Classical Music News

Spoleto Festival USA Announces New Director of Chamber Music

October 27, 2023

2 MIN READ

Cellist and composer Paul Wiancko will step into the role in 2024

Former Spoleto Festival USA Composer-in-Residence, Paul Wiancko will become the next Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Director of Chamber Music.

The multidisciplinary 17-day festival annually draws some of the world’s most renowned classical musicians for its Bank of America Chamber Music series. As director, Wiancko will curate repertoire and host these concerts at the Dock Street Theatre.

Wiancko’s appointment marks the first time in the Festival’s history that the standing director is both a performer and composer.

Before becoming a member of the Kronos Quartet in 2023, Wiancko was the cellist of the Harlem Quartet. He is also a founding member of the viola and cello duo Ayane & Paul, as well as the distinctive quartet, Owls.

As a composer, he has written works performed by the St. Lawrence Kronos, Aizuri, Parker, Calder, and Attacca Quartets, and several other prestigious ensembles.

“During my first visit to Spoleto as cellist and composer-in-residence, Geo Nuttall revealed the generative power of the Festival–a 3-week long upward spiral of music, art, and thought, kept aloft by impassioned audiences and fueled by a preposterous amount of raw talent and artistry," Wiancko said. "Chamber music grows deeper, more inclusive, and more exciting every day. As director of chamber music at Spoleto, I will explore this treasure trove with our expanding family of fearless chamber artists and beloved audiences.”

Spoleto Festival General Director & CEO Mena Mark Hanna commented that “Paul has an infectious passion for chamber music and an exceptional talent for intuitively communicating the most complex musical devices. He will be an engine of ingenuity for Spoleto and by extension, the chamber music field, curating across period and genre, subverting our expectations of what is western and non-western, canonic and not canonic, new and old.”

Wiancko is the second artistic appointment of Hanna’s tenure as general director. Last month, the Festival announced conductor Timothy Myers as the new music director of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, joining Director of Choral Activities Joe Miller and Jazz Curator Larry Blumenfeld in the organization’s artistic leadership.