Maverick Concerts

08/28/2026

Gary Levinson brings members of the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth to Maverick this Sunday — and here he is to tell you about it himself.

Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet. Dvořák's Op. 87. And two piano quartets by George Tsontakis, the Grawemeyer-winning composer who happens to live right here in the Catskills.

Levinson is Senior Principal Associate Concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony. Cellist Inbal Segev has played concertos with the Berlin and Israel Philharmonics. Violist Stephen Adam Savage recently joined the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Two Tsontakis quartets on one program is genuinely unusual, and having the composer's own community in the audience makes it more so. The Mozart and the Dvořák bracket them beautifully — one of the great G minor works of the 18th century and one of the warmest chamber pieces Dvořák ever wrote.

Sunday, August 30 at 4 PM · 120 Maverick Road, Woodstock

Tickets: https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/MaverickConcerts/2109/event/1462092

08/26/2026

08/26/2026

George Tsontakis has been called "an American master" by The New Yorker and "a giant of the American music scene" by Gramophone.

This Sunday at 4pm, Gary Levinson and members of the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth perform George Tsontakis's Piano Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 — completing a cycle in which all four of his piano quartets have now been presented at Maverick.

No. 1, "Bagatelles" (1997), takes its cues from Beethoven's late piano bagatelles and ends in a dance-like perpetual motion. No. 2 (1999) opens with four lazy chords — an abstracted jazz progression — and closes in a whisper.

Tsontakis is a Grawemeyer Award winner, a Grammy nominee, and Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at the Bard College Conservatory. He lives and works a few miles up the road from our hall.

Also on the program: Mozart's G-minor Piano Quartet, the first work ever written in the form, and Dvořák's Op. 87.

Sunday, August 30 • 4pm
Tickets: https://maverickconcerts.org/event/chamber-music-society-ft-worth/

08/21/2026

He was a teaching assistant to the philosopher Theodor Adorno. Then he met Don Cherry in Paris and never looked back.

Karl Berger followed Cherry and Ornette Coleman to Woodstock in the early '70s and, with his wife Ingrid Sertso, built the Creative Music Studio — the barn-door-open school where Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Pat Metheny and Anthony Braxton all came to teach and learn.

Karl played Maverick three times. In the program notes for that last concert in 2019, introducing the CMS Legacy Ensemble, he wrote: "A dream has come true for us, because we are not only enjoying musical unity in this ensemble that is rare in this depth of communication, the CMS message of music as our common and most personal language will indeed expand into the next generations."

Saturday at 8pm, that next generation makes good on it. Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum, Ken Filiano and Tani Tabbal play. It takes two musicians — Marilyn Crispell on piano and Brittany Anjou on vibes — to cover the two instruments Karl left behind. Ingrid Sertso, co-founder and the voice at the heart of CMS for six decades, will make a special appearance.

Tickets: https://maverickconcerts.org/event/tribute-to-karl-berger-2026/