Pictured: Composer faculty Marc Migó with artistic director Max Tan and pianist Baron Fenwick in an open rehearsal during the 2024 Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program. Photo by Sophia Szokolay.

There has always been something intrinsically intimate about chamber music. To watch in wonderment as a trio, quartet or sextet of wildly talented individuals dance through scores of classical music, improvising off one another with a simple look, tell or flick of the wrist. It’s a magical experience, to be able to ensconce oneself in something so immediate, so visceral, in a small, tightly packed space.

That magic is coming to Sarasota next weekend, with the inaugural Suncoast Composer Festival featuring events open to the public on October 4, 5 and 7. The festival is a component of Soundbox Venture’s Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program (SCFP), a private residency for emerging composers to learn and work with world class mentors, performers and recording artists. “The idea of SCFP is actually manyfold. It’s at once a sort of artist residency, it’s also a series of concerts that we’re putting on at the festival. At the same time it's also an educational program. The idea is that artists today, typically when they go play a concert or festival, they’re considered seasoned pros, they’re traveling and bringing programs they’ve prepared,” says violinist Max Tan, founder and artistic director of Soundbox Ventures. “We’re doing something a little different. We find that often the framework for musicians to grow and develop their craft relies a lot on generational knowledge being passed on down from senior artists to younger ones. We wanted to help artists of similar generations find each other.”

This year’s festival will feature a flurry of different types of events around Sarasota, including classical and chamber music concerts as well as seminar talks. On Friday, October 4, Tan, who is a Perlman Music Program alumnus and performs with the Sarasota Orchestra, will lead a free seminar talk at the Selby Library followed by a performance from SCFP musicians of Johannes Brahms’ “Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115”. On Saturday, two intimate chamber music concerts will be presented at a “chateau” in South Poinsettia Park–the location known only to those who purchase tickets–and will feature music from composer mentor-in-residence Marc Migo Cortes, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel and more. On Monday, the festival will culminate in The Composer Fellows Concert at First Congressional United Church of Christ.

October 4 - 7, soundboxventures.org/scfp2024-2

Pictured: Composer faculty Marc Migó with artistic director Max Tan and pianist Baron Fenwick in an open rehearsal during the 2024 Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program. Photo by Sophia Szokolay.

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