Our Most Recent Season: Summer 2025
Ensemble: Festive Together, Green Lake Festival of Music’s 46th season, featured a rich variety of musical styles, periods, composers, and solo and ensemble performances by seasoned professionals, accomplished collegiate musicians in training, and community members. Nearly all concerts were preceded by conversations with the artists led by Sam Handley, GLFM’s director.
Reverón Piano Trio opened the season June 6 at Thrasher Opera House/Green Lake with a program of works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Teresa Carreño, Astor Piazzolla, Gabrieta Lena Frank, and Ricardo Lorenz.
V3NTO Brass Trio offered engagement concerts June 11 at Ripon Public Library, Evergreen Retirement Community/Oshkosh, and Oshkosh Public Library, performing music by Jean-François Taillard, Vaclav Nelhybel, Scott Joplin, Alex Temple, Giovanni Pergolesi, and Frigyes Hidas.
The Children’s Chorus Camp enabled area youngsters to learn songs by Tracy Wong, Bob Applebaum, Proyecto Ayni, and Kirk Franklin with conductor Magdalena Delgado Vargas and pianist Marisa Ladsverk, culminating in a June 12 performance for family and friends.
Pianist Evren Ozel, who won the bronze medal at the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in early June, gave a spectacular recital at Ripon College’s Rodman Center for the Arts June 16, performing challenging works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Bartok, Fauré, and Schumann. The next day, after a morning master class at Ripon College, he performed works by Beethoven and Ravel for an SRO crowd at Evergreen Retirement Community in Oshkosh.
The father-son duo TNTeague (Liam Teague and Jaden Teague-Núñez) played steelpan, piano, and percussion in an outdoor concert in Deacon Mills Park, Green Lake, on June 27. Audience members brought their own seating and refreshments, and enjoyed music by Antonio Vivaldi, Astor Piazzolla, Liam Teague, Frédéric Chopin, Lord Kitchener, Gary Gibson, G.H. Green, and Zeqhuina de Abreu.
Choral singers from around the region converged for GLFM’s Choral Programs June 18-22, conducted by John C. Hughes, the festival’s director of choral programs. After intense rehearsals, the Festival Chorus joined the acclaimed bluegrass ensemble Monroe’s Crossing for a rousing performance of The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass by Carol Barnett on June 21 at Rodman Center. The next afternoon, the Composer Residency Choral Ensemble (with pianist Sarah Wheeler) and bass-baritone soloist Vince Wallace performed new and recent works by Shawn E. Okpebholo, GLFM’s 2025 Composer in Residence.
GLFM hosted the highly regarded Chamber Music Institute (July 6-19), which for two weeks each summer provides the opportunity for pre-professional string musicians 18+ from around the world to focus on the unique demands of chamber repertoire with outstanding faculty & guest clinicians from around the U.S.: Program Director Elizabeth Oakes/viola; Annie Fullard/violin; Jesse Holstein/viola, violin; Andrew Janss/cello; Salley Koo/violin; Nick Photinos/cello; Domenic Salerni/Violin; Gregory Sauer/cello; Yiheng Yang/piano. Faculty concerts on July 9 & 16 at Ripon College’s Rodman Center for the Arts featured music by Paul Hindemith, Carlos Simon, Jessie Montgomery, Antonin Dvořák, GLFM Composer in Residence Shawn Okpebholo, and Robert Schumann. The 16 CMI student musicians performed at the David Woods Family Concert July 13 at Rodman Center; and on July 19 students and faculty gave the festival’s final concert of 2025, again at Ripon College’s Rodman Center, featuring works by past CMI faculty member Paul Wiancko, Anton Arensky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Charlton Singleton, Beethoven, Edvard Grieg, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Sergei Prokofiev, Philip Glass, and Edward Elgar.
The season officially concluded on July 25 with the “GLFM Radio Hour” Gala Fundraiser at the Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake. The celebratory gathering (with an old-time radio-show theme) included a cocktail hour, seated dinner (catered by Mr. & Mrs. P’s of Ripon), live and silent auctions and a raffle, and musical interludes by the Avanti Piano Trio, soprano Jeni Houser and pianist Scott Gendel, and the Kabardian Quartet, which was founded earlier in the month by 2025 Chamber Music Institute participants.
