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.

org.