Monday, August 3rd, 2026 at 1:00 pmA Special Event - Concert for Violin, Cello and Piano
with Michael Roth, violin, Peter Sanders, cello, and Diane Fanning, piano
Strode Independent Living
at Morgan Orchards
Admission: FreeThursday, August 6th, 2026 at 7:00 pm Open Rehearsal
Chandler Center for the Arts Admission: Free
Saturday, August 8th, 2026 at 7:30 pm Brahms, Gliere, Źeleński
Chandler Center for the Arts Admission: $27.00 Buy Tickets
Sunday, August 9th, 2026 at 4:00 pm An Encore Performance - Brahms, Gliere, Źeleński Afternoon concert in Woodstock, VT Woodstock Unitarian Universalist Church 7 Church St. Suggested donation at the door, $20.00
Thursday, August 13th, 2026 at 7:00 pm Open Rehearsal
Chandler Center for the Arts Admission: Free
Friday, August 14th, 2026 at 7:00 pm A Special Event - Erik Friedlander Block Ice & Propane
Chandler Center for the Arts
Admission: $20.00 Buy Tickets
Saturday, August 15th, 2026 at 7:30 pm A Special Concert for Walter Parker
Music for mixed ensembles of strings, winds and piano ending with the Dohnányi Sextet in C major, Op. 37
Chandler Center for the Arts Admission: $27.00 Buy Tickets
The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival announces the release of its first highlight CD: Festival Harvest
"The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival has come a long way since it was founded in 1993 by Peter Sanders, a New York cellist who grew up spending his summers in the Randolph area. An indication of just how far is its excellentNew CD, "Festival Harvest," a compilation of live performances of works by Mendelssohn, Schönberg and Frank Bridge at the Chandler Center for the Arts in 2000 and 2004.
When I first heard the album, I had recently heard an excellent performance of Mendelssohn's A Major String Quintet at Vermont's justly revered Marlboro Music Festival. The same work opens this CD, and I actually preferred the Randolph performance. That's big praise."
Thank you for checking in on the CVCMF. The music-making for the 2025 season was memorable. We were thrilled to have the Nico Muhly choral works played by strings from the August 16th, 2025 concert quickly picked up by Performance Today and broadcast on September 22nd. PT has been offering up festival recordings for some time and we thank them. This season will include artists you know and some new ones as well. We continue to create World-class Music in the Heart of Vermont!
Festival dates will be August 3rd - 15th, 2026.
A gala is being planned and that would be on Sunday, August 2nd. Week one will include music for combinations of strings and piano by Brahms, Gliere and Polish composer Władysław Źeleński. We hope to share a preview with Walter Parker at Vermont Public with a visit to the live radio studio on Friday. This is still to be confirmed. A Saturday night concert at the Chandler and we will return to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Woodstock, VT for a repeat performance on Sunday afternoon the 9th.
The second week will bring back many familiar artists from past seasons to play a program of music for strings, winds and piano. This concert is dedicated to Walter Parker, radio host at Vermont Public. Walter has been a good friend of the festival for many years and the sextet on this weeks program was his choice! Music by Spohr, Robert Kahn, Shostakovich and Ernst von Dohnányi will make up a wonderfully varied Saturday night concert.
You can read about all the artists for both weeks on the Artists page of this website. You can also enjoy past performances on YouTube by searching for CVCMF. There are many choices there from over the years.
Please plan on joining us and for those that can, bring friends who might not yet have enjoyed the concerts and amazing acoustics of the Chandler Center for the Arts!
We are all about Community...
Peter Sanders - Artistic Director
Artists and Programs subject to change
CVCMF 2025 - Nico Muhly, choral works played by strings.
With introduction by the composer.
CVCMF 2018 - Vaughan Williams Piano Quintet in c - 1st movement
Interview with Peter Sanders
Peter Sanders had the pleasure of chatting with Kate Remington at WSHU in Connecticut a few weeks ago. Two big topics were covered, including his long relationship with the Stamford Symphony Orchestra (now Orchestra Lumos) and also his 30 year history with the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival. Kate was a host at Vermont Public radio for many years and that is how they met. Please enjoy this lively conversation.
