There are a lot of things that we work very hard at, and if we do them right they don’t attract too much attention.  One of those is our weekly eNews, in which we share  thoughts about upcoming concerts and offer special discounts.  Normally our only feedback comes from eagle-eye readers who flag typos, wrong dates, and other (hopefully rare) errors.  However, today we were lucky enough to stumble upon a nice blog post by Mary Ann Devine, formerly marketing and PR guru at the Academy of Vocal Arts.   In it she praised some of our efforts, and we’re thankful for that – I think I even saw a small “high five” moment between Miles and Brian right before they brought out a birthday cake for Box Office Manager Bradford Kochel.  Good job guys!

As always, we welcome your feedback and look forward to seeing you at a concert soon.

Burwasser put it nicely:

On the surface, the decision to present this music seemed daring, but the utter joy and excitement of the audience upon hearing it made it look like an easy choice. It certainly did not seem to faze the performers, who offered fearless and affectionate playing, not least the conductor, Leon Fleisher, one of the great men of contemporary American music, and at the age of 81, as eager for adventure as any college kid.

Concerts like this don’t get presented often enough, that’s for sure.  In this case we can thank a wonderful group of foundation and individual supporters who helped make possible some eleven concerts of rarely heard masterworks: the Philadelphia Music Project and the Presser Foundation deserve our special thanks.

In the four years since its inception, the Philadelphia Fans of Classical Music has grown to 187 members from the Greater Philadelphia region including two dedicated individuals from Baltimore. The Fans meet monthly—or more often—in members’ homes to discuss some of the works or composers in upcoming concerts or to share  a favorite CD with the group and to select  which concerts to attend in the coming months. The group often gets together after the concerts for coffee and conversation.

If you’re interested in classical music, the Philadelphia Fans of Classical Music would like you to check out their Meetup.  Don’t worry; you don’t have to be a musician or a musicologist or know how to read music to join this group.  One of the members describes it as “a friendly and varied group of people of different ages and backgrounds—musically, socially and ethnically.   A very nice mix.”  I can attest to that; I meet them at our concerts.

Come October, there is an mix of excitement and anticipation in the air at 1616 Walnut Street, something akin to the pause just before running a marathon.  Watching the Phillies beat the Dodgers last night at Jose Pistola’s around the corner from the Kimmel Center with Miles, Brian, Brad, Sacha, and Jen (after a stunning performance by the always-sparkling Emerson Quartet), the annual shift in attitude was particularly pronounced.

What are we so excited about (besides the Phillies)?  Over the next 7 months, PCMS will present 65 concerts attended by nearly 25,000 people and facilitate some 50 educational outreach concerts, lectures, and master classes impacting thousands of young people in our region.

At the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (PCMS), our mission rings clear.  We believe that people from all walks of life should have access to the best classical music experiences that the world has to offer.

How can we guarantee this experience for you?  By providing a unique, affordable ticket policy:  $23 or less per ticket.

Join the PCMS family as we enter another exciting new season.  We look forward to seeing you at a concert soon!

Get an iPod Nano on October 23rd
That’s when violin virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos appears at the Kimmel Center for one of our most exciting concerts of the year.  Come to the concert, join our Young Friends and have a chance to walk out of the hall with a new Nano.  Simple as that!

To get your ticket, either shoot me an e-mail, give us a call in the Box Office (215-569-8080) or use your Unlimited Student Card at the door the night of the concert.

How to Get Unlimited Capogiro Gift Cards
We’ve teamed up with our favorite sweet spot in town, Capogiro Gelato, to make our new student offer even sweeter.  For the next two weeks, when you buy an Unlimited Student Pass you get a $5 