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BURRILLVILLE – A four-day festival featuring six renowned performers will be held on a historic farmstead in July as part of an ongoing series that aims to make world-class music accessible to a local audience.
Grace Note Farm will host the Summer Chamber Music Festival, featuring David Bernat; Jiarong Li; Cameron Chase; Audrey Chen, Nina Bernat and Joseph Lin for several performances on two consecutive weekends, July 3 and 4, and 10 and 11.
The latest in the ongoing Music At the Farm series, the festival will include four programs, all starting at 2 p.m. at Artistic Director Virginia Sindelar’s Pascoag home, an 11.5 acre farm on Jackson Schoolhouse Road. The historic property, known as the Benjamin Smith homestead, is adjacent to the George Washington Management area and has been a working farm for more than 200 years.
Sindelar launched the series in 2018, bringing professional musicians to the relaxed venue that feature a variety of music styles, from classical chamber music, to folk and jazz.
Violinist Bernat is a C. V Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he studies with Joseph Lin. He was recently featured on the BBC Radio 3 program, In Tune, and at WQXR’s Greene Space as part of Juilliard’s annual ChamberFest.
As soloist, Bernat has performed concertos with the Ft. Dodge Symphony and Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, and is a 3rd Prize winner of the 2020 World Bach Competition hosted by the Boulder Bach Festival and a semi-finalist of the 2018 Hudson Valley String Competition.
Chinese Pianist Li has won prizes at competitions including the Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy Competition, the Distinction Award of the Hong Kong-Asia Piano Open Competition. Li is currently a DMA student at Manhattan School of Music, where she studies with John Forconi. Her former teachers include Pei-Shan Lee, Bruce Brubaker and Xiang Zou. Jiarong is a Si-Yo Artist.
Chase currently studies at the Juilliard School with Areta Zhulla and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in violin performance. He has attended music festivals such as the International Academy of Music in Italy, Music Mountain Masterclasses in Connecticut, and The Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine. He has been featured as a soloist in Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Bridgeport Symphony and with Christopher Hisey and the American Chamber Orchestra.
Cellist Chen, a Washington native, has performed across the globe, including at Carnegie Hall, the Mariinsky Theatre, Royal Albert Hall, and the Kennedy Center. She has performed as a guest artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society, A Far Cry, the Silk Road Ensemble, the Parker Quartet, and the Borromeo Quartet. Chen has also performed in numerous festivals, has a bachelor’s from Harvard University and master’s in music from the New England Conservatory. She is now pursuing a doctorate in musical arts from the CUNY Graduate Center. Chen is also the cellist of the New-York based Argus Quartet.
Nina Bernat is the first prize winner at the 2019 International Society of Bassists Solo Competition. She has performed as guest principal of the Israel Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and as a2019 Keston MAX Fellow, she performed with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. Bernat has recently performed with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and as soloist with the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall as winner of the Juilliard Double Bass Competition. She currently studies with Tim Cobb and Rex Surany at the Juilliard School as a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship.
Joseph Lin appears regularly throughout the United States, Asia and Europe, and is on the faculty of Julliard School, where he teaches violin and chamber music. Lin was first violinist with the Julliard Stirng Quartet from 2011 to 2018. Since then, his concert engagements have included period instrument performances of Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the complete Bach Sonatas and Paritas. As a professor at Cornell from 2007 to 2011, Lin organized the inaugural Chinese Musicians Residency and led a project to create new music inspired by Bach.
Program 1 of the festival on Saturday, July 3 will feature Wolf- Italian Serenade for String Quartet Schubert – String Quintet in C major. Program 2 on Sunday, July 4 will showcase Schumann a Piano Quartet in E flat Major. On July 10 it’s Dvorak – String Quintet in G major and the final day will include Schubert – Piano Quintet in A major “Trout.”
Tickets for cost $40 and reservations can be made by calling (401) 567-0354.