Performance Today Broadcast - February 19th, 2020
The festival was thrilled to have the 2017 Ravel Piece en forme de Habanera performance by Peter Sanders and Adrienne Kim featured during the second hour of Performance Today in February of 2020. Thank you to PT for including the festival again! The performance is available to be viewed on YouTube.
Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival closed its 31st season at Randolph's Chandler Center for the Arts with a concert that underscores the fact that this has become one of the finest of its type in Vermont.
Founder and Artistic Director Peter Sanders has been bringing his New York instrumentalist friends, largely culled from the New York City Ballet Orchestra, where he is a longtime cellist, for two weeks each year to the town where he and his family spent their summers during his youth. Many of the musicians have established local ties and are, indeed, considered part of the community.
Saturday's major work, Mozart's Horn Quintet in E-flat Major, K. 407, was given a delightfully lyrical performance, and introduced a new musician to the community. French hornist Stewart Rose, who moved from the NYC Ballet to the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, played with a natural articulation and an irresistible warm expressiveness.
In fact, much of the quintet was something of a sublime duet between Rose and violinist Arturo Delmoni and their interaction was exquisite. As part of the unusual instrumentation, they were joined by violists Katarzyna Bryla-Weiss and Michael Roth and Sanders on cello. (Bryla-Weiss has also left the NYC Ballet, but for the San Francisco Symphony, but continues to return to Vermont.)
Aiming directly for the heart was the beloved Molto Adagio from Samuel Barber's String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 - better known as "Barber's Adagio." Led exquisitely Roth, this time on violin, Delmoni, Bryla-Weiss and Sanders performed with an intimacy usually reserved for long-term string quartets. It was pure pleasure. Saturday's performance of Alexander Glazunov's String Quartet No. 3 in G Major, Op. 26, "Quatuor Slave," by Delmoni, Roth, Bryla-Weiss and Sanders, seemed better than this pleasant work actually warranted. However, the third movement, "All mazurka: allegretto," was irresistible for its ethnic rhythms, and the finale, "Une fête slave: Allegro" was a fantasy of folk tunes and full of fun virtuosity. It may not have been great, but it was fun.
The program opened with stylish and impassioned performances of two of William Grant Still's "Danzas de Panama," "Tamborito" and "Mejorana y Socavon," by the Vermont Youth Orchestra String Quartet. Violinists Emmerson Stapleton and Emma Xia, violist Elizabeth Cunningham and cellist Ariel Tooey all played skillfully and with a sense of ensemble and style. It bodes well for the future of classical music.
The Central Vermont Chamber Music tends to focus on standard composers and repertoire, but it's what these musicians, normally part of an orchestra, want to play - perhaps that's why they play it so well.
Pulp Fiction performed by Jeffrey Zeigler, Peter Sanders, Hannah Holman, and Chris Finckel (Arrangement: Bernard Amrani) on August 15, 2015 at Chandler Center for the Arts as part of the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival.
Unless otherwise listed, our concerts take place at the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, Vermont. Click here for a map to Chandler Center for the Arts.
The festival is a non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from the IRS.
Click here to download a donation form and help support the CVCMF.
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"...Saturday's Central Vermont Chamber Festival concert Chandler Center for the Arts had me babbling by intermission. When Peter Sanders told his listeners from the stage that they don't know how lucky they are, he was dead right. Except that I think they do know how lucky they are. He's lucky, too."
- Peter Goodman, as appeared in the HERALD, Randolph, Vermont, August 27, 2009. (read the full review here)
Rehearsal, season #1 on Chandler stage - 1993
Adela Peña - violin, Aloysia Friedmann - viola, Peter Sanders - cello, Steven Masi - piano
"Stanziano delivered the dramatic washes of notes with clarity and virtuosity, while Delmoni and Sanders plied the dramatic lines with passion. They also responded to the subtle moments with sensitivity, making this a grand - and fun - performance."
"The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival has become a welcome tradition in Randolph and the central Vermont area, and Saturday's impassioned high level illustrates just why."
"Chamber music festival opens with finesse, spirit. Just when you think you've heard enough chamber music for the summer, someone comes along and performs the Mozart Clarinet Quintet - beautifully, in this case - and the passion returns immediately."
