Founded in 2014, The Middlebury Chamber Music Festival includes concerts, lessons, masterclasses, community events and an intensive weekend of chamber music coaching.   Directed by Emily Sunderman as a project of the Middlebury Community Music Center, the festival includes workshops for amateur and professional musicians in improvisation and chamber music, concerts and master classes by renowned visiting artists and faculty.

The idea for the festival originated when members of the Addison String Quartet wanted to improve as an ensemble. We decided to ask Miho Weber to come and coach us.   A few of us had worked with Miho at Point CounterPoint.  While at Point Counterpoint, we’d met a few other like-minded adult amateurs, so we invited these friends to Middlebury for a weekend to be coached by Miho.  We enjoyed pot lucking and music-making together and one thing led to another and the idea for the festival emerged.

The mission of the festival is to make great works accessible to curious musical minds through full immersion into standard and new repertoire.  The faculty’s goals are to inspire musicians to explore their love for chamber music while challenging them to have the highest of standards.  Through intense rehearsals, we aspire that all our students become independent and intelligent performers and storytellers of the music while developing new and lasting friendships with their fellow musicians.