A trio, a string quartet and a brass quintet take the Fulkerson Recital Hall stage on the HSU campus in Arcata, for the third in a series of concerts featuring community chamber music groups.
These groups are composed of North Coast citizens, most of them with jobs and careers unrelated to music, who rehearse and perform for the love of music.
For example, the members of TriMusica are a retired English/French teacher, a physician who is the principal oboist for the Eureka Symphony, and a truck driver and former principal cellist for the Eureka Symphony.
And while the idea of community chamber music groups may suggest programs dominated by safe and familiar music, this concert highlights seldom-performed works and composers.
The TriMuisica trio is oboist (and physician) Ellen Weiss, pianist (and retired teacher) Betty Creaghe, and cellist (and truck driver) Mark Creaghe. They will perform a sonata composed by the “soldier-king” of 18th century Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. Novelist and composer Rupert Hughes called him a “flute player and composer of remarkable skill — for a king.” He wrote some 100 sonatas, though they are rarely heard today.
TriMusica will also perform a sonata by Johann Gottlieb Graun, who was Frederick the Great’s court composer when he was still a crown prince, as well as a rare work by English composer John Rutter, “Tango” by Issac Albeniz and an Etude by Frederic Chopin.
The Meadowood Quartet makes its second appearance in the community chamber music series: they played in the first one last spring. Members of the string quartet are Betty Bliss (violin) from Redway; Marilyn Page (violin) from Arcata; Stefan Vaughan (viola) from Eureka, and Eric Jones (cello) from McKinleyville. They will perform one of Beethoven’s celebrated early Quartets (Opus 18, Number 4 in C minor), in four movements.
The third group in this concert, the Northcoast Brass Ensemble, is a little different in that all its members are music teachers. Chris Cox (trumpet) teaches at Eureka High; Burt Codispoti (trumpet) at Triple Junction High School in Petrolia; Ronite Gluck (French horn) for the Freshwater School District; while Dan Aldag (trombone) and Fred Tempas (tuba) teach at HSU.
Four of the works the Ensemble will play are contemporary compositions or arrangements with a regional connection. “Fanfre for Open Spaces” us a 1988 composition by HSU alumna Katherine Ann Murdock, who teaches music theory and composition at Wichita State University. “Mamanita” by pioneer jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton, is arranged for brass quintet by Northcoast Brass Ensemble trombonist and HSU Music professor Dan Aldag. “Italian Postcards” by Ray Burkhart was commissioned by the Humboldt Brass Chamber Music Workshop. “Dance” is by Wilke Renwick, a French horn player who retired to Oregon from the Colorado Symphony.
This Community Chamber Music concert on Friday, June 6 will begin at 7:30 p.m., which is a half hour earlier than concerts in Fulkerson Recital Hall usually start. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students/seniors, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. http://HSUMusic.blogspot.com. An HSU Music Department production.