The 14th Akaroa Summer Music Festival will be featuring an array of NZ’s best musicians. Well known performers and ensembles, such as the Auckland based Jade String Quartet and the Canterbury Trio, will be in residence in Akaroa between January 8th and 17th. Soloists Michael Endres, Mark Menzies, Ben Hoadley and Luca Manghi will join the line up for a programme including all – time favourites, new compositions and interesting discoveries. This impressive line-up will be complemented by our young Ensemble in Residence, the Amio Quartet, four of NZ’s most promising young musicians. The Jade String Quartet will start things of with a spectacular evening including Schubert’s famous string quartet “The Death and the Maiden” on January 8th in the Gaiety Hall, followed by Beethoven’s op.131 on Saturday and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence on Sunday. On Friday the 15th, Michael Endres, Mark Menzies, Robert Ashworth and Edith Salzmann will perform Faure’s and Mozart’s piano quartets in the intimate setting of the Powerhouse Gallery, a woodwind extravaganza on Saturday, and Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night will end the festival on Sunday.