Summer Solstice Festival: Summer Passion

Starts: Sunday, June 21 2:15 PM

Ends: Sunday, June 21 5:00 PM

The Festival concludes with a program of lushly romantic chamber works and a special collaboration between two festival artists. The program includes Sergei Rachmaninoff's first Trio Elegiaque, a short but eloquent expression of youthful angst, written when he was 19 and still a student at the Moscow Conservatory.

Rachmaninoff's teacher and friend Anton Arensky composed his Piano Quintet, the featured work in this program, almost a decade later but only six years before his death in 1906. A work of great beauty and expressiveness, it has been re-discovered in recent years by a new and wider audience.

About the Festival

The absence of a summer chamber music festival in Edmonton was a question raised by Dr. Patricia Tao when she joined the ECMS executive in 2004.

A pianist and dedicated chamber musician, she had participated in many such festivals in Europe and North America and thought Edmonton, with its well-established chamber music audience and enthusiasm for summer festivals, would welcome a new entry onto the cultural scene. The ECMS supported her vision and in June 2008 presented the first annual Summer Solstice Festival.

Patricia Tao undertook the role of Music Director as well as performer. Organizer of the Hear's to Your Health concert series at the Walter Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre, she drew upon her experience as a music programmer to create thematically linked but stylistically varied programs.

More Information

Event Location

Convocation Hall
3-82 Fine Arts Building
Edmonton, Alberta
T6G 2C9