Facebook event here:
CR at Sava’s: SF Symphony/Orchestras Summit After-Party

We’ve got two events coming up in March: on March 5, a chamber jam at Silvio’s Organic Pizza, with Beethoven, Turina, and more. Plus, on March 23, we’re teaming up with UMS to host an afterparty at Sava’s for the San Francisco Symphony concert, part of UMS’s Renegade series. More details to come.

Facebook event for March 5 is here:
Chamber Jam at Silvio’s

On Sunday, April 24th, we’re presenting our last show at Gracie’s before Ann Arbor enters summer mode.

Featuring…

Yet another Bach string arrangement by Mark Haynes, the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor! With Mark on cello plus Dan Winnick, violin, Stephanie Kirwan, viola, and Ed Baskerville on another cello.

The Baroque stylings of Brandon Straub on harpsichord and Hannah Robbins on viola da gamba!

Beethoven’s Trio in C major, Op. 87, with Katie Thompson, Hilary Lewis, and Christine Beamer!

and…

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’s first ode to Bachian forms grafted onto Brazilian music. With Jonathan Butler, Jake Woollen, Jamie Davis, Ken Ishii, Andrea Yun, Corie Lint, Ed, and Mark. That’s right, EIGHT CELLOS!

18+, $5 recommended cover donation. All proceeds benefit relief work by Doctors Without Borders around the world.

Visit the Facebook event to let us know you’re coming.

This Wednesday, Classical Revolution co-founder/violist Charith Premawardhana and Classical Revolution Detroit director/striking DSO bassist Rick Robinson will be joining us at Silvio’s Pizza for our usual weekly chamber music jam session! Rick and Charith, out from San Francisco, will be visiting chapters all around the midwest this week from Madison to Detroit.

Plus, you can help out with trip expenses by pledging money here. Any amount helps!

The fun at Silvio’s begins at 7:30 PM, as usual.

Plus, they’ll be at the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit next Monday, March 7—check out the Classical Revolution Detroit Facebook page for more.

We’re pleased to announce our next show at Goodnight Gracie, featuring music by Schubert, Bach, and much more!

The music begins Sunday, February 27, at 8:30 PM. Let us know you’re coming by RSVPing at the Facebook event.

All door proceeds for the evening ($5 recommended minimum donation) will go toward important work in Haiti by Partners In Health, the most established on-the-ground health organization there. A year ago, Classical Revolution chapters around the world held events to raise money for earthquake relief in Haiti, and, a year later, Haiti struggles to rebuild while suffering from a major outbreak of cholera amidst political instability.

Most fundraisers after big disasters are one-time events, even if an area is still struggling to recover after the initial outpouring of support. This is one attempt to follow up, and Gracie’s has been kind enough to let us replace the cover charge with donations to PIH.

Mendelssohn octet, with oboe on second violin part of course

Last Wednesday, a very surprising and wonderful thing happened: snowed-in members of the Cleveland Orchestra came to Silvio’s Organic Pizza for a night of chamber music. I thought I’d get down my account of what happened before it’s completely gone from my memory.

For us, this was a case of being in the right place at the right time: (1) they played Hill Auditorium last night just as the snowstorm was getting into full swing—a brilliant concert, by the way; (2) Wynton Marsalis & Jazz at Lincoln Center got stuck in Toronto; (3) we have chamber music jam sessions every Wednesday night; (4) I knew a violist in the orchestra, Joanna Patterson, from Seattle Youth Symphony; and (5) Liz Stover of UMS keeps track of us on Facebook. (Can I call this a “perfect storm” without it sounding quite as cliché as usual?) Thanks to Liz and Claire Rice at UMS for connecting things together, to Carol Lee Iott, personnel director of the Cleveland Orchestra, for getting the word out on their end, and to Stephen Shipps, violin professor, for bringing in a raft of new student musicians that hadn’t been to CR before. And especially to Silvio Medoro, who made his wonderful pizza joint the perfect place for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.

