The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival begins Sept. 7 — with a concert featuring a violin and an amplified cardboard tube in Old Cabell Hall. Over the course of the next two weeks the festival will offer concerts featuring chamber music by such distinguished composers such as Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms as well as arrangements by modern composers such as pianist Eric Moe.
The festival got its start about nine years ago, and in its beginnings, it used the Jefferson Theater downtown. While the Jefferson is being renovated, the University has been lucky enough to act as host, giving students a more intimate opportunity to experience its music. Directors Tim Summers (violin/viola) and Rafe Bell (cello), who have been to a variety of music festivals, thought there was a vacuum to fill in Charlottesville’s music scene. With the Chamber Music Festival, Summers and Bell hope to add another dimension to the diversity of Charlottesville music.
Though Charlottesville is not the booming metropolis many of the festival’s performers have played in, it provides a friendly atmosphere uniquely suited to the intimacy of chamber music, which often features small, informal groups playing music to entertain themselves as much their audiences.
“It is as at least as much fun to rehearse as to perform.” Summers said. “To have friends come to Charlottesville, where we could spend time making music in a beautiful and comfortable place, and in the end performing for an audience amongst whom we could find many friends, seemed very attractive.”
The core group of performers for the festival mostly consists of friends Bell and Summers have made over the years through their involvement in various music ensembles. The highest concentrations of musicians come from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra — in which both Bell and Summers play — and Juilliard.
Many of these performers and contributors are coming from Europe, but it is the very American idea of improvisation, born of jazz, that influences much of the modern contributions to this year’s festival. Summers, in his construction of the program, put a lot of thought into this idea of improvisation as a way to provide a better understanding of classical music. The amplified cardboard tube — conceived by percussionist and festival performer David Cossin — played with the violin, is the epitome of this concept of improvisation in classical music. “I thought that using violin/cardboard tube in a free way would make a good sort of invocation for listening.” Summers said.
Summers has also gleaned inspiration from former festival performers — friend and violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch and Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Kuusisto’s style was especially inspirational for this performance, Summers said. He described Kuusisto’s style as “Finnish jazz-folk-whatever,” which is a description that seems to be particularly appropriate to the theme of improvisation in this year’s festival. Summers’ concept for this concert will balance these improvisations with classical chamber music pieces composed by the greats.
During these few weeks in September, Old Cabell Hall will play host to a collection of concerts that promise to be a pleasure to all attendees, no matter their musical background. The festival will be an appropriate mix of intelligent improvisation and beautiful classics, played in the unique environment that is Cabell Hall. The concept of chamber music as music for friends, by friends, will make its home in Charlottesville to be enjoyed by students of the University and members of the community alike.
The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival runs Sunday, Sept 7 through Sunday, Sept 21 in Old Cabell Hall.
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