Rockport Festival

We made our festival debut at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival last week! I was especially excited for this concert because I remember going to RCMF concerts when I was growing up in Boston.

They are in the process of raising money for a gorgeous new concert hall to open hopefully in 2009 but for now their concerts are still held in a beautiful art gallery in town. The space is really fun to play in because the audience is so close you can see and feel how they react to things. We played Mason Bates' "String Band", a piece that was written for us a few years ago which uses prepared piano - little rubber pencil erasers and washers between the strings of the piano that give it some twang. We could hear people's surprise when Donna busted out with some sliding pitches and wood block sounds - and everyone crowded around to watch as we took the preparations out of the piano at intermission.

The only drawback is that the gallery gets a bit steamy during concerts because they have to keep the air conditioning off because it makes a lot of noise. I remember hearing a wonderful recital that Andres Diaz and Judith Gordon played in Rockport but we all worried about Andres' amazing Gofriller because it was dripping with sweat by the end of the concert ;-0

While in Rockport, we stayed with wonderful hosts, Mary and Harry Hintlian, in their gorgeous house on the water. Here are Emily and Donna with Mary and her daughter, Lauren:





Here we are relaxing after the drive up from NYC:



Rockport is famous for it's gorgeous sunsets and we were lucky enough to catch an amazing one!