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Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival_features world-class musicians and composers,
and adds Rabbi Daniel Syme of Temple Beth El to the lineup as narrator for "Peter and the Wolf”
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish. News
lthough the Great Lakes Chamber
Mdsical Festival (GLCMF) generally
restricts its performances to world-class
musicians and young chamber groups
from throughout the world, this year brings an
exception.
In the tradition of featuring personalities from
fields other than music as narrator for Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf Rabbi Daniel Syme of Temple
Beth El, one of the three religious institutions
sponsoring .the festival, has been invited to join the
concert program.
Syme will perform June 18 and 24 in the sev-
enth season of the secular music event, which runs
June 10-24 and also is sponsored by St. Hugo of
the Hills Catholic Church and Kirk in the Hills
Church as well as the Detroit Chamber Winds &
Strings, a local musical ensemble that provides
administration for the concerts.
Pianist and native Detroiter James Tocco, who
has been artistic director since the festival began,
appears in seven of the 21 live performances sched-
uled at the sponsoring religious institutions and
other venues in the area.
William Bolcom, a Pulitzer Prize-winning corn- .
poser, pianist and University of Michigan professor
who has performed at events sponsored by area
Jewish organizations, will be at the keyboard and
serve as composer-in-residence.
"It's a great honor to be invited to be part of this
festival because it's one of the major chamber •
music festivals in the country," says Rabbi Syme,
who was active in theater when he attended the
University of Michigan and long ago performed
with a young rock 'n' roll band.
"Peter and the Wolf is a wonderful composition
for adults and children alike, and I really want to
do a good job. I remember hearing my father,
Rabbi M. Robert Syme, narrate it when I was a
child, and I've asked my brother David, a concert
pianist, to help me prepare for this.
"I think of this year's last festival performance,
which will be at the temple, as a double pleasure
because it comes when we will be celebrating the
150th anniversary of Beth El with a dinner and
silent auction."
This year's concerts feature several returning
musicians, including violist Paul Biss, violinist
Miriam Fried, pianists Ruth Laredo and Gilbert
Kalish, cellists Paul Katz and Nathaniel Rosen,
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William Bolcom and Joan Morris. Bolcom is a featured keyboardist and composer-in-residence for the Great
Lakes Chamber Music Festival. He's an artist in very high demand today within the classical music community.
baritone Kurt 011mann and Detroit Chamber
Winds & Strings. New to the festival are violinists
Joseph Silverstein, Scott St. John and Eric
Pritchard and the Artemis String Quartet.
"Music programs sponsored by religious organi-
zations usually have very interested audiences, and
I like the opportunity to encourage young corn-
posers," says Bolcom, whose compositions will be
played throughout the festival and become the
entire program June 19, when his wife, mezzo-
soprano Joan Morris, will perform.
Bolcom, who has launched 17 premieres in the