Since violinist Tim Summers and cellist Raphael Bell founded the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival twenty years ago, there has been dizzying change in the musical world. The availability of sheet music online, the flood of streaming music, the ubiquity of electronic music and amplification, the fantasy and reality of European “canonical” roots, the struggle between personal and artificial memory—each of these issues alone contains seeds of a revolution as digitalization reveals the depths of its consequences. Being a traveling musician gives a particular perspective, with cross-cultural experience and matters of show business and performance in constant play. Playing selections from Bach and Berio, Tim will offer insights into what musicians do, why they do it, and how music continues to resonate.
Violinist Tim Summers is the founder and artistic director, with cellist Raphael Bell, of the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. Since 2009 he has been a member of the celebrated Mahler Chamber Orchestra, traveling and performing with the orchestra across the globe. A graduate of Harvard and The Juilliard School, Tim teaches violin and improvisation on the faculty of the Universität der Künste in Berlin where he lives with his wife, also a violinist, and young son. Every year he returns to Charlottesville, his hometown, for the annual Festival, which will celebrate its twentieth season this September. Find out more at cvillechambermusic.org.