by Ariel Brogno

Nyack, June 23 — The 14th annual Academy of Music Festival completed it’s 2012 season with a grand finale concert on Friday featuring two quartets and an octet playing selections from Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Felix Mendelssohn. Featuring talented and professional world-renown musicians, the festival provides young up-and-coming music students with a rich experience in solo and chamber performance. Students from all over the world get the chance to spend two weeks living with a host families in Nyack, getting lessons from the performing artists, and attending the festival’s concert series at Grace Church on First Avenue

Violinist, violist, and artistic director of the festival, Isaac Malkin, founded the Academy of Music Festival in 1997.  Malkin, who teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, has previously taught in Israel and Russia.

This year’s Academy’s performers were nothing short of amazing. Korliss Uecker (soprano), Jerry Grossman (cello), Mikhail Kopelman (violin), and Anat Malkin Almani (viola) performed Mozart, Brahms, Dvorak, Debussy, and Schubert both as soloists and in chamber groups throughout the Academy’s two week schedule at Grace Church.