Newtown Friends Of Music Announce 26th Season

Having completed 25 years of sponsoring instrumental classical music concerts, Newtown Friends of Music is now offering subscriptions to the 2003-04 season, its 26th year of operation. The season will run from October through April and will include five concerts at Edmond Town Hall plus two School Outreach Programs in Newtown public schools, supplementing the music curriculum for Newtown students. The concerts will again be presented on Sunday afternoons beginning at 3.

Subscriptions for all five concerts are available at $55 for adults and $45 for people age 65 and over. (Children between the ages of five and 14 are admitted to the concerts free of charge when accompanied by a ticket holding adult.)

Opening the season on October 5 will be Mariko Anraku, harpist with the Metropolitan Opera, together with the Avalon String Quartet and a guest narrator from WQXR. The program will include Andre Caplet’s Conte Fantastique (based on Edgar Allen Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”), and music of Saint-Saens, Ravel and Debussy.

Ms Anraku, who has won attention as one of the world’s outstanding young harpists, has appeared in Newtown once before and drew enthusiastic applause from the audience and bravos from the critics.

The second concert will be a return engagement of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, performing some of the most beloved chamber music by the world’s most esteemed composers. Mozart, Schumann and Beethoven are likely to be on the November 16 program.

NFoM does not present performances in December nor January, but the season will resume on February 22. The Pacifica Quartet will no doubt delight audiences with its dynamic and exciting playing of string quartets new and old.

The Pacifica Quartet will be the first group to visit a Newtown school for an outreach program funded by NFoM. The musicians will be visiting sixth grade orchestra students at Reed Intermediate School on Monday, February 23.

The concert season then continues on March 21 with the pianist Melvin Chen presenting a recital on the concert grand Knabe piano.

Concluding the 2003-04 season be the Cavani String Quartet on April 25.

Deeply committed to the teaching of chamber music, the all-female quartet has developed a series of educational and outreach programs for a wide variety of settings and for audiences of all ages, including a series of children’s concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. On the Monday following their concert at Edmond Town Hall, the string quartet will offer the second NFoM Outreach Program, this one with orchestra students at Newtown High School.

Program details for concerts later in the season will be announced closer to their performance dates.

Brochures describing the concerts more fully are available at Cyrenius H. Booth Library, Drug Center Pharmacy, Newtown Savings Bank, and a number of other venues around town and in surrounding towns, or can be obtained by calling 426-6470.

For further information on the activities of Newtown Friends of Music, write to the organization at PO Box 295, Newtown CT 06470, call the number above, or visit www.NewtownFriendsOfMusic.org.