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Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival Opens Saturday

DETROIT (WWJ) - This Saturday, June 11, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival opens its 18th year of music in Detroit. In a season titled "Music of the Spheres: Songs of the Earth and Sky," the Festival will feature music both earthly and heavenly.

Global themes will play a central role with the work of 2011 Stone Composers-in-Residence Chen Yi and Zhou Long. The Festival will close with a chamber transcription of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.

In keeping with the broad definition of spheres, the Festival will include many celestially-inspired works, including Haydn's String Quartet Op. 76, No. 4 (Sunrise), Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, arranged for flute, violin, cello and piano by Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

Each piece of the 2011 Festival will be performed by musicians of the highest caliber, including pianist Jeremy Denk, violist Kim Kashkashian, cellist Andrés Díaz, cellist Paul Katz, soprano Lauren Skuce and contemporary sextet eighth blackbird, among others.

The prestigious Shouse Institute will again welcome emerging talent to the Festival. Hailed as an incubator for rising stars of chamber music, many Shouse alumni have gone on to receive Grammy nominations. The 2011 Shouse artists are the Jasper String Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Sima Trio and Trio Terzetto.

Joining the young Shouse ensembles is the Stone Composer Fellow, Nicholas S. Omiccioli, an emerging composer commissioned to write a new work. Recently, Omiccioli was nominated for an award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a winner of the ASCAP Foundation's 2010 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

The Festival's 2011 Stone Composers-in-Residence are Chen Yi and Zhou Long.

A composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, Dr. Chen's music provides a sound base from which to explore the music of two hemispheres.

Zhou Long is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West.

The 2011 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival will take place June 11 - June 26 in venues around Metro Detroit.

Tickets are on sale now online. Single tickets are $40 for Saturday nights, $35 for weekdays and $10 for all patrons 25 and under. All single tickets increase by $5 at the door.

Patrons can also purchase ticket subscriptions, which cost $90 for three concerts, $135 for five concerts and $145 for seven concerts.

For a complete concert schedule, click here. For more information, call 248-559-2097 or visit www.greatlakeschambermusic.org.

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