Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

Chamber

11/10/2024 - JASPER'S LUSH PERFORMANCES OF STILL, DVORAK AND FUNG QUARTETS - Abby Wasserman
Chamber Music Marin / Jasper String Quartet. J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violin; Andred Gonzalez, viola; Rachel Henderson Freivogal, cello.
The Jasper String Quartet’s November 10 concert in Mill Valley revealed sonic jewels in the music of Still, Vivian Fung and Dvořák. The Jasper members—J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violins; violist Andrew Gonzalez and cellist Rachel Henderson Freivogel, achieved lovely balance and dense harmonies ...

10/13/2024 - TWO CHAMBER MUSIC WORKS AT MARIN'S MT. TAM CHURCH - Abby Wasserman
Marin Symphony /
The Marin Symphony Orchestra’s musicians have been nomads since mid-2022, when retrofitting began on the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium. A limited number have performed chamber symphonies and choral works in the Dunn Theatre at the College of Marin, or intimate chamber music in churches and hal...

10/10/2024 - FINAL ALEXANDER SQ CONCERT AT MUSIC AT OAKMONT - Terry McNeill
Music at Oakmont / Alexander String Quartet; John Novacek, piano. Una Lee and Zakarias Grafilo, violin; David Samuel, vola; Sandy Wilson, cello
Music at Oakmont’s new season launched Oct. 10 in Berger Auditorium with a concert of musical contrasts. 100 attended the first of six concerts in the splendid series that began 34 years ago with the insouciant impresario founder Robert Hayden. In their ensemble’s final career tour the San Francis...

8/21/2024 - BRASS OVER BRIDGES AT SPRING LAKE SERIES - Terry McNeill
Spring Lake Village Concert Series / Brass over Bridges. Brass Quintet. Two trumpets, two trombones, horn, tuba
Innovative programming is alive at the Spring Lake Village Concert Series, with the usual piano trios and vocal groups upstaged by a recent formal solo harp recital and August 21 by Brass Over Bridges, an all brass quintet. The short program in Montgomery Auditorium West included works by one of ...

7/25/2024 - A FAURE TO REMEMBER - Terry McNeill
Mendocino Music Festival / Susan Waterfall and Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano; Stephen Harrison, cello; Susan Freier, viola; Hrabba Atladottir and Sam Weiser, violin; Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano
French composer Fauré was featured in many of this season’s Mendocino Music Festival’s concerts, the final one July 25 with seven songs and two chamber music works, one old and one new. Before a full Preston Hall house soprano Sylvie Jenson sang the Le Jardin Clos cycle from 1914, ably partnered by...

7/25/2024 - DYNAMIC MENDELSSOHN AND SUBTLE BRAHMS AT FINAL PIANOSONOMA CONCERT - Pamela Hicks Gailey
pianoSonoma / Kara Dugan, mezzo-soprano; Christine Wu and Peter Dugan, piano; Doori Na, violin; Mike Dahlberg, cello
PianoSonoma July 25 concluded its Vino e Vibrato summer festival with a stunning offering of Mendelssohn’s Op. 49 Piano Trio and four selections from Brahms’ 8 Lieder und Gesänge. The Green Center’s Schroeder Hall was filled to the brim for this finale, including many well-behaved and attentive ch...

7/21/2024 - GUITAR UPSTAGES PIANO AT BRAZILIAN VOM CONCERT - Terry McNeill
Valley of the Moon Music Festival / Tanya Tomkins and Coleman Itzkoff, cello; Rachell Ellen Wong, Anna Presler, Juliette Greer and Keir GoGwilt, violin; Liana Bérubé, viola; Dan Turkos, bass; Marc Teicholz, guitar; Nikki Enfeld, soprano; Eric Zivian, piano
It’s a rare event when virtuoso pianist and jack-of-all-trades Eric Zivian is upstaged. Nonetheless, it happened July 21 at the wildly successful Valley of the Moon Festival concert at Sonoma Valley’s Hanna Center. The upstager was virtuoso guitarist Marc Teicholz, playing famed Brazilian guitaris...

