Northern California will be treated to a month of music this August, thanks to the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival and their summer tour schedule.
The Festival is celebrating its sixth year wth a series of eight public concerts and two weeklong retreats for musicians in Trinity County.
Next weekend, August 5-7, the festival presents three concerts featuring quintets by Brahms and Mozart, both considered among the very finest examples of classical chamber music. The musicians will feature festival director Ian Scarfe on piano, and Trinity County residents Ellen McGehee on violin and Karla Avila on clarinet. They will be joined by three other string players from across the North America – Joseph Howe from Colorado, Edwin Huizinga from Toronto, and Stephen Fine from Florida. The works performed will be Mozart’s lyrical and haunting Clarinet Quintet, written near the end of his life, and Brahms’ fiery and dramatic Piano Quintet, a favorite among audiences and performers alike.
Canadian violinist Edwin Huizinga will return for his third visit to the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, gladly making the trip across the continent. “It is one of the highlights of my year,” says Huizinga, who juggles a busy tour schedule throughout North America and Europe, “All of the different venues and communities we visit make it possible for so many people to experience this music, and it brings a sense of community to the area.”
The community aspect of this festival is well regarded, violist Stephen Fine has been a regular musician with the festival since its beginning, coming out west from his home in Gainesville, Florida. “It’s not just for the wonderful musicians and the great music we play, but also our incredible audiences, who are enthusiastic and sophisticated listeners.”
The weekend of August 12-14 will take a larger ensemble to several scenic outdoor venues in Hyampom, Willow Creek, and Coffee Creek. The first half of this program will feature strings, harpsichord, and flute performing concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach and his son, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach. The second half will offer two of the great string quartets of the 20th century – the exotic and sensuous Quartet in G Minor by French composer Claude Debussy, and the ferociously difficulty Quartet No. 3 by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.
The final weekend, August 26-27, will feature a pair of concerts in Weaverville and Redding prominently featuring festival violinist and fiddler Alisa Rose, joined by pianist Amy Zanrosso and cellist Elizabeth Vandervennet. The trio will perform Russian works by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, Antonin Dvorak’s elegiac and folksy “Dumky Trio”, and a world-premiere of “Piano Trio for Luisa”, a commission by Michael Cogan of Redding, one of the music festival’s sponsors.
Thanks to private and corporate sponsors, the festival is able to offer all of its concerts as free events, asking audience members to contribute what they can in the form of a suggested donation.
As if the high level of performances were not enough of a draw, the festival has cultivated a special relationship with audiences through its storytelling. Musicians always speak from the stage, sharing thoughts about the composers, the history of this music, and their own experiences playing it. Altogether this brings the true atmosphere of chamber music to each concert – true classical elegance and virtuosity, blended with friendly intimacy and beautiful California settings.
More concert information, as well as fun videos and photos, can always be found at the festival website: www.TrinityAlpsCMF.org.
Calendar Information:
“Quintets of Mozart and Brahms”
Friday, August 5, 7:00pm
Hyampom Community Hall, Hyampom, CA
Saturday, August 6, 7:00pm
Trinity Alps Performing Arts Center, Weaverville, CA
Sunday, August 7, 2:00pm
Pilgrim Congregational Church, Redding, CA
“Bach goes Outdoors – music of Bach, Debussy, and Bartok”
Friday, August 12, 7:00pm
Hyampom Community Hall, Hyampom, CA
Saturday, August 13, 7:00pm
China Creek Amphitheater, Willow Creek, CA
Sunday, August 14, 6:00pm
Trailhead Pizza Cafe, Coffee Creek, CA
“East Meets West – music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Dvorak, and Alisa Rose”
Friday, August 26, 7:00pm
Trinity Alps Performing Arts Center, Weaverville, CA
Saturday, August 27, 7:00pm
Pilgrim Congregational Church, Redding, CA
