Chelsea Music Festival Artistic Directors Seek to Celebrate America

The Chelsea Music Festival is hosting its week-long 17th season this summer with new and returning artists to take the stage, as well as other arts events planned. In celebration of America’s 250th Anniversary, this year’s theme, “Every Story Counts,” aims to “Uplift every immigrant story and every marginalized person’s story,” said Festival Artistic Director Ken-David Masur. The phrase takes inspiration from the quote “Every Vote Counts” where each person’s vote is dignified and counted in a democracy. On the program are nine events that feature an array of performances by varying musicians. The founders and artistic directors of the festival, Ken-David Masur and Melinda Lee Masur, respectively, are excited to be bringing this event back to the streets of New York for yet another season.

Melinda Lee Masur is an internationally acclaimed pianist with performances spanning major venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, and London’s Wigmore Hall. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and is a dedicated chamber musician, performing with renowned artists and as a founding member of the celebrated Lee Trio. Beyond the stage, Masur is deeply committed to education, having taught at institutions including the University of Chicago and Boston University, and now serving on the faculty at Stanford while mentoring young musicians through programs like the BU Tanglewood Institute.

Ken-David Masur is a widely respected conductor, currently serving as Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony’s Civic Orchestra, and Artistic Partner of the Oregon Bach Festival. In addition to his extensive performance and recording career, Masur is, like his wife, dedicated to music education, working closely with young artists and training ensembles, and continuing a global career shaped by his early musical roots in Leipzig and studies in both Germany and the United States.

Q: How did you two meet?

Ken: Melinda and I met doing Bach cantatas and oratorios together. I was studying voice, and Melinda being a pianist, I was fortunate enough to have her as my accompanist.

Q: What did the selection process look like for artists that will be showcased this year?

Ken: For composers, because we will have at least three-dozen living composers represented in the festival, we sometimes have ideas years in advance where we feel that it would be a fantastic piece or a fantastic composer to be featured for a specific theme. 
And this year, with this topic, one idea was the America the Beautiful project, where we have composers writing their own take on what they think is beautiful about America or what it makes them respond to in terms of the origin of that song. And then we have an opening night event that, Melinda, you can talk about more because, Melinda will actually be involved in, but that will start the whole storytelling aspect from the stories of Paul Dunbar. He’s an important African-American poet who has slave roots.

Melinda: The composer Stephen Ward wrote a song cycle based on his poetry. We’re really excited to bring his work to the festival. We also have Clara Ozovsky.

Ken: Ya, she’s an amazing, award-winning arts song recitalist. She’s one of the great American art song recitalists. She is also sort of a leading American figure now in creating American new art songs, and she commissions a lot of composers to write art song cycles. So we have everything from, you know, the storytellers and the storytelling that some are more familiar with and others that are less familiar to get a good range of things for everyone.

Q: What parts of programming the festival have you two disagreed on? Have there been any times where you’re trying to think about who you want to feature, what kind of theme that you want to showcase, and then had to come to some sort of compromise or resolution?

Ken: I hope we do that every year. I think it’s great because I love when Melinda loves something, and it happens all the time that we want to actually have more people than we can possibly program during the festival, because we we love to dig in and hear from composers we would meet that we had never heard of, and that we really think, wow, this would be amazing for a New York audience. What do you think, Melinda?

Melinda: I think at least I hope we would disagree sometimes. I mean, there’s very lively conversations about what we’ll finally get on the program, but I feel like it’s more just healthy processing versus full on disagreements. I probably am more involved in how things are pitched and how things are brought to the world with our marketing team and all of that stuff. Maybe our most heated arguments are about merchandise. He loves his t-shirts, I like totes.


Q: And you can’t do both I assume

Melinda: We do both.

Q: How did you both decide on this year’s theme of Every Story Counts? And why did you decide to do it this year?

Melinda: Well it’s been a tough few years for all of us. And so given the environment that we’re in in this country right now, where people’s stories are kind of being disappeared and people themselves are disappearing, we just feel it’s a good time to celebrate the people who have come here and worked hard and built this country and made this landscape what it is. Truly our American culture is made up of all these people’s stories.

Ken: I think it’s important especially now. We wanted to find the most constructive way to be in thoughtful dialogue. It’s not supposed to be confrontational at all in the sense that you go in the street and you have to use your whistles to get attention, but it is a hopeful way to get people together and have a dialogue. I’ve witnessed growing up that having music before rigorous debate will at least remind people that if we can all listen to some wonderful music together, we have something in common already. And so, the premise of this year’s topic and programming, comes from that aspect.

The festival is scheduled to run from June 20th-27th, with tickets available on their website: https://www.chelseamusicfestival.org/2026