Midsummer’s Music Puts Brahms in the Spotlight

During Midsummer’s Music’s Brahms in the Spotlight program, audiences will experience works by a contemporary woman composer of color and a relatively unfamiliar 18th-century composer – both alongside music by the renowned Johannes Brahms.

What Brahms considered one of his “finest works” – the String Quintet in F Major, Op. 88 – is for two violins, two violas and a cello. He wrote the words “in the spring of 1882” by each movement, which is why it’s also known as “Spring.”

Most of Sir Arthur Somervell’s compositions were for voice, but Brahms was the inspiration for his Clarinet Quintet in G Major. Although this 1913 chamber piece by Somervell is now considered an extraordinarily fine work, when it premiered in 1919, its Romantic style was already out of fashion, and it was nearly lost to the ages.

Opening the program will be the haunting African American spiritual–inspired Movements for String Quartet by Nkeiru Okoye, a young American composer of Nigerian ancestry. She is described as an “activist through the arts” who creates works that affirm traditional and new audiences.

Performances are July 6, 7 pm, at the Kress Pavilion in Egg Harbor; July 7, 7 pm, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Ephraim; July 8, 7 pm, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sister Bay; and July 9, 5 pm, at Woodwalk Gallery in Egg Harbor.

Tickets are $38 for adults, $17 for students, and free for children 12 and younger who attend with an adult. Order tickets at midsummersmusic.com or by phone at 920.854.7088.