Famed cellist will perform at Serafin Summer Music festival

Grammy Award winner Sara Sant’Ambrogio will appear in a week of programs to kick off the Music School of Delaware’s Serafin Summer Music 2024 program in the first week of June.

Sant’Ambrogio, a cellist best known as a member of the Eroica Trio, has performed with symphonies around the world as well as recording numerous CDs. She won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for her recording of “Bernstein Arias and Barcarolles.” 

The Serafin Ensemble, from left: Eric Pritchard and Kate Ransom, violin; Miles Brown, double bass; Charae Krueger, cello; and Amadi Azikiwe, viola.

The 2024 Serafin Summer festival starts on June 5 when the Serafin Ensemble performs at 12:30 p.m. at the offices of Young Conaway Stargatt Taylor on North King Street in Wilmington, after a rehearsal at 10 a.m. The law firm is a Serafin sponsor. That event is not open to the public. 

A Serafin Master Class will follow at 5 p.m. with students coached by Serafin artists, at Music School of Delaware, 4101 Washington St., Wilmington. The event is free; no reservations required. 

Next is a happy hour soiree to be held at 4 p.m. June 6 at Stonegate Retirement Community on Kennett Pike. The program will feature Sant’Ambrogio on cello, Victor Asuncion on piano and Kate Ransom on violin. Special tickets are required for attendance. A Serafin appearance at Stonegate in March was sold out. 

At 7 p.m. June 7 the Serafin Ensemble will present a program titled “Fantasy and Fire,” with works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonin Dvorák and Dimitri Shostakovich. The performance will be at the Music School of Delaware in Wilmington.

Sara Sant’Ambrogio, a world-renowned performer and recording artist, will appear at the Serafin Summer Music festival.

The music moves downstate on June 8 with an “Italian Serenade” program at 4 p.m. and again at 7 p.m., at the Music School of Delaware Recital Room, 23 N. Walnut St. in Milford.

The June 9 finale, “Postcards from Italy,” will include works by Luigi Boccherini, Niccolò Paganini, Gian Carlo Menotti and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The performance will be at the Music School of Delaware in Wilmington.

Serafin Summer Music was initiated in 2019 after the long-standing Delaware Chamber Music Festival was discontinued.

Kate Ransom, Serafin violinist and artistic director, said chamber music is a deeply personal and engaging experience for performers as well as listeners.

“Concert-goers get a close-up view of the interaction needed between performers in order to communicate,” said Ransom, who honed her talents with the Alexander String Quartet and now performs at concerts and events nationwide.

“The works written for chamber ensemble are some of the composers’ most intimate and deeply emotional expressions of the range of human experience – from joy to grief, humor to tragedy. It is ‘musical conversation’ at its most compelling,” Ransom said.

Sant’Ambrogio’s appearance this summer is underwritten by the Delaware Commission on Italian Heritage and Culture.

Ticket prices for the Serafin Summer Music festival range from a $10 student admission (with ID), $25 for a single performance (in person as well as virtual) and $125 for all six Serafin Summer Music performances. For more details about the Serafin festival and how to get tickets, visit www.musicschoolofdelaware.org