(CATSKILL, N.Y.) – Music from High Peaks, featuring soloists with the Catskill High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra, will perform works by Bach, Milhaud, Halvorsen and others at the Bridge Street Theatre on Friday, August 12, at 7pm. Soloists include Bayla Keyes and Peter Zazofsky, violin; Michael Strauss, viola; Yehuda Hanani, Tom Landschoot and Sae Rom Kwon, cello; Michael Chertock and Mikael Darmanie, piano; and Baroque specialist Paul Dwyer. The event is part of the Catskill High Peaks Festival.

The Catskill High Peaks Festival is a ten-day chamber music festival and teaching institute, directed by internationally acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, offering a combination of concerts, lectures, films, and master classes, open to the public and featuring distinguished faculty artists sharing the stage with outstanding young musicians from around the world. Festival events will take place on the historic, 100-acre estate of the Carey Institute for Global Good overlooking Lake Myosotis in Rensselaerville, N.Y.

Music from High Peaks has been featured throughout the Hudson Valley-Berkshire region at venues including Basilica Hudson; the Norman Rockwell Museum; Olana; the Doctorow PAC in Hunter; and the Orpheum Theater in Tannersville, N.Y.

The Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill is a former industrial building newly renovated and repurposed as an intimate arts center.

This summer, the Catskill High Peaks Festival explores the architectural genius and spiritual force of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose influence hovered over every future generation of composers that followed him. On a recent New York Times survey of the all-time top ten classical composers, opinions varied from number two on; however, number one was unanimous, and Bach remains securely at the top of the charts. Throughout the festival, the works and legacy of J. S. Bach, extending through the Romantics (Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, who worshiped him, will be present), will be explored via daily performances and events.

The festival also offers a series of illuminating talks, a “Meet the Artists Tea and Talk,” and free classes and workshops offered each day.