Guarneri Hall Presents NEXUS 7th Annual Chamber Music Festival, August 19-23, 2024
NEXUS Chamber Music has served as Guarneri Hall’s ensemble-in-residence since 2018. This year’s NEXUS Chamber Music Festival will feature two rehearsals open to the public, two programs at Guarneri Hall, and their first performance on the North Shore.
The first Guarneri Hall concert, Dreamscapes: A Liederabend, on August 20th at 6:30 p.m., will explore the surrealist nature of the poems and stories of the traditional Lieder: do their texts represent a narrative based on the real world or a fabricated reality? The candlelit performance of lieder by Brahms, Berg, Chausson, and American contemporary composer Augusta Read Thomas will lean into this question.
New for this season, NEXUS will perform a concert event, Sonic Light, on the North Shore at the Winnetka Congregational Church (725 Pine St, Winnetka, IL) on August 21st at 7 p.m. The program of works by Bach, Brahms, Augusta Read Thomas and Amy Beach is highlighted by an audience sing-along of two of Bach’s best-known chorales.
The festival will then conclude on August 23rd at 6:30 p.m. with its second Guarneri Hall event, Awakening, presenting a selection of contemporary works by composers from backgrounds historically underrepresented in music. The program of Billy Childs, Paul Wiancko, and Amy Beach embodies the NEXUS mission to bring excitingly new and fresh musical experiences to Chicago audiences.
The festival will feature performances by Adam Neiman, piano, Geneva Lewis, violin, Kristina Bachrach, soprano, Claire Bourg, violin, Brian Hong, viola, Kyle Orth, piano, and Alexander Hersh, cello. In addition to the concerts, two rehearsals open to the public showcase the collaborative nature of the NEXUS Chamber Music ensemble. Audiences are invited into the artistic process as the musicians work together to shape the sound of their concert pieces. The first rehearsal takes place on August 19th at 10 a.m. and the second takes place on August 22nd at 10 a.m., both at Guarneri Hall in downtown Chicago.
Tickets for the festival are $40 each, $10 for students. Due to the intimate nature of the space, tickets are extremely limited. All tickets include access to the concert and post-concert reception and are available at https://guarnerihall.org/events-calendar-guarneri-hall-presents/.
