A Family Legacy and a Love of Music Inspire New Catskills Classical Festival

A new chamber music festival is bringing internationally acclaimed musicians to the Catskills this summer.

The inaugural Shin Creek Music Festival will feature three performances in Lew Beach and Livingston Manor, with programs ranging from Bach and contemporary works to family-friendly selections featuring music by Irving Berlin and Maurice Ravel.

The festival was created by cellist and writer Nicky Swett and his wife, cellist Geirthrudur Gudmundsdottir, who are bringing together longtime musical collaborators for concerts in the newly renovated Lew Beach Community House.

For Swett, the festival is the realization of a dream decades in the making.

His family has been coming to the Catskills since 1938, when his great-grandfather—the songwriter and composer Irving Berlin—bought a home in Lew Beach. The area became a place where Swett could return to nature and focus on music, especially as he developed as a cellist.

“I’ve always kind of fantasized about organizing a chamber music festival, about bringing really good friends of mine who are musicians to come and play here,” Swett said.

The opportunity came after the renovation of the former church building in Lew Beach into the Lew Beach Community House, a project of the Beaverkill Valley Land Trust.

Swett said one of the goals is to create a space where musicians can rehearse, perform, and connect with audiences in a more personal environment.

“The space that we’re playing in really becomes part of the performance,” he said.

The festival’s opening concert will feature Gudmundsdottir performing solo cello works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Icelandic composer Gudmundur Hafsteinsson, Gudmundsdottir’s father.

The program carries personal significance for the cellist. Her father wrote the large-scale solo cello work before she was born, but Gudmundsdottir said learning the piece as a professional musician gave her a sense of connection to her father’s artistic vision.

“It felt sort of like it had been written for me,” she said.

The composition explores themes of struggle, transformation, and renewal, following a character through experiences of obsession, depression, and recovery.

Gudmundsdottir said the Lew Beach Community House’s smaller scale offers a unique performance experience.

“You really feel like you’re speaking quite individually to every audience member,” she said, adding that the intimacy of the room allows for a wide range of musical expression.

Image: Cellist Geirthrudur Gudmundsdottir will perform a solo cello concert at the Shin Creek Music Festival featuring music by Bach and her father, Icelandic composer Gudmundur Hafsteinsson. (geirthruduranna.com)