— By Meredith Guinness, 7.9.2026 for CT Examiner

OLD LYME — In honor of the nation’s 250th birthday, the town’s 36-year-old chamber music series, Musical Masterworks, dips its ladle into the melting pot of American composition and arrangement.

And, while you’re sure to find plenty of Yankee Doodle dandies from Copeland and Gershwin on each of the series’ five main concert programs, you’ll also encounter a number of composers who are just getting their due and some instrumentation you might find nowhere else. Bluegrass sax, anyone?

The series starts October 10 and 11 with a quartet featuring violinist Tessa Lark, who is celebrating her fifth season as artistic director. She’ll be joined by violist Melissa Reardon and two Musical Masterworks veterans, pianist Jeewon Park and Edward Arron on cello. The program includes everything from Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s “Louisiana Blues Strut” to Antonín Dvořák’s “Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 87.”

Lark said she is particularly happy to showcase a viola sonata by Rebecca Clarke, an internationally renowned viola virtuoso who stopped composing when she married in the mid-1900s. First performed in 1919, the sonata is her most successful work, Lark said.

Concerts on December 5 and 6 will feature another Musical Masterworks fan favorite, Emi Ferguson. The flutist is also taking curatorial credit for the program.

“It’s always fun to have one of the artists program works, just in case people get tired of my programming style,” Lark said, laughing.

The concert features the series debut of pianist/composer Peter Dugan, host of radio’s “From the Top,” with Lark’s father, Bob Frederick, on banjo. While Lark said she fondly remembers her dad, a wildlife biology professor by day, playing at their Kentucky home and in a gospel bluegrass band, this is the first time she’s coaxed him to Old Lyme for a performance.

The program includes a lengthy selection of American tunes, including Meredith Monk’s “Ellis Island” and “Phantom Waltz,” four works by Aaron Copeland, a John Cage, and “Unsquare Dance” by jazz great Dave Brubeck.

“It’s like a big variety show,” Lark said. “That’s what I love about [Emi’s] programming. It hits kind of like a playlist.”

February audiences will be treated to an appearance by Caleb Hudson, who Lark calls “one of the greatest trumpet players who ever lived.” He and organist Greg Zelek will play a special Valentine’s Day Weekend program to inaugurate the first series concert featuring the historic First Congregational Church organ.

Concerts on March 13 and 14 found inspiration in the final piece on that weekend’s program, William Grant Still’s “Ennanga.” Named for an African harp, the piece requires unusual instrumentation featuring a piano, two violins, cello and the harp, which will be played by returning musician Charles Overton.

“It’s very romantic and quite stunning,” Lark said of the composition, which will follow works by George Gershwin, Amy Beach, Camille Saint-Saëns and more.

As in the 2025-26 Musical Masterworks series, the April concerts, on April 24 and 25, will feature the winner of the Irving M. Klein International Strings Competition. This year’s performer, Starla Breshears, is just 18 and has already secured a job as a section cellist with the San Francisco Symphony.

Anticipating the concert, Lark caught some of the livestreamed competition and said she was floored by the young musician’s mature interpretation.

“I was truly enjoying the music she was making. She transcends the cello already,” Lark said. “I thought, if she’s not the winner, I’m terrified of who is!”

Breshears will be joined by Lark and Jesse Mills on violin, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt on viola and Sarah Rommel on cello. The program will include Felix Mendelssohn’s “String Octet in E-flat major,” which Lark believes is “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”

Noting Mendelssohn composed the work when he was just 16, she said it was a fitting challenge for the young competition winner, who recently graduated high school. The composition is also the inspiration for the season’s brochure, a handmade work by artist Elizabeth Strazzulla, who said the piece’s youthful energy creates “an explosion of hot colors and exquisite harmonies.”

While the main concert series takes place on Saturdays evenings and Sunday afternoons at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Musical Masterworks will present a more spontaneous program on April 2 featuring Lark and Eddie Barbash, a saxophonist best known for his work with Jon Batiste’s band on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

The pair will play duets, dipping deeply into bluegrass, Scottish tunes and other styles, which may include a few new works written for each other and by musical friends. This one-hour MMModern concert, at a venue to be announced, will include cocktails and more time to improvise and “be adventurous,” Lark said.

“If Covid taught us nothing else,” she said, “once we have food, water and shelter, we need people.”

For more information or to buy tickets, visit https://musicalmasterworks.org/.