“Their [the Stoeckels] wonderful estate lay among wooded hills, intersected by rivers and shimmering streams… it was as romantic and mysterious as it had been two hundred years earlier. There was an atmosphere of poetry over the large, sleeping woods that was unique.”
Composer Jean Sibelius, recalling his stay in Norfolk, 1914.

Constructed in 1906, we celebrate the 120th birthday of our historic redwood and cedar Music Shed by featuring composers who visited and performed on its stage. Jean Sibelius, in his only trip to the United States, was commissioned by the Norfolk Music Festival to write the orchestral tone poem The Oceanides. Sergei Rachmaninoff performed his own 2nd piano concerto on the Shed stage on June 3, 1920. The Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor had a deep connection with Norfolk and visited several times. The world premiere of his violin concerto was given in the Shed by soloist Maud Powell, who was among the first American violinists to become a soloist of international standing.