I was blown away by how many Cleveland Orchestra members showed up to play, which I don’t think is just a statement about the Wednesday night scene in Ann Arbor—it shows a real openness on their part. Two appearances by celebrities (at least within the classical music world) were particularly unexpected: concertmaster Bill Preucil, who had dinner plans at 7:30, showed up right at 6:30 to play quartets for an hour with Joanna and a rotating band of local cellists and violinists. Later in the evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano soloist touring with the orchestra, jumped into the fray with the finale from the Brahms G minor piano quartet, elevating the dinky little piano we had donated a few months ago to newfound heights.

In all, we played music from 6:30 PM to nearly midnight, the program including:

• Various Beethoven and Mendelssohn quartet movements
• Schubert cello quintet
• Bach trio sonatas
• Brahms G minor piano quartet (finale)
• Beethoven serenade for flute, violin, and viola
• Mozart horn quintet
• Brahms B major piano trio
• Rachmaninoff Vocalise arranged for three basses
• Mozart flute quartet
• Mendelssohn octet (with oboe on second violin)

and probably more, but my memory is limited.

An attempt at listing the musicians that played, in alphabetical order:

• Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
• Martha Baldwin, cello
• Ed Baskerville, cello
• Charles Bernard, cello
• Katie von Braun, violin
• Lindsey Bordner, violin
• Charles Carleton, bass
• Hans Clebsch, horn
• Scott Dixon, bass
• Max Dimoff, bass
• Alicia Doudna, violin
• Max Geissler, cello
• David Harrell, cello
• Kat Lawhead, viola
• Amy Lee, violin
• Hilary Lewis, viola
• Corie Lint, cello
• Joanna Patterson, viola
• William Preucil, violin
• Frank Rosenwein, oboe
• Jake Saunders, cello
• Julia Siciliano, piano
• Anča Skálová, violin
• Josh Smith, flute
• Brian Thornton, cello
• Dan Winnick, violin

and I know I’m forgetting the names of at least one bass student, two violin students, and probably others.

I was also happy to see administrative bigwigs there—along with Carol Lee were Cleveland executive director Gary Hanson and general manager Gary Ginstling, and life-of-the-party Ken Fischer, president of UMS. I think their presence was a good thing not because Classical Revolution needs direct support from or entanglement with large, well-endowed arts organizations, but rather that a group of people that may read about things like CR, even abstractly like the idea, were able to see it in the flesh. Under normal circumstances, I suspect a trip to a local Cleveland bar may not have made it onto their busy schedules.

Zachary Lewis of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was traveling with the orchestra, and wrote a nice little piece, focusing of course on the “orchestra’s unexpected night off” angle.

Let’s just hope blizzards keep more orchestras stuck in town. When’s the Berlin Philharmonic here next?

Wednesdays at Silvio’s

First up, two pieces of news about our jam sessions at Silvio’s: (1) we’ve moved them to Wednesday nights in order to better accommodate gigging musicians, and (2) we have a piano, generously donated by Jon Rush!

We had our first Wednesday session last week, and Renee Robbins and Andrew Anderson came by to lend their pianistic talents to our first night with a piano. Mark Haynes and I were on hand with our cellos, and Dan Lipschutz, past president of the Ann Arbor Symphony, dropped by with his violin. Had us some Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, and more. (Thanks to Ernest Caviani for tuning the piano at the last minute, and to Renee for making the call.)

Upcoming shows at Gracie’s

We’ve confirmed our next show at Goodnight Gracie’s for February 20maybe February 27, actually. Details to be announced, but put it on your calendar now…wait for the final date!

We’re also hoping to do an all-cello extravaganza in March, and more in April and May as well. Stay tuned!

This Website

Finally, a word about this website: it’s been mostly stagnant until now thanks to the growing hegemony of Facebook, but I’m going to begin using it as a place to post more information about what we’re doing, the place to find our master calendar of events—including, starting now, other events that CR players are involved in—and anything else interesting and relevant to CR. Assuming everything is set up right, these blog posts will automatically get announced on Facebook and Twitter, helping keep the same information for people connected there as well as anyone who stumbles upon us on the web.

upcoming show: BEETHOVEN LIVES DOWNSTAIRS

We’re coming to Goodnight Gracie’s on December 12 for a night of chamber music by Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Smetana, and Shostakovich, plus some Armenian folk songs arranged for string quartet.

RSVP at the Facebook event page.

For now, please note our plea for a piano (click the “loan us your piano” link up top).