The DMC continues its celebration of Charles Ives Day with its Charles Ives Concert Series, led by Danbury-native, Paul Frucht, as the artistic director and Jon Cziner as the associate artistic director. 

To celebrate Ives's 144th birthday, the Series will present a program of Ives's music and his influences: Brahms, Beethoven, and a pioneering American woman, Amy Beach, whose music is of the iconic, but often forgotten generation American of American composers that preceded Ives. The program will feature selections from Beethoven's Bagatelles for solo piano, Amy Beach's Romance for violin and piano, Brahms's C Minor Piano Trio alongside Ives's Largo and a selection from his groundbreaking Piano Trio.

Featured artists include three familiar faces to the Ives Series and Danbury community: Violinist Chelsea Starbuck Smith grew up Redding and has been acclaimed as a violinist of “compelling presence, fearless attack, and technical aplomb and bravado” by New London's The Day. A graduate of Juilliard, she regularly performs on Broadway and has made solo appearances with the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra in Charleston, SC, the Southern Finger Lakes Orchestra in Corning, NY, and with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. 

Cellist Mitch Lyon is a Juilliard graduate a native of Philadelphia who has performed extensively as a soloist, chamber musician, and in orchestras throughout the United States, France and the United Kingdom. As a recipient of Juilliard’s Gluck Community Service Fellowship, he brought music to new and underserved audiences, including patients in New York area hospitals, nursing homes and alternative care facilities. Mitch arranges, organizes and performs house concerts at private residences throughout the boroughs of New York City and in other locations by arrangement. 

Pianist Mika Sasaki holds a doctorate from the Juilliard School and has performed at Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Peter J. Sharp Theater, Palazzo Chigi Saracini (Italy), Minatomirai Hall (Japan), Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (Japan), Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, and live on WQXR and WFMT radio. Her solo debut album, Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann, released on Yarlung Records in 2016, was highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as “illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between these three Romantic souls,” Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, and was recently featured on Radio Sweden.

All three musicians have been involved as artist-faculty in both the Danbury Music Centre' Chamber Music Intensive and Charles Ives Concert Series since 2017. 

Tickets are $20 for general admission and $10 for students with ID at the door and online here: 

http://danburymusiccentre.org/charles-ives-concert-series/