(NEW MARLBOROUGH, Mass.) – As always, this year’s late-summer Music & More at the Meeting House series boasts an outstanding array chamber music, cabaret, and literary events with preeminent musicians, performers and writers, this year including musician Simon Shaheen, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, and novelist Nicholson Baker, among others.

 

 

 

 

 

The series, which runs at the Meeting House on Saturdays, August 27 – October 8, at 4:30 p.m., kicks off on August 27 with the Neave Trio performing Haydn’s Trio in D major Hob.XV no.16, Dvorak’s Trio in f minor op.65, and Piazzolla’s “Estaciones Porteñas”.  One of the finest emerging young chamber ensembles, the Neave Trio has been enjoying tremendous international success on concert series and at festivals worldwide — fast distinguishing itself as an ambassador of music to a wider audience through innovative concert presentations.

 

For one Saturday, September 3, the series moves to Trumbull Studios in Southfield, Mass., where special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull will present works-in-progress of a revolutionary new movie technology. Trumbull is a multiple Academy Award-winner known for his visual effects work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek-The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, and others. He also wrote and directed Silent Running and Brainstorm, as well as other alternative media projects including Back to The Future – The Ride in IMAX. Trumbull is an inventor and multiple patent-holder, with patents for simulation rides, Virtual Reality, high frame rate cinema, Giant Screen Theaters, and now the Magi process. Advance tickets required.

 

 

 

Back at the Meeting House on September 10, musician Simon Shaheen is joined by a percussionist and a qanun player (qanun is a type of hammered dulcimer) for “From Cairo to Andalusia,” a program of traditional Egyptian and Syrian music, plus improvisations and original compositions by Simon Shaheen.  Shaheen is a Palestinian-American virtuoso and composer who holds Israeli and American citizenship. Shaheen founded the Near Eastern Music Ensemble and heads the Arabic Music Retreat, held annually at Mt. Holyoke College. In 1994 he received a National Heritage Foundation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Shaheen, a Catholic Arab, lives in New York City, where he leads an Arabic ensemble called Qantara, which he formed.

 

 

 

On September 17, Simone Dinnerstein performs works by Franz Schubert and Philip Glass. New York-based pianist Dinnerstein gained an international following after the remarkable success of her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Her newest Sony Classical album, Broadway-Lafayette, was recorded with conductor Kristjan Järvi and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra by Grammy-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. Dinnerstein has performed around the world including at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London’s Wigmore Hall, and with symphony orchestras throughout Europe. Dinnerstein is the director of Neighborhood Classics, a concert series that raises funds for New York public schools. She has recently joined the faculty of the Mannes School of Music in New York. A wine tasting hosted by Domaney’s will follow in the Meeting House Gallery.

 

 

 

On September 24, The Sebastians, a dynamic musical ensemble specializing in music of the baroque and classical eras, will present “Over the Alps,” tracing the musical evolution of the Italian style as it migrated over the mountains to the Austro-German regions. Take a musical journey with baroque violin, cello, harpsichord, and the stunning soprano Awet Andemicael. Vocal and instrumental works by Alessandro Stradella, Handel, Buxtehude, Biber, and other baroque masters will be performed. Winners of the Audience Prize at the 2012 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition, the Sebastians were also finalists in the 2011 York International Early Music Competition and the 2011 Early Music America/Naxos Recording Competition.

 

 

 

On October 1, local clarinetist Paul Green and his Jewish-jazz fusion band Two Worlds collaborate with world-renowned Ladino vocalist Sarah Aroeste in a program that presents jazz, klezmer, and Sephardic music.  The similarities and differences among the three genres are explored, for an exciting fusion of styles.

 

 

 

 

The series concludes on Saturday, October 8, with award-winning novelist and essayist Nicholson Baker hosted by our region’s own multi-laureled author, Simon Winchester. Baker has written about poetry, literature, library systems, history, politics, time manipulation, youth, and sex. He received a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 for his nonfiction book “Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper,” and the International Hermann Hesse Prize in 2014. Simon Winchester, OBE, is a British author and journalist who resides in Western Massachusetts. Winchester has written or contributed to more than a dozen nonfiction books, has written one novel, and his articles have appeared in several travel publications.

The series includes preconcert talks and post-event receptions in the Meeting House contemporary art gallery.

 

Unless otherwise noted, events take place at the Meeting House

154 Hartsville New Marlborough Road (Rte 57), New Marlborough, MA

413-229-7924  |