With modest budget and no paid staff, Blue Hill organization hits high notes for 47th year
The NewYork Times called The Telegraph Quartet’s performances “full of elegance and pinpoint control.” The group comes to Blue Hill on Feb. 15. Photo courtesy of BHCA.
Feb. 10, 2026
By Steele Hays
The Blue Hill Concert Association (BHCA) is run by volunteers, with a modest budget, no paid staff and no permanent performance space of its own. But for 47 years, it’s been bringing top-quality professional chamber music groups to Blue Hill every winter–and it’s doing it again this year.
“At the last performance of each series, we survey the audience and the results are overwhelming–people really want to get out and hear music in the winter time,” said BHCA President John Arrison in an interview with The Rising Tide.
There are three more concerts coming up in this year’s schedule:
The Telegraph Quartet on Feb. 15
Boyd Meets Girl on March 8
The Isidore String Quartet on March 29
The first concert of the year took place on January 25th, when the Claremont Trio performed.
All concerts take place at 3 p.m. on Sundays at the Blue Hill First Congregational Church. Tickets are $35, and anyone 21 years old or younger is admitted free.
One unique tradition of the BHCA concerts is that during intermission, concertgoers are invited to mingle over tea in Jonathan Fisher Hall in the church basement and view artworks by local artists. The tradition was started by the late Dottie Hayes of Blue Hill, an artist and early supporter of the BHCA.
Numerous people in the Blue Hill community were involved in the founding and early years of the BHCA, including musicians Masanobu Ikemiya, Claude Monteux, and Gillian Shaffer; Curtis Beech, minister of The First Congregational Church of Blue Hill; early program directors BG Thorpe and Doug Damrosch; and David Witter, who served as BHCA president for more than a decade.
Looking ahead, as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2028, the BHCA is considering whether it needs to hire one or several staff members to help manage operations and fundraising. Currently, the organization relies entirely on volunteers for all aspects of its operations. Its annual budget of $50,000 comes from a combination of grants, ticket sales and supporter contributions. The cost of bringing professional music groups to Blue Hill varies according to the number of musicians and other factors, but each concert’s cost is usually in the $10,000 to $12,000 range, Arrison said.
Boyd Meets Girl, a husband-and-wife duo will perform in Blue Hill on March 8. The Isidore String Quartet will cap the Blue Hill Concert Association’s winter season on March 29. Photos courtesy of BHCA.
The association has booked one group so far for the 2027 season, The Junction Trio, a pianist-cellist-violinist group based in New York. The BHCA is exploring adding a fifth concert to the schedule next year with a focus on booking a Maine-based musical group.
In addition to performing on Sunday afternoon, each group brought to Blue Hill by the BHCA agrees to do an educational workshop at a local school on the peninsula or Deer Isle.
In this week’s upcoming concert on Sunday, Feb. 15 by The Telegraph Quartet, the Michigan-based group will perform pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven and George Rochberg. Before moving to Michigan, the group was formed and worked for several years in San Francisco. They have won the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The New York Times described the group as “full of elegance and pinpoint control.”
Boyd Meets Girl, appearing March 8, is not a chamber music group, but rather a duo that pairs Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd with American cellist Laura Metcalf.
Boyd and Metcalf are married and live in New York City. Their two studio albums have received over five million downloads on Spotify. Boyd has been described as “truly evocative” by The Washington Post, and Metcalf has been called "brilliant" by Gramophone. Their debut album reached No. 3 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart.
On March 29, the Isidore String Quartet will perform works by Joseph Hadyn, Antonin Dvořák and Billy Childs, a Los Angeles-based jazz composer and pianist who has written a piece specifically for the quartet. The group began as an ensemble at the Juilliard School, and has coached with Laurie Smukler and the late Joel Krosnick, among others, both of whom have been on the faculty of Blue Hill’s Kneisel Hall.
Learn more about the BHCA on their website.
