Mary Zimmerman joined the Summerfest Board of Directors over a decade ago, bringing a long-standing love of chamber music and a record of support for musical performance and music education in the community and in public schools. A graduate of the University of Michigan with graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota, Zimmerman’s “day job” is as a Professor in the KU School of Medicine where she directs the doctoral program in Health Policy and Management. Zimmerman grew up in Emporia,
On behalf of the staff and members of Country Club Christian Church, welcome back for the second season! We are thrilled to be able to have you back in our facilities. From our perspective, 2012 was an outstanding season on all fronts for Summerfest. We at the Church are poised and ready to do everything we can to make 2013 even stronger. At the close of last year’s concerts I received
Summerfest Concerts, the eclectic summer chamber music festival in Kansas City, announced that in its 23rd season of chamber music programming, the Sunday afternoon concerts will be once again be presented in the beautiful sanctuary of Country Club Christian Church at 6101 Ward Parkway. “We moved to Country Club Christian Church to make ourselves accessible to new audiences, while providing another gorgeous venue for our loyal supporters,” said Mary Zimmerman, President
One hallmark of Summerfest concerts is our varied instrumentation of strings, winds, harp, and keyboard instruments. We have added voice and percussion to this mix in past years to bring in unique timbres to the sound mix. This year Summerfest will add guitar for the first time in our 23 year history. The Summerfest artistic committee has talked about adding guitar for quite some time. “Adding any extra instrument to our
When Summerfest decided to explore the connection between dance and music this summer, the artistic committee – comprised of Jane Carl, Alex East, Shannon Finney, and Mary Grant – spent countless hours searching through repertoire lists, library collections, and recordings for promising repertoire. We have discovered recently that one the most extensive resources that we can draw from now is the list of music that we have already performed through
Summerfest schedules outreach events year-round to audiences that traditionally do not or cannot attend paid concert events. The scope of this outreach program has nearly doubled in recent years. In 2011 Summerfest reached over 1,600 children and seniors through free outreach presentations. In 2011 Summerfest began a residency at the French language charter school Académie Lafayette, in Kansas City, Missouri. Summerfest musicians performed twice at all-school assemblies in
Who would ever guess that in the 1960’s Emporia, Kansas would be the birthplace of one of the country’s first Suzuki Violin programs?! Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of developing great character as well as a high level of musical achievement. Summerfest both exists and is the better because of Suzuki’s ground breaking program. Mary Garcia Grant’s older sister, Katie, was one of
Summerfest musicians spend countless hours exploring potential programming for each summer series. A lot of this research involves being aware of the newest recordings, reading reviews of performances and newly released CDs, and listening to lots and lots of recently produced recordings by composers of a variety of genres of music – not just classical. It was by this last avenue that the Summerfest artistic committee discovered Dave Grusin's “Three Latin
In anticipation of Summerfest Concert’s upcoming July chamber music festival, we sat down with Jane Carl, clarinetist and UMKC Conservatory faculty member, to talk about what inspired her to keep the tradition going each summer. “We’ve got a pretty unique spot,” says Carl, “because we provide something that isn’t really very prevalent in the summer.” “I started playing in Summerfest a long time ago now, not the first year, but shortly
Thanks to a generous grant from the Francis Family Foundation, Summerfest has been able to partnership with three schools in the Kansas City, Missouri school system this spring. Summerfest strings will go into Alta Vista Charter School, on the Westside, and Académie Lafayette, near UMKC, to help students prepare for their spring concerts. Luis Portillo, string ensemble and Mariachi director at Alta Vista Charter School says, “I want my
