You are invited to attend the Gallery Gala, an event to benefit the free First Tuesday Concerts and intimate Living Room Concerts you love so much! Mark your calendar for a festive evening of fun on Friday, June 15 at 7:30pm at Hodges Taylor Gallery.
Enjoy a prosecco and dessert reception with a silent auction and a wall of wine. Tickets are $30 each or two for $50. Purchase yours today!
Performing jazz will be pianist extraordinaire, Ethan Uslan, along with trumpeter Doug Burns. Remember Ethan Uslan’s incredible performance in October at the first concert of the season? Here is a clip of that performance:
Watch as local artist Barbara Travell uses a viola as her canvas to create a work of art before your eyes! Below are photos of her latest work preparing the viola and painting two other instruments that will be auctioned at the gala:
Barbara Travell creates canvases from a guitar & violin by sanding & priming their surfaces.
Sanding the viola to prepare it for primer and paint before the event.
A sketch of Barbara Travell’s plans for painting the back of the violin.
For more information about the Gallery Gala, click here, email office@charlottechambermusic.org, or call (704) 943.1424 x. 108.
Sound the Trumpet, enjoyed by all ages!
I hope last week you were able to take a break from your day to enjoy some music with Sound the Trumpet!, the final First Tuesday Concert of the season. I was excited to have a class of 27 elementary students from Omni Montessori School join us for the noon concert, and to see them, along with audience members of all ages, enjoy top-notch performances by some of our favorite musicians! One audience member says he enjoyed Sound the Trumpet so much at noon that he returned at 5:30 to see it again!
Erica Cice – English horn, Elina Lev – violin, Rebekah Newman – viola, Joy Payton-Stevens – cello, Karin Bliznik – trumpet, Jenny Topilow – vioin, Scott Christian – percussion, & Leo Soto – percussion
The musicians!
Elina Lev, Jenny Topilow, Rebekah Newman, Joy Payton-Stevens, & Karin Bliznik
After the noon concert, the class from Omni Montessori School had the opportunity to meet some of the musicians:
Karin Bliznik chats with elementary students
They loved chatting with chat with Karin Bliznik, Leo Soto, & Scott Christian, and had many enthusiastic questions!
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An incredible season of concerts is coming to a close
With summer fast approaching, another season of Living Room Concerts and First Tuesday Concerts is coming to an end. I am looking forward to a fabulous First Tuesday Concert on May 1, “Sound the Trumpet”, to send the season off with a great fanfare.
Tuesday, May 1 we will welcome Karin Bliznik, former Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and current Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Associate Principal Trumpet, back to Charlotte with an inventive program of works for trumpet and chamber ensemble. We are also excited to welcome back Bruce Murray, pianist, for his fourth First Tuesday Concert performance this season, and Elina Lev, talented violinist, whom you may remember from our “Brahms in Love Concert” in February. Joining them will be Jenny Topilow, violin, Rebekah Newman, viola, Joy Payton-Stevens, cello, Erica Cice, English horn, Leonardo Soto, percussion, & Scott Christian, percussion.
Karin Bliznik & Mark Dulin, Holiday Brass Spectacular, December 2010
Photo Credit: Wiley Stewart for WDAV
Highlights of the program include a special premiere preview of Ridge Runner: an uninterrupted suite for Trumpet and Percussion by Libby Larsen. Ms. Larsen is one of the country’s most performed living composers, whose catalog of over 400 works spans nearly every genre from chamber music to orchestral works to operas. Her notes on where the term “ridge-runner” originates, and why she chose that name for this piece are very interesting and can be found here on her website.
We also want to celebrate our lovely our supporters, so as a thank you, donors who have given $250 or more to the Spring Campaign, in support of the First Tuesday concerts and Living Room concerts, are invited to a special musical event, featuring talented pianist Bruce Murray, on Monday, April 30 at 7:30pm. Make your gift today and join us for this celebration! You can donate here through PayPal.
Earlier this month, audiences were thrilled by the performances of Elena Kuschnerova, heralded pianist from Russia, Janet Orenstein, violinist, and Brooks Whitehouse, cellist, at The Seasons of Tchaikovsky concert – which ended Charlotte’s Ulysses Festival celebrating the life of Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
At the Sunday Living Room Concert, we were treated to a spectacular performance at the home of Amanda & Stuart Burri on their special limited edition Steinway piano – only 91 of which were built to commemorate the 91st birthday of Henry Z. Steinway, great-grandson of the company’s founder, and the last family member to lead the firm.
Before performing pieces from Tchaikovsky’s rarely heard “Seasons” for solo piano, Elena Kuschnerova shared the beautiful poetic epigraphs contained in the Russian edition.
