It’s hard to believe that Classical Up Close has just finished its twelfth season, but it’s true. 

What began as a response to the cancellation of the Oregon Symphony’s return to Carnegie Hall in 2013 has blossomed into an annual event of free chamber music that puts the artists up close and personal with listeners. (One season was lost to Covid shutdowns.)

After a piece is played, audience members can pepper the players with questions of all sorts – about the musicians’ background, the music, the instruments, the composer, what kind of shoes work best with an ipad foot pedal, etc. The interactive style of Classical Up Close concerts has proven to be a winner for everyone.

This season offered six full-fledged concerts at Portland metro area churches, plus seven pop-up performances, and two kid’s concerts – and all were gratis. All of the main concerts were emceed by Christa Wessel, one of the most popular voices at All Classical Radio, and the free raffle giveaway for an upcoming Oregon Symphony concert is an added plus for listeners.

At Hillsdale Community Church

I was able to attend the first four Classical Up Close concerts, which kicked off April 29 at Hillsdale Community Church in Southwest Portland. This concert offered an enticing mixture of music for strings, brass, voice, piano, and harp by a diverse group of composers, including a couple that I had not heard of before.

Violinist Erin Furbee, pianist Maria Garcia, and cellist Kevin Kunkel kicked things off with Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires in an arrangement by José Bragato. The trio gave the tango-drenched piece a wonderfully sultry feeling.  The scratchy and snapping sounds that Furbee created elicited questions from audience members.

One of the most unusual combinations that I have ever heard was a piece for cornet and harp written by Oskar Böhme, a German trumpeter and composer who lived most of his years in Russia until he was executed by Stalin in 1938. Titled Soirée De St. Petersbourg: Romance for Cornet and Harp, this mellow, lovely duet was performed by cornetist Jeffrey Work and harpist Matthew Tutsky. I knew that Work had a collection of trumpets and cornet, so I had to ask him how many he currently has. He replied that it has expanded to seventy!

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American composer Mason Bates’ Mainframe Tropics for Violin, Horn, and Piano received an incisive performance by Greg Ewer, Jeff Garza, and Sequoia, respectively. They more than conquered the changes in meter and extended techniques, which included prepared piano (whereby Sequoia placed little encumbrances next to some of the strings inside the piano). It was a tricky piece that veered from herky-jerky passages to motoric sequences that were occasionally accompanied by rapping-tapping sounds from the piano.

Mezzo-soprano Sarah Maines, violist Amanda Grimm, and pianist Monica Ohuchi delved into Romantic German lieder with Brahms’ Zwei Gesánge für eine Altstimme mit Bratsche und Klavier.  Maines, who sings with the Portland Opera Chorus, emoted the songs with a beautiful tone, but it would have been nice to have had a text, because her diction got swallowed up by the acoustic. (I mention this because German is my other language.)

The low-pitched and meditative Tenebrae by Osvaldo Golijov impressed me greatly. Violinists Ling Ling Huang and Ruby Chen, violist Grimm, and cellist Kunkel created a warm, intimate sound that was inviting and lovely. At one point the piece seemed to become fragile, with tremolos taking over, but then it transitioned to the soothing introspective thematic that was so relaxing.

The Rose City Brass Quintet (trumpeters Logan Brown and Joe Klause, trombonist Lars Campbell, tubist JáTik Clark, and hornist Dan Patridge) played Passages Pour Quintette de Cuivres by French composer Patrice Caratini. Clark laid down a steady beat for the opening of this jazzy number, but he also got the spotlight in a gentle movement. There were all sorts of challenging rhythms that the ensemble surmounted with gusto, which brought the concert to an emphatic end.

At Trinity Church

The next Classical Up Close concert took place May 2 at Trinity Church of Portland. This string-dominated concert began with the first movement of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 13 in A minor. The quintet, featuring violinists Greg Ewer and Ling Ling Huang, violist Adam LaMotte, and cellist Antoinette Gan, aced this beloved piece with elan.

The audience then found out that Huang’s first novel will be turned into a TV series and that her second novel, Immaculate Conception, will be published very soon. LaMotte is going to expand his business of making violins, taking over Geesman Fine Violins in downtown Portland, and Gan is a registered nurse. Man, these musicians are killing it on all fronts!

Polish composer Alexandre Tansman wrote a rarely heard quartet for four cellos, which was played by Nancy Ives, Justin Park, Kevin Kunkel, and Seth Biagini. Tansman’s Deux Mouvements Pour Quatuor de Violoncelles had a singing quality that was also sort of pensive. The second movement moved with more rhythmic and motoric intensity. After the applause, listeners congratulated Park with additional applause, because he is the new assistant principal cellist of the Oregon Symphony.

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The first movement of Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2 in G major received a lush and lovely performance from violinists Shanshan Maggie Zeng and Shengnan Li, violists Amanda Grimm and Haojian Want, and cellist Seth Biagini. They made it easy to imagine springtime with a flight of birds accenting the skyline.

After intermission came the third movement, Presto, of Jessie Montgomery’s Duo for Violin and Cello. Violinist Ron Blessinger and cellist Ives had a fun time with this one, taking the audience on an energetic, uptempo hoedown. The pros and cons of using an iPad with a foot pedal instead of paper sheet music ensued afterwards. I think Blessinger said that sometimes “you have to remember to wake up the pedal.”

