The Salt Spring Chamber Music Festival springs to life at ArtSpring this week with three great concerts and a week of learning for the festival’s resident students and faculty. This year's concerts will feature many highly talented musicians who play diverse instruments that range from banjo to cello and from piano to oboe.

The first performance on Tuesday, July 23rd features Jayme Stone, the amazing banjo player who wowed his Salt Spring audience last summer. He’ll be joined by Moira Smiley, a terrific singer he has been working with at the recent Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Moira is an avid collector of American folk music and Jayme, who loves collaborating with musicians from diverse traditions, is really excited to play with her at ArtSpring. They'll also be joined for a part of the concert by the classical musicians of the Visentin Ensemble, who are here for the week running the Salt Spring Chamber Music Festival.

On Thursday, July 25th Canadian cellist Hannah Addario-Berry, Australian guitar player Jacob Cordover and American oboist Laura Karney bring us a lovely concert of fresh music for these three diverse instruments. This concert will be a treat where unique sounds come together to create magical instrumentation.

Then on Saturday, July 27th David Visentin and friends – violinists Kai Gleusteen and Hiroko Kagawa, cellist Paula Kiffner, and pianist Catherine Ordronneau – present an evening of major works for string quartet, piano quintet and solo piano. These concerts have been the highlight of ArtSpring’s summer programming for many years. They will be joined by this year’s students who will have worked all week alongside them. The students – Ceilidh Briscoe, Blythe Allers, Jordan Vermes and Than Allers – are a fine young string quartet from Victoria along with solo violinist Edward Powell.

For tickets to these three wonderful concerts visit the ArtSpring Box Office or call 537-2102 or visit http://www.tickets.artspring.ca.