Touring

musicians from Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival to visit

Middlebury College March 11

MIDDLEBURY, Vt.―For 50 years,

the Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, Vt., has been a summer mecca

for young musicians from all over the world who want to collaborate

with chamber music’s senior masters. Fresh from that experience,

a group of more than 25 of those young talents, known as Musicians

from Marlboro, tours the country each year. The current group will

share its music with Middlebury College Sunday, March 11, at 3 p.m.

in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on South Main Street (Route

30).

The program will feature alumna and

mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel, a member of the Middlebury class of

1987. She will perform Maurice Ravel’s “Chansons

madécasses.” Also on the program is the Brahms Piano Quartet

in A Major.

Founded in 1951 by a group that

included violinist Adolf Busch, his pianist son-in-law and legend

Rudolf Serkin, and flutist Marcel Moyse, the Marlboro Music Festival

brings together both seasoned and budding musicians from the United

States and many other nations. The artists gather for the Marlboro

retreat at their own expense to experience an informal and intimate

exploration of a vast array of chamber music. Pablo Casals, a fixture

of the festival for many years, once said of the gathering, “I came

expecting a school and found instead a temple of music.”

The touring portion of the Marlboro

program has introduced many of today’s leading solo and chamber

music artists to American audiences. Some examples are pianists

Richard Goode and András Schiff, violinists Pamela Frank and

Jaime Laredo, flutist Paula Robison and clarinetist Richard Stolzman.

The touring group garners accolades yearly for its freshness, energy

and edge. Time magazine described its work as, “The most exciting

chamber music in the United States.”

An extensive list of Marlboro

performances is available on Sony Classical and CBS Masterworks

recordings.

Tickets are $10 for general admission

and $8 for senior citizens. A pre-performance brunch will be held at

1:30 p.m. at Rehearsals Cafe in the Center for the Arts. For tickets

or brunch reservations, call the College box office at

802-443-6433.

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