music

bpa chamber music

Masterpieces of the Chamber Music Repertoire: Bach, Mozart & Brahms

March 27, 2011
Sunday @ 3:00 p.m.

Tickets
$16 for adults and $12 for seniors, students, youth, military, and teachers

Sponsors
Presenting Sponsor: Acupuncture & Wellness Center, P.S.

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"Quitslund leads BPA chamber musicians for the final time" by Amy Phan, Kitsap Sun

BPA Chamber-Music Series, 2010-2011 Season

This season’s January 16 concert presented music from the century-plus from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s first Piano Trio of 1839 to works by the Americans Alvin Etler and Randall Thompson dating from 1941-45. 

Our March concert shifts the timeframe to the period from 1720 to 1861.  This period saw rapid and sometimes wrenching changes in the arts as in all aspects of life—beginning before the birth of Immanuel Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers and ending in a time of advanced industrialization and urbanization.

The Program (March 27)—Music for Two, Four and Five Instruments

Of all the musical representatives of pre-Enlightenment humanism none is more significant that Johann Sebastian Bach.  In 1720 he turned 35; he was employed at the politically obscure German court of Cöthen.  He did not know that he would soon move to a much more prestigious position in the great city of Leipzig.  He went on composing as if there were no tomorrow, completing the six Brandenburg Concerti and most if not all of his works for violin and orchestra and solo violin as well as six extraordinary sonatas for violin and keyboard. 

Our March 27 concert begins with the third of these, in E Major, BWV 1016.  Like Bach’s other violin-keyboard sonatas, this is a fully evolved piece for two instruments—the keyboard is no longer used to fill in chords between the base line and the melody played by the violin, but is an independent actor in the drama.

More than sixty years later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was living with his family in an apartment behind Vienna’s Cathedral of St. Stephen, and involved in feverish activity.  Here, within a few years, he composed some of his finest works including several string quartets, The Marriage of Figaro and the bold and beautiful Quintet for Piano & Winds, K. 452 (1784). Beethoven was to model a work for the same instruments on Mozart’s, but even he could not match the outpouring of melody or the rich harmonies and textures of Mozart’s writing for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.  These are sonorities that had not been heard in 1784 and that continue to surprise and move us today.

The program ends with Johannes Brahms’s Quartet for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano in G Minor, Opus 25 (1861).  At the age of 20, Brahms had caught the attention of Robert Schumann and been heralded in a widely read article as the genius who had been sent to lead German music on “new paths.”  In 1861, still only 28, he felt it was time to break away from North Germany and test his own promise and either fail utterly or begin establishing himself as one of Europe’s leading musical figures. He went to Vienna. 

The Quartet in G Minor was one of the new works he had in his portfolio when he arrived.  It was featured in his first public performance, with some of Vienna’s leading string players.  It was surely a good omen—or perhaps the ultimate challenge--when Brahms learned that the first reading of the piece was to take place in the “Figaro House,” of all places, not far from the flat in which Mozart had lived eighty hears before, received a visit and benediction from Haydn and himself declared that a temperamental teenager named Beethoven would someday make waves.  Vienna was to be Brahms’s home until his death in 1897.

The Performers

Performers in the March 27 concert will be Thomas Monk (violin); Lara Moore (viola); Barbara Deppe (cello) ; Amy Duerr-Day (oboe); Patti Beasley (clarinet); Ron Matthew Gilbert (horn); Judith Lawrence (bassoon); and pianists Mary Foster Grant and James Quitslund.

Thomas Monk started playing violin at age eight, receiving his first lessons through the California public schools. As a high school student in Issaquah, Washington he was a first violinist in the Seattle Youth Symphony, won the Poncho Prize for soloists, and was concertmaster of the All State Orchestra in 1972. While at Harvard College he performed the Boston premier of the Mendelssohn violin concerto in D, written when the composer was only 12 years old and which had been lost for 125 years until the manuscript was rediscovered. He has played violin and viola with the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and several chamber music groups since moving to Bainbridge Island in 1986 to take up his post as Pediatrician at the Winslow Clinic. In December 2007 he helped found the Bainbridge office of The Doctors Clinic.

Lara Moore performs and teaches both viola and violin on Bainbridge Island and elsewhere in Kitsap County.  She coaches strings for Olympic High School, Fairview Junior High School, Poulsbo Middle School, and the Bremerton Symphony Youth Orchestra.  Last summer she coordinated the first annual Kitsap Youth Summer Symphony, a one-week symphony camp in Poulsbo.  Lara has a Bachelor's in Music Performance and a Master's in Literature, and she has played violin and viola in semiprofessional orchestras on the East coast and in the Western U.S.  At present she participates in many chamber groups, the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, and the New Baroque Orchestra in Seattle.

