The award winning Gold Coast Chamber Players bring the finest in chamber music to Lafayette and now to the city of Piedmont. Founded in 1987, GCCP distinguishes itself by its eclectic programming and by providing community access to leading musicians from throughout the world. The fourth of this season’s concerts, titled Songs and Echoes of Home, will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 7, 2020 at the Lafayette Library Community Hall, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette. A Musical Mentoring Showcase featuring a student quartet from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music begins at 7 p.m. This program with the Aizuri Quartet, is presented in partnership with the Bay Area Music Consortium.
Praised by The Washington Post for “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was awarded the Grand Prize and the CAG Management Prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, along with top prizes at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan, and the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London. The Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, featuring new works written for the Aizuri Quartet by five American composers, was released by New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY Award.
“Songs and Echoes of Home” features music that embodies a sense of homeland and national identity, but at a distance, one step removed by the forces of psychology, geography and time. Folksong is a powerful force for the composers featured here, and the program includes three sets of song arrangements beginning with Dvorak’s beautifully touching Cypresses. Santa Cruz, CA native Lembit Beecher’s These Memories May Be True is a series of musical poems on elements of Estonian culture that his grandmother passed down to him. The first half of the program concludes with another set of songs, these written by the Armenian priest Komitas, whose music has become an enduring symbol of home deeply treasured by the Armenian diaspora. Rhiannon Giddens’s At the Purchaser’s Option was inspired by a 19th-century advertisement Giddens found for a 22-year-old female slave whose baby was also available for sale. Sibelius’s gripping Voces Intimae represents a shift from the grand optimistic expression of Finnish nationalism that dominated his youth to something more dark and personal. This unique program represents a unique musical journey that will move and inspire the listener.
Tickets are $45/ $40 senior (65+)/ $15 students. Purchase online at GCCPmusic.com or by calling (925) 283-3728. Concerts sell out quickly. Reserve today.