The Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra's Charles Ives Music Festival will be held from July 28 through Aug. 10, and it will include six concerts to celebrate composer and Danbury native Charles Ives' 150th birthday.
Ives was a composer who started composing music at age 13, according to the Charles Ives Society website. He composed several songs, including "Variations on America," and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his work titled "Symphony No. 3."
Several musicians will perform works by Ives throughout the festival, including mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan and her husband Peter Dugan, a pianist and host of NPR program "From The Top." Grammy award-winning violinist Charles Yang will also perform alongside the couple at the festival.
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The Dugans and Yang will perform their joint concert, called "Trailblazing," at Ives Concert Hall in Danbury on Saturday, Aug. 10 at 7 p.m.
A two-week educational program involving 50 young musicians from Fairfield County and southeastern New York will work with artists and faculty from the Charles Ives Music Festival on chamber music and orchestral rehearsals and performances during the festival for the first two weeks of August.
The concerts will be held at Ives Concert Hall on the midtown campus of Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) in Danbury.
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The Charles Ives Music Festival Orchestra, led by Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra Music Director and Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra Conductor Eric Mahl, will also perform at WCSU's Hagman Hall at the Visual and Performing Arts Center in Danbury on Aug. 8. The performance will feature this year's concerto competition winner, 11-year-old Ridgefield resident Lucas Tejada.
Most of the Charles Ives Music Festival concerts will be open to the public and free to attend, but some concert events will have tickets available for purchase. To find out more about the festival events, visit the Charles Ives Music Festival website.