Built around two works that evoke landscapes, By the Sea shows how music creates connections between people and places, bridging the tangible and the intangible. With stunning virtuosity, kaleidoscopic color, and soaring lines, this program transports the listener to places real and imagined.

Pulitzer-winner Kevin Puts’s mixed septet Seven Seascapes depicts seven versions of the mercurial ocean, inspired by quotes from writers including Virgina Woolf, Douglas Adams, and Emily Dickinson. From a “maëlstrom of passions” to a fine morning where “the sea and sky looked all one fabric” to leaping “jets of sparks”, each movement captures a vivid and unique image, familiar to those who live near the sea, brought to life through music.

In The Companion Guide to Rome, Andrew Norman paints a musical picture of the man-made, using a string trio to take the audience on a tour of Rome, visiting nine storied churches in the Eternal City. Each movement moves beyond the buildings themselves, inspired by the lives and legends of the saints each church is named for, creating miniature character studies of imaginary travel companions.

Searsmont-based Robert Sirota also calls on the past in his Elegy to a Lost World as he recalls the lost idealism of youth. Written for his son for a set of elegiac pieces for viola, Sirota uses the viola’s full expressive range as he remembers a past that may never have been real. 

Just as Robert Sirota’s elegy is crafted around the sound and voice of a specific instrument, Paul Lansky and Emily Praetorius craft their pieces out of the techniques and abilities of specific instruments, building a bridge between the performer, the instrument, and the soundworld. Written for horn, violin, and piano, Etudes and Parodies uses idiomatic gestures for horn as the seed for each movement, drawing upon Lansky’s lived experience as a horn player performing in chamber settings. In Sans Serif, Emily Praetorius imagines how to bring the flute and cello closer together, despite their differences as instruments. Moving in and out of unison, they seek to find common ground as they fly through a shimmering soundscape.

In this sonic journey across the sea, the listener will experience a wide range of high-flying emotions before returning to a comforting place “where waves are kind.”

About our Artistic Directors

Cellist Clare Monfredo grew up in Seal Harbor, Maine, and has performed as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader all over the world, collaborating with a diverse array of notable artists, from Patricia Kopatchinskaja to Jon Batiste, to groups such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, A Far Cry, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Festival appearances include Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Lucerne Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, and  Kurt Weill Fest.  Clare holds a BA in English from Yale University and a masters from the Rice University Shepherd School of Music, where she received the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Arts Award. She attended the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. Clare lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches at Hunter College. She is co-founder and co-artistic director of DownEast New Music.

Praised as a “master of his instrument” (Fanfare), bassist Edward Kass performs internationally, specializing in contemporary performance. A graduate of the San Jose Unified Public School system, Kass is noted for his “phenomenal musicianship” (Which Sinfonia) and “terrific precision” (The Arts Fuse). A frequent performer with groups including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Sound Icon, recent appearances include the Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood, and Elbphilharmonie Visions. Sought after as an artistic leader and pedagogue, Kass serves as a Contemporary Leader for Lucerne Festival, a role combining performance with curation and pedagogy. With pianist and music therapist Renate Rohlfing, Kass co-created “Tell Your Story”, a community-based, creative engagement project for Spoleto Festival USA to create sonic memoirs preserving the oral history of the greater Charleston area. Since 2016, he has performed with soprano Nina Guo as Departure Duo, which performs, commissions and researches music written for soprano and double bass. The duo released their “exquisitely beautiful” (Avant Music News) debut album, Immensity Of, in 2022.

Conrad Winslow is a composer and pianist whose musical forms are bold, legible and emotionally direct. His music combines precipitous edges with subtle shifts of syntax. He draws influence from architects and playwrights to structure pieces like places to inhabit. Raised in Homer, Alaska, he first learned to make a world from scratch by watching his parents build a log cabin home in the woods. His work has been called “compelling” (New York Times) and described as a “scenic, boisterous and bumpy ride” (Albany Times Union). Winslow's instrumental music has been commissioned by Alarm Will Sound, Carnegie Hall, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others. He holds a Master’s Degree in Composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano, an M.M. degree in film scoring from NYU, where he studied with Justin Dello Joio, and an Honors A.B. degree in Music from Rollins College, where he studied with Daniel Crozier.

About our 2026 Artists

Recipient of a 2026 Avery Fisher Career Grant, winner of the 2023 Concert Artist Guild Competition, and major prize winner at the at the 2022 Sibelius and Singapore International Violin Competitions, violinist Nathan Meltzer is establishing a holistic and multi-faceted career as both a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Finnish RSO, the Helsinki Philharmonic, and the Alabama, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Montreal, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, among others. As a chamber musician, Nathan has performed at festivals including ChamberFest Cleveland, Krzyzowa Music, Moritzburg Festival, and Music@Menlo. He is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Green Room Ensemble, a chamber music organization dedicated to new music and historically underrepresented works.

Born in Orange, California in 1993, violist Tanner Menees is forging an enviable career as a chamber musician. Mr. Menees has collaborated with a range of notable artists, including Martin Beaver, Denis Bouriakov, Miriam Fried, Clive Greensmith, Lynn Harrell, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, Marcy Rosen, and Peter Stumpf.  Tanner Menees has performed internationally at festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Chamberfest Cleveland, Menuhin Festival String Academy, Edinburgh Music Festival, Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, and McGill International String Quartet Academy Mr. Menees received his Bachelor of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Colburn School, where he studied with Paul Coletti. Later he studied with Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory where he earned a Master of Music degree. Mr. Menees plays on a Tarasconi school viola made in Milan, Italy c. 1880, courtesy of Guarneri Hall NFP and Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins.

Flutist Roberta Michel is dedicated to the music of our time. Praising her “extreme adventurousness,” New York Concert Review said she “riveted with her performance, inspiring one to want a repeated hearing.” A member of Da Capo Chamber Players, PinkNoise and SEM Ensemble, Michel has performed with: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ecce Ensemble, Portland String Quartet, Newspeak, Wet Ink Ensemble, Argento, Iktus, Wordless Music Orchestra, and Cygnus Ensemble among others, and she can be heard on several recordings. Roberta is the Assistant Teaching Professor of Flute at Bowling Green State University.

Laura Weiner is a passionate horn player and advocate for classical music based in New York City. Laura is a member of chamber ensembles Alarm Will Sound, Decoda, and “the post-post-feminist pop French horn experience” Genghis Barbie, and freelances in a wide variety of ensembles in New York City. Laura taught music in prisons for many years, and eventually went to law school. Laura is now a public defender in the Bronx by day, and French horn player by night and weekend. Laura is grateful for the unusual balance of her professional life. 

Free parking is available on Main Street, Pleasant Street, Jefferson St, Friendship Road, in the 8 unreserved spaces on Glidden Street; in the Kuhn Parking lot (beside the masonic lodge on Main Street); and in the lot behind Perch and The Narrows Tavern. Please DO NOT park on School Street, Shady Ave or in the 2 Reserved spaces on Glidden Ave, as parking there is prohibited and strictly enforced.

If you have mobility issues that require special seating, please send an email to: [email protected]. We will be happy to accommodate your needs. 

Doors open at 3:00pm. 

All tickets are final sale and non-refundable.