The Salt Bay Chamberfest usually plays during the summer in a converted barn in Damariscotta, Maine, under the direction Wilhelmina Smith, a cellist and its founder and artistic director. But the Covid pandemic put an end to that this summer.
Undeterred, Ms Smith, who made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra when she was still a student at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1997, carried on, taking her cello and a cinematographer out to a float in the middle of Round Pond Harbor. There, sitting on a lobster trap, she played the prelude from Cello Suite No 6 in D Major, while the camera focuses on the working harbor’s everyday scenes.
The Chamberfest’s notes for the concert say that the prelude offers “metaphors for the cycle of life, of journeys to distant places, of going and returning, and of the joys and hardships of lives lived with the ultimate return to the anchorage of nature and a home port.”
A classic cellist, Ms Smith has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Guarneri and Juilliard String Quartets. But, as evidenced by the video, she does not limit herself; she also has performed with Sting and Bruce Springsteen.
The concert lasts about five minutes. See – and hear – it here:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/478303079
https://saltbaychamberfest.org
