By helping to underwrite these costs, your vision of a vibrant community filled with chamber music is ensured! You can cover the costs for one or more people to attend a First Tuesday Concert through our Power2Give project.

• For $25 you can cover the cost of one person to attend
• For $50 you can cover the cost of two people to attend

Please visit our Power2Give project and help allow the concerts you love to continue to be performed for free to the Charlotte community.

Enjoy this video clip of Bruce Murray performing at January’s evening concert:

You can watch more footage of Opus One, and previous concerts, on our YouTube page!

We look forward to seeing you at the February concert!

Join us for this ultra-premium experience and enjoy a presentation featuring high-end video and audio equipment at Bang & Olufsen.

Attend and enter to win tickets to the popular Living Room Concerts or Headphones from B&O!

This is a free event, and wine & appetizers will be served. We hope to see you there!

Bang & Olufsen South End
1700 Camden Road
Charlotte, NC
(704)372.7375

“~You don’t have to buy tickets to the First Tuesday Concerts, so you can decide at the last minute if you want to go to the noon or evening concert.
~You hear chamber music in an intimate setting, like it was meant to be heard; especially if you attend the Living Room Concerts.
~An hour of chamber music is the perfect length of time!
~These concerts make a great “date”!
~You get to meet the musicians and other interesting people, especially if you can go to the reception after the evening concerts.
~These concerts enrich the cultural life in Charlotte.
~The concerts are free (to us), but NOT really free…
These are professional musicians that we get to hear, and they are paid as professionals.
Therefore, please fill out the survey and info card with your contact information.
Thank you for supporting Charlotte Chamber with your attendance, but please consider financial support, as well.”

Thanks, Dottie & Dick, for sharing your thoughts with us! We look forward to hearing more awesome comments like these at the next concert!

The First Tuesday Concert is just four days away, on January third, and the Living Room Concert is Sunday, the eighth. I hope to see you there!

You make it possible for everyone to enjoy great chamber music, awesome musicians, and to make meaningful connections to each other, to the musicians, and to our community.

Because of your support, we are able to begin the New Year with another great concert, Opus One: Famous Firsts for the First of the Year, which will feature a program of “firsts” – be it publication, opus number, or recognition – by a quartet of first-rate “B-list” composers: Bach, Boccherini, Bernstein, and Beethoven. We hope you can join us for the Living Room Concert  or the First Tuesday Concert.

Thanks again for all your help. Enjoy the holiday season, have a happy New Year, and we look forward to seeing you at the next concert!

Opening the concert was a world premiere harp arrangement of Scott Joplin’s A Real Slow Drag, performed and arranged by Ina Zdorovetchi.

After its world premiere with Charlotte Chamber Music, Ina performed this same piece for WGBH, where our Artistic Director, Ben Roe, is managing director of classical services.  And they created a beautiful video of her performance, which you can view below.

Drive Time Live: Ina Zdorovetchi plays “A Real Slow Drag” by Scott Joplin from WGBH Classical New England on Vimeo.

Mary Struble Deery, 11-1-2011

Mary Struble Deery is always ready with a smile and hello at our concerts!

You need people in the woods to hear the tree fall. So without us at this  concert, would there be any music? There wouldn’t be any ears  – there wouldn’t be any uptake receptors.

It’s more than just listening to the stunning music that turned me into an uber fan. If it were just about the music, I could tune into splendid programming on WDAV any time of the day. For me, a First Tuesday [Concert] is carbonated by the people I’ve met.

I myself am not a musician, evidenced by my being last chair in the junior high flute section…but I love listening to classical music. This affair started when as a counselor at Interlochen Music Camp in Northern Michigan, I attended seven concerts a week. Even then it became clear it was about more than music.

After our very first Charlotte Chamber Music concert, my husband and I had a bite to eat at Fox and Hound. We didn’t even consider going to the post-performance reception at the Hodges Taylor Gallery. Toward the end of our meal, a couple I had seen at the concert sat down near us. I leaned over to them, “Wasn’t that a great concert?”

