BAR HARBOR — The Bar Harbor Music Festival will celebrate its 54th season online over Facebook and/or You Tube from June 28 through July 26. Performances will be live and prerecorded videos of solo recitals, chamber music, pops, new composers, opera, jazz, string orchestra conducted by Maestro Francis Fortier, a New Composers Forum and young audience presentations by Deborah Fortier.

Each performance will be broadcast on the web through the Bar Harbor Music Festival Facebook page. Audiences should “like” the festival page for access to the concerts. All performances are available to the public free, but all viewers will be able to donate to the festival directly from the page.

April Martin, soprano, and Cara Chowning, piano, will perform lieder by Hahn, Argent and Liszt aat 4 p.m. Sunday, June 28.

Festival favorite pianist Christopher Johnson will perform his first of two recitals at 8 p.m. Friday, July 3. Celebrating 250 years of Beethoven, the performance will include the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31 no. 3, a brilliant four-movement work full of freshness and vigor, plus a world premiere by Deborah Fortier, concluding with Sousa’s Stars and Stripes, made famous for piano by Vladimir Horowitz. Recent critics have called Johnson “utterly convincing and technically astounding.”

Brass Venture will present a festive, patriotic program for brass trio of trumpets and trombones at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 4. Their 17th consecutive summer with the festival, Brass Venture’s talent combined with engaging repartee make this a great holiday concert.

Composer Patrick Zimmerli will lead the 24th annual New Composers Forum with the Bowers-Fader Duo at 3 p.m. Wednesday, July 8. They will be joined by internationally recognized composers to discuss “Contemporary Responses to 20th Century Music: Tonal Vs. Atonal.”

The 37th annual New Composers Concert will take place at 8 p.m. Friday, July 10. The Bowers-Fader Duo will perform live from New York City. The program will include a world premiere by Patrick Zimmerli as well as music by Scott Wheeler, Tim Mukherjee and Paul Salerni. This concert and the New Composers Forum are made possible in part by a grant from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.

Artists from the Bar Harbor Music Festival Vocal Program will present a program of vocal “Pops” at 8 p.m. Sunday, July 12. Downeast favorite, baritone Isaac Bray, will be joined by singers Chloe Olivia Moore, Stephen Carroll and Alice-Anne Leight with pianist Cara Chowning to perform favorites from stage and screen, including “The Impossible Dream” and “Maria.”

Spanish pianist, Antonio Galera Lopez returns for his eighth consecutive recital with music by Beethoven, Debussy and Ginastera at 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 14. As a prize winner of several competitions, including the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe Award, his national career has brought him performances in major halls and festivals throughout the world, receiving outstanding reviews – “extraordinary sensibility,” “infallible technique control,” “very rare musicality.”

At 8 p.m. Friday, July 17, arias from “Barber of Seville, “The Magic Flute,” and “I Pagliacci,” sung by Isaac Bray, Stephen Carroll, Chloe Olivia Moore and Alice-Ann Leight, will be aired.

The Ardelia Chamber Players will present the online interactive forum, “Making Music Together, Apart,” at 6 p.m. Saturday, July 18. What is “chamber music” in a time when musicians can’t gather? The origins of chamber music date back hundreds of years. It was an intimate way for musicians to essentially have “musical play dates” in the salons or “chambers” of someone’s house. In their online interactive forum via Zoom, the Ardelia Chamber Players, Janey Choi, Antonio Galera and Jennifer DeVore, will explore Mozart’s g minor Piano Quartet, as well as a piano trio by lesser-known French pianist/composer Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944), the first female composer to be granted admission to the Order of the Legion of Honour. The forum will demonstrate, discuss and answer questions about how we can still create and be collaborative artists during this time of socially distancing.

The Wolverine Jazz Band, one of Boston’s finest Dixieland traditional jazz and swing bands, appears for their 16th consecutive season for Jazz Night on Sunday, July 19th at 8PM. This all-star ensemble includes John Clark on Clarinet & Saxophone; Jeff Hughes on Trumpet & Cornet, Tom Boates on Trombone; Ross Petot, on Piano; Jimmy Mazzy on Banjo and Vocals, Rick MacWilliams on Tuba, and David Didricksen on Drums.

At 5 p.m. Monday, July 20, Deborah Fortier will present Part One of “Learning to Read Music Through Poetry.” She will present Part Two at 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 22.

Johnson, will perform his second festival recital of 2020, “Celebrating 250 Years of Beethoven,” at 8 p.m. Friday, July 24. The program will open with music by American composer Gary Eskow, including a world premiere, and finish with the Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata,” by Beethoven. Considered his greatest sonata, the “Appassionata,” with its searing passion and relentless energy, is the most extreme and explosive sonata of its time.

Sunday, July 26, marks the end of the summer online series with an 8 p.m. performance by the Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra conducted by Francis Fortier. The orchestra will perform music by Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, Allegro from Vivaldi’s mandolin concerto with Jeffrey Ellenberger, soloist, and the Waltz and Finale from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

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