Saratoga Springs, New York, is a historic destination long known for horse racing, mineral springs, and European-style spa resorts. It is also a major cultural hub in upstate New York, largely thanks to Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), which is located on the beautiful grounds of Saratoga Spa State Park. SPAC boasts several venues, including an amphitheater with seating for over 25,000 people (5,200 sheltered seats plus lawn seating for an additional 20,000), as well as the Spa Little Theater, an intimate 500-seat space. 

For many years, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) has held a residency at SPAC, serving as the chamber music partner alongside other organizations such as the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. What began as a brief annual residency has grown into amore sustained presence, with CMS artists performing at SPAC year-round.

July 12–26 of this year, CMS will bring five concerts to SPAC for its summer series. The repertoire showcases CMS’s wide range of programming, with music from the 18th century to the present day. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, each concert will feature at least one piece by a prominent American composer, including George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis, and others. I spoke with Christopher Shiley, President of the Saratoga PerformingArts Center, about the relationship between CMS and SPAC, and the current renovation of the Spa Little Theater. Our conversation is edited for length and clarity. 

How has CMS’ presence at SPAC evolved over the years?
Christopher Shiley: There has been a tremendous evolution in the relationship between our two organizations. We’ve seen CMS go from a more traditional residency model, where they were doing a number of programs all consolidated into a three-week period, to now having a year-round presence within our community. It represents a huge shift, and it’s one that we’re very excited about. Of course, the quality and the depth of the programming that they bring remains unchanged, but we’re now able to offer it all year. 

Our audience would always get very excited about chamber music in this three-week period; they would come see these great concerts, and then we’d have to say, “Great, we’ll see you next year.” Now they get those more consistent touch points throughout the season, and I think that helps to build audiences and to help keep excitement high, rather than feeling like you’re restarting year after year. We’re thrilled to be able to offer to this to our community.

Tell us about how CMS fits into SPAC’s overall programming.
CMS is our primary driver for intimate, high-caliber classical performances. At SPAC, we’re anchored by other flagship residencies with the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and those take place in our 5,000-seat amphitheater; there’s a spectacle and size in addition to the quality of what they do. CMS operates on a different scale. The Spa Little Theater provides a wonderfully intimate space that obviously goes hand in hand with chamber music, and CMS creates a more listening-forward experience for our audience that I feel is an important contrast to the larger-scale programs that we have in the amphitheater. The intimacy and the quality of CMS’s programming bring a lot of additional depth to what we’re offering in the large amphitheater.

How will the renovation of the Spa Little Theater, which is currently in process, change the experience of chamber music at SPAC?
It’s a total transformation of the space. I like to say that it’s equal parts restoration and renovation. We have a 90-year-old building that has never been renovated in full; it’s had little touch-ups along the way, but never anything substantial. It was originally built as a lecture hall, so it has a really beautiful acoustic that CMS has always enjoyed, and they sound great in the space, but it has a lot of quirks and challenges because it was never really conceived of as a true theater. With this restoration/renovation, we really focused on improving the experience for the community, improving the experience for the artists, making some updates to the space to make it more functional, and making it more viable to do multiple programs throughout the year, while at the same time making sure that we retain the intimacy of the space and its signature acoustic. When CMS comes and performs, the overall experience for the audience and the artists should be substantially improved.

Of course, it’ll be a little different this summer with CMS concerts at Skidmore while the Spa Little Theater is temporarily closed. What can audiences expect?
We’re very fortunate to have a space like the Arthur Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College available to us while the Spa Little Theater is under renovation. It is a gorgeous concert hall, and certainly it’s more modern than the Spa Little Theater in its design. It has about 600 seats and a wonderful acoustic as well. So it’ll be perfect for chamber music; CMS did the Brandenburg Concertos therein the winter. It sounded fantastic, and the space has a beautiful natural backdrop in the setting of Skidmore College. It’s a wonderful place to see as how, and it’s only about ten minutes away from SPAC. 

We’re excited that we get to continue to present CMS in a really beautiful and meaningful way, where they can do their absolute best as artists in a space that’s fitting for them. And we’re excited for our community to see something new and to experience a space that some of them have never been to before. Though I do joke with everyone: don’t get too comfortable, because we are going back to the Spa Little Theater once that renovation is done! 

Saratoga Springs is a wonderful place, and it’s only a couple of hours from New York City by train. It’s very easy to get to, and there’s so much to do up here in addition to seeing incredible performances. We’d love to welcome more audiences from New York City who want to experience this music in a different setting.