21C Media Group is thrilled to announce that it now handles national media relations for Caramoor Center for Music & Arts. Founded in 1945, Caramoor is one of the more diverse presenters in the music world, inviting stars to perform as well as supporting up-and-coming young artists in music of many genres. Concerts set in and around the idyllic 90-acre Caramoor grounds in Katonah, New York offer a magical experience only an hour’s car ride from New York City. While steeped in its rich and colorful history, Caramoor continues to develop new strands and to find ways of reaching engaged audiences through its educational work, with new Chief Executive Officer Jeff Haydon driving its current artistic and financial success. In recent years Caramoor has become much more than a summer festival, evolving into a year-round cultural beacon. 21C will support the organization as it reaches further with its broad ambitions.

Caramoor showcases artists at the height of their fame across a range of musical genres – from classical, opera and jazz to American roots and the American songbook. There are few musical destinations in the world where you might find talents as diverse as Emmylou Harris, Yefim Bronfman, the Emerson String Quartet, Suzanne Vega, Audra McDonald and Alisa Weilerstein, all of whom have appeared at Caramoor in recent years. Equally, the festival is renowned for supporting young talent and offering opportunities to artists on the cusp of great careers, with programs such as Evnin Rising Stars, Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, Bel Canto Young Artists, and Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence. This wide mix lies at the heart of Caramoor’s approach and appeal and is reflected in this season’s offerings, with summer highlights including French pianist Hélène Grimaud as Artist-in-Residence; Wynton Marsalis headlining the Jazz Festival with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra; Lucinda Williams closing the American Roots Music Festival; productions of Donizetti’s La favorite and Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites; and the festival finale featuring the resident Orchestra of St Luke’s. The summer’s full program details will be announced in early March.

Caramoor was born of great love – that between the founders Walter and Lucie Rosen, and their mutual love of music and the arts. Walter Rosen was a New York banker and amateur pianist, and Lucie Bigelow Dodge a young journalist from a prominent New York family. They met and fell in love at first sight in 1914, and were married six weeks later. In 1926 they bought the Katonah estate; it was only in 1945, following the death of their son Walter while he was serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force, that they bequeathed it as a center for music and the arts in his memory after their deaths. The festival grew out of public concerts that the Rosens held in the house.

The Caramoor experience offers more than music. Concert-goers are invited to come early so that they can enjoy the full delights of the property. The Mediterranean-style house, finished in 1939 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes complete 18^th-century rooms originally from Italy, France and England. With its Renaissance furniture and Gothic tapestries, the Music Room provides an atmospheric concert setting, So do the estate’s bucolic grounds, where music can be heard in a variety of locales, including the Sunken Garden and Friends’ Field, which serves as the perfect spot for family-friendly programs, Dancing at Dusk and the American Roots Music Festival. Some of the summer concerts take place in the partially covered Spanish Courtyard, and the festival’s biggest venue is its Venetian Theater, a fully covered outdoor space that seats 1,700.

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