World-class musicians descend on Tucson for Winter Chamber Music Fest

Arizona Friends of Chamber Music kicks off its annual Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival on Sunday, March 13, at Leo Rich Theater downtown.

It’s the group’s 27th annual festival, even though last year’s event was virtual. The group barely got its 2020 festival in before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down.

This year, the group is hosting the Dover Quartet, the dynamic young foursome that the Chicago Tribune predicted would “become the next Guarneri String Quartet — they are that good.”

The group — violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-Van de Stadt and cellist Camden Shaw — has been playing together since organizing in 2008 at the Curtis Institute of Music. They took their name from Samuel Barber’s love song “Dover Beach.”

The quartet anchors a lineup that includes cellist Edward Arron, who joins pianist David Funk, violinist Axel Strauss and violist Dimitri Murrath for Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major. The opening concert program also features Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Sonata with clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois and pianist Jeewon Park. Think of that as an appetizer for the world premiere to close the festival March 20 of Liebermann’s String Quartet, commissioned by Arizona Friends.

It is the third work the group has commissioned from Lowell Liebermann, who in his 40-year career has composed two operas and more than 150 works for voice, symphony and chamber ensembles.

Here’s what you need to know about the 2022 festival, curated and coordinated by longtime artistic director Peter Rejto:

When: Performances are at 3 p.m. opening day Sunday, March 13, and the finale on March 20, and 7:30 p.m. March 15-18. “Festival — Celebration 2022” begins at 6 p.m. Saturday, March 19, featuring a concert, food prepared by Janos Wilder and an open bar.

Where: Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave.

Tickets: $130 for all five concerts, or $32 per concert, $10 for students. $150 for March 19 celebration event, a fundraiser for Arizona Friends. The performances also will be livestreamed. For access details, visit arizonachambermusic.org

Repertoire highlights: In addition to the Liebermann premiere, this year’s festival features works by a handful of popular composers including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Stravinsky and Dvorák, who share the spotlight with composers that fulfill Friends Board President Joseph Tolliver’s goal to offer more diversity in programming. Tolliver, tapped in March 2020 to lead the board, has made it a priority to program more works by female composers and composers of color.

On Friday, March 18, the festival checks both those boxes with African-American composer William Grant Still’s “Lyric” Quartet, to be performed by the Dover Quartet; and Polish female composer Grazyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No. 1, featuring Lark, Strauss, Murrath, Arron and Park.

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“These composers belong on these programs,” cellist Arron said from a concert stop in Florida last week. “They are great musicians and composers from throughout history and I think these pieces just fit so naturally into programs. Some of the things we are playing are not often performed and I think there will be a discovery certainly for some in the audience and for some of these musicians.”

Fun facts

:

Only three of the 10 musicians performing in the 2022 festival are making their festival debuts. One of those, violinist Tessa Lark, made her Tucson debut in 2019 when she joined Tucson Symphony Orchestra for the premiere of a bluegrass violin concerto co-commissioned by the TSO.

Violinist Axel Strauss wins the festival repeat offender award: This year marks his seventh festival appearance. (Of course, cellist/festival program director Rejto has him beat; he’s appeared at the festival since its beginning in 1994, although he hasn’t performed at all of them.)

We’ll file this fun fact under “Marital music-making:” Cellist Arron and pianist Park have been married for 15 years and often perform as a duo in Massachusetts, where they live with their 8-year-old daughter, Lilly.

And speaking of Arron, he and Lark are no strangers. In the fall, Lark will replace Arron as artistic director of the Musical Masterworks series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Arron is finishing up his 15th season with the popular chamber music series.

One last fun fact: Arron also shares the Tucson stage with his University of Massachusetts at Amherst colleague clarinetist de Guise-Langlois.

COVID protocols: Proof of vaccination and masks required for all festival concerts.