New artistic director named for long-running Lexington Chamber Music Festival

Can one organize and execute a thriving music festival geared to the needs of one city while living and working in another? If you’re talking about the kind of corporate, large scale, commercial savvy events that pepper major cities across the country during the summer months, the answer might — might, mind you —be a reluctant “maybe.”

But if you’re curating an independent festival geared to presenting chamber music within a city like Lexington after that event had been nurtured locally for nearly two decades, the notion of trying to navigate it from, say, Boston, would be an Olympian feat.

That was the realization Nathan Cole came to. A Lexington-rooted violinist with an international performance reputation, he co-founded the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington in 2007 and has served as its artistic director ever since. But in 2024, Cole became only the fourth Concertmaster in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was quite the move upward — geographically, as well as career-wise. But the opportunity made managing and meeting the demands of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington a bit trickier.

“After I got the position in Boston, suddenly my summer schedule changed totally,” Cole said. “The season at Tanglewood (the famed Lenox, Mass., outdoor venue that has been the BSO’s summer home since the 1930s) is not like some other summer orchestral season where players come and go. Everybody moves out to Tanglewood for eight solid weeks. I just can’t get away for any of those weeks, which really puts a crimp in a possible schedule for a Lexington festival.

“Last summer, we were able to play without some of our core members. I was looking ahead to this summer, knowing that it would likely be the same. I just felt the person leading the festival should be somebody in Lexington.”

And so, this summer, stewardship of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington is being passed from a pioneering Lexington musician who has moved away to an equally industrious local artist who has lived and worked for much of his career in Chicago and New York, but has relocated back home — Grammy winning violinist Zach Brock.

“Nathan called me in December, so it was a big surprise to me,” Brock said. “It was really out of left field, not something I ever even thought of as a possibility or desire because I see the festival as inextricably linked to Nathan and the chamber music folks in Lexington. After the initial shock wore off, I was, of course, incredibly moved, humbled and thankful that Nathan would even think of me for something like this.

“The more we talked about it, the more I understood why he was asking me to do this. His vision for the festival moving forward was to continue with the musical precedent it had set, to expand and encompass more things than it already does. He wanted to keep the quality of the original classical chamber music program intact, but also expand the audience of the festival. The more we talked about that, the more it made sense.”

Having Brock take over for Cole as artistic director also made sense to everyone involved with the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington. The two have known each other since childhood specifically since their time playing together in the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra. Cole also invited Brock, then working in the New York/New Jersey area, to return to Lexington to serve as Artist-in-Residence for the festival in 2017.

Stylistically, the move might seem like an odd fit. Brock is well-schooled in classical music, but much of his working life has been in jazz. He currently serves as violinist in the multi-genre instrumental collective Snarky Puppy, with which he tours internationally. The band is also where earned Brock his Grammys.

Brock was set to perform at the Chamber Music Festival last summer, but plans were interrupted by touring duties with Snarky Puppy. Instead, he played an intimate benefit concert for the festival at The Apiary last August. That’s where seeds were planted not for the change of directors — that was an unknown to Brock at the time — but for a collaborative piece titled “What Remains” that the violinist would perform with the Lexington Chamber Orchestra. The piece was to have premiered at a concert in late January, but was postponed to May due to the winter storm that paralyzed much of Lexington.

“The Apiary event was the first time I heard Zach perform live,” said Cacey Nardolillo, who has served as executive director of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington since 2022. “I just thought he was fantastic. He’s got these chops that can transfer from jazz to folk, but he can really play the classical music repertoire, so we’re going to have fun broadening our program — having classical repertoire from the canon of chamber music, but also branching out to bring a varied selection of musicians to come in as our guest artists. It’s going to be a wonderful bridge in growing our audience and adding even more chamber music opportunities for Central Kentucky.”

Cole doesn’t plan to completely remove himself from the festival. He will be on hand when it reconvenes this summer Aug. 21-30 and will continue to participate solely as a performer in subsequent years as his Boston-bound duties permit.

“My plan is to be there as often as my schedule allows,” Cole said. “It’s always one of the weeks I most look forward to and has been for close to 20 years now.

“It was tough coming to this decision. There is this sense of pride with the festival, but the decision was made easier because I knew it was going to be in such great hands with Zach. It would have been a different situation if I was thinking of giving up the festival and turning it over to the world at large. If that happened, I would be concerned that this beautiful thing Lexington has helped nurture would wither and die. But I have no worries about that now.”