The Hamptons Festival of Music Brings the Sounds of Its Symphony to St. Luke's in East Hampton

September is upon us, and that means The Hamptons Festival of Music mainstage season can’t be far away. TH·FM, as it is called for short, brings full orchestral performances to the East End every September and is now gearing up for its fourth season.

This year, three mainstage concerts featuring The New American Sinfonietta, TH·FM’s 41-piece orchestra, are scheduled for September 6, 11 and 14, and fans of TH·FM’s past festival offerings will definitely notice some major changes to the programming this time around — most notably, the venue. While the first three festivals were presented in the black box theater space at Wainscott’s LTV Studios, this year, all three concerts will be performed at TH·FM’s new home on the campus of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton.

TH·FM will be presenting music in two different buildings at St. Luke’s. The Saturday, September 6, and Sunday, September 14, concerts will feature the full orchestra performing in the church’s Hoie Hall, which seats 100 to 125 audience members, under the baton of Maestro Michael Palmer, TH·FM’s artistic director. The Thursday, September 11, concert will be presented in the 300-seat church sanctuary under direction of TH·FM’s assistant conductor Logan Souther with a pared down selection of the orchestra’s musicians.

While LTV Studios’ black box theater made TH·FM’s first three festivals a success, Palmer and Yip note that at St. Luke’s, there is a flexibility to take the music to a new level. They are especially excited about the architectural interior of Hoie Hall, which will add a layer of Old-World charm they find reminiscent of another era. The beams of the hall’s lofted ceiling, along with its board and batten walls, wooden floors and Gothic arched windows speak to a time in history during which many classical pieces were originally composed and performed.

“The 10 years I toured Europe with my own orchestra, we played the great concert halls in great villages,” Palmer said. “Back in the day, if you had 25,000 people in your town, the government would provide a concert hall. The halls in Europe never had a bad place to play.”

Now, a bit of that same ambiance will be created for TH·FM’s concerts at Hoie Hall.

“The European halls seem to me to be so well-tuned acoustically, though many of them are hundreds of years old or more. They had a real ear for that,” Palmer said. “What sounds like short notes in a recording of the Vienna Philharmonic, for example, are not short at all, but the hall picks it up and lengthens it.”

“That space is so live, and a quarter of it will be taken up by the orchestra,” Yip added of Hoie Hall. “If you’re in a wooden hall like those in Europe and don’t calibrate the power of this orchestra, you’re in for a disaster. This is an option to tweak the controls. This requires much more finesse than if you unleashed the orchestra as if you were in a 2,000 person hall. Everyone has to be playing at an appropriate intensity and volume.”

“The orchestra won’t have to muscle their instruments,” added Souther in explaining how the musicians will temper their performances to account for the wooden hall.

For that reason, adjustments will need to be made by the musicians for the Hoie Hall performances and since the full orchestra has never played together in the room, the first rehearsal will be focused on tuning the orchestra to the space.

“They need to coexist,” Yip said. “Once we have the first concert set, it will feel like an 18th century concert in a grand ballroom. The other difference from LTV is that there will be no stage this year. The audience will be seated on the same level as the musicians.

“We’re literally creating this great ballroom feel and maintaining the intimacy with the orchestra,” Yip added. “You’ll feel like you’re in a candlelit ballroom. People will come into a beautiful, low-lit romantic space. It will feel like they’re in Beethoven’s time. All of a sudden, there will be this casting of light on the orchestra. It’ll be a visual contrast of a very classical, intimate feeling to, now, you see the orchestra.”

Souther stresses just how unique the experience will be to hear a full symphonic performance in such an intimate setting where the musicians are seated on the same level as the audience.

“I spend a lot of time with orchestras, and this sends chills down my spine,” Souther admitted. “I don’t think there’s anywhere on Earth you can have an orchestral experience like we offer. It’s like having the quality of the New York Philharmonic, but as if it’s you and just the first two or three rows of people.”

“With the 41-piece orchestra, the first downbeat will be gorgeous,” Palmer said with a grin. “The audience will feel it. The orchestra knows you’re there and they see you.”

Being seen has been a big part of the mission for TH·FM since the nonprofit’s arrival on the East End in 2021. Palmer, Souther and Yip reflected on how they have worked to expand awareness of their organization in the wider community by bringing classical music to new audiences in novel and creative ways.

For example, in mid-August, TH·FM presented a “Tasting Notes” benefit at Hoie Hall. The immersive event blended live chamber music, wines paired with the music selected by Lisa Schock of Park Place Wines & Liquors and culinary offerings courtesy of Moby’s in East Hampton.

“It was such an incredible event,” Yip said. “Elegant, but warm. These are behind-the-curtain experiences.”

Also coming up for TH·FM’s supporters is a private Mexican mole dinner in Sag Harbor, prepared by violinist Juan Ramírez, a member of the Atlanta Symphony. In addition to being a musician, Ramírez is a chef, avid gardener and close friend of Palmer’s and he will bring his passion for music and Mexican cuisine to the event — along with his own stock of vegetables from his garden.

“He even makes the tortillas — grinds the corn himself,” Souther said. “He also brings the peppers and everything he needs to make the mole.”

And coming up next Wednesday and Thursday, September 10 and 11, between the hours of noon to 5 p.m. four TH·FM musicians — a pair of trumpeters and a woodwind duet — will offer pop-up performances throughout East Hampton Village at the Black and White Gallery, LVIS Thrift Store, BookHampton, Smokey Buns and Kumiso. The event will end with a members-only outdoor tea event.

But perhaps TH·FM’s most important outreach effort to date is the one that involves East End families. In late May, TH·FM presented its “Second Annual Tour of the Hamptons,” with Souther, a protégé of Maestro Palmer at Georgia State University in Atlanta, presenting four concerts featuring eight musicians from the TH·FM Salon Orchestra, along with the vocal talents of Metropolitan Opera Award-winning soprano Greer Lyle and soloist Garry Ianco (a violinist and TH·FM’s assistant concertmaster). The concerts were held in locations throughout the area — Springs Community Presbyterian Church, St. Luke’s in East Hampton, Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor and St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton.

“It’s good for us to get to know the community,” Souther said. “After two years of those outreach performances, people who heard us are now hosting our musicians or have become donors. They’re entering our orbit through these outreach performances.

“These are people who love art, beauty and community experiences — they come and see eight to 10 players, with Greer doing a standard repertoire,” Souther added. “It’s in between chamber music and conducted performance. Chamber music is a good entry point. The audience is distinctly different in each hamlet.”

“That’s where a tour of the community allows us to connect differently,” Yip added.

And it’s not just adults coming to hear the music. TH·FM has also taken classical repertoire to students through a residency at East Hampton High School. This past spring, Souther and Greer attended rehearsals of the school’s orchestral program and, in turn, those students performed for their younger counterparts at Amagansett and Wainscott schools with Souther on keyboards and Lyle singing alongside them. The TH·FM Salon Orchestra also performed for students in the high school auditorium, while Souther and Lyle visited younger children at Project Most and the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center where they offered an introduction to classical music.

“We do some evangelism,” Souther said. “We have a cross section of everyone. We’ve built relationships with students, so it’s not unusual to have families come to our community concerts.

“It’s a home for younger audience members,” Souther added. “It’s so experiential, and having an orchestral offering here is so different than anything else. A lot of young parents saw orchestral music when they were young in the city.”

Yip added that people have taken notice of the wide range of ages in terms of the audiences that come to TH·FM performances.

“Patrons have said to us, ‘Your audience is younger. What are you doing to cultivate this?’ Yip said. “Everyone is telling you this is an art form that will die. But we’re performing at different spaces, breaking barriers down. We have two big supporters, and they bring their grown children. That’s what we’re trying to cultivate. The uniqueness.”

And as it enters its fourth season on the East End, staying true to the mission and the music is a priority for TH·FM — no matter where they are performing it.”

“We’ve increased our outreach to younger audiences without having to change who we are,” Palmer noted. “It’s a human experience not enough people avail themselves of.”

As they settle into their new digs at St. Luke’s, it feels somewhat like divine inspiration with the pieces falling nicely into place for the 4-year-old festival. Yip recalls that it’s a transition that began with their very first encounter of the Hoie Hall space back in May of 2024.

“We walked in, saw the space, heard the space and ideas started turning right away,” he said.

On that first visit, the TH·FM principals also had the good fortune of meeting Reverend Ben Shambaugh, St. Luke’s recently arrived rector, who also happens to be a tuba player and performs with the Sag Harbor Community Band.

“Fr. Ben had just arrived and he said he wanted to bring more music to the church,” Yip noted. “We’ve partnered with so many organizations. He is so supportive. For us it feels good. The proof will be in the pudding. They take music very seriously at the church. They gave us their community service award for our ‘Tour of the Hamptons’ concerts and our outreach work with the schools and we were very honored. Now we want to give back to the congregation.”

“Whether it’s mainstage, house concerts or community outreach, this starts with the music,” Souther added. “We’re doing an art form at the highest level we can — and it’s as real a human experience as you can have. That’s what’s different.”

TH·FM’s 2025 Mainstage Schedule:

Saturday, September 6, 7 p.m.

Hoie Hall, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Festival Opening Concert – Michael Palmer, conductor

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 “Classical,” Op. 25

Barber: “Violin Concerto” – featuring Annie Chalex-Boyle, violin

Mozart: Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425 “Linz”

Thursday, September 11, 7 p.m.

The Sanctuary, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Festival Concert No. 2 – Logan Souther, conductor

Stravinsky: “Dumbarton Oaks Concerto”

Mozart: “Symphony No. 29”

Tchaikovsky: “Serenade for Strings”

Sunday, September 14, 4 p.m.

Hoie Hall, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Festival Finale Concert – Michael Palmer, conductor

Cimarosa: “Overture to the Secret Marriage”

Berlioz: “Four Songs from Les nuits d’été” (Nos. 1–4) – featuring Greer Lyle, soprano

Beethoven: “Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60”

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Hoie Hall is at 18 James Lane, East Hampton. For tickets to all concerts, visit thehamptonsfestivalofmusic.com.