Bethany Mamola
The Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival has never been content with merely closing its season – it brings it to a crescendo. Indeed, the festival has always possessed an uncanny ability to transform summer evenings into transcendent musical experiences.
The 2025 Gershon/Cohn Final Gala Concert on August 10th raises the bar with “CelloBration” – a gathering of eight world-class cellists that promises to redefine what audiences expect from chamber music.
This year’s approach feels particularly bold. Rather than the traditional mixed ensemble format, “CelloBration” places the cello – that most human of instruments, with its capacity for both profound melancholy and soaring triumph – at the center of the musical universe.
The evening opens with Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras #5,” a piece that marries Brazilian folk rhythms with Bach’s contrapuntal mastery. Originally written for soprano and eight cellos, this performance featuring soprano Bethany Mamola and the festival’s cello ensemble promises to transport listeners to the sun-drenched landscapes of Brazil.
The program’s centerpiece, Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations,” showcases the technical brilliance and emotional depth that made the composer a master of the Romantic era. This challenging work demands not just virtuosic skill but also the kind of musical storytelling that transforms notes into lived experience.
Leading this cello consortium are familiar festival favorites and exciting newcomers. Zuill Bailey and Charae Krueger return as seasoned luminaries, joined by Guang Wang, Nick Curry, Grace Gavin, Martin Gueorguiev, Benjamin Karp, and Laura Usiskin. Each brings their own interpretive voice to create what promises to be a true musical conversation among equals.
The choice of repertoire reflects the festival’s commitment to programming that challenges both performers and audiences. Villa-Lobos and Tchaikovsky represent different continents, eras, and philosophies, yet both understood the cello’s unique ability to sing with human-like expression while anchoring ensemble music.
The concert begins at 5:00 P.M. in the acoustically superb Highlands Performing Arts Center, with the celebration continuing afterward at Wildcat Cliffs Country Club where guests and performers can mingle over dinner in a setting as gracious as the music itself. The Gala is named for donors Ruth Gershon and Sandy Cohn, two visionaries whose legacy of support has helped ensure the Festival’s vibrancy.
As the final notes rise and fade, they leave behind not silence, but resonance—a reminder that great music, like great community, soars higher when it’s shared.
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