My favorite of the epigraphs is the one for April: The Snowdrop, written by Russian poet Apollon Maykov.
The blue, pure snowdrop — flower,
and near it the last snowdrops.
The last tears over past griefs,
and first dreams of another happiness.
All three audiences enjoyed a beautiful finale of Piano Trio in A minor, Op 50, a deep brooding piece, and the only work Tchaikovsky ever wrote for the combination of piano, cello, and violin. His piano trio, written in Rome between December 1881 and January 1882, is subtitled In memory of a great artist, in honor of his close friend and mentor, Nikolai Rubinstein.
If you didn’t get the chance to hear this performance in person, please enjoy the following video clip from the Living Room Concert.
Elena Kuschnerova, Brooks Whitehouse, & Janet Orenstein perform Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio.
The final Living Room Concert of the season is this weekend!
Are you as excited as I am about the Seasons of Tchaikovsky concerts taking place this week? These concerts are part of the Ulysses Festival – a month-long Tchaikovsky celebration by Charlotte’s leading musical organizations. This has been a fabulous month for Tchaikovsky lovers, and I am so looking forward to our performances this Sunday and Tuesday!
The concert this Sunday, April 1, is also the last Living Room Concert of the season, and tickets are still on sale. You don’t want to miss it, so buy them now while you still can!
At The Seasons of Tchaikovsky, you will enjoy the talent of heralded Russian pianist Elena Kuschnerova, in a performance featuring a range of the Russian composer’s small-scale output, including selections from Tchaikovsky’s rarely-heard “Seasons” for solo piano. Ms. Kuschnerova will be joined by Brooks Whitehouse, cello, and Janet Orenstein, violin.
Janet Orenstein, Elena Kuschnerova, & Brooks Whitehouse
Please enjoy this clip of Elena Kuschnerova performing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata:
You can learn more about Ms. Kuschnerova on her website.
The Living Room Concert is just five days away, on the first of the month, and the First Tuesday Concert is on the third. I hope to see you there!
Bach’s Goldberg Variations come to Charlotte
Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a piece that has been called “the longest, most ambitious, and most important keyboard work before Beethoven” came to audiences in Charlotte this week – quite possibly for the first time ever.
At the First Tuesday Concert, audiences also enjoyed our first “prelude performance” by a student of the Community School of the Arts — a groundbreaking new collaboration. Julia Van Patter, 17, performed Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Major for the evening concert.
Audiences at all three presentations of Aria, with Variations were delighted by pianist Bruce Murray’s captivating performance. At Sunday’s Living Room Concert, after his third standing ovation of the week, Murray shared with the audience that he performs (and Charlotte Chamber Music presents) works like Bach’s Goldberg Variations because “it reminds us of what it’s like to be human.”
Bruce Murray practices before the Living Room Concert
Sunday’s Living Room Concert was hosted by Haywood & Sabine Rankin at their home, Redlair Farm, in Belmont. Prior to the concert, Haywood Rankin led a group of guests on a tour of the farm and forest – a beautiful property that is protected by permanent conservation easements with the Catawba Lands Conservancy.
Bruce Murray performed the Goldberg Variations on the Rankins’ Bechstein grand piano – a piano with a rich history. That story, as told to us by Haywood Rankin, is below:
“The piano was built in Berlin, and probably purchased in Munich, in 1905, when the last of the great Germanic composers, Mahler and Strauss, were at their height. Sabine’s grandmother, Elisabeth Schmid, was the 14-year-old daughter of a doctor and a superb pianist. Her parents gave her this piano, which remained with her all her life, and was the musical center for an extremely musical family.
Elisabeth assisted her father in nursing her severely-wounded first cousin, Alois Schmid, during the First World War. She and Alois married, and their four children, including Sabine’s father Walter, were all musically active. Alois Schmid, crippled for life, became head of the salt-processing industry in Rosenheim, where the family lived in a large apartment during the Second World War. The piano was moved to an interior wall of the large salon, to protect it in the event of bombing. Rosenheim was severely bombed in April 1945. A bomb dropped directly through the salon but the piano was prevented from falling into the crater by an overhead beam that fortunately pierced it from above. The piano was disassembled and taken to dry storage, where it remained until 1949, when the first of several repairs took place and the piano resumed its central role in the family’s life. When Elisabeth died in the 1960′s the piano passed to her eldest child, Erna, who played it until the 1990′s when she was in her 80′s and becoming blind.