7/14/2024 - GRIEG SONATA HIGHLIGHTS ECLECTIC VOM FESTIVAL PROGRAM - Terry McNeill
Valley of the Moon Music Festival / Nikki Enfeld, soprano; Tanya Tomkins, cello; Jennifer Frautschi snd Juliette Greer, violin; Liana Bérudé, viola; Eric Zivian and Adonis Gonzalez, piano
Valley of the Moon’s eclectic Festival ended its first full weekend of events July 14 with sparkling and varied concert that spotlights the Venezuelan pianist/composer Terese Carreño. Somehow Grieg, Brahms, d’Albert, Chopin and Rossini got into the mix. Before a large Hanna Center audience the “P...

6/8/2024 - TWO BIG WORKS IN BOEPPLE'S MUSIC AT OAKMONT RECITAL - Terry McNeill
Music at Oakmont / Hans Boepple, piano
In his long career San Jose-based pianist Hans Boepple rarely travels to play formal recitals in the North Bay, but he arrived June 8 with a long and demanding program of just two works in Music at Oakmont’s Berger Auditorium. Before the MAO’s largest audience of the season the artist tackled Bach’...

5/5/2024 - BURST OF FLIGHT WITH THE VIANO QUARTET IN MARIN - Abby Wasserman
Chamber Music Marin / Viano Quartet
Few classical compositions based on bird song soar higher than Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, Op. 64, No. 5 (“The Lark”), the Viano Quartet’s opener May 5 at Chamber Music Marin. As first violinist, Lucy Wang played the lark’s part on the high E string with admirable fluidity and purity of tone. Her ...

4/21/2024 - FAMILIAR AND NEW - TRIO NAVARRO'S SPRING CONCERT IN WEILL - Terry McNeill
Sonoma State University Department of Music / Trio Navarro. Tammie Dyer, violin; Jill Rachuay Brindel, cello; Marilyn Thompson, piano; Roy Zajac, clarinet
Familiar chamber music in concert always feels warm and cozy, and it was Dvorak’s often performed E Minor Trio (Op. 90 “Dumky”) that highlighted the Trio Navarro’s Schroeder Hall performance April 21. Played many times over the Navarro’s long career, oddly the Dumky hasn’t been heard locally in som...

4/11/2024 - OAKMONT SEASON CLOSES WITH STRAUSS' PASSIONATE SONATA - Terry McNeill
Music at Oakmont / Simone Porter, violin; Pallavi Mahidhara, piano
Music at Oakmont’s stellar season closed April 11 with a recital of violinist Simone Porter and pianist Pallavi Mahidhari in the Berger Center Auditorium before an audience of 75. It was the soloist’s Oakmont debut, though locally she played the Beethoven Concerto with the Marin Symphony in a perfo...

4/7/2024 - MORE GOLD THAN KORN AT ALEXANDER SQ CONCERT - Terry McNeill
Santa Rosa Junior College Chamber Concerts / Alexander String Quartet
Parting is such sweet sorrow. The venerable line was on many minds April 7 at the Alexander String Quartet’s concert in Santa Rosa’s Glaser Center. Sorrow not from the three programmed works, but because the Alexander is not touring anymore, and this concert will be the last in a long history of ...

3/20/2024 - NOT A SEVENTH BUT A FIRST AT SPRING LAKE VILLAGE CONCERT - Terry McNeill
Spring Lake Village Concert Series / Telegraph Quartet
Felix Mendelssohn wrote six wonderful string quartets, pillars of the repertoire. But wait, there is a seventh, and the Telegraph Quartet played Fannie Mendelssohn’s E-Flat Major Quartet March 20 at the Spring Lake Village Concert Series. Before a full house the Telegraph, in residence at the San ...

3/1/2024 - SHAW'S MICROFICTIONS HIGHLIGHTS MIRO QUARTET'S SEBASTOPOL CONCERT - Peter Lert
Redwood Arts Council / Miró Quartet
As with cellist Amit Peled’s cello recital last month in the Sebastopol Community Church, a March 1 performance by the Miró Quartet in the same acoustically rewarding venue proved once again that heavy rain could not prevent a capacity audience from enjoying an excellent evening of chamber music. Fo...

