Chamber music – and an entrepreneurial spirit!

I’ve heard Chamber Project St. Louis a half a dozen times now in various venues around St. Louis, most recently at the Schlafly Tap Room downtown. What is remarkable and admirable about these four young ladies is that they are also managing their own business affairs – marketing, sales, website, rentals, venue arrangements, piano rental, and much more I am sure. It is difficult enough to eke out a living in classical music and the arts, but to do it all on your own is quite a challenge. Most musicians launch off an existing platform, an institution; these ladies are creating one.

But even that’s not all: They are bringing chamber music to new venues. How many times have you heard a violin, viola, flute, and harp in a bar? By doing so, they are undoubtedly attracting new patrons, young patrons, patrons that don’t need to drape their mink coats or Burberry overcoats over the back of their chairs. Imagine being able to sway and move, or even tap your foot to the music you are listening to! If you don’t like sitting for an hour, you can stand in the back. I heard them in the Spring at the Tavern of Fine Arts in the Central West End, over a glass of wine (or two) and a cheese and bread plate (and other choices). Chamber music is awakening, morphing into entertainment with options for how you experience it (not that I don’t love going to traditional concert halls, too)

The program last week at the Tap Room featured a harp, and music that spanned two and a half centuries. The Song of the Lark for flute and harp was the first piece, by Charles Rochester Young, a contemporary composer. It was followed by a Mozart (late 1700s) Duo for violin and viola, a harp solo by G Donizetti (early 1800s), and finished with Petit Suite by the French composer A Jolivet (mid-1900s). Just getting to see and hear a harp up close was treat enough! During the first piece, the harpist did something to her instrument to make it sound like a snare drum. To me, this was a stunning effect. She played it in spots like a guitar. Or at least it sounded like one to me. The piece itself reminded me of Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun. One thing about a Flute and a Harp: Both can run up and down the musical scales lightning fast and fast runs were certainly featured in this work. I’ve also never seen a harp string break, but one did (it hung there like a child being punished in the corner), and the players recovered marvelously.

The Mozart piece, I have to say, was typical in the sense that the viola was slaved to the violin. I’ve been a struggling viola player at various times in my life and have an ever so tiny chip on my shoulder. And not that I could ever have played hard, solo parts if they were ever written for me. But still. Anyway, the piece came across as lovely and, again, just so enriching to hear Mozart in a bar with huge tanks of beer and ale one floor below. He probably would have liked that. Finally, by the third movement, it seemed that the viola had parts equal to the violin, as they seemed to do a question an answer type of dance between them, exploring something deep.

During the Donizetti, we really got to see the harp up close and personal. The movement of the arms off of and onto the strings, and the shoulders as an extension of the instrument, is a thing of splendor.

The final piece, the Jolivet, also led my mind to Faure, Debussy, and Ravel and the impressionistic music of France and Europe in the late 1800s. This piece flowed off the stage deliberately and with great sensuality, and in the third movement I think I detected fragments of Middle Eastern musical themes, and different rhythms. In the last movement, the flute player switched to a piccolo and the piece ended playfully, as if there was dancing on board a ship, wherein the harp sounded to me much like a piano.

I guess I have a sentimental reason for hoping Chamber Project St. Louis achieves lavish success. When I was a teenager, playing the viola in the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Youth Orchestra, I formed a chamber group with some friends and we played a few “gigs” around town. We even got paid when we played at the Jewish Community Center, to this day the only time I have ever made a dollar with that instrument (five dollars to be exact!). Our group was a little lopsided. We had three or four violins, one viola, and I recollect that we had a cellist, and maybe even another instrument or two. We booked our own gigs too. I suppose our parents helped. But I think about how much fun we had giving it a go.

These ladies of course are trying to make a living adding new dimensions to the chamber music experience in St. Louis. Plan to enjoy their next gig and support them when you can!