David Kim presides over the Kingston Chamber Music Festival for the last time this year.

After two decades at the helm of the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, violinist David Kim, the event’s founder, is bowing out. Kim will preside over this month’s festival, which gets under way Tuesday, then hand the reins to pianist Natalie Zhu, who has been a familiar face in Kingston for the last four summers.

“It’s time to move on,” Kim wrote in a letter to the board.

But before he leaves, Kim will oversee a 20th-anniversary festival with twice the number of performers and more music than ever. (For the lineup, see story on Page I1.)

Finding time to run the festival, which plays to sold-out houses at the University of Rhode Island, has become increasingly difficult since Kim took on the job of concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2000. He has had to scramble to find a couple of weeks in the summer when the orchestra isn’t playing, when he can squeeze in a half-dozen concerts in Kingston. Now, he explained to the board, he longs to use his summer vacation to spend time with his family and to travel. Kim and his wife, Jane, are the parents of 6- and 7-year-old girls.

“I lived for those two weeks in July when I could run around just making sure our artists were happy and making good music,” Kim wrote. “I am now a bit tired at the thought of having to come up with the next fresh face and clever programming idea.

“After 20 glorious years, I don’t have much left in the tank,” he confessed.

Kim announced his departure to the board back in late May. Brian Mitchell, the festival’s managing director, said the news “came as a shock, but was not entirely surprising.”

“The more the board thought about it,” said Mitchell, “the more they realized the festival was more than David Kim. They felt a responsibility to keep it going. It’s never been at a higher level. Now would be the wrong time to throw in the towel.”

Not long after Kim tendered his resignation, Zhu’s name surfaced as a possible successor. The board flew her in from her home outside Philadelphia last month and was impressed with her presentation, said Mitchell. She was also willing to take the job for the same “modest fee” that Kim has been paid, he said. She was hired a couple of weeks ago.

“There was a little doubt,” Zhu said the other day. “It’s not something I was familiar with. But after a few days it really felt right. I think I’m the right person to carry on David’s mission of bringing in great musicians from around the world.”

Zhu, a native of Beijing, China, who moved to the United States with her parents in the 1980s, said that for one thing, she has a lot of contacts in the music world. For the past decade, she has been the accompanist of the acclaimed violinist Hilary Hahn, and has met many musicians on her travels, people whom she could hire in the future.

She also has connections to players in the Philadelphia Orchestra through her husband, Che-Hung Chen, a violist with the orchestra.

Zhu, who said she is in her early 30s, has wasted no time getting down to business. She has already blocked out the music for next year’s festival, but has yet to pick all the musicians.

She plans to carry on the tradition of programming familiar masterworks, but would also like to spice things up with music by living composers.

“I don’t think the audience should be afraid of new music,” she said.

Double the lineup for anniversary year1

Because the Kingston Chamber Music Festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary, founder David Kim has pulled out all the stops this summer. He has hired twice the normal number of musicians, 44, and almost doubled the number of concerts to 11.

Besides the traditional six concerts in URI’s Fine Arts Center, Kim has added a mini-tour of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ to churches in Kingston, Westerly and Rumford.

The Seven Last Words, commissioned in 1785 by Cadiz Cathedral in Spain, was written to accompany a special Good Friday service. It is composed of seven, 10-minute movements.

Natalie Zhu, who will take over for Kim as festival director next year (see story on Page I1), and Gail Niwa, who has been with the festival since the beginning, will share an afternoon of piano music at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston. Zhu will play Schumann’s Carnival Jest from Vienna, and a couple of Bach transcriptions, while Niwa tackles several Chopin selections.

There will also be a free children’s concert with composer Bruce Adolphe on Saturday, July 26, at 11 a.m. in the Fine Arts Center.

Festival programs tend to feature an adventurous work or two and conclude with a tried-and-true masterwork. Saturday’s installment, for example, features Gershwin piano music arranged for brass quintet, then ends with Brahms’ G Minor Piano Quartet.

Other familiar scores include Mendelssohn’s Octet, which has been performed several times before at the festival, and the lovely Schubert Octet, which wraps up the July 30 concert. The Mendelssohn caps the opening-night concert Tuesday.

Gail Niwa is the pianist for the Brahms F Minor Piano Quintet on July 28, the final work in a program that includes an arrangement of the Richard Strauss’s Introduction to Capriccio and the sixth solo cello suite by Bach with Kenneth Olsen.

The Onder Piano Duo, one of the more popular acts at the festival, will not be appearing this year as announced. In their stead Kim has booked a young piano team fresh out of Juilliard, the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo. They appear Thursday, July 24, playing among other things Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and their own arrangement of Strauss waltzes.

The festival closes Aug. 1 with an all-Mozart program that includes the Gran Partita, scored for 13 instruments. Kim has wanted to perform this serenade scored for winds and bass for the past 20 years, but never felt he could justify the expense. Many of the performers are coming to the festival just to appear in the Mozart. But for the anniversary year, the board dipped into the festival’s savings so it could put on programs such as this.

“We wanted this year to be super special,” said Kim. “You only get a few chances for really big events like this.

By the way, Kim may be leaving this year, but that doesn’t mean he won’t return as an occasional performer. Zhu said she will definitely invite him back. “There’s no question about that,” she said.

The Kingston Chamber Music Festival opens Tuesday and runs through Aug.1 in URI’s Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $20. Call (401) 789-0665 or log on to www.kingstonchambermusic.

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cgray@projo.com