3/1/2024 - FRY ST. SQ PLAYS A DEMANDING 222 GALLERY CONCERT - Terry McNeill
The 222 / Fry Street Quartet. Robert Waters and Rebecca McFoul, violin; Bradley Ottesen, viola; Anne Francis Bayless, cello
Continuing a string of exemplary chamber music programs, Healdsburg’s 222 Gallery presented Utah-based Fry Street Quartet March 1 over two evenings that included a movie, two demanding quartets and a newly minted work by a local composer. Newly minted? Gabriela Lena Frank’s A Psalm of Disquiet wa...

2/25/2024 - SPIRITUAL CHAMBER MUSIC MARIN TRIO CONCERT - Abby Wasserman
Chamber Music Marin / Manasse-Nakamatsu-Frautschi Trio. Jennifer Frautschi, violin; John Manasse, clarinet; Jon Nakamatsu, piano
It’s difficult to write without superlatives about Chamber Music Marin’s February 25 concert by the trio of Jon Nakamatsu, piano, clarinetist Jon Manasse and violinist Jennifer Frautschi. There aren’t a lot of compositions for this ensemble, and while Mr. Nakamatsu and Mr. Manasse have been a perfor...

1/28/2024 - SPIRITUAL STRING MUSIC IN BLACK OAK ENSEMBLE'S MARIN CONCERT - Abby Wasserman
Chamber Music Marin / Black Oak Ensemble
Black Oak Ensemble’s Jan. 28 concert at Mill Valley’s Mt. Tamalpais Methodist Church, one day after Yom Ha Shoah, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, included two works by Jewish composers who met death in Nazi concentration camps: Gideon Klein and Sándor Kuti. Presented by Chamber Music Ma...

1/24/2024 - VIRTUOSIC HARP RECITAL AT SPRING LAKE VILLAGE SERIES - Terry McNeill
Spring Lake Village Classical Music Series / Anna Maria Mendieta, harp
Not within memory has there been a formal North Coast harp recital, but Santa Rosa’s Spring Lake Village Concert Series produced one Jan. 24 with virtuoso harpist and consummate entertainer Anna Maria Mendieta. Before a full house Ms. Mendieta performed a catholic recital of works from mostly known...

1/21/2024 - EMOTIONAL BLOCH PIECE HIGHLIGHTS PELED'S RAC RECITAL - Peter Lert
Redwood Arts Council / Amit Peled, cello; Peter Miyamoto, piano
Heavy rain Jan. 21 did not deter a capacity audience from enjoying the excellent acoustics of the Sebastopol Community Church and a recital by Israeli American cellist Amit Peled, with pianist Peter Miyamoto. The recital’s theme was “American Landscapes,” and Mr. Peled is known for augmenting his r...

1/14/2024 - OYSTER TRIO AT THE ROSE SIGNATURE SERIES - Terry McNeill
Roses Signature Concert Series / The Oyster Trio. Jennifer Cho, violin; Judiyaba, cello; Marilyn Thompson, piano
There is surprisingly a new piano trio around, The Oyster, supplementing pianist Marilyn Thompson’s preeminent North Coast Trio Navarro. Wait, Ms. Thompson was also at the piano for the Oyster’s Jan. 14 concert in Santa Rosa’s Church of the Roses, playing two of her favorite Beethoven “Geister” and...

1/13/2024 - CANTABILE CHARMS IN MIXED 222 GALLERY CONCERT - Terry McNeill
Cantabile / Anna Combs-Johnson and Michelle Rivard, vocal; Joel Cohen, cello; Elena Casanova, piano
Healdsburg’s 222 Art Gallery has become one of the North Coast’s most busy concert venues, fielding a large menu of multi theme events, some with cabaret seating, and longtime area violinist Gary McLaughlin produces attractive sporadic classical music programs. Ukiah based vocal instrumental ensemb...