Tuesday, July 30 at 4:00 P.M.
Opening Chapel Service – “New Life”
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Terry Green
and music by Festival Musicians
Tuesday, July 30 at 7:30 P.M.
Soprano Lisa Lowry and Pianist Paula Pressnell
Wednesday, July 31 at 7:30 P.M.
Violinist Wesley Mason
Thursday, August 1 at 7:30 P.M.
Tenor Jeff Prillaman and Pianist Charles Hulin
All events take place at Lasker Baptist Church
and are free and open to the public.
For more information, please call 863-667-6974.
by Charles Hulin
In recognition of the significant contribution of literary friends to this year’s time in Lasker,
I share my reflections on the festival in the form of a poetic remembrance of our opening concert,
Sound and Silence.
I’ve stopped the old clock’s ticking
And I sit at the grand in the warmth of the sanctuary.
Mozart’s Fantasy is on my mind and in the air.
Trying on his hands, I enter and exit silence in Wolfgang’s subtle ways.
With a composer’s mood, Jim skates his bow across the strings.
The cello tones glide into a cove of calm Vaughan Williams charted in his folk music suite.
In the reverberant worship space, Anna’s voice is heard in three full dimensions.
Its mother-earth richness lifts the ink from the page
and the words of the Charter live for those present.
Jeremy’s flute-breathed sounds are compact, brilliant, tense, and clever.
Paula reveals Beethoven: expressive, methodical, and unyielding.
I return to the piano with more Mozart.
Across the room, Kathy and Jeremy listen and play beyond thought or planning.
Aloft on tremolos and scales from the keyboard, my partners’ instincts do the surfing.
They find true ensemble and discover the chamber music of the moment.
Rickey declaims the syllable “be” at the end of his passionate preaching.
The word persists and I realize it is bigger than any sentence.
It is older than the Law
And the way Rickey says it is more personal than a command.
It is an utterance from the God who desires us to be
And who desires us.
Finally we sing the festival hymn.
The organ’s dense sound undergirds the tune
And we all pivot on a prayer word –
“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
We are excited and touched that the Lasker Summer Music Festival will turn fifteen years old this summer!
The time has flown by, and while many things have changed, the festival remains a constant for our musicians. We do, indeed, look forward to “re-igniting the fires of our inspiration, re-setting our artistic compasses, and replenishing our stores of enthusiasm” each summer in Lasker, as the festival charter states.
Since this is an important anniversary for the festival, we considered making this season a big celebration. We also considered making it a little more intimate to connect back to the experience we had the very first year. Now that the schedule is in place, I see that we have done a bit of both.
We will begin with a chapel service and opening ceremonies at 11:00 A.M. on Saturday, July 14th. During this service, Dr. J Brabban of Chowan University will speak on our season’s theme “Stirring the Worship Senses.”
At 7:30 P.M. on the 14th Tenor Jeff Prillaman will return to Lasker for a solo concert of classical and sacred favorites.
At 7:30 P.M. on Monday the 16th Baritone Gregory Parker will perform the Four Serious Songs of Brahms. Jeremy McEntire, flute and Kathy Hulin, horn will present music by C.P.E. Bach, Phillipe Gaubert, and others.
We will conclude our time in Lasker with a pianistic extravaganza at 7:30 P.M on Tuesday the 17th.This concert will be a tribute to the father of American pianism, Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869). This concert will involve a team of keyboardists including Paula Pressnell, Josiah Antill, Bruce Moser, Kathy Hulin, Joshua Russell, and myself in an informative and entertaining evening of Gottschalk’s music.
As always, each of these events will take place at Lasker Baptist Church, free of charge and open to the public. For further information, please call 252-862-5548.
See you in Lasker!
Charles J. Hulin IV
laskersummermusicfestival 