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12/01/2022 11:42 AMThe Essex Winter Series has had to improvise: Not musical improvisation, but like other groups during the pandemic, it had to make changes to its concert schedule to react to the ever-changing COVID situation.
The result is that the final concert of last year’s season will take place on Sunday, Dec. 18.
“There was a COVID spike so we canceled last January and this is a make-up concert,” explained Mihae Lee, the artistic director of the series.
The upcoming concert will feature the Brentano String Quartet with Lee at the piano. “We are so lucky that artists who are so incredibly busy could find a date,” Lee said.
The Dec. 18 program will include a quartet written by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, the sister of a far better-known composer, Felix Mendelssohn. In the last three decades, however, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s work has appeared more frequently on concert programs. International affairs have made the difference.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when archives in former East Germany became available to music researchers, the extent and quality of Mendelssohn Hensel’s work became apparent. As a result, it is now being performed more often.
Lee pointed out that the Essex Winter Series presents a variety of musical styles from jazz to symphony orchestra.
“We are presenters of different kinds of music. That’s what Fenton wanted it to be,” Lee said, referring to late Fenton Brown, who founded the series.
One of the regular performances every year, honors Brown’s memory, The Fenton Brown Emerging Artists Concert. This year’s emerging artist concert will feature a string trio from Project: Music Heals Us. The group is dedicated to bringing live music to nontraditional places, including homeless shelters, hospice facilities, even prisons. The musicians involved have other careers but volunteer to participate in Project: Music Heals Us.
Lee chose the group because of her own emphasis on the outreach programs which have become a regular part of the Essex Winter Series. Outreach includes performances at Essex, Deep River, and Chester elementary schools, Middletown High School, New London schools, and St. John’s School in Old Saybrook.
When Lee engaged Project: Music Heals Us for the Emerging Artists concert, Molly Carr was the viola player. She has since become a member of the Julliard String Quartet.
“She’s not emerging anymore. She has emerged,” Lee said.
Lee is pleased that Brian Hong, another performer from the coterie of musicians who make up Project: Music Heals Us, will now be the violist in the string trio at the Fenton Brown Emerging Artists program.
"I asked for him,” she said.
This year’s concert schedule also includes the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Jeff Barnhart and His Hot Jazz Collective, and the renowned male vocal group, Chanticleer.
The New Haven Symphony, which has performed at Winter Series before, nonetheless, has something very new for this season’s appearance, a marimba soloist, Aya Kaminaguchi.
“She is incredibly interesting to watch,” Lee said.
Lee became the artistic director of the Essex Winter Series in 2010. In 2016, she also became the music director of a summer series the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival, where she had performed as a pianist since 1995.
Serving as the director of a concert series demanded a new set of skills that were not part of Lee’s training as a piano student at The Julliard School.
“What I’ve learned over the years is the kind of stuff they never teach you at music school, about marketing, tickets, promotion, working with the board,” she said. “It’s a learning curve.” And, she added one more thing. “It’s more work than you ever think it is going to be.”
Essex Winter Series Concerts
Brentano String Quartet with Mihae Lee; Sunday, Dec. 18, Valley Regional High School
New Haven Symphony Orchestra; Sunday, Jan. 22, Valley Regional High School
Jeff Barnhart and His Hot Jazz Collective; Sunday, Feb. 26, John Winthrop Middle School
Project: Music Heals String Trio with Mihae Lee, March 12, John Winthrop Middle School
Chanticleer; April 23, Valley Regional High School
All concerts begin at 3 p.m.
For more information or tickets, visit essexwinterseries.com.