The 2009 summer season of Yellow Barn Music School & Festival in Putney ended August 8, with a busy weekend which included a collaboration with Putney’s famed Sandglass Theater, and a Season Finale which features Grammy Award-winning baritone William Sharp in J.S. Bach’s Aria No. 3 from Cantata BWV 32. But the end of summer concerts does not mean the end of this festival’s 40th anniversary year, which will continue into the fall with a residency and more public concerts.

In early October, Yellow Barn will welcome the prize-winning young Parker Quartet to Vermont. During their week-long stay, the group will engage in intensive study of a few specific works, under the tutelage of famed musician-educators including violinist Donald Weilerstein and violist Roger Tapping. On Tuesday, October 6, they will perform at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, with works by Haydn, Bartók and Mendelssohn. Later that week they will be presented at an invitational event at a private home in the Brattleboro area.

The Parkers, Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, violins, Jessica Bodner, viola and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello, are rising stars on the world chamber music stage, having won the Concert Artists Guild Competition in 2005, followed by First Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition and, more recently, the coveted Cleveland Quartet Award. All hold graduate degrees from the New England Conservatory, and all are Yellow Barn alumni, having first attended in 2002 and returning as Quartet-in-Residence in 2004 and 2005. The group has been hailed by The New York Times as “something extraordinary” and by The Boston Globe for their “fiercely committed performances”.

For more information about ongoing Yellow Barn activities including the Parker concerts, visit www.yellowbarn.org or call 802-387-6637. Yellow Barn programs are supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.