Central and Eastern Kentucky
(2003-06-23)
Sitka Summer Music Festival founder, Paul Rosenthal
Jeffrey Solow, cellist
For thirty two years Sitka has been host to a month long series of chamber music concerts featuring world class musicians. According to founder Paul Rosenthal, The Sitka Summer Music Festival has been for me that rarest of rarities -- the dream that has come true and remained true . The Sitka Summer Music Festival was founded in 1972 when violinist Rosenthal decided, during an early visit to Sitka, that the town would be the perfect place to hold an informal reunion with fellow proteg s from the Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky masterclasses. At that time, a handful of people from around Alaska contributed just enough money to buy the musicians one-way tickets to Sitka, and just enough people attended the concerts to raise the money for their return flights. The musicians performed without fee that year in Sitka and have volunteered their talents every year since.
Today, between 18 and 35 talented, professional musicians gather in Sitka each summer from throughout the world for the simple pleasure of making music with friends. The result is a concert series filled with electrifying performances as magical as the surrounding scenery. Rosenthal says that; Perhaps it is because in Sitka we don't play for money or glory that the music itself and the concerts mean so much to us. Whatever the reason -- and I believe it is better not to look too closely into such mysteries -- a very large percentage of the musicians at the Sitka Festival have that extra something that makes all of us, performers and audience members alike, feel the special joy that is the gift of great music, lovingly played and heard.
This Saturday Juneau residents will have an opportunity to hear four of this year's musicians performing several of Beethoven's Middle String Quartets while whale watching on board an Allen Marine Tours Catamaran. The musicians are Rainer Moog, viola, Philippe Djokic, violin
Eugene Osadchy, cello and Paul Rosenthal, violin. The cruise begins at 6pm and includes appetizers. There will be a no host bar. Tickets are available at Hearthside Books and seating is limited to 60.
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