Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival — it’s a title that can be a bit misleading when you’re sitting in Tucson in March amid sun-soaked, blue skies and temperatures tipping past 80 degrees.
But in places like New York and Chicago, it is still winter and the idea of attending the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival in unwinterlike Tucson seems like a pretty good idea.
Beginning this weekend, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music will host its 23rd annual winter festival with a cast of artists that hail from those cold climes, including the headliners Pacifica Quartet.
The Pacifica — violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad and cellist Brandon Vamos — are on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington. They are making their return to Arizona Friends after a recital here in late 2014.
Among the works they will perform during the festival: Beethoven’s First String Quartet on the opening day Sunday, March 13; Schubert’s String Quintet in C major with cellist Steven Doane on Tuesday, March 15; and the premiere of G. Schurmann’s “Romancing the Strings” for string nonet to close the festival March 20.
The festival artist roster includes the return of Tucson faves pianist Bernadette Harvey, who is making her fifth festival appearance; festival regular Volkan Orhon, the Turkish-born bass player; violist Cynthia Phelps, New York Philharmonic’s principal violist who has performed with the Friends over the years; and cellist Clive Greensmith, whose relationship with the festival goes back to the early 2000s.
We’ll also see some lesser known faces including violinist Martin Beaver, whose last festival appearance was in 2012; and percussionist Svet Stoyanov, who was with the Friends at the 2005 festival to premiere Jeffery Cotton’s “Meditation, Rhapsody and Bacchanal,” which the Friends had commissioned with Soyanov and violinist Joseph Lin in mind. Lin, who is not among the festival artists this year, has been a constant on the Arizona Friends concert series and festivals for a number of years.
Festival newcomers include Canadian virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin, and Houston Symphony percussionist Matthew Strauss, both making Tucson debuts.
This year’s festival features a new Friends commission — one of three this season and among 61 the group has commissioned since launching the program in 1997. On Wednesday, March 16, pianist Harvey and cellist Steven Doane will perform Canadian composer/pianist Heather Schmidt’s Cello Sonata.
