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Serafin Summer Music, Chamber Orchestra at the garden, and The Sisters
BSR Classical Interludes, June 2025
Gail Obenreder
June music continues with two expansive festivals—one in the Philadelphia environs and one in Delaware. There are also three world premieres and a look into the history and repertoire of an iconic string instrument. And if you’re at one of Philadelphia’s burgeoning farmers markets this summer, you might run across Orchestra 2001 offering one of their unusual “Playing the Markets” concerts. Here’s to a musical start to the summer!
Serafin Summer Music
June 10-27, various times and dates
Multiple locations in Wilmington, Greenville, and Lewes, Delaware
For their annual Delaware chamber festival, Serafin Summer Music will offer 12 performances featuring 17 international musicians over three weeks in June. Concerts will be held in three locations statewide—Wilmington, Greenville, and Lewes. This year, their series is titled “A Season of Firsts”, since many of the concerts are programmed to feature prominent early works by major composers like by Schumann, Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, along with a host of others.
Dolce Suono Ensemble: Earth
Thursday, June 12, 7pm
Trinity at 22nd, 2212 Spruce Street
Closing their season, this ensemble presents a song cycle by award-winning Chinese-born American composer Fang Man. Commissioned in 2012 by Dolce Suono, Earth is her setting of some of the original Chinese poems that Gustav Mahler set as Das Lied van der Erde. This work for soprano (Ashley Marie Robillard) and baritone (Norman Garrett) features an ensemble (under conductor Jason Fettig) that includes Mimi Stillman (flute), Calvin Falwell (clarinet), Juliette Kang (violin), Gabriel Cabezas (cello), Charles Abramovic (piano), and Gabriel Globus-Hoenich (percussion). The concert also includes Brazilian chôros and works by Leonard Bernstein.
Liberty City Arts: The Sisters
Thursday, June 13, 7pm
Saturday, June 15, 4pm
Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 North American Street
This new chamber opera by Patricia Wallinga imagines a dreamlike conversation among four pioneering women poets across time. The work was inspired by Amy Lowell’s The Sisters, with libretto (also by Wallinga) created from the poems of Lowell, Sappho, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Directed by Elise D’Avella, with musical direction by Ting Ting Wong, this fully staged premiere production for four singers also features a string quintet.
The Crossing: The Last Days of Immanuel Kant
Saturday, June 14, 7pm
First Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia
For this year’s Month of Moderns, a concert titled “What Should I Do?” features Donald Nally’s lauded choral ensemble in a world premiere by Gavin Bryars. Commissioned by the ensemble, this full-length opus is the third Bryars composition that the Crossing has premiered, and it is based on a biographical essay that honors the 18th-century thinker’s intellect as well as his fastidiously organized (but slowly unraveling) life. Nally and Bryars will give a pre-concert talk at 6pm, and there will be a post-concert meet-the-artists reception.
Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia: Orchestra in the Garden
“Mostly Mozart”
Saturday, June 14, 7pm
Stoneleigh, 1829 E. County Line Road, Villanova
“Summer Serenade”
Thursday, June 26, 7pm
Bartram’s Garden, 5400 Lindbergh Boulevard, Philadelphia
Friday, June 27, 7pm
“Songs of Hope”, Esperanza Arts Center, 4261 North 5th Street, Philadelphia
Saturday, June 28, 7pm
Stoneleigh, 1829 East County Line Road, Villanova
This ensemble is reprising its lovely summer outdoor concert series in three different locations. On June 14, “Mostly Mozart” features his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Divertimento in D Major, along with Grieg’s Holberg Suite. Later in June, countertenor Reggie Mobley will lead the orchestra and sing a “Summer Serenade” of songs by Purcell, Handel, Sancho, and others, along with a selection of spirituals. Though the repertoire is the same, the concert at Esperanza Arts Center is titled “Songs of Hope” and is ticketed separately.
The Public Pleasure: Solo: A Brief History of the Cello and the Illusion of Solitary Endeavors
Sunday, June 29, 3pm
Gloria Dei (Old Swedes) Church, 916 South Swanson Street, Philadelphia
Cellist Eve Miller, founder of the Publick Pleasure, will give a solo performance billed as “part concert, part contemplation, part history lesson, part collaboration”. The concert will feature unaccompanied music for cello spanning works of the 17th century to the present day by Gabrielli, JS Bach, Joseph Dall’Abaco, Alan Hovhaness, Eleanor Alberga, Bright Sheng, and a world premiere composition by Philadelphian Mark Rimple.
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