Puddingstone Music Series kicks off this week with two concerts

German pianist and Newport resident, Clemens Teufel, will kick off his new music series this week with two live concerts. The concerts will combine performing and non-performing arts in an approachable 19th-century-style salon. Teufel sees a vision of Newport similar to that of Prague – a center of culture with music and art only a stone’s throw away at every turn and accessible to the widest audience possible.

Born in Germany, Teufel studied at the University of Music “Franz Liszt” in Weimar, Germany under Professor Peter Waas and he completed his graduate studies as a student of Professor Lev Natochenny at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt, Germany. Teufel has performed across the globe at venues including Lincoln Center, Newport Music Festival, Rockport Music, Longy’s School of Music Pickman concert hall, Cité des arts in Paris, Summit Music Festival New York, and the Beijing Conservatory besides many others.

Teufel is grateful to work with co-founder and volunteer Kevin O’Leary. O’Leary is the co-founder of three successful music festivals including Terrastock Festival (Providence, RI 1997), Vermont Mozart Festival (Burlington, VT 2014-2018) and Mystic Folkways (Mystic, CT 2022-present).

Puddingstone’s first two concerts will be:

Thursday, October 5 at 6:30pm “Jazz Meets Classics” at Greenvale Vineyards. “Ears of Steel” John Lindsay on the sax and award-winning Rubin brother, Colescott Rubin, on the bass will perform both classical pieces and Jazz-arrangements of evergreens such as Bach’s Inventions, Strauss’ Blue Danube and Brahms’ Hungarian Dances as well as free-style and counterpoint improv. Festival Founder, Clemens Teufel, will chime in on the piano and present some intimate solo and improv pieces. Award winning painter, Alastair Dacey, will present recent works and converse about the difference of creating art based on structure vs improvisation. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Saturday, October 7 at 6:30pm “Music By the Ocean, Art of Light” at IYRS. Fresh off their debut at Buffalo’s prominent summer music festival ArtPark, the new ensemble CS4, headed by violinist Chase Spruill, brings to Puddingstone a thrilling program including a New England Premiere to be performed in Newport’s historic IYRS Boat Restoration Hall.

A specialist in the music for Philip Glass, having recorded multiple albums on the composer’s own label, CS4 brings its expertise to two major works for string quartet including Glass’s String Quartet No.4, dedicated to the artist Brian Buczak, and the New England premiere of Glass’s most recent work for quartet, the tempestuous String Quartet No.9 “King Lear” which was drawn from the composer’s 2019 music for the Broadway production starring Glenda Jackson as Lear. The program is rounded out with a homage to the locale, Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude arranged for quartet. The event will also feature poetry as well as Alison Gibbons’s large scale paintings. Pre-Concert discussion with Chase Spruill and Richard Guérin, head of repertoire of Philip Glass’s publishing company and director of his record label.