Bowdoin International Music Festival returns to Brunswick with 280 students

Brunswick’s Bowdoin International Music Festival is back with about 280 student musicians, 70 free events and 20 ticketed performances, filling Bowdoin College and nearby venues with chamber music, orchestral works and masterclasses.

The summer institute runs June 27 through Aug. 8, while public events run June 29 through Aug. 7. The season opens with the Ying Quartet on June 29, followed by the Scholarship Gala on June 30 and a July 1 program built around Schubert, Elizabeth Ogonek and a world-premiere arrangement of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra for two pianos. Later in the summer, performances include the Jupiter, Shanghai and Brentano quartets, along with violinist Frank Huang, cellist Zlatomir Fung and pianist Jon Nakamitsu.

Free community events, Young Artists concerts, lectures, masterclasses, a Scholarship Gala and a Student-Sponsor Brunch are on the public calendar. Many of the events are centered on the Bowdoin College campus and Studzinski Recital Hall, with others in performance spaces around Brunswick.

The program began in 1964, after Bowdoin College music department chair Robert Beckwith invited violinist Lewis Kaplan to propose a summer concert series. The festival became an independent nonprofit in 1997 and took the Bowdoin International Music Festival name in 2004. David Ying and Phillip Ying became artistic directors in 2014, and Daniel Nitsch joined the staff in 2015 before becoming executive director in 2016.

During Nitsch’s tenure, student applications have doubled, scholarship awards are up 90% and streaming has reached nearly 100 countries. Last year’s festival drew nearly 12,000 in-person attendees and close to 23,000 livestream viewers. Students arrive from more than 20 countries and nearly every U.S. state.