About the Weekend of Chamber Music: Sullivan County, New York Summer Music Festival

Never one to rest on her laurels and with a strong desire to bring music to children, Ms. Pearce soon added a Saturday writing workshop in which children created poems set to music, and the interactive children’s concerts were presented in the “Music and Imagination” series. A collaboration with the Liberty Library and the Liberty Museum and Arts Center (LMAC) in the “Main Street Program” led to a New York State Council on the Arts grant in 2001, and another way to reach young people with chamber music. With that funding, Ms. Pearce created The Memory Project©, which was a four-year interdisciplinary collaboration with Narrowsburg, Livingston Manor, and Liberty 9th grade teachers and students. The Project sent the students into the community to interview local senior citizens, record their memories of life in their towns, and then develop an exhibition performance based on their interviews to present at the LMAC.

Another program for youth, WCM’s Artist Coaching Project has made it possible for high school chamber music and band students to work intensively with professional performing artists. Beginning with Monticello High School in 1996, that prototype project has since been embraced by many area public schools, among them Tri-Valley, Liberty and Sullivan West.

Meanwhile, WCM’s moveable feast of summer music has been traveling around the region to play at Narrowsburg’s Tusten Theatre, Lake Huntington’s Nutshell Gallery, and WCM hung its hat for 4 summers at the historic, mid-19th century Hortonville Presbyterian Church from 2000 to 2004. Celebrating its milestone 10th anniversary there, WCM brought celebrated Metropolitan Opera soprano and Sullivan County native Stephanie Blythe to the Hortonville stage. The following July, WCM traveled to six venues throughout the Hudson and Delaware Valley regions, bringing the noted British composer Nicholas Maw here to celebrate his 70th birthday with WCM audiences. Mozart celebrated his birthday with WCM, too, as WCM relocated one more time in July 2006, moving that composer’s 250th birthday into the Barnstorm Workshop barn, the Jeffersonville home of the late renowned photojournalist, Eddie Adams.

After more than a dozen years of making beautiful summertime music in the Catskills, WCM has grown into a well-regarded citizen of the Delaware Valley’s cultural life. Weekend of Chamber Music has made significant cultural and educational contributions to the region, and in that role has unquestionably enriched quality of life for all of its citizens.

As WCM embarks on its next decade, greater expansion of its Artist Coaching Project and the Arts in Education collaborative work is on the horizon. During the year between Summer Festivals, WCM’s concerts have already increased in number, and performances beyond Sullivan County are projected for venues in New York City and Pennsylvania. If you would like to explore how to bring WCM programs and concerts to your school or city, just write to us or call!