This concert series lets you hear Charlotte Symphony Orchestra musicians for free
The upside? Free chamber music, almost all of it impossible to hear elsewhere in the region, played for sheer joy by members of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, their friends and peers.
The downside? Pews at Providence United Methodist Church can be hard. These Sunday nights concerts are always BYOC: Bring your own cushion.
The PUMC Chamber Music Series has gathered a steady following in the hundreds, but that means most people who attend CSO concerts still haven’t discovered the biggest classical music bargain in town. They’ll get their next chance March 1, when 20 musicians tackle half a dozen lesser-known works dear to their hearts.
The night starts with the small-scale “Cricket Symphony” by Georg Philipp Telemann, who had a penchant for replicating animal noises. It ends with three short works by the Charlotte Mandolin and Guitar Quintet, including an arrangement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1. In between come Mikhail Glinka’s Trio Pathetique and a new piece by CSO cellist Jeremy Lamb: “A Ride on Oumuamua,” which he’ll play with cellist Sarah Markle and bassist Taddes Korris.
That’s a program only musicians would’ve assembled. In fact, they do everything for this series themselves: pick programs, locate music if it’s obscure, get permission from living composers — they like to feature those — and find other musicians they can talk into playing with them.
CSO bassoonist Lori Tiberio manages the series, which generally offers seven concerts between September and May. Tiberio gives application forms to all her symphony colleagues to help her assemble the programs, and she’s not in the habit of turning people down.
“There are seasons where a particular piece may not fit,” Tiberio said. “But if a musician really wants to do it, I’ll schedule it. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll get a little hate mail, and we’ll do another concert the next month.” (Complainers, who have grown fewer through the years, must beef in e-mails to the church for her to find out.)
A musician-led effort
“One of the first things I heard about when I moved here (in 2006) was this series,” said violinist Kari Giles, assistant concertmaster of the CSO, who’ll play in the Telemann. “They trust you and are willing to go with you. I paired a solo piece by Elliott Carter with a piece by Robert Mann (of the Juilliard Quartet) for violin and cello. I suggested that to Lori, and she said, ‘Cool!’
“Orchestral music is my job; chamber music is my passion. If I don’t have chamber music …” Giles pauses, searching for a metaphor to echo something pianist Paul Nitsch had said earlier: “My life as a solo pianist was sitting in a practice room for 200 hours, giving a concert, getting applause and going home. The first time I was invited to a chamber music concert at a Virginia festival — it was for the Smetana Piano Trio — I had tears in my eyes. I had been given a chance to find out why I played the piano.”
Nitsch, who’ll play in the Glinka trio, taught at Queens University and helped start a chamber series there that ran for years. He has seen such enterprises come and go, including another long-running series at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
Only the PUMC team has endured, and its humble beginnings gave no sign of longevity. Tiberio remembers the late 1970s, when section leaders in the CSO got together to make music wherever they could find an inexpensive (preferably free) space and a reasonably tuned piano.
“We felt we were getting lost in the orchestra, which wasn’t a good thing,” she recalled. “So we’d run around town and beg people for spaces to play, then drink beer afterward.” (“We have graduated to martinis,” Nitsch added, laughing.)
How the series began
A quartet playing at Wildacres, a music retreat in Marion, ran into David Stoke, then the music director at PUMC. He invited them to play at the church without a rental fee, Tiberio said. “He told us, ‘I’ll hide the cost of piano tuning somewhere in the budget.’ The church has always been a gracious host under David and Adam Wade, the music director now.”
Concerts continued informally from 1982 to 1995, when Tiberio took the reins: “I have a music history degree, and this was the ideal place to use it.” She asked PUMC to let her oversee a formal series; the church agreed, with two caveats. First, its chancel choir had to get a slot on the series each year. (It has two this time.) Second, no money could be collected because performances take place in the sanctuary.
Early on, Tiberio remembers, unusual works regularly prompted responses of “That was awful. If you play anything like that again, I’m not coming.” She asked musicians to speak beforehand, even demonstrate bits of the music. Educating the audience paid off so well that she now feels comfortable scheduling an entire program of living composers.
Though organizers have occasionally had benefactors — years ago, one patron liked to pay for post-concert receptions — they’re almost alone in town in not wanting you to give money.
“We’re not a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit,” Tiberio said. “We don’t have a board, and the musicians have ownership over the programs. It’s just us playing music we love.”
If you’re going
The free concerts all begin at 7 p.m. at Providence United Methodist Church, 2810 Providence Road. After the March 1 outing described above, three concerts remain. There are no tickets to buy, but you’ll find the schedule at providenceumc.org.
The March 29 concert offers Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and Toru Takemitsu’s “Between Tides.” On April 19, you’ll hear Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Victoria Bond’s “Dancing on Glass” and Marc Mellits’ “Splinter.” The May 17 concert contains one full-length work, René Clausen’s “A New Creation,” with the PUMC chancel choir and an orchestra under the direction of Adam Ward.
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