Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival: Celebrating 41 Years of Transformation and Love

In this 41st year since its founding, The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival will present a broad range of music performed by some of the best musicians in the world and have them perform on the east end of Long Island. East End icon, legend, treasure, and renowned flutist Marya Martin founded the Bridgehampton Chamber Music, and she vows this year’s festival will be both “transformation and love,” and she said  that although they are “two different themes, they also, exist together in this crazy world.” BCM Festival will present 12 concerts from July 14th  through August 11th  that celebrate the twin themes of transformation and love in music. This, being their 41st season, makes the BCM Festival Long Island’s longest-running classical music festival.BCM Artistic Director Marya Martin said exclusively in an interview with Hamptons.com, “The real overreaching theme of this festival is really basic music that makes you feel wonderful, and it’s music that some composers wrote when they were highly in love with their partner, their spouses or their patrons. When you are playing music like this, all the bad stuff in the world goes away. The pieces that we are playing are incredibly beautiful, romantic, and gorgeous!”

Then Ms. Martin paused and said, “When I say romantic, Bach can be romantic. After all, he did have 24 kids. It may not be the same romance as Schumann or Brahms, but every composer has his top honorable efforts, and I talk about that music in the concert.”

The first performance of 2024 will be at 6 pm, Sunday, June 14th, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. It is titled “Bridgehampton Chamber Music  Festival Opening Night: Schumann Journey.” Ms. Martin said, “Our programs are very mixed; they have a little of everything. I want the audience to feel like they have had a journey in music; they always come out (from the concerts) smiling. This is the opposite of going to an intellectual endeavor where you learn about Bach and Mozart. This is got to be fun.”

The concert will consist first of a Mozart focus highlighted by the duo that opens the program. Second comes the idea of transformation, in this case, Zhao Tian’s dynamic Viaje (Journey), which was originally scored for flute and string quartet. Finally, love – Florence Price’s gorgeous Adoration speaks to a Godly devotion, and Schumann’s Piano Quintet was inspired by the love of his life, his wife Clara. 

The musicians: Marya Martin, flute; Juho Pohjonen, piano; Paul Huang, violin; Kristin Lee, violin; Matthew Lipman, viola; Brannon Cho, cello.

 They will be performing:

W. A. Mozart                      Duo for Violin and Viola in G major, K. 423

Zhou Tian Viaje for Flute, Cello and Piano

Florence Price’s                    Adoration for Violin and Piano

Robert Schumann Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44

This year’s  BCM Festival will be led by flutist and festival founder Marya Martin, this summer’s BCM musicians are James Austin Smith, oboe; Graeme Steele Johnson, Bixby Kennedy, and Osmo Vänskä*, clarinet; Nanci Belmont*, bassoon; Stewart Rose, horn; Kate Arndt*, Paul Huang, Chad Hoopes, Erin Keefe, Anna Lee*, Kristin Lee, Anthony Marwood, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Rubén Rengel*, and Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin; Ettore Causa, Masumi Per Rostad, Matthew Lipman, Cynthia Phelps, and Cong Wu, viola; Carter Brey, Nicholas Canellakis, Brannon Cho, Narek Hakhnazaryan*, and Mihai Marica, cello; Donald Palma, bass; Michael Stephen Brown, Juho Pohjonen, Albert Cano Smit, Orion Weiss, and Shai Wosner, piano; Bridget Kibbey, harp; Kenneth Weiss, harpsichord; Ian Rosenbaum, percussion; the Parker String Quartet*; and the Stephane Wrembel Quartet. (Those marked with an asterisk are making their BCM debuts.)