Classical Music
Savor an island view — and first-class music

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic

ERIC ARBITER Aloysia Friedmann is founding artistic director of Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and a violist. She runs the festival with Jon Kimura Parker, her husband.

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"Concerts with a View" is the catchphrase of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and audiences can't miss the stunning views of the San Juans from nearly every perspective surrounding the little festival.

For music lovers, another catchphrase would be just as accurate: "Stunningly imaginative programming with first-class artists." That's what is on tap this weekend, when music and dance — yes, dance — unite on the tiny stage of the Orcas Center in Eastsound, the island's major hub.

This weekend's performances, long sold out, include two performances of the most eagerly awaited of all the 2004 programs: "Connections," in which two hotshot pianists — Jon Kimura Parker and Anton Nel — team up to play Stravinsky's dazzling "The Rite of Spring," with two San Francisco Ballet dancers interpreting the score.

"I think this year is really special," says founding artistic director Aloysia Friedmann, a violist who runs the festival together with Parker, her husband. How does she get her ideas for creative programming, such as last year's concerts uniting filmmaker Otto Lang, pianist Claude Frank (who starred in Lang's film about Beethoven) and commentator Gerard Schwarz?

"Things just come to me," says the unassuming Friedmann, "and I see if I can make them work. I get input from people on Orcas, from other musicians and all sorts of sources. This year we're doing a 'Chopin Sorbet' of bits and pieces from Chopin at several concerts, because our videographer requested more Chopin."

The "Rite of Spring" came together because of a chance meeting last summer with Benjamin Pierce, a San Francisco Ballet principal. When pianist Anton Nel agreed to come for 2004, Friedmann knew that Nel and Parker could do the "Rite of Spring" in Stravinsky's own arrangement for two pianos.

Festival preview Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, 7:30 p.m. today and tomorrow, 4 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 2-3, Orcas Center, 917 Mount Baker Road, Orcas Island, $25-$27 (360-376-2281 or www.orcascenter.org; info at www.oicmf.org).

"I started thinking about dance, and I asked [Pierce] if he would do the choreography and perform it with his partner, Muriel Maffre. He jumped on the idea."

Even Friedmann doesn't know exactly what to expect tonight, when the first performance takes place. The work will incorporate film of the two dancers, representing the corps de ballet, while the live dance takes place in the foreground.

"It's a bit of a mystery to me," she confesses. "Along with this comes a whole new series of challenges: What do dancers need? A special floor, stage lighting, all sorts of things. But I know this will be truly out of the ordinary."

Friedmann also programmed a work of English violist/composer Rebecca Clarke ("Morpheus") this season, partly at the suggestion of the late and beloved board member Rosalie Chantiny — and partly because she acquired Clarke's viola from her colleague Toby Appel (with whom she was playing at the Seattle Chamber Music Society's Summer Festival).

"I sold my New York apartment and bought this beautiful instrument," Friedmann says, "and now I am getting to know it. It's a Grancino instrument from the late 1600s — the same maker who made my violin."

The festival always offers something a little unusual, and this year it will be William Ver Meulen playing the Alp horn. "Bill will be outside the theater, playing Alp horn calls [prior to some of the concerts]," says Friedmann. "That should certainly be interesting!"

Also on tap at 7:30 p.m. today and tomorrow: Debussy's String Quartet, and Mozart's Piano Quartet (with George Shangrow at the keyboard), and such artists as violinists Andrés Cárdenes and Ida Levin.

The festival continues Sunday with a 1 p.m. family concert, plus two "Orcas-trations" events at 4 and 6:30 p.m. featuring Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (with Cárdenes, flutist Lorna McGhee, Shangrow, and several others).

In between the "Seasons," there's a 5:15 p.m. ice-cream social on the Orcas Center Lawn. Two final concerts, Sept. 2 and Sept. 3, present "String Theory" with Schubert's B-Flat Piano Trio, Brahms' B-Flat Sextet and several shorter showpieces for piano and violin. Getting tickets won't be easy.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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