Barbara Deppe began studying the cello at the age of ten through the public school music program in Ames, Iowa. From the age of twelve, she studied with cello teachers at Iowa State University, most notably Barbara Thiem and David Tabbat. She also studied with Jerome Jelinek at the University of Michigan for two years. After a nine year hiatus she returned to playing, joining the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and local chamber groups. She is a massage practitioner and owner of Winslow Massage.

Amy Duerr-Day is co-principal oboist of Philharmonia Northwest Chamber Orchestra and principal oboist of Bremerton Symphony Orchestra. She performs with Puget Sound Opera, Ovation Theater, Orchestra Seattle, Northwest Mahler Festival, and The Impromptu Ensemble. Holding a Bachelor Degree of Music Performance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, her teachers have included William Banovetz/San Francisco Ballet, Barbara Herr/ St. Louis Symphony, and Dan Williams/Seattle professional. She has recorded for Hat Factory Film Studio and performed with Island Soundscape Players, Opera San Jose, Gilbert & Sullivan Society of San Jose, Monterey Symphony, St. Louis Philharmonic Orchestra, Lincoln Symphony, and Nebraska Chamber Orchestra. She teaches oboe and is an interior and building designer with award winning and nationally published projects.

Patti Beasley is currently a member of the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and Bluefish Tango Band. She also plays in numerous chamber groups and for Ovation! Musical Theater Bainbridge. During the day she is co-director of Adoption Connections and a docent at the Seattle Art Museum.

Ron Matthew Gilbert, resident of Kitsap County via Ft. Lauderdale, FL started his musical training with piano at the young age of four. At ten years old, he started playing the French Horn. He attended Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and then transferred to Florida International University in Miami, FL, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Brass Performance. He also was a Master’s Degree Candidate in Wind Conducting under the direction of Dr. Roby George. He studied Horn with Arthur Brooks, Wendy Stewart, Holly Ballard of the former Boca Pops Orchestra and Greg Miller of the world renowned Empire Brass Quintet. He has had the honor of being selected to perform in Master Class for Phil Meyers, Principle Horn of the New York Philharmonic.

Ron has regularly performed professionally for The Gold Coast Opera, The Wind Symphony of Florida, Deerfield Symphony, Ars Flores Orchestra, Symphony of the Americas and numerous other freelance gigs. Now living in the Puget Sound area Ron performs with The Federal Way Symphony, Northwest Symphony, and Washington Wind Symphony. He also is on the Horn substitute list for the Tacoma Symphony and the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Ron is the Brass Coach for the Bremerton Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has a private studio of French horn, Trumpet, Tuba and Piano students. Ron is also an accomplished conductor. He has conducted musical theater productions, award shows and large music ensembles.

Judith Lawrence has lived in North Kitsap for the past 20 years. She received her musical education at Cincinnati Conservatory and Boston University. Judith has played in many Puget Sound area ensembles, including Tacoma Symphony, Cascade Symphony, Bremerton Symphony, Rainier Chamber Winds, Northwest Mahler Festival, Everett Symphony, Turtle Bluff, Port Angeles, New Baroque Orchestra, Puget Sound Symphonic Band, Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, and she has been the principle bassoonist in Orchestra Seattle for the past 18 years. She also enjoys performing with local chamber music groups, and teaches both private lessons and preschool Kindermusik classes. Judith has soloed in the past with the Everett Symphony, Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, Turtle Bluff Symphony, and Orchestra Seattle. She performs again this spring with the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra.

Mary Foster Grant is one of five musical sisters, born on Bainbridge Island, and raised in a household where Bach was king. She began her formal piano studies with Vicky Hoffman at age 9, and by age 11 she had won her first competition. Various scholarships and honors followed in subsequent years as she went on to study with the legendary Michiko Morita Miyamoto. In addition to her classical training she grew up with a love of traditional music and dance. While dancing Greek syrtos and singing Balkan songs with her sisters, she developed the rich sense of rhythm, harmony and melody that colors her interpretation of her beloved classical repertoire today. Mary continues to perform regularly, playing both solo and chamber music.

James Quitslund received his formal musical training from Catherine Hahn and Corinne Berg on Bainbridge Island and performed concertos of Grieg and Mozart under the auspices of the Bainbridge Light Opera Association in 1956 and 1957. He has appeared elsewhere in other parts of his life—in New England during his college years and again in the 1970s and 1980s. But his most significant period of growth as a musician has taken place since 1994 in collaboration with musicians from the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, regular participants in BPA’s Chamber Music Series and Seattle friends such as Marshall Brown, Kim Zabelle and Stephen Provine. He has served as organizer and moderator of the BPA Chamber Music Series since its inception more than a decade ago. Since returning to the Island in 1990 he has taught at the University of Washington and recently retired from a technology company in Redmond which he helped grow from infancy to success.