First And Last Programs Announced

The Music Festival of the Hamptons' 1997 season got an elegant send-off on March 25 when the Festival Chamber Players, with Lukas Foss at the piano, performed Schubert's Trout Quintet in the oak and walnut-paneled library of the Lotos Club in Manhattan as an interlude between cocktails and dinner.

Mr. Foss, the new artistic director of the festival, seen at right above with Maria Cooper Janis, told its supporters that music would no longer be "in the back seat in the Hamptons."

This year's programs will open with the Harlem Boys Choir and close with a performance of Stravinsky's "Histoire de Soldat," for which Gene Saks, Peter Stone, and Larry Rivers, at top left with Alix Michel, left, and Phyllis Tenny Adler, right, will take speaking roles. At bottom left, Julienne and John Scanlon flank the president of the festival, Eleanor Sage Leonard.

Mr. Scanlon offered opening remarks. Ms. Janis was on the benefit committee along with her husband, the pianist Byron Janis, as were the Scanlons and Ms. Tenny Adler, among others. Ms. Michel was a junior chair.

The other members of the quintet are Brian Krinke, violin, Zuill Bailey, cello, Bryan Gumm, bass, and Ralph Farris, viola. Susan A. Ivory and Richard Adler were honorary co-chairs.