I don’t remember who they were, but kudos go to them for encouraging us to head over to the reception, which was the true beginning of my infatuation.

At that first gathering, we were warmly welcomed by then board member, Ann Depta. She has become a friend. In fact she and I hiked the Pinnacle Trail at Crowder Mountain last Sunday. Christie Taylor, who used to host the receptions [following the First Tuesday Concerts], once gave her time to help me with my [own] not-for-profit. I go to art shows put on by Clayworks and see Elaine Spallone’s beautiful ceramic pieces. Assistant Director, Marianne LeVigne and her family stopped by our cottage in Northern Michigan this summer. There are plenty of folks my husband and I recognize as First Tuesday patrons at other events. We might not know their names, but we feel a First Tuesday [Concert] bond.

Through these concerts, I’ve also met musicians. When I was front and center at the Yo Yo Ma concert two years ago, I could actually wave at many of the symphony players I’d met through First Tuesday [Concerts]. There was the sweetheart cellist Jennifer Humphreys, now, sadly for us, gone – our loss, Atlanta’s gain. Through these concerts I met trombonist, Tom Burge,

Trombonist Tom Burge

who has a Sunday evening WDAV gig I listen to. Even if I can’t see Amy Whitehead’s flute, I surely recognize her familiar, tilted head in row three of the symphony. When he played the benefit concert last spring, my husband and I got to chauffer virtuoso violinist Robert, please call me Bobbie, McDuffie from the airport to his hotel.

There’s no doubt about it, the music is stellar, but for me, it’s the people who carbonate my First Tuesday concert experience. So if you’ve not gone across the street to the post-concert reception before, consider this a nudge. You might even get to meet the musicians.

I look forward to meeting you!

We started our season with a celebration of the influential Charlotte native, Romare Bearden.

Shirley and Tai discussing the Summerland duo by William Grant Still

If music can be described as storytelling, then in our Carolina Shout program we told the story, through different musical arrangements, of Bearden’s artistic influence and history that helps us understand our city better.

To tell the story, each musician brought a different personality and energy to the table. Hailing from NYC,  Tai Murray debuted her skills on the violin and let us in on that the secret behind her smiles: Happiness from playing the violin.

We were also delighted to reunite with former Charlotte Symphony Orchestra Flute player Shirley Gilpin. She lives by the philosophy that music is storytelling because similar to Bearden, she believes that  you must know what the art and culture is expressing in order to understand the history and background of a time and place.

Sound Check: Ina and Tai check their instruments before the concert.

In from Boston,  Ina Zdorovetchi captivated the stage with every cord of the hypnotic harp, an instrument that she “fell in love with at first site.”  She stumbled into the harp while she was a young pianist at boarding school in Romania. She elaborated that music is  “where we can express emotions where words are not needed”.

Pianist, Ethan Uslan was not only entertaining to listen to, his personality shined through off-stage.  He shared that his  passion for jazz and rag time music is engraved in his everyday life as well as on-stage.  And the audience agreed when there was much applause for every song he played including Carolina Shout and Jungle Drums by  James P. Johnson. Interestingly, both Ethan and Mr. Johnson are native Jersey Boys.

There was nothing but approval from the audiences after every performance. Shown here is our favorite: Really Truly Awesome

We love this rating: Really Truly Awesome

Shown L to R: Ina Zdorovetchi, Ethan Uslan, Ben Roe and Shirley Gilpin at Kings Kitchen

We are excited for next month’s concerts. The Living Room Event will be on November 6th.

We will be introducing you to a fresh young quartet to emerge in recent years. The Kontras Quartet (which means “contrast” in the Afrikaans language) is dedicated to bringing chamber music to new audiences, offering fresh interpretations of the established string quartet canon, as well as presenting new and unfamiliar works from the member’s individual homelands of South Africa, Russia, and the United States.

We look forward to seeing you there!