Bay Chamber Concerts

Bay Chamber Concerts is a non-profit organization located in downtown Rockport, Maine. Bay Chamber Concerts plays a principal role in bringing music, particularly classical music, to the Mid Coast area. During the months of July and August Bay Chamber Concerts hosts a Summer Music Festival bringing an assortment of musical groups to the Rockport Opera House and surrounding venues. In addition, from September to June, Bay Chamber brings various performers to the Camden, Rockport and Rockland area through their Performing Arts Series. Bay Chamber Music School offers private instruction and group classes to all ages and abilities, regardless of ability to pay. The organization is committed to offering many free programs to the community and especially to those who otherwise have no access to live performance and music education.

Andrew Wolf, pianist, and flutist Thomas Wolf founded Bay Chamber Concerts as a summer chamber music festival in 1961. The teenage brothers with the inspiration and financial assistance of Mrs. Mary Louise Curtis Zimbalist Bok, their grandmother (the violinist Lea Luboshutz) and their uncle (the opera impresario, Boris Goldovsky) established Bay Chamber in an effort to revive a musical tradition begun by the great philanthropist Mary Louise Curtis in 1930.

From 1930 to 1945 Mary Louise Curtis hosted a summer music program at the Curtis Institute of Music. Illustrious musicians from all over the world came to Rockport, Maine to teach and to give concerts in a boat barn. Despite the summer music program's discontinuation in 1945, many musicians continued to come to the Rockport area with their students. As summer residents of Rockport, Maine since early childhood and alumni of the Curtis Institute, Thomas and Andrew Wolf viewed founding Bay Chamber Concerts as a means of continuing Curtis's musical legacy.

The early concerts, under the artistic direction of Thomas Wolf, were held in an Episcopal Church in Camden. At the same time, the Wolf brothers were instrumental in establishing the Fox Island Concerts on Vinalhaven, an island off the mid-coast of Maine. In 1970, Bay Chamber Concerts assisted in the founding of Machias Bay Chamber Concerts in a town 30 miles from the Canada–US border. Under Bay Chamber Concerts' auspices each summer, both locations continue to present numerous concerts.

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