The world of music lost a true artist and lover of beauty with the passing of Christopher Rex on March 22.  And the Madison Cultural Center lost the Founder and Artistic Director of the Madison Chamber Music Festival and our good friend.

Principal cellist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for 39 years, Christopher Rex launched the Madison Chamber Music Festival in 2002.  While we had been exploring  the possibility for a number of years, the stars became aligned when a photo of Christopher Rex appeared on the front page of the New York Times Arts Section playing his cello on a street corner in Fernandina, Florida and announcing the beginning of the Amelia Island Festival.  I knew Chris through my wife Lee and her work with the Atlanta Symphony and asked if he would consider bringing his Festival to Madison. Chris recognized that our intimate auditorium with its distinctive acoustics and historic Madison were ideally suited for Chamber Music and in 2002, the Madison Chamber Music Festival was begun. 

While the Festival is primarily dependent upon individual patrons and sponsors, one of my lifelong friends, classmate and fellow alum of the Madison Graded School, Charles Baldwin and his wife Sue, as the Trustees of the Robert M. and Lilias Baldwin Turnell Foundation, provided key funding to launch and sustain the Madison Chamber Music Festival as Founding Festival Sponsor. Charles (now deceased) and Sue have continued Robert and Lilias’ vision for the Cultural Center which began in 1954, and the Festival is dedicated to their memory. The Brady Inn has become the Festival Sponsor in recent years. In its 20 years, The Madison Chamber Music Festival has presented world class musicians ranging from classical – Lyn Harrell, Valentina Lisitska, Sylvia McNair, David and Julie Coucheron and Christopher O’Reilly  to Bluegrass -  Bella Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Chris Thiele, the Krueger Brothers and Rhiannon Giddens to Jazz with Joe Alterman. This commitment to high-quality performers has led to grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other funding sources. 

Contributions can be made in Chris’ memory to a fund created to support the Madison Chamber Music Festival.  The final concert of this 20th year of the Festival, “Musical Fireworks,” on May 9th will be dedicated to Chris and will feature a number of his friends who are virtuosic musicians from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Georgian Chamber Players, Atlanta Chamber Players, Emory School of Music , Vega String Quartet and Christiania Trio.