WORTHINGTON — The Sevenars Music Festival is returning this Sunday for its 54th season with a concert that will feature the premiere of two new pieces of music.
“We’re keeping it going,” Sevenars Executive Director Rorianne Schrade said. “And the next generation is coming down the pike.”
Sevenars gets its name from founders Robert Schrade and Rolande Young Schrade and their five children, all of whom have names that start with “R.” All seven used to play together and Rorianne Schrade, as the youngest, first performed as part of the concert series when she was 5 years old.
This Sunday’s 4 p.m. concert will feature the premiere of a song cycle from Anita Anderson Cooper, based on poems from Gloria House.
“They’re very healing poems,” Rorianne said.
“Sevenars is a long established music festival,” said Cooper, who has performed at Sevenars before and will be the singer for this weekend’s song cycle. “Premiering something of my own is very exciting.”
Cooper praised the work of House, who she noted has written a lot on social justice, but also on living in general.
“She has a wide variety of things that she writes about,” she said.
The second premiere on Sunday is a two-piano suite called “Carnival of the R-nimals,” specifically composed for Sevenars by Clifton J. “Jerry” Noble.
Bird calls and the hopping of rabbits is suggested as part of the piece, among other animals.
“You can hear the waves in the manta ray piece,” said Rorianne, who will accompany Noble in the performance. “He suggests it all in the music.”
Kara Noble, Jerry Noble’s wife, will read poems as part of the piece.
In addition to the premieres, Sunday’s concert will feature performances by Rorianne Schrade, her niece and nephew Lynelle James and Christopher James, the children of her late sister Robelyn, and their father David James, a native of New Zealand who is returning to Sevenars after being stuck in that country since 2019 because of the pandemic.
A subtheme in this year’s concert series is the work of Schubert, who had the 225th anniversary of his birth this year.
Rorianne Schrade will also play a piece from composer Alexander Scriabin to honor her brother Randolph, who died on July 2.
“We shared a great love of Scriabin,” Rorianne said.
With Randolph’s death, Rorianne is the last Schrade of her generation still publicly performing.
The next concert will be Sunday, July 17, and feature a series of piano and cello duos performed by Christopher James and Luis Ortiz. Among these will be Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata.”
On July 24, pianist Jiayan Sun will return to Sevenars to treat the audience to an all-Schubert program.
She also noted that Sun allowed the nonprofit to post his performance unedited and in full online, something she said is a rarity in the classical music world.
Ukrainian pianist Liana Paniyeva will perform on July 31, after several years of trying to get into Sevenars. Rorianne said that Paniyeva is a prize-winning pianist who has performed on multiple continents.
“She’s really played all over the world,” she said. “She’s the real deal.”
The Aug. 7 concert will feature musician and filmmaker Judith Lynn Stillman on piano, accompanied by Rachel Braude on flute and Charles Dimmick on violin.
The concert will feature music from a variety of artists, as well as Stillman’s own composition, “Poet As Immortal Bird,” for spoken word and piano, with Rorianne doing the spoken word portion of the piece.
The final concert will be on Aug. 14, and will feature the jazz styling of the Bob Sparkman Trio. The trio consists of Jerry and Kara Noble and their friend Bob Sparkman, and the group has closed out the concert series for many years.
“That’s a real toe-tapping fun one,” said Rorianne.
She said that Sparkman and Jerry Noble “mesh like no one else” when performing, and that special mocktails will be served at the event.
All concerts take place on Sundays at 4 p.m. at the Academy building, located at 15 Ireland St., a former school that the Schrade family turned into a concert hall.
No admission is charged for any of the concerts, although the suggested donation is $20.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.