June 24, 2025
private home
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Kenn Wagner, violin; Eric Hawkins, horn; Logan Souther, piano.
Johannes BRAHMS: Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40
William Ford | 26 JUN 2025
Atlanta’s summer of 2025 has been unrelentingly hot—not just in temperature but in its conspicuous drought of classical music. Once-vibrant programs like the Atlanta Symphony’s “ASO at Chastain” and Emory University’s June chamber series have faded, leaving the city’s abundant and atmospheric outdoor venues strangely silent. Brahms and Beethoven have vanished from the summer air. Culturally speaking, Atlanta has become a classical music desert.
In response to this void, conductor Michael Palmer has created something both timely and lasting: the Georgia Festival of Music. Now in its second season, the festival not only presents high-caliber performances but also prioritizes mentorship and musical legacy. Its centerpiece, the Art of Conducting Academy, is a five-day intensive designed to equip emerging conductors with professional coaching, masterclasses, and crucial podium experience. It all culminates in a public concert with the festival’s MainStage Orchestra.
On Tuesday evening, the festival hosted a chamber concert that embodied both excellence and intimacy. Held in Palmer’s own living room—a literal chamber for chamber music—the performance offered a rare, up-close encounter with Brahms. The physical proximity between artists and audience fostered a remarkable sense of connection.
Palmer’s deconstructivist-meets-industrial-chic condo fits right into the eclectic personality of Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, a neighborhood alive with street art, indie coffee shops, and architectural boldness. The compact space is visually dominated by a full-sized Bösendorfer concert grand piano, which commands the room like a sculptural centerpiece—both an instrument and an altar to the music. To hear Brahms in this urban loft, just steps from taco joints, speakeasies, and community murals, felt less like a contradiction and more like a celebration of how classical music can live within everyday life.
The centerpiece of the evening was Johannes Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40, written in the wake of the composer’s mother’s death. Scored for the unusual combination of violin, horn, and piano, the piece was once considered shocking for its instrumentation but is now a beloved part of the chamber music repertoire. The trio moves from pastoral warmth to private grief with stunning emotional range.
The performers—Kenn Wagner (violin), Eric Hawkins (horn), and Logan Souther (piano)—offered a performance of striking cohesion and nuance. Wagner phrased with warmth and subtle restraint, while Hawkins’s tone conveyed both the nobility and vulnerability of the horn’s voice. Souther provided the harmonic grounding and rhythmic momentum that held the ensemble together. The room’s intimacy brought an acoustic immediacy, and from my seat just a few feet from the horn, its presence was especially vivid. Hawkins handled that prominence with grace and control. The piano part, by contrast, felt somewhat recessed in the space—but this seemed more a matter of perspective than balance. I suspect Brahms would have approved.
An equally important facet of the festival is its commitment to cultivating future talent. This year, six Conducting Fellows were selected from across the country to participate in the Art of Conducting Academy:
- Robert Botwinski (Schaumburg, IL), a middle school orchestra director and active performer in Chicagoland
- Justin Han (Atlanta, GA), choral conductor, pianist, and director of the Athens Master Chorale
- Quinn Mason (Dallas, TX), a nationally recognized composer-conductor with over 220 commissioned works
- Noah Mittwer (Glendora, CA), a trombonist and award-winning bagpiper who bridges classical and folk traditions
- Charlotte Wang (Amherst, MA), a promising young conductor with growing national recognition
- Alex Wilkerson (Richmond, VA), an emerging talent representing the next generation of orchestral leadership
All six fellows attended the concert, mingling with the audience before and after the performance—an informal but meaningful gesture that reinforced the festival’s community-minded ethos. Their presence was a quiet reminder that musical excellence and mentorship can coexist in the same room—sometimes literally.
Throughout the week, these young conductors participated in masterclasses, coaching sessions, and rehearsals, primarily under Maestro Palmer’s direction, in preparation for the festival’s closing event: the MainStage Orchestra Concert on Saturday, June 28 at 7:30 PM, at Saint Mark United Methodist Church.
Each fellow will conduct a movement from works by Mozart, Dvořák, or Haydn, with evaluations by Palmer, associate conductor Logan Souther, and members of the orchestra. This final concert is more than a performance—it’s a rare, real-world audition for the artistic and leadership demands of the podium. With tickets priced at just $25, it’s one of the most accessible high-level music experiences in Atlanta this summer.
The Georgia Festival of Music is a vital addition to the city’s cultural landscape. It offers more than programming—it offers purpose. By bringing world-class music into intimate spaces and investing in the next generation of conductors, Michael Palmer is building a bridge between artist and audience, between past and future. And in a city far too quiet in summer, that’s a sound worth celebrating. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Georgia Festival of Music: g‑fm.org
Read more by William Ford.
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