Paul Schwendener, incoming executive director of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival.
The Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival returns Aug. 3 after a one-year absence, with nine performances, a new executive director, and an optimistic outlook on returning to live music.
Paul Schwendener takes over administration of the 42-year festival, replacing the retiring Elaine Lipton. Clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu return as co-artistic directors, positions they have held since 2006.
Forced to make plans in early spring, the festival focused on two traditional venues: the Cotuit Center of the Arts, and Wellfleet’s First Congregational Church. The festival plans two programs each evening, at 5:00 and 7:30 p.m. A free outdoor concert is also planned for Aug. 12, in Eastham at the Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor’s Center Amphitheater.
This year’s festival features the Escher Quartet and Imani Winds. Manasse and Nakamatsu will also perform, as well as a former artist director, pianist Brian Zeger.
It’s an abbreviated schedule—the festival normally runs four weeks—but Schwendener senses a return to normal.
“I get the impression that everybody is understanding of the situation,” he says. “This year we felt glad to be able to work it out with venues in Cotuit and Wellfleet. We had to schedule back in April. When we were planning, so much was still closed.
“The goal is to return to our beloved venues,” Schwendener says about future festivals. In addition to Cotuit and Wellfleet, in past years the festival has regularly performed in Orleans, Chatham, Dennis, Provincetown and the Islands.
“It looks possible to return to a four-week festival next year, as traditional,” he says.
“Each concert has its own ecosystem. The audience has embraced a mix of classics and diverse explorations for forty years, and embracing that for the next 40 years feels very possible.
“I hope to keep this hidden treasure going,” he says, “and make it a well-known hidden treasure.”
Schwendener comes to CCCMF after a long classical music career. Trained at the Eastman School of Music, and at Vienna’s Hochschule für Musik, he worked for Philips Classics and the esteemed Milken Archive of Jewish Music for decades, and was most recently the executive director of the All-Star Orchestra, an Emmy Award–winning ensemble that has performed for years on PBS.
“I collaborated with Jon Manasse in the All-Star Orchestra,” he says. “When this position opened, I had a wonderful feeling.”
This summer’s concerts will have restricted attendance.
“We are following Mass. protocols, and local ordinances,” he says. “Things are constantly changing. We’re limiting Cotuit to 150 per concert—it was 180 before. Wellfleet is currently planned for 175 per concert, half the regular capacity. Both Cotuit and Wellfleet have excellent air-filtration systems. The free concert will have 200 seats—and an excellent view of the Nauset marshes.
“We’ve had a good start to ticket selling,” Schwendener says. “The five o’clock concerts are popular.”
Appropriately, the festival begins with a look back on the lost year. The opening night program, performed by “the Jons,” as the longtime artistic directors have become known, includes music of Brahms, Finzi, Chopin and Weber.
“The first Cotuit concert is unique,” Schwendener says. “The Brahms sonata especially. Brahms retired, but then he returned to composing after he heard a great clarinetist. We’re coming back as well.
“It’s a celebration of the audience, and a personal statement, performed in memory of our past year. A reawakening, and a sense of mourning for what has been lost.”
The Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival opens Aug. 3 and continues through Aug. 13, with concerts in Cotuit, Wellfleet and Eastham. Visit capecodchambermusic.org or call 508-247-9400.
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Leonore Overture and Opera News. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.