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Appalachian Chamber Music Festival to close with final concert on Sunday

By Tabitha Johnston - Chronicle Staff | Aug 26, 2022

From left, Rachelle Hunt, Delcho Tenev, ACMF Artistic Director Katie Tertell and Danielle Wiebe Burke perform Gaspar Cassado’s Quartet No. 1 in F minor, in Shipley Recital Hall last Sunday. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — This Sunday at 3 p.m., the Second Annual Appalachian Chamber Music Festival will come to a close, with its festival finale, “Celtic Heritage in the Appalachian Region,” at Happy Retreat in Charles Town. The concert, while featuring a variety of music on-theme with the title, will also be the second of two held this month in conjunction with a lecture — this Sunday’s, being given by none other than Shepherd University’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities Director Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt.

While the prices to attend most of the festival’s concerts have not been cheap, with some of the concerts costing as much as $43.99 per ticket, a few of the events were offered free to the public this year, including the festival taster preview concert, a bluegrass workshop and the first lecture/concert, held last Sunday afternoon in Shipley Recital Hall.

An $8,800 grant from the Eastern West Virginia Community Foundation’s Detlev and Mary Ellen Preissler Fund for the Arts, Music, Design and Nature helped for all of the concerts held in West Virginia to be offered at a lower rate than those held in Virginia, for the first time this year.

“Our vision is of a world that celebrates the history, nature and culture of Harpers Ferry, Charles Town, Jefferson County and beyond, through the power of meaningful, intimate, relatable and thought-provoking chamber music performances,” said ACMF President and Artistic Director Katie Tertell, before speaking about the grant funder. “Mary Ellen Priessler says her husband, Detlev, described himself as a ‘simple country boy from West Virginia,’ despite being born in Berlin and his many architectural achievements and varied interests. Simple things bring us great joy, and chamber music is one of these simple things. I think the ‘simple country boy from West Virginia’ would approve.”

The festival has made some useful connections since its inception, with sponsors such as Berryville Graphics, which for the second year in a row has sponsored the commission and world premiere of a new work for the festival; the Corporation of Harpers Ferry, for supporting concerts in Harpers Ferry; a new partnership with Shepherd University’s School of Music, which hosted three festival concerts; and Durham University in the United Kingdom, which brought its IMPACT grant-funded international culture project on the work of Spanish Catalan composer Gaspar Cassado to be the first lecture/concert of the season.

Durham University professor Rosi Song lectures on each chamber piece performed, during “Lost in Plain Sight” in Shipley Recital Hall on Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

“We are starting, today, a project. Katie Tertell, the artistic director of the Appalachian Chamber Music Festival, is collaborating with me on this project,” said Durham University professor Rosi Song, during the “Lost in Plain Sight” lecture this past Sunday afternoon. “Hopefully, with this project, we can do more fun stuff and travel around the world, exploring the legacy of this remarkable cellist, who I think has somehow gotten lost in history, because of the events that happened during his lifetime. . . . His career was interrupted by two world wars and the Spanish Civil War.”

To get tickets to any of the five remaining ACMF concerts today and this weekend, visit https://www.appalachianchamber.org/festivalschedule.

From left, Delcho Tenev, Rachelle Hunt, Lauren Nelson, ACMF Artistic Director Katie Tertell and Schuyler Slack perform Luigi Boccherini’s Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, Opus 30 No 6, in Shipley Recital Hall last Sunday. Tabitha Johnston

From left, Domenic Salerni, Rachelle Hunt, Schuyler Slack and Lauren Nelson perform Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, in Shipley Recital Hall Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston