Twickenham Fest
Alabama's Only Summer Chamber Music Festival
We are excited to announce...
Twickenham Fest 2014
Engagement and Education Week
August 17-23, 2014
AND
Fifth Anniversary Concerts
August 28-31, 2014
Stay tuned for details including our resident artist announcements, venues, concert repertoire, the 2014 New Commission, and more!
The 2013 Artists
Twickenham Fest's 2013 Guest Artist Roster included winners of multiple major international competitions and performers from some of the most respected institutions in the world.
Stay tuned for the 2014 Artists!
The Concerts
Twickenham Fest's guest artists perform three free concerts in downtown Huntsville.
Twickenham Fest also hosts a Patron Soirée for its most avid supporters.
Support the Fest
Twickenham Fest relies on its individual patrons to bring world-class chamber music to the Huntsville community.
The festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit, and donations are tax-deductible.
About Twickenham Fest
Twickenham Fest is a summer chamber music festival in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2010, co-founders Susanna Phillips and Matthew McDonald came together to bring the best young classical musicians to Huntsville. Each year, the Fest brings into Huntsville several Artists in Residence to engage students and adults in Outreach and Education events and perform concerts that are FREE to the public.
About the Founders
Matthew McDonald will start as the Principal Bassoonist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra the fall of 2013. Prior to his appointment there, he was the Principal Bassoonist of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and co-principal bassoonist of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. McDonald has performed as soloist with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as at the International Double Reed Society conference. He has appeared with festival orchestras such as the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center.
Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Matthew began studying with Hunter Thomas, and later with Benjamin Kamins. A graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, his other teachers include Barrick Stees, Bernard Garfield, and Daniel Matsukawa. Besides playing the bassoon, Matt enjoys poetry and wine.
Alabama-born soprano Susanna Phillips, recipient of The Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 Beverly Sills Artist Award, continues to establish herself as one of today’s most sought-after singing actors and recitalists. The 2013-14 season sees Phillips return to The Metropolitan Opera for a sixth consecutive season. Starring roles with the company include Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, under the baton of returning music director James Levine, Rosalinde in a new staging of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus as part of the annual New Year’s Eve gala, and Musetta in La bohème, a reprise of the role in which she made her house debut in 2008.
Phillips’ 2013-14 orchestral engagements include Fauré’s Requiem with Charles Dutoit and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra as well as with the Philadelphia Orchestra where it shares the program with Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 5 with Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Phillips also joins the St. Louis Symphony to sing Ellen Orford in a concert performance of Peter Grimes, under David Robertson, at Carnegie Hall on Britten’s 100th birthday and in St Louis. Other orchestral engagements include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Milwaukee Symphony and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Jacksonville Symphony.
In recital, Phillips is joined by bass-baritone Eric Owens at both Chicago’s Symphony Center and the Gilmore Festival for a program of Schubert lieder. Chamber music engagements include performances with Paul Neubauer and Anne Marie McDermott in a trio concert tour that culminates at Boston’s Gardner Museum.
What's being said about Twickenham Fest?
"Robust, adventurous..." says Michael Huebner (The Birmingham News, AL.com) of the all-Schubert concert August, 30, 2013.
Read HERE a review of the 2013 Annual New Commission from composer Christopher Weiss. Michael Huebner writes:
"The composer's sparse-textured scoring released a flood of profound emotions, heightened by Matthew McDonald's plaintive bassoon solos and soprano Susanna Phillips' sensitive rendering of the text."