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Music at Eden's Edge Announces Programs, Plans for 2008 Summer Concert Series

BEVERLY, MA: Music at Eden’s Edge, the North Shore’s own resident chamber music ensemble, announces plans for its upcoming Summer Concert Series. With performances distinguished by exceptional artistry, intriguing musical selections, superb venues, and private viewings of art collections for concertgoers, the 2008 Summer Concert Series is one of the area’s most anticipated cultural events.

This season, Music at Eden’s Edge (MEE) will introduce its Emerging Artists at the Edge program, designed to showcase promising young artists and give them invaluable performance experience with the region’s most prominent chamber music ensemble. The first MEE Emerging Artist is violinist Joshua Peckins. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Mr. Peckins has performed as a chamber musician in Boston, Paris and Austin, Texas and is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in violin performance at the Yale University School of Music.

The Music at Eden’s Edge’s Summer Concert Series runs from June through September. The five programs in this year’s series include beloved favorites and new discoveries in the chamber music repertoire, from Mozart and Beethoven to world premieres of commissioned pieces by distinguished American composers Howard Rovics and Mark Berger.

Themes for this year’s series are “June Classically Discovered,” “At the Edge of July’s Garden,” “Mostly Viennese” in early August, “The French-American Connection” in late August, and “September Turns Eastward” for the series finale.

These programs showcase an exceptional range of chamber music. For example, Beethoven’s “Eyeglass Duo” is paired with a string quartet by his contemporary Gyrowetz in the June program. The July concert features music from the 18th century to the present and includes the premiere of MEE’s 2008 commission ”Listening to the Sea Winds” by renowned composer Howard Rovics, a work inspired by the poetry of the late poet of Gloucester Vincent Ferrini. “Mostly Viennese” presents a rich profile of the city’s musical life, from Mozart and Haydn to Richard Strauss. Featuring the world premiere of a work for Cello e Basso by composer and violist Mark Berger, “The French-American Connection” takes audiences on a fascinating musical journey from Paris, with works by Barrière, Offenbach and Gounod, to New York (Gershwin) and Boston (Harbison and List). September’s concert includes pieces by Sviridov, Martinu and Schubert for an end-of-season musical tour de force.

Venues for the 2008 Summer Concert Series include the East India Marine Hall and Phillips Library at world-renowned Peabody Essex Museum; the Fitz Henry Lane Gallery at Cape Ann Historical Museum; New England Biolabs’s elegant campus; the Community House of Hamilton and Wenham, with its warm traditional New England ambience; and the Endicott College Chapel, a beautiful location that features magnificent acoustics and a spectacular oceanside setting.

The Music at Eden’s Edge 2008 Summer Concert Series is sponsored by Central Bank, a full-service community bank providing a variety of deposit and lending services for retail and business customers and operating nine full-service offices in Somerville, Arlington, Burlington, Chestnut Hill, Malden, Medford, Melrose, and Woburn (two branches). Sponsors for individual concerts include New England Biolabs (New England Biolabs concerts) and Pulsifer & Associates (“At the Edge of July’s Garden,” Peabody Essex Museum).

Founded in 1982, MEE has come to represent the highest standards of musical performance artistry. Its Summer Chamber Music Series, which runs from June through September, features extraordinary musical artists performing in some of the area’s most beautiful and distinctive settings. MEE is known for creative programming that ranges from the Baroque period to innovative 21st century compositions, and for concerts that combine rarely performed works with more familiar and traditional pieces in the chamber music repertoire. For more information, call 978-270-4463 or visit the website at www.edensedge.org.