The concert wrapped up with Peter Schickele’s Quintet No. 2 for Piano and String Quartet. Some P.D.Q. Bach influences came through, especially with the boogie-woogie piano segments and the uptempo barnyard dance that featured some fiddling. Violinists Inés Voglar Belgique and Lucia Atkinson, violist Maia Hoffman, and pianist Cary Lewis had a grand time with this piece. I’m sure that Schickele, rest in peace, was smiling, especially when Voglar Belgique let out a “Yee ha!”

At Montavilla Church

A full house greeted the musicians May 6 at Montavilla Church, which had plenty of air conditioning to counter the very warm day (around 80 degrees). The program began with the first three movements of Germaine Tailleferre’s String Quartet, which received an appealing rendition from mousai REMIX (violinists Emily Cole and Shin-Young Kwon, violist Jennifer Arnold, and cellist Marilyn de Oliveira). A young girl in the audience remarked that she loved how the musicians moved to the music, and that brought smiles to everyone’s faces.

Up next was Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello by Reinhold Glière, in an arrangement for violin and bass. Violinist Vijeta Sathyaraj and bassist Mariya-Andoniya Andonova charmed concertgoers with four movements of the Glière, which included a very lovely lullaby. Several comments afterwards were directed to Andonova and the physicality of playing a double bass. She mentioned that controlling her 80-pound dog challenges her physically as well.

Sarah Kwak, concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony and head honcho of Classical Up Close, took the stage with pianist Cary Lewis to sail through the first two movements of Schubert’s Sonata (Duo) in A Major for Violin and Piano (Op 162), making a tricky piece look easy. Lewis noted afterwards that he had played that piece many times, but Kwak’s interpretation was the most sensuous, which she accomplished despite a baby or young child who let out a brief yell at just the right time, which caused everyone to chuckle.

The first two movements of Dvořák’s Terzetto in C Major featured inspired playing by violinists Yuqi Li and Jeong Yoon Lee and violist Haojian Wang. It turns out that all three play modern instruments: Li’s violin dates to 1973, Lee’s dials back to 1992, and Wang’s viola was made in 1983.

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Opening tempestuously with dramatic chords from the piano, the first movement of Vaughan Williams’s Piano Quintet in C minor closed out the program with verve. Pianist Yoko Greeney played with terrific expressivity, accompanied by violist Kwon, violist Charles Noble, cellist de Oliveira, and bassist Jason Schooler, who chose the piece because so there are few quintets that feature the bass. Emcee Christa Wessell mentioned that the bows used by the group were made by, or at least had bow hair from, her husband, Darrell Hanks. So, she wanted the quintet to be called the Hanks Ensemble. For more about Hanks, see my article here.

At Red Sea Community Church

The Classical Up Close concert at Red Sea Community Church May 7 was not heavily attended, but did have an enthusiastic audience that appreciated a program that offered lots of variety, starting with Glière’s Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello, but this time with violinist Jeong Yoon Lee and cellist Seth Biagini, instead of violin and bass – as was done the previous evening. Lee and Biagini played three movements plus the lullaby, finishing with the wickedly fast final movement. Between the two evenings, the only movement that was not heard was the sixth, which Lee noted just wasn’t that interesting.

Caroline Shaw’s Limestone and Felt created an enigmatic atmosphere with lots of percussive sounds. Violist Charles Noble and cellist Marilyn de Oliveira carpeted the church with textures derived from plucking, snapping, slapping, and strumming. The musicians noted that Shaw won the Pulitzer Prize for music and now lives in Portland. How cool is that!

The Shaw was followed by Prokofiev’s Quintet in G minor, one of the quirkiest quintets in the chamber music repertoire. Oboist Karen Wagner, clarinetist James Shields, violinist Emily Cole, violist Noble, and bassist Jason Schooler uncorked the off-kilter eccentricities of three movements from this piece, which Prokofiev wrote for a circus troupe band. Shields got off some terrific licks, going extremely high in his register one moment and then extremely low the next. The group should record it some day.

After intermission came the third movement from Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, with violinist Vijeta Sathyaraj and cellist de Oliveira. Lots of phrases were exchanged between the two musicians, as if they were holding a lively conversation.

The concert finished up with Serenade for Winds by Hungarian-British composer Mátyás Sieber. Clarinetists Shields and Louis DeMartino teamed up with bassoonists Kai Rocke and Vincent Igusa and hornists Joseph Berger and Alicia Waite to perform the piece. The music expressed a wide range that included lilting folk-song-like passages, humorful, sprightly sequences, and tic-toc-ing bassoons that supported Shields as he played a wistful melody.

Afterwards, one of the questions prodded differences between orchestral performances (follow the conductor’s vision) and chamber music performance (musicians create their own vision). Plus, Rocke revealed that he doesn’t confine himself to classical music – he has played with popular bands such as Tower of Power. Super!

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Although I didn’t get to the final Classical Up Close concerts (May 16 at Moreland Presbyterian Church; a pair of kids’ concerts May 18 at Tigard Library), you can still enjoy the photos by Joe Cantrell:

At Moreland Presbyterian Church

At Tigard Library kids’ concert

At St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church

At Southwest Community Center pop-up concert

At Powell’s City of Books pop-up concert