Lawrence Chamber Music Festival is another hidden gem within the Mile of Music

Another fascinating and unique aspect of the Mile of Music is the festival within a festival: The Lawrence Chamber Music Festival. This year it kicks off about a week before the start of Mile 13 and continues the first three days of the Mile with six 50-minute performances. Performances include the first ever intergenerational concert, collaborations with four singer-songwriters and musicians hailing from 19 states and three countries. 

Lawrence University and the Mile of Music have been inextricably connected since the festival debuted in Appleton in 2013. Adroit Mile aficionados know the way to start one’s Mile experience each day is with the morning concerts at the Lawrence Chapel (Thursday, 11 a.m. at the Lawrence Chapel), The Hilton Paper Valley (Friday) and Copper Rock (Saturday). Lawrence students and faculty, international touring guest artists and pre-professional music students from around the world take part in a two-week chamber program that starts July 20 and continues through August 1. From Debussy to Dvorak, selections feature classical and current compositions, both exhilarating and meditative. 

Michael Mizrahi, director of Lawrence Summer Music Programs, keeps finding ways to bring classical or chamber style music to new audiences. At the Mile, the cross-genre collaborations with Mile of Music artists are always highly anticipated. This year’s collaborators are:

• Gold Standard, a local bluegrass band featuring Lawrence alum Kate Stenson on vocals and fiddle, Lawrence music instructor Loren Dempster on cello, Gregg Daigle on guitar and songwriter Ian Moore on bass. (2:30 p.m. Saturday) 

• Ruby Mac, a 24-year old Taylor Swift inspired songwriter from Rhode Island who just released the nifty Swifty single, “Fatally Attracted” (11 a.m. Friday)

• Ron Artis II, a multi-instrumentalist and free-feeling songwriter from Hawaii. (10:30 a.m. Saturday) 

• Buddy Red, an Atlanta-based blues revivalist who’s debut single, “Sold His Soul,” was released a year ago. (2 p.m. Friday)

This year the Chamber Music Festival will also feature its first intergenerational (family) concert, “Music in Motion," 9 a.m. Friday at Harper Hall. In addition to the Lawrence Chamber collaborations, Gold Standard, Mac, Red and Artis will all perform multiple times at Mile 13. As Mizrahi notes, the Mile of Music is designed for serendipity. But planning ahead for Thursday morning at the Chapel is a great place to start!

Michael Mizrahi, director of Lawrence University Summer Music Program, talks about the Lawrence Chamber Music Festival’s ongoing collaboration with the Mile of Music 

How many years have you been collaborating with the Mile on this and has anything changed much since the first few years?                                           

Lawrence has been a part of Mile since the very beginning, as a key venue for Mile artists as well as the popular Music Education Team programming, which for years was hosted by Lawrence Conservatory Dean Brian Pertl and Leila Ramagopal Pertl. We began our unique summer collaboration pairing pre-professional music students with Mile songwriters back in 2021, and we branded the program Lawrence Chamber Music Festival in 2024. Since our earliest collaborations, the program has become more popular than ever. We had over 80 applicants this year for 40 slots, and we've expanded from three Mile of Music events the first year to six this year, including our first ever Intergenerational Concert featuring Lawrence Chamber Music Festival musicians on Friday morning in Harper Hall.

From where will the Lawrence Chamber Music festival musicians be coming this year? 

 They are coming from all over the world! Lawrence Chamber Music Festival musicians this summer hail from 19 states and three countries. Our faculty include several of our amazing Lawrence Conservatory faculty as well as world-renowned guest artists from New York City, Los Angeles and some of the world's top music schools.

What is your reaction to hearing that, without being part of the Mile, many music fans would not be exposed to chamber music like that performed by the Lawrence Chamber Music Festival?                                                                         

I love that Mile of Music exposes listeners to so many different genres of music. The festival is designed for serendipity. I love wandering through the hundreds of free music sets throughout the festival and checking out music that is new to me. There is such a great spirit of discovery. The Lawrence Chamber Music Festival and the kind of music we bring (mostly classical) adds to the rich tapestry of Mile of Music. The collaborations between Mile songwriters and our festival musicians are so joyful for everyone involved, including all of the performing musicians and the audiences who come to hear them.                                                                    

What is the hardest thing about collaborating with Mile artists who may or may not have worked with chamber groups like this before?

Honestly, it's mostly been an easy process. We work carefully to select Mile artists who are going to be open to a collaboration with classical musicians, and we prepare our festival musicians for their collaborations with songwriters. In the very first year of this program, we were figuring everything out for the first time and none of us were sure how it would turn out. When the final results were a big hit, we were able to more easily describe to all the musicians involved what we were after, and they've responded beautifully.

Thinking back, what is a particularly gratifying moment you had with a collaborating artist and why?                  

Every single collaboration has brought joy, excitement, and a spirit of adventure, and every year I look forward to the new songwriters and festival artists who will get to experience this beautiful process. We were fortunate to work with PEGASIS  twice in the last few years. They embody that joy so exuberantly throughout the entire process. I remember a moment at last year's Hilton Hotel show where one of our festival musicians was encouraged to take a synthesizer solo in the middle of a song, and the audience went wild. Keep in mind that this performance was at 11 a.m! I love that our community brings such enthusiasm and support for live music, and that musicians like PEGASIS are so generous and open with their music-making, even at a time of day when many touring musicians are still asleep. 

For more information on the Mile of Music, visit Mileofmusic.com. Scott Peeples can be contacted at (920) 422-2365  or peeplesscottj@gmail.com