The 2025 Chamber Festival opened with a special program offering a great variety of music from ensembles of different sizes, curated by Artistic Director Paul Marleyn.

In a pre-concert, on-stage conversation between composer-in-residence Dinuk Wijeratne and Mr. Marleyne, the artists traded stories of their musical educations and brushes with famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma. 

Mr. Wijeratne recalled Ma critiquing one of his student ensemble performances: “it’s not really telling me much — there’s no story here,” said Ma. “And I remember,” said Mr. Wijeratne, “we looked at each other, thinking, do you know how hard we’ve been working? You mean we have to tell a story as well?

“That was a formative lesson…”

The concert offered an evening of storytelling in words and music.

As bassist Joel Quarrington introduced Giovanni Bottesini’s Gran Duo for clarinet, bass and piano, he noted that some have called it a “mini opera,” all of nine minutes long! To assist the audience, he offered his own narrative of nine comical scenes. His fellow musicians, clarinetist James Campbell and Guy Few at the piano took on their roles with obvious amusement. Given that Bottesini was a bass player himself, the music foregrounded the melodic capacities of this instrument, with not a few pyrotechnical passages. Mr. Quarrington made sure that the bass was the hero of his story.

The second half of the concert turned to feature violinist Justin Saulnier playing the first movement of Mr. Wijeratne’s sonata, entitled “Resilience.” As the composer introduced it, he described it as a young person’s attempt to balance his cultural influences — born and raised in the East but trained in the Western tradition. He noted with pleasure that this evening’s performer was the same age as the composer when he wrote it — nineteen.

Mr. Salunier, accompanied by Gaspard Tanguay-Labrosse at the piano, delivered sometimes jagged lines and propulsive rhythms with energy and conviction. Passages of more winding, sinewy melody and moments of plucked piano strings brought out the Eastern influence. But most riveting were the quiet passages. 

Closing the program was a performance of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s “The Kitchen Revue.” Originally a ballet score, this piece for six instruments offered the witty dynamic of musical theatre, telling a story of “relationship troubles between kitchen implements” as guest narrator Tom Allen described it. Martinů’s pastiche of modernist musical styles, from Stravinsky to Dixieland, was perfectly paced with the mock-heroic storytelling.

The festival launched in the last week of August with an outdoor concert at Macaulay House featuring the True North Brass. We are pleased to feature here a witty illustration of the event from Terry Culbert.

The Festival continues this coming weekend, September 19-21, with three more concerts featuring the Arion Baroque Ensemble, a cello extravaganza, and the return of Tom Allen to read from Tolstoy’s story, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” alongside Beethoven, Janacek, Wijeratne and Brahms.  

Tickets available at pecmusicfestival.com

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