Engelbach-Hart Music Festival (Illinois)
CreArtBox opens the Engelbach-Hart Music Festival, three nights on Illinois College's Fine Arts Series running 6 to 8 November 2026. The concert is in Rammelkamp Chapel, on the campus in Jacksonville, and admission is free.
The Fine Arts Series has brought visiting musicians to the college since 1980, and most of its concerts are ticketed. The November festival is the exception: it was given by the Engelbach and Hart families as a gift to the town and has been held free every autumn since 2011. A. C. Hart and Charlotte Engelbach Hart graduated from Illinois College in 1925 and 1926, and the organ in the same chapel was dedicated in their honour in 1979.
Most of the programme is early work. Lili Boulanger wrote her Nocturne at eighteen, Rachmaninoff the Trio élégiaque at eighteen, Shostakovich the C minor Trio at sixteen. Around them: a piece by Nadia Boulanger, Bloch's Three Nocturnes, Kurtág, and two short pieces by the Spanish cellist and composer Andrea Casarrubios.
Program
- Nadia BoulangerThree Pieces for cello and piano - No. 1, Modéré 3'
- Ernest BlochThree Nocturnes for Piano Trio 11'
- Andrea CasarrubiosSilbo · and · 24 Mozas · for cello and piano 10'
- Lili BoulangerNocturne for violin and piano 4'
- György KurtágTre Pezzi 13'
- Sergei RachmaninoffTrio élégiaque in G minor, No. 1 15'
- Dmitri ShostakovichPiano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8 14'
Performers
- Josefina Urracapiano
- Emilie-Anne Gendronviolin
- Ana Kimcello
Guest artist
Indiana-native cellist Ana Kim performs on modern and period instruments, and since 2024 has been Assistant Principal cello of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra. She also plays with Philharmonia Baroque, Teatro Nuovo and the New York Trinity Baroque orchestras, and has appeared at Yellow Barn, Music@Menlo, Oregon Bach, the Verbier Academy and Prussia Cove. She holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California and studied Historical Performance at Juilliard; her teachers include János Starker, Ralph Kirshbaum and Laurence Lesser.
About CreArtBox
CreArtBox is a New York–based chamber music and multimedia ensemble founded in 2013, performing at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music and on tour internationally. The ensemble's New York Series presents approximately six productions a year - combining commissioned premieres, reimagined classics, and collaborations with visual artists, filmmakers, and writers.
In parallel, CreArtBox runs Festival ADAR each August in rural Asturias, Spain - an international arts festival pairing chamber music with site-specific performance in churches, hórreos, and mountain villages. Both the New York Series and Festival ADAR are produced by CreArtBox, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
