Our News
Keep up to date with our latest news at The Sembrich! Scroll down to see the latest updates on our Bolton music festival, other events, museum programs, and scheduled activities! To read Notes from the 9th Floor, a newsletter from Artistic Director Richard Wargo, click here.
The Sembrich has announced its 2026 summer festival, “Brava! Celebrating Women in Music,” featuring 20 events from Sunday, June 7 through Wednesday, Sept. 2 on Lake George. The festival recognizes women composers and performers across centuries, from historical figures to contemporary artists.
It is with profound sadness that we share news of the passing of Anita Behr Richards, a longtime supporter and beloved member of The Sembrich and Bolton Landing community.
He was inspired by a dramatization of the story by Michael Pavese, a longtime friend, and promised to be a story that would fit quite well into the intimate performance space at the museum.
This it does. Splendidly. That’s because the music and lyrics are extremely compelling, because the singers are extraordinary, and because the playing space is used so creatively. The venue is the music studio built for the renowned soprano Marcella Sembrich, now a museum that affords an intimate performance space.
It was a triumph for the performers; it was as concert-friendly a setting as you could imagine; it was a very happy audience that paused for some refreshment and a last look at lovely Lake George before heading into the night.
The Sembrich has opened its studio museum and historic lakeside grounds for the 2024 season. Visitors can explore the rich artistic history of our region and learn about one of the Gilded Age’s most popular international celebrities through the museum’s exhibitions and events.
The Sembrich and Opera Saratoga will celebrate Juneteenth with a studio talk and performance by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis on Wednesday, June 19 at 7 PM. Davis will be joined by soprano Christine Jobson, bass-baritone Carl DuPont, and pianist Alan Johnson, who will perform selections from Davis celebrated operas.
Vincent Caruso, one of the voices behind Sirius XM’s “Symphony Hall,” will give a studio talk at The Sembrich on June 15, 2024, at 2 PM. The talk, titled “A Kitchen, A Radio, and a Kit,” will discuss Caruso’s journey through classical music and radio. The popular satellite radio host will be joined by Joel Brown and the Finger Lakes Guitar Quartet performing arrangements for classical guitar.
There's fun for the whole family this holiday season! We're back at The Hyde Collection for streams of The Met: Live in HD, hosting special holiday tours for the Bolton Landing Holiday House Tour, and bringing holiday cheer with unique holiday gifts!
Written from the desk of his 9th floor composition studio in Scranton, Pennsylvania, The Sembrich’s Artistic Director and Composer-in-Residence Richard Wargo offers special insights into the planning of each season at The Sembrich and his own work as a composer.
Notes from the 9th Floor
The boxes here are on ninth floor are repacked now, ready for a return trip to Bolton Landing. A great deal of my time here during the past nine months has been spent working with our Sembrich “team,” preparing the upcoming summer festival, “Trailblazers,” and the numerous exciting events that we look forward to sharing in the weeks ahead.
This year, an extended museum schedule kept me in residence on the Sembrich grounds well into October. One of the first tasks awaiting me on my return to Scranton was the assembly of the instrumental parts for my Christmas cantata, VOICES IN THE MIST.
Quite by chance, these past six months featured productions of three of my operas: “A Visit to the Country” (Part Two of A CHEKHOV TRILOGY) at University of Georgia, “Losers,” Part Two of BALLYMORE at Illinois Wesleyan University and “Winners,” Part One of BALLYMORE at Westminster Choir College.
While the autumn season in recent years has become a time for me to travel, most notably, to Eastern Europe, to visit musical colleagues in Poland and Ukraine, this year, quite by chance, the travel focus has turned to colleges and universities here in the US, to hear performances of some of my works.
Like last season, my winter-time travel this year was minimal, due to the ongoing pandemic. But an unexpected opportunity arrived with the mid-March Canadian premiere of my opera THE MUSIC SHOP, a virtual production presented by Vancouver Opera…
Happy New Year! And warm wishes from the three small rooms that comprise my office and composing studio on the ninth floor of the Professional Arts Building in downtown Scranton, where I’ve been working almost exclusively since the outbreak of COVID-19 last March.
The pervasive mood of these coronavirus days brought to mind the photo on the right, one of my favorite images from The Sembrich Collection, dating from July, 1914. Not to compare our current crisis with the calamity of the Great War, but the emotion and pensive mood conveyed by this image seems to capture the uncertainty of our own pandemic times.