Taconic Music’s Fourth Festival Concert Brings Cellist Tommy Mesa to Manchester

The fourth and final of Taconic Music’s Chamber Music Saturdays concerts in its 2025 summer festival will take place on July 12 at 7:30pm at the Riley Center for the Arts at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont.

The concert opens with Wang Jie’s whimsical Memories of that first Summer, a composition of six miniatures for solo piano, performed by Taconic faculty pianist, 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Drew Petersen. Following the solo piece, guest cellist Tommy Mesa joins Petersen in Claude Debussy’s Cello Sonata L.135. The recipient of Lincoln Center’s 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Organization’s 2023 Medal of Excellence, its highest honor, Mesa has performed for the Supreme Court of the United States and with major orchestras across the U.S. He will join the cello faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in the fall.

The evening concludes with César Franck’s stirring Piano Quintet in F Minor, op. 14, with Taconic faculty violinist Heather Braun and co-Artistic Directors violinist Joana Genova and violist Ariel Rudiakov joining Petersen and Mesa on the Riley Center stage.

On Monday, July 16 at 7pm, the Young Artists from Taconic’s Chamber Music Intensive return to the stage in the final concert of Taconic’s 2025 season. Violinists Bethlehem Kelley, Amina Knapp, Gisselle Sanchez-Diaz, and Cara Wunder; violists Waverly Long and Sebastian Saiz-Harrison; cellists Irén Hangen Vázquez and Daniel Knapp; and pianist Qiaochuhan Li will perform classical and contemporary works by Felix Mendelssohn, Béla Bartók, Caroline Shaw, and Antonín Dvořák.

Chamber Music Saturdays concerts are $30 for adults, free for students and kids. Reservations are recommended. All attendees at Saturday concerts are invited to an informal pre-concert reception beginning at 6:30, when the box office opens. Young Artists Concert admission is by free-will offering at the door, with a suggested donation of $15 for adults, free for students and kids.

For those who cannot make it to the concert hall, concerts will be livestreamed on Taconic’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/@taconicmusic/streams). For more information about Taconic Music’s summer festival and year-round programs, visit taconicmusic.org.