A home for future music superstars, a cultural nourishment for schoolchildren and seniors, and a rehearsal space where young string quartets can be mentored from everyday life to empire. .
Is that too much to ask for from a modest Palm Beach-based chamber music concert series?
Not according to Vicky Kellogg, founder of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Society, or Ahmad Mays, the organization’s executive director.
The association is planning a special concert on Tuesday to mark its 10th anniversary.th With a budget in the black and a successful launch of a second concert series far from home, the organizers are keen to explore future opportunities, including finding a space for society that could also serve as an educational center. Thinking big about the next few years.
“We don’t have big productions, but we run this organization very closely,” Kellogg said Friday. “We are very lucky.”
A sold-out concert scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Norton Museum features two string octets. In other words, it is a chamber music piece for eight people. Two octets each are scored for 4 violins, 2 violas, 1 cello, and double bass.
Accompanied by Amy Schwartz-Moretti and Grace Park, the violin parts are celebrated violinist James Ehnes and CMSPB artistic director Arnaud Sussmann. The violist is Paul Neubauer and Brian Chen. Nicholas Kanelakis will be in charge of the cello duties. Blake Hinson plays bass.
The program consists of Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet (in E-flat major, Op. 20), the most famous of all such pieces. In contrast, the other octet is the product of aging. The lesser-known Octet (B-flat major, Op. Post) by Max Bruch was composed in his 1919 and completed in his early 1920 when the German Romantic composer was 82 years old . Bruch died later that year. Octet was not performed by him until 1937, and he had to wait until 1996 for it to be published.
The Chamber Music Society held its first concert at Mar-a-Lago in November 2013, with classical guitarist Milos Karadaglich giving a recital of music by mostly South American composers. Since then, more than 100 musicians, including members of major symphonies such as the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic, in addition to internationally renowned performers such as Innes and Israeli pianist Inon Bernathan Introduced the artist.
Last year, the association hosted the Boscobel Chamber Music Festival at the Boscobel House and Gardens, a historic early 19th century house museum north of New York City. The Emerson String Quartet ended her 47-year career this year and performed at the festival, which drew about 1,000 people. A second festival is planned for September, featuring leading string quartets as the centerpiece of the music production.
Kellogg, who studied violin with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School and Joseph Silverstein at the New England Conservatory of Music, said, “Chamber music has always been my greatest love as a musician. Not many, and with Ruggiero Ricci at Indiana University The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society was just formed when Kellogg was a student in New York (she is now on its board), and Guarneri Genres such as the quartet, Lion was the biggest name in the chamber music scene.
The genre of chamber music has its origins in aristocratic circles, but by the mid-18thth In the 20th century, music for a small number of instrumentalists, such as violin sonatas, piano sonatas, string trios and string quartets, became popular with the new urban middle classes who were interested in playing music at home. It quickly became popular by finding a market for it quickly. The great Viennese triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven took chamber music to a much higher level by infusing into form some of their deepest thoughts.
![Vicky Kellogg is the founder and president of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Society.[Photo by Corby Kaye]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2023/01/07/NPBD/f6495bfe-4462-48eb-b949-155f6c58646d-vicki_kellogg_3.JPG?width=300&height=375&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
“Ordinary people know nothing about chamber music. [Tchaikovsky’s] After the ‘1812 Overture,’ they seem to be moving to opera, maybe because it’s the closest thing to a Broadway musical,” said Kellogg, inviting new acquaintances to a chamber music concert. “She had to Google ‘what is chamber music,'” she added. music? ‘”
But when they run into it, it’s a different story.
“When they come to chamber music, they find something that really feeds their soul,” she said.
The association has drawn up a three-year strategic plan that includes a new mission statement that is more than just a desire to put on great concerts, Mayes said Friday.
“The mission, in a nutshell, is to transform, connect and inspire,” he said.
This means that chamber musicians are “very important vehicles for connected societies”. “When I ask people why they come to our concerts, they tell me this is already happening.”
At the heart of that concept is diversity and inclusion, said Mays, who will join CMSPB in 2021 as director of education for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The current effort to expand the field of classical music to include previously marginalized voices, such as women and people of color, both as performers and writers, is the hottest topic in the industry today.
“Our job now is to find performers and composers who represent the communities we want to attract,” he said. This is a long-term project, he added, and he hopes observers will see society 50 years from now and see its progress.
“We want to be more connected to the society of the time. We want it to be a reflection of the society of today, rather than a museum or a ‘repository,’” Mays said. We can appreciate what art is without the (social) structures that have been built up over time.
“It builds community, so when someone comes to our concert, they feel they belong and it’s not a stuffy experience.” I liked it,” he said.
To diversify the audience, CMSPB’s February concert will feature performances by violinist Charles Yang and pianist Peter Dugan. Their program, Lovell to the Beatles, explores the connections between numerous musical styles. The Yang and Dugan concert will be held on February 15th at 7pm at the Norton Museum of Art.
Norton is a major concert venue in society these days, but the organization wants to hold concerts in its own home where it can offer educational outreach and expand. The group currently makes about seven to eight school visits each season, Mays said, but hopes to triple that number in the next few years.
Kellogg also wants the Society to commission new work, and wants to add video capabilities for educational purposes as well.
“And of course we want a place for us, a home,” she said. “We want to create a program for young artists, an up-and-coming program for those just starting to prepare for the main stage.”
Eventually, she said, an education director would be hired and the association would host visits by prominent violin makers.
In short, many outward-facing activities for music in its most intimate and private form of art. Kellogg’s “Dear Friend” describes the difference between chamber music and other genres:
“There’s ‘entertainment,’ and then there’s ‘inner containment,'” she said.
if you go
Tuesday 10th The Anniversary Celebration at the Norton Museum is sold out. Tickets are available for his Charles Yang-Peter Dugan concert titled “Bridges: Ravel to the Beatles” on February 15th at 7pm in Norton. Tickets are $75. For more information, visit www.cmspb.org or call 561-379-6773.
