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The festival ended last Sunday: concerts, Hausmusiks, panel discussions, world premieres…only we’re not in Newburyport but Ashburton, England, and I wake to the sound of sheep bleating outside my window.

In addition to NCMF, I’m Artistic Director of the Ashburton Chamber Music Festival, which just completed its fifth season. ACMF is modeled, conspicuously, on what we started in Newburyport twenty-four years ago. Managed by local impresario and jazz saxophonist extraordinaire, Andy Williamson, concerts take place in thousand-year-old parish churches dotted throughout the feral landscape of south-west England.

It is an ancient land, a magical land, and Very Green. A few months neglecting the hedges and this little town would be swallowed up like some lost city of the Amazon. One climbs out of town through tight, single-lane roads beneath towering hedgerows and gnarled, moss-covered trees until, suddenly, forest and hedgerow stop and you find yourself on the moor, the top of the world.

As in Newburyport, people come out to hear live music, packing the pews. Transplanted to a different continent, these sold-out concerts feel like a vindication of the vision I call “community-oriented” chamber music. Intimate access to international musicians, open rehearsals where you see how the sausage is made, hearing pieces multiple times, Hausmusiks, artists in homes instead of generic motels, world premieres – it all creates a unique engagement between audience and performer. Add to that a carefully curated choice of repertoire and, crucially, choosing musicians for who they are as well as how they play: your audience’s loyalty is earned, and never taken for granted.

Going to a live performance is different from listening at home. Some of the reasons are obvious, some less so: seeing performers interact is different; a concert may be the only time some are free from the siren call of their smartphone; at a concert, we set aside daily life for an hour or two - no dishes to put away, no dog to walk, no dinner to prepare, no repairman to call.

And then there is the journey with a roomful of strangers. At St. Pancras in Widdicombe (“The Cathedral of the Moor”) we performed Kurtág’s “Officium Breve,” a requiem for lost friends, by the 98-year-old composer still living in Budapest. At the end of the performance, several audience members were openly crying; an older man near the front cradled his face in his hands. Music takes us places regardless of where we are.

Next year, maybe some of you would like to cross the pond and see how they do it in the old country. Shall we make an embassy from north-east Massachusetts to south-west Devon?  I’ll lead a hike up to Haytor on the moor, or perhaps a bracing wild swim in the River Dart. There is even a transplanted Bostonian in town to make you feel at home, eminent classical radio host and composer, Tom Vignieri (who also happens to be my cycling partner). We’ll share a steak and ale pie at the Old Exeter Inn (founded 1130 A.D.) and raise a pint to the good people of Newburyport, who made this all possible, and the fine folk of Ashburton, who are spreading the gospel.

I’m doing a lecture on the Kurtág on Monday at 3:00 in Illume Books downtown and just like that it is full speed ahead. (While the festivals don’t do all the same music, there is some overlap.) The NCMF calendar is available for download here. Several concerts are already sold out so don’t wait too long.

All this wouldn’t be possible without the support of grants from the Merrimac, Newbury, Newburyport, and Salisbury cultural councils, local agencies supported by the Mass Cultural Council, the City of Newburyport Resiliency Committee, and a grant from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Action Grant. Finally, contributions from individuals and local businesses are our bread and butter. Thank you, Newburyport.

See you next week!

David Yang, Artistic Director

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