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Winter Harb Music Festival

By Sonja O’ Donnell Phot s courtesy of the Winter Harb r Music Festival

Ever since Deiran Manning became Executive Director of the Winter Harbor Music Festival in 2016, according to Artistic Director
and Founder, Deirdre McArdle, there have been “amazing changes” to a classical music program that began in 2009 and remains
deeply rooted in one of Maine’s iconic coastal communities.

Deiran is currently quadruple timing an impressive artistic career as a member of the faculty of the Brooklyn Conservatory, as the
conductor of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado on Long Island and as a performer in a Bronx Opera’s production Bartered Bride. This
evening, he is home again and about to accompany on piano fellow baritone Henry Hortsmann for the evening’s performance of
Schubert’s Winterreise, a kick-off to the Winter Harbor Music Festival’s inaugural First Friday concert series. It is an unseasonably
mild March evening for Downeast, not quite the backdrop to the “winter journey” Deiran imagined when he made the selection.

Yet, it is part of an inspiring vision.
“The piece tonight is pretty obscure for kids to listen to,” Deiran explains, “but one of my goals
is to get children and their parents to come to these performances.” To that end, recordings were shared with the after-school arts
program, “so that if the children do come to the performance, they will recognize it,” Dierdre adds. They plan to do the same for every
concert.

“A large part of the audience base for classical music is older, and there are not a lot of young kids being incorporated or sought out
for that,” Deiran laments. “It’s important for classical music to keep going and survive.”

Practicing for a concert at Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor are quintet members Carol Wincence, flutist, with left
to right: Gary Kosloski, Anatole Wieck, Jeffrey Chow and Braden McConnell.
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