History of the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival
The Belvedere Chamber Music Festival was established in 2007 by the Luna Nova New-Music Ensemble. Luna Nova was formed 2002 under the auspices of the Associated College of the South. It has performed over ninety concerts in colleges, museums, churches, and concert halls across the country. At the end of the ACS grant funding period, the ensemble became the core performing group of the newly formed Luna Nova Music in Memphis, TN. Luna Nova achieved its status as a 501(c)3 organization in December 2006. In June 2007 Luna Nova Music, in cooperation with the Beethoven Club and Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, inaugurated the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival. It is supported primarily by private donations. The purpose of the Festival is twofold: to provide the community free concerts of 20th and 21st century music performed by exceptionally fine musicians from around the country; and to support student composers and performers by giving them an opportunity to work closely with a professional new music ensemble and with successful contemporary composers.
The Festival has as one of its components a student composition contest. This contest is supported and administered in cooperation with the Beethoven Club of Memphis. It is open to academic composers under the age of 30 from around the world. Each year the contest attracts approximately forty entrants from around the world. In 2007, 2008, and 2009 the top three came to Memphis at their own expense to participate in the Festival. They came from universities in Italy, Taiwan, Australia, and China as well as from Indiana University, the Berklee School of Music, the University of Arizona, and Duke University in this country.
The Belvedere Chamber Music Festival is unique in Memphis in that it is the only private chamber series devoted entirely to contemporary art music performance and composition. It is also one of the few chamber music events available to Memphis concertgoers in the summer. It has found a niche in which to develop and expand.
Concerts at the Belevedere Festival are made up of new works by emerging faculty and student composers as well as masterworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. Complete festival recordings are available at www.lunanova.org/audio.html.
Belvedere Chamber Festival, 1794 Carr Avenue, Memphis, TN 38104, 901-278-2699
pgray@pgray.net
produced by Luna Nova Music
(www.lunanova.org)