The Hamptons Festival of Music begins its fifth season on Sept. 5 with a series of concerts that are unique on the East End. Michael Palmer, the festival’s founder and artistic director, has assembled more than 40 top-notch instrumentalists from North America’s leading orchestras to form the American Sinfonietta, which will be here for a week of three concerts highlighting music by Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Mozart, and Schubert. The musicians are drawn from orchestras in Seattle, Detroit, Minnesota, Baltimore, Houston, St. Louis, New York City, and elsewhere.
Whereas typical orchestral concerts take place in a large auditorium, the festival’s MainStage Series takes place at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. The first and third concerts will be in Hoie Hall — an intimate space with fine acoustics, where the audience is much closer to the performers than usual — and the second will be in the church’s warm sanctuary.
Palmer began his conducting career in 1967, when he became the assistant director for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the invitation of the legendary conductor Robert Shaw. Later he became director of the Wichita and the New Haven Symphonies, and eventually founded the American Sinfonietta. In 1993, the maestro became the founder and artistic director of the Bellingham Festival of Music, a celebrated summer series in the Pacific Northwest, and is now its conductor laureate.
The Sept. 5 concert features “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams with Brennan Sweet, concertmaster, as violin soloist, Brahms’s Serenade in A major, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat.
On Sept. 9, the program will be under the baton of Logan Souther as associate conductor, with Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, called the Haffner symphony after the family that commissioned it, Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 in D, Gerald Finzi’s Romance in E flat for String Orchestra, and Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.”
Souther, who founded the Gainesville (Ga.) Sinfonietta at the age of 19, is a recurring guest conductor for the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Atlanta Pops Orchestra. He has also taught, coached, and conducted for the Atlanta Music Project, an organization that reaches underserved communities.
Ending the week on Sept. 12, Palmer returns to the stage with Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 (the “Unfinished”), Mendelssohn’s Overture to “Die Hebriden,” and closing with Hummel’s Concerto for Trumpet, a virtuoso work with the festival’s principal trumpeter, Mark Hughes, as soloist.
This year’s series has a particularly poignant tone in that it is dedicated to the memory of Michael Yip, who was the executive director of the festival until his untimely passing at the age of 52 in April of this year. “The whole season is dedicated to Michael’s memory,” Palmer, his husband, said last week, “and I have chosen for each concert a piece or two that were among his favorites.”
Some of the other works are tangentially related. For example, the two pieces by Vaughan Williams, who lived much of his life in London, are nods to Mr. Yip’s time studying and living in that city. The opening Brahms piece has an interesting timbre, as it is scored for winds and lower strings, but it has no violins. “It is dark, but also very warm,” Palmer said.
The new interim executive director is David Palmer, who has an international career as a concert pianist as well as an arts administrator. “It is my great honor and pleasure to step in after being asked by the board of directors to fill the position,” he said.
The Hamptons Festival of Music will continue to have a presence in the area throughout the year, with some concerts for smaller chamber orchestra, featuring players drawn “from this incredible ‘gold coast’ of wonderful musicians that’s on the Northeast coast of the U.S.,” Michael Palmer said. Planned are a holiday concert, a school outreach program, and programs for families.
More information is at thehamptonsfestivalofmusic.com. Tickets for the 7 p.m. concerts are $150 each, or a festival pass is $400, and it is noted that there is limited seating.