In 1998, Sabine and I retired from the Foreign Service and returned to our farm-forest Redlair. I wanted her to have a grand piano, as she had had, and as her grandmother had, in her own home in Bavaria when she was a child. We looked at grand pianos to buy, but they were prohibitively expensive. Aunt Erna made the decision, somewhat to the dismay of family members who did not want to see this precious piano leave Bavaria, to ship it across the ocean for Sabine to have.
Bruce Murray’s performance of the Goldberg Variations at Redlair on March 11, fourteen years after our arrival at Redlair and 107 years after the piano was built, is the first concert we have had on it. The piano, despite a cracked sounding board, responded well, far better than we had any reason to expect, to the most extraordinary music ever written, played extraordinarily by Bruce Murray.”
If you missed seeing Aria, with Variations, or would like to see it again, we do have a short clip from the First Tuesday Concert here, and more concert photos are available on our Facebook page.
Redlair Farm
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This month, noted pianist and Bach specialist, Bruce Murray, Dean and Artistic Administrator of the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, NC, joined Charlotte Chamber Music for the third time this season (first for Opus One, second for Brahms in Love), this time in a wonderful presentation of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which Murray has performed on three continents.
I think the following comment from one of our fans perfectly captures the experience of the Aria, with Variations First Tuesday Concert earlier this week:
“Bruce Murray provided a thrilling and evocative experience of the Goldberg Variations this evening. His understanding, mastery, phrasing and speed, not to mention playing from memory, delighted me.” ~ Judy Lynn
Murray’s mastery delighted audiences and inspired a spontaneous standing ovation with three curtain calls!
Did you miss the concert this Tuesday? Please enjoy this video clip from this presentation of a rare – if not premiere! – Charlotte performance of J.S. Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.”
You can enjoy more footage of Bruce Murray, and other lovely musicians from our previous performances, on our YouTube page.
We are excited to hear Aria, with Variations for the third time at the Living Room Concert this Sunday, at Redlair Farm! I look forward to seeing you Sunday or at the next concert, The Seasons of Tchaikovsky, in April!
Win a pair of season tickets!
Make your pledge to Charlotte Chamber Music’s Spring Annual Fund Drive by Friday, March 2 and you’ll be automatically entered to win a pair of season tickets to the Living Room Concert series next season!
That’s six chamber music concerts in some of Charlotte’s finest homes. Enjoy chamber music by the best local and regional musicians in an intimate setting. After the concert, enjoy wine, food, hors d’oeuvres and sweets with the musicians and fellow enthusiasts.
Brahms in Love Living Room Concert
Our Spring Annual Fund Drive is right around the corner and we want to be green and save money. The more pledges we receive this week, the fewer stamps and letters are needed for the annual spring mailing.
Your pledge helps tune pianos, buy sheet music, pay musicians, lease office space, keep the lights on, pay an artistic director — all of which are needed to create the curated* chamber music you enjoy month after month.
Click here or email office@charlottechambermusic.org to pledge today and enter to win tickets!
Thank you and good luck!
See our new space!
We’ve moved and are excited to be settling in to our new office! The new address is 402 West Trade Street, Suite 102, Charlotte, NC 28202, across from the Federal Courthouse.
Our new building!
Soon we will have a new phone number as well, which will be announced as soon as it is ready. In the meantime, you can contact us via email at office@charlottechambermusic.org or espallone@charlottechambermusic.org.
Thank you to everyone who helped us move!
Special thanks to Home Management for subleasing to us, and helping us transition to our new space. The Home Management team has been incredibly friendly, welcoming, and helpful!
If you would like to see the new office, please stop by. We would love for you to have a tour of the new space!
Ours is the third door on the left
You can see more photos on our Facebook page.
We’re moving! Can you help?
We’re excited to announce that we are moving our office to a new location! This Friday and Saturday, we are moving from 115 W 7th St, to our new location at 402 West Trade St, Suite 102, across from the Federal Courthouse.
Help is needed to get us to our new office, and a few furniture items for the new space are needed as well. 
Volunteers are needed at the following times:
- Friday, February 17 from 12:00-5:00pm
- Saturday February 18 between 10:00am and 3:00pm
This is what we need volunteers to do:
- Load & unload boxes
- Load & unload desks, shelves, a filing cabinet, etc.
- Set up the computers
The following items are still needed for the new office:
- Lateral/horizontal filing cabinet
- Office chairs
- 2-3 person conference table with chairs
- Bookshelves
- Storage units
- Office waiting/guest chairs
- Small side table
If you are available to volunteer with the move any time Friday or Saturday, or if you have wishlist items you would like to donate, please let us know by emailing office@charlottechambermusic.org or calling 704.335.0009.
We appreciate your help!
