Our Season Guest Series welcomes back Palaver Strings Friday, January 6, 2023.  Included will be a pre-concert ‘meet the composer’ talk.

The 7:30 p.m. concert will be held at the BMC. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and are available through the BMC website at bmcvt.org or by calling (802) 257-4523. Please note BMC concert attendance requires masking for all attendees.

BMC Artist-in-Residence Ashleigh Gordon, one of the night’s performers, will give a pre-concert talk from 6:30 to 7:10 p.m. in the BMC recital hall.  She will be interviewing composer Jeffrey Mumford, whose work is on the program, via Zoom.

Titled “Painted Dreams,” the January 6 concert recalls sunnier times in the depths of a New England winter. It begins with Reena Esmail’s Nadiya for Violin and Viola, and continues with the subtle textures of Mumford’s string quartet, A Veil of Liquid Diamonds. An avid painter as well as a composer, Mumford writes that his work is “inspired by cloud imagery, suspended structures that continually split off and recombine as analogous to the formation of layers of simultaneous musical development.”

The concert concludes with the epic Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, written by Tchaikovsky on one of his visits to Italy. This epic piece is full of dashing escapades, romantic sentiments, and nostalgia for home, drawing on both Italian themes and the Russian melodies of Tchaikovsky’s homeland.

Performers include Brianna Fischler, Maya French, Ashleigh Gordon, Domenic Salerni, Matthew Smith, and Nathaniel Taylor.

Palaver Strings is a musician-led string ensemble and nonprofit organization based in Portland, ME. Founded in 2014, Palaver has established itself as a forward-thinking ensemble whose mission is to strengthen and inspire community through music. In a musician-led model, Palaver’s musicians share artistic and administrative leadership, guided by a passion for engaging new audiences, addressing social justice issues, and amplifying underrepresented voices. Each year, Palaver presents a full series of live performances featuring diverse musical programming, cross-genre projects, and community collaborations.