Virtual offerings will include online discussions and radio rebroadcasts

By James Nelson

As many of you have heard, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival—Yale Summer School of Music has had to cancel its program for this summer, due to the coronavirus crisis. This has left us all beyond disappointed. I can speak for the faculty, fellows, staff and above all our patrons in telling you how disappointed we are to not have the Norfolk summer filled with great music and all the positive energy we find in this spectacular corner of the state. 

All that said, we do have some plans for this summer that we want to share with you, plans that observe social distancing and other protective measures. Unfortunately, we will not have the usual cadre of fellows, faculty and staff—but we do aim to keep both the festival and Norfolk on the map as a vibrant, lovely and arts-centric part of the country.

This July we will present three virtual concerts live from the Music Shed. The Brentano Quartet will present the first two Saturday night programs in July as originally planned—on the Shed stage but without a live audience. The next concert, on July 18, will feature some of our star faculty, including Melvin Chen and Robert Blocker, piano; David Shifrin, clarinet; and Paul Watkins, the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet, all live from the Shed. 

On the fourth Saturday, July 25, we will present several distinguished alums of the Yale Summer School of Music. They will not be in Norfolk but will record complete works for streaming, with Festival Director Melvin Chen hosting the concert. 

Another component of the 2020 virtual festival will be a series of online talks and discussions about chamber music, the concert programs and Norfolk’s surprising impact on music in America and the world over the last 120 years.

To increase attention to the streamed concert series, we are partnering with WMNR-FM to re-broadcast some of our concerts from 2018 and 2019 each Sunday evening. We’ll be getting the word out through other means as well, including Facebook, Instagram and other digital as well as traditional outlets. 

You will also see a bright banner on Route 44 just across from the Wood Creek Grill celebrating the town of Norfolk as a (virtual) music hub for the summer. This banner has been supported in part by the Norfolk Economic Development Commission and will expand to a triptych of three banners to be used in the coming fall, spring and summer months. 

Finally, we want to make sure you know we have been posting highlights from the 2018 and 2019 seasons on email, Facebook and Instagram three times weekly since the coronavirus crisis emerged in March, providing a musical respite in this challenging time. We continue to receive very enthusiastic responses each week from people around the world, who now enjoy the opportunity to experience what we all know of Norfolk—that it is both a bucolic village in the woods and a vibrant international center for music and art. 

We are grateful to all of you for your support and help over the decades, and we very much look forward to sharing this redesigned summer season with you this year, anticipating the time when we can all be back in the Music Shed together.

James Nelson is the general manager of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival—Yale Summer School of Music.