Mark your calendars! At 5:30 pm on Thursday, December 19, the Music Room in the mansion at Rosario Resort will again be the setting for the 2019 Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival Leaves of Gold Concert. OICMF Artistic Director Aloysia Friedmann, violin, and Artistic Advisor and pianist Jon Kimura Parker will be joined by horn player William VerMeulen and violinist Sylvia VerMeulen, who have been enthusiastically received by past Festival audiences.
The concert will include works by J.S. Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Paul Basler, and John Williams, along with familiar holiday tunes. You won’t want to miss this early evening concert, which is followed by a lavish buffet dinner in the Mansion Dining Room. Rosario goes all out to set a warm, festive holiday atmosphere in the Mansion with twinkling lights and festoons of decorations amid the many colorful holiday trees.
Aloysia Friedmann founded Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival in 1998 with a one-weekend concert series. The Festival has grown into a two-plus-week series of summer concerts and outreach activities in the San Juan Islands, along with educational events and concerts throughout the year. Since 2016, Ms. Friedmann has sat on the board of Chamber Music America, and in 2018 she was named a Musical America Top Professional of the Year. She serves as Associate Concertmaster for the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and performs with the Houston Grand Opera. She also performs in numerous chamber music festivals, including Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, Napa Valley’s Music in the Vineyards, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
A true Canadian ambassador of music, Jon Kimura Parker has given command performances for Queen Elizabeth II, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Prime Ministers of Canada and Japan. He is an Officer of The Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian honor, and he was recently appointed Artistic Director of the Honens International Competition and Festival in Calgary, Alberta. Beginning in 2020, he will be the Creative Partner for Summer Programming at the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, where he will host, perform in, and help design its summer shows. Mr. Parker’s concerto performances are in high demand among the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonie, and London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A committed educator, Jon Kimura Parker is Professor of Piano at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.
Sylvia VerMeulen has been a member of the first violin sections of the Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet orchestras for more than 20 years. She is a leading freelance player in Houston and has recorded with the Houston and Columbus symphonies. She has also been a first violinist with the Sun Valley Music Festival for the past 22 years, and as a chamber musician, she has collaborated in many prestigious chamber music festivals. Ms. VerMeulen made her concerto debut at the age of seventeen with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra after winning First Prize in the Dallas Symphony Young Artist Competition, and she received her advanced training at Indiana University with Paul Biss, Joseph Gingold, and Henryk Kowalski.
Hailed as “one of today’s superstars of the international brass scene,” William VerMeulen leads a varied musical life as a soloist, orchestral principal, chamber musician, master teacher, and music publisher. Mr. VerMeulen has been Principal Horn of the Houston Symphony since 1990 and is a performer and on faculty with several music festivals and chamber music presenters, including Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music @ Menlo, Banff, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, where he also serves as Principal Horn. Mr. VerMeulen is Professor of Horn at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and Brass Artist-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould School.
Tickets for the Leaves of Gold Concert and post-concert dinner are $150, $75 of which is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by the IRS. Contact the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival office at (360) 376-6636 or for tickets and more concert information.