Kickstarter

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We at Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago have been nurturing the vision of hosting an annual Vocal Chamber Music Festival in Chicago since we started our organization a year and half ago. As musicians we have devoted much of our lives to preserving and promoting the art of song, and we have worked hard to create a unique musical home for song in Chicago. This March we will kick off our vision by presenting the first COLLABORATIVE WORKS FESTIVAL - an annual series of concerts devoted to the art song and vocal chamber music repertoire, showcasing leading artists in the field in performances and educational events.

This year's three-day Collaborative Works Festival, “Epic Journeys: the song cycles of Franz Schubert,” will feature baritone Jesse Blumberg and legendary collaborative pianist Martin Katz in performances of Die schöne Müllerin on March 29 and Winterreise on March 31. Each recital will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State Street in Chicago.

The Festival includes an opening night reception, vocal repertoire coachings and a Schubert Lieder master class. Throughout March 30, Jesse Blumberg will offer vocal repertoire coaching to individual students at the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago studios, and at 7:00 p.m. on that day, Martin Katz will teach a master class in the PianoForte Salon of the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave. Students participating in the coaching sessions and the master class are being selected by CAIC. The master class is open to the public.

We can't imagine a better way to inaugurate this yearly vocal chamber music Festival than with these two seminal song cycles, which revolutionized the art song repertoire, and we are incredibly excited to bring two exceptional musicians to Chicago to perform this great music.  The funds raised from this Kickstarter campaign will cover artist fees, artist accommodations, venue rental fees, as well as a variety of other marketing and production costs.  We're starting this new venture completely from scratch, so no contribution is too small, and any little bit will help!  Your contribution will make you part of the foundation and the beginning of what will become a major fixture in the rich and wonderful Chicago classical music landscape.

ABOUT THE COLLABORATIVE WORKS FESTIVAL GUEST ARTISTS/CLINICIANS:

Jesse Blumberg, the founder and artistic director of Five Boroughs Music Festival in New York City,is equally at home on opera, concert, and recital stages.  His recent engagements include Niobe, Regina di Tebe at Boston Early Music Festival, Bernstein’s Mass at Royal Festival Hall, and performances with New York Festival of Song. Besides the 2012 Collaborative Works Festival, his 2011-2012 season includes debuts with Anchorage Opera and the Georgia Symphony Orchestra, and return performances at American Bach Soloists, New York Festival of Song, and TENET/Green Mountain Project. His singing of the Schubert song cycles has been described by Ann Arbor.com as “beautiful vocalism, lyrical where it should be, impassioned or agitated when it needed to be.”

Martin Katz, one of the world’s busiest collaborators, has been in constant demand by the world’s most celebrated vocal soloists for four decades. He has appeared and recorded regularly with Marilyn Horne, Frederica von Stade, Karita Mattila, Samuel Ramey, David Daniels, Jose Carreras, Cecilia Bartoli, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kathleen Battle, and Sylvia McNair, just to name a few. In addition to being a collaborative pianist and conductor, Katz is a committed teacher. Since 1984, he has been the chair of the University of Michigan’s School of Music’s program in collaborative piano. He has been a pivotal figure in the training of countless young artists, both singers and pianists, who are working all over the world.  The Los Angeles Times has said that Katz “must surely be considered the dean of collaborative pianists.”