The second annual Chamber Music on the Mountain will be held July 18-30 at Mt. Sequoyah's Millar Lodge and Dining Hall, as well as the Fayetteville Public Library, Thaden Performing Arts Center, Ozark Mountain Smokehouse and the Arkansas Arts Academy. It will feature a variety of performances from local and national classical and jazz artists. Artistic director of CMM is Department of Music associate professor of piano Tomoko Kashiwagi.

The festival's theme this year is "Music That Moves Us," which Kashiwagi says represents a story for every listener. The repertoire will include:

Arkansas composers: Philip Parker, William Grant Still

Women Composers: Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Susan Mutter

Composers of Color: William Grant Still, Astor Piazzolla, Julio Doming and more

Ukrainian Composer: Vasyl Barvinski

Piece Commissioned by the Performer: Susan Mutter's "Song of Survival" for Cory Mixdorf and his son, Meyer

Variety of styles:

Baroque - Telemann Recorder and Flute Concerto

Classical - Weber Clarinet Quintet, Domenico Dragonetti Waltzes

Romantic/Modern- Erwin Schuhoff's "Concertino for Flute, Viola and Bass"; Vasyl Barvinski's "Variations for Strings and Piano"; Arthur Foote's "A Night Piece"

Living Composers - William Bolcom, Ragtime; Mike Mower, Sonata Latino; Ellen Taaffe Zwillich, Quintet (a jazzy response to Schubert's Trout Quintet); Philip Parker, Grooves and more

One such piece that is closest to Kashiwagi's heart is by Ukranian composer Vasyl Barvinsky (1888-1963). One of the first Ukrainian composers to gain international recognition having works published around the world, he was the director of the Lviv State Conservatory of Music, respected as a teacher, composer and a pianist. In 1948, Barvinsky was exiled to a labor camp by the Soviet authorities and his music publicly burned, but after his release, Barvinsky returned to Lviv in 1958 and spent the rest of his life trying to recreate his lost works, many of them from memory. Some works that had been published abroad survived.

Kashiwagi obtained the piano score of his "Sextet for Piano and Five String Instruments" from the Ukranian Scores Project. As she explains it, this particular piece was an incredible labor of love.

"When I received the score for Vasyl Barvinsky's Sextet from the Ukrainian Score Project, they just sent me the piano score. I commissioned another musician to type out the string parts from the score so that we can perform this piece.

"After the CMM performance at the end of this month and all corrections necessary are made, I plan to send the music to the Ukrainian Score Project and upload to the International Music Score Library Project so that more people can play this piece."

The piece will be performed Thursday, July 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the Arkansas Arts Academy and Saturday, July 30, at Mount Sequoyah Center Millar Lodge at 7 p.m. There is no record of this piece being previously performed anywhere in the United States, so do not miss this chance to hear this masterpiece!

Visit the CMM website at https://chambermusiconthemountain.org to find a list of concerts, events and artist biographies.