with “glow and poise and electric tension” (The Daily Telegraph)\, the music of composer Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds\, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination\, discovery\, and textural lyricism. Inspired by the intimacy of quotidian objects\, found sounds\, and natural processes\, she has been described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop\, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle). \nKatherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic\, the New York Philharmonic\, the London Sinfonietta\, Ensemble Modern\, and the symphony orchestras of Pittsburg\, Dallas\, Minnesota\, Oregon\, Albany\, Indianapolis\, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste\, Fontainebleau Music Festival\, and Festival MANCA in France\, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK\, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan\, and the Aspen\, Norfolk\, Santa Fe\, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. Her work has been presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall\, Disney Hall\, London’s Wigmore Hall and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. \nWinner of a 2025 Guggenheim fellowship and the 2020-2021 Rome Prize\, Katherine was nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award. She has also been honored by ASCAP\, BMI\, the American Academy of Arts and Letters\, Chamber Music America\, the Barlow Foundation\, Civitella Ranieri\, the International Society of Contemporary Music\, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation\, the Fromm Foundation\, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music. \nKatherine was the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony\, where she was lauded by the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She has also served as composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists\, Inc. \nKatherine is currently Associate Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music. She has previously served on the faculties of Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute\, Mannes School of Music\, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music\, the Walden School and Bard College-Conservatory Prep. Katherine holds a D.M.A. from Columbia University and an M.M. from Yale School of Music. She counts among her mentors George Lewis\, Georg Friedrich Haas\, Marcos Balter\, Zosha Di Castri\, Aaron Kernis\, Chris Theofanidis\, and David Lang. \nKatherine documents her lived experiences on the page\, with each composition serving as a diary of what has captivated her curiosity. When not making or listening to music\, she can be found hiking\, cooking\, or hanging out with her feline sidekick\, Zarathustra and her husband\, fellow composer Ted Moore. URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/meet-the-composer-balch/ LOCATION:Online from Brunswick\, 12 Campus Rd S\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011 CATEGORIES:Free Events,Meet the Composer,New Music ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/contents/media/2026/05/MTC-Balch.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T140000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T150000 DTSTAMP:20260906T011259 CREATED:20260605T180211Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260710T135039Z UID:24576-1785938400-1785942000@www.bowdoinfestival.org SUMMARY:Arctic Museum Community Concert DESCRIPTION:Arctic Museum Community Concert \nJoin us for a wonderful afternoon of music at Bowdoin’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum featuring talented Festival Young Artists. Community Concerts typically feature a variety of classical repertoire and last about 45 minutes. \nThis concert has reached capacity. Please submit the form below to be added to our waitlist.\nFree | Reservation Required (limit to 2 per household) \n\n\n \n First Name*Last Name*Phone*Email*\n \n Number of Seats*12There is limited seating and a maximum of two seats per household.\n Submit URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/arctic-museum-2026/ LOCATION:Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum\, 10 Polar Loop\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011 CATEGORIES:Community Concerts,Free Events ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/contents/media/2026/06/Arctic-Museum-CC.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T193000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T210000 DTSTAMP:20260906T011300 CREATED:20260130T033028Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260805T193855Z UID:24014-1785958200-1785963600@www.bowdoinfestival.org SUMMARY:Bach\, Beethoven\, & Mendelssohn DESCRIPTION:SOLD OUT — JOIN THE WAITLIST \n\n\n \n First Name*Last Name*Phone*Email*\n \n Number of Tickets*1234Mobility Considerations*\n \n \n No Mobility Considerations\n \n \n \n Space for a Wheel Chair\n \n \n \n Unable to Use Stairs\n Seat Availability Preference*\n \n \n Seat us separately\n \n \n \n Seat us together\n Please indicate whether you would prefer to wait until the necessary number of seats become available together. Notes for Box Office\n Submit \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n\n  \nBach\, Beethoven & Mendelssohn \nJOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)\nSonata in G Minor\, BWV 1020\nMeg Freivogel\, violin • June Han\, harp  \nLUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)\nSonata for Piano and Violin No. 7 in C Minor\, Op. 30\, No. 2\nYooJin Jang\, violin • Pei-Shan Lee\, piano \nFELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847)\nString Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major\, Op. 87\nIan Swensen\, Mélanie Clapiès\, violin • Che-Yen Chen\, Liz Freivogel\, viola • Daniel McDonough\, cello \n  \nProgram Notes \nJOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH\nSonata in G Minor\, BWV 1020 (1734) \nThe present Sonata in G Minor has sparked lively authenticity debates among scholars. One manuscript from the 19th century credits it to Johann Sebastian Bach\, while another from the late 1700s suggests that it was by his son\, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Robert Marshall has proposed that it could have been composed by C.P.E. Bach under the direct influence or tutelage of his father\, while others\, like the flutist Barthold Kuijken\, have suggested it might even have been written by somebody else entirely. There are also questions about the piece’s instrumentation. The sources all label it as a violin sonata\, but the range and part writing in the work have led some to propose that it was originally for flute. Such musicological puzzles help to open a work up by reminding us that the identity we attribute to music from the past is often speculative and subject to revision and adjustment. \nThe first movement of the Sonata in G Minor (BWV 1020 or H.542.5\, depending on who you think wrote it) is characterized by a frothy river of sixteenth notes in the harpsichord (here the harp)\, which the solo voice occasionally takes over. The sweet Adagio is in a floating 9/8 time that gets a bit of extra lilt when little wavering syncopations disrupt the otherwise continuous\, expressive flow of triples. In the closing Allegro\, near the end of sections\, Bach has both musicians play nagging\, stuttering drones: 15 rapid repetitions of a fixed pitch that is set against an angular\, arpeggiated motif in the other voice. These moments create fantastic exhibits of oblique motion\, that wonderful contrapuntal strategy in which vigorous\, expressive activity in one voice stands in relief against the solemn fixity of another. \n  \nLUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN\nSonata for Piano and Violin No. 7 in C Minor\, Op. 30\, No. 2 (1801–1802) \nLudwig van Beethoven realized he was losing his hearing some time in the late 1790s\, but he only started admitting it to people in the summer of 1801. He wrote to his friend Carl Amenda in July\, bemoaning that\, “Your Beethoven is leading a very unhappy life\, and is at variance with Nature and his Creator.” He spent a long period the next year in Heiligenstadt\, a spa town outside Vienna\, where he hoped in vain that a quieter\, country life would help his condition. Though he feared the long-term consequences his deafness would have on his career\, he was still perfectly able to compose and he completed several important works the summer of 1802\, including his Second Symphony and his three Op. 30 Violin Sonatas. Of these latter pieces\, only the Violin Sonata in C Minor\, Op. 30\, No. 2\, seems to clearly betray the anxiety and uncertainty of the moment. \nIn the opening Allegro con brio\, Beethoven avoids coming to a definitive cadence at the end of the exposition section and he also dispenses with the traditional repeat of that part of the movement\, creating a continuous\, tense spin of action and modulation. The beguiling Adagio cantabile features one of Beethoven’s achingly simple melodies\, which he adorns with just enough harmonic and rhythmic flavor to make it extraordinarily touching. In the middle of the movement\, he writes a mysterious interlude full of rising arpeggios composed of short\, stopped notes that become fodder for variations and countermelodies when the lyrical opening theme returns. At the end of phrases in the trio section of the Scherzo\, Beethoven generates momentum by using hemiola — that rhythmic trick in which the music is written in one meter but accents and melodic features make it temporarily sound like it is in another. The Finale is made up of short\, angry phrases that stubbornly emphasize augmented sixth chords\, a rather menacing harmony that here keeps the music stuck in place. As he does in the first movement\, Beethoven employs a lively coda to achieve resolution\, briefly introducing a catchy melody and then rushing forward in a furious dash. \nProgram Notes by Nicky Swett \n  \nFELIX MENDELSSOHN\nString Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major\, Op. 87 (1845) \nMendelssohn’s compositions with opus numbers above 72 indicate that they were\, for whatever reason\, published posthumously; some of these works are fragmentary\, while others remained unpublished because Mendelssohn never felt fully satisfied with them. Such was the case with his now-beloved “Italian” Symphony\, for example\, as well as with his String Quintet\, Op. 87. \nMendelssohn completed the work in 1845 while on a summer retreat to Bad Soden\, a spa village outside Frankfurt. The repose was welcome\, given the restless lifestyle Mendelssohn maintained in the preceding years: in addition to ongoing commitments in Leipzig and London\, he had until recently been in charge of sacred music for Friedrich Wilhelm IV\, King of Prussia\, in Berlin — a position he had only taken up reluctantly\, and from which he was pleased to resign in 1843. \nIn 1844\, Mendelssohn’s friend and colleague\, the violinist Ferdinand David\, wrote to him suggesting that he write “a new quintet\, something I eagerly await” — a suggestion which Mendelssohn duly embraced. In returning to the string quintet form\, the composer recollected not only Mozart — who had been a pioneer of the two viola quintet ensemble late in his life — but also his younger self\, having composed his first such quintet at the age of seventeen. The Finale\, with its contrapuntal complexity\, reflects Mendelssohn’s lifelong dedication to studying the music of Bach; yet it was this Finale which ultimately left Mendelssohn disappointed\, as he felt unable to achieve the balance he sought between thematic economy and intrigue. The manuscript\, with the other movements otherwise polished\, reflects his anxieties; however\, at the time of the composer’s death\, the composition was left sufficiently intact for editors to produce the posthumous publication\, allowing today’s audiences to enjoy this mature work. \nProgram Note by Peter Asmiov URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/08-05-2026/ LOCATION:Studzinski Recital Hall\, 12 Campus Road S\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011 CATEGORIES:Concert,Ticketed Events,Wednesdays,Livestream ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/contents/media/2026/01/Bach-Beethoven-Mendelssohn.png END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR