Manchester Music Festival engages, inspires, and grows a supportive audience for classical music, performed at the highest level of artistic excellence, and teaches exceptional young performers in the art of chamber music.

This summer, Manchester Music Festival explores "Music and Storytelling," illuminating the profound connections between literature, poetry, song, and music.

Schedule of Events:

Thursday Nights - Mainstage Concerts

7:30 pm - 9:30 pm: Opening Night: Baroque and A Famous Musical Quote

Location: Arkell Pavilion, Southern Vermont Arts Center, 860 Southern Vermont Arts Center Drive, Manchester, VT

Emi Ferguson, Principal Flute of the distinguished Handel and Haydn Society and recipient of the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, joins early music specialist Arthur Haas (harpsichord), Philip Setzer (violin) and the MMF Young Artists Strings to open the season with Bach's lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Music inspired by Shakespeare, Dryden, and Milton shapes the program in songs from Purcell's The Fairy Queen and Oedipus, as well as Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, featuring the internationally acclaimed soprano Sherezade Panthaki, a radiant phenom for whom "it becomes increasingly difficult to find words that will adequately convey the multifold splendor of her singing" (San Francisco Chronicle). Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings, which owes its literary inspiration to Goethe's Faust, while also paying homage to Handel, governs the Arkell Hall stage on the second half of the program.

Program: 
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (1721)
Purcell - Aria "Music for a While", incidental music from Oedipus: A Tragedy (1679)
Purcell - Song "The Plaint" ("O let me weep!") from The Fairy Queen (1692)
Handel - Song "Sweet Bird" from L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1740)
Mendelssohn - Octet for Strings, Op. 20 (1825)

Artists: 
Arthur Haas, harpsichord
Emi Ferguson, flute
Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Philip Setzer, violin
MMF Young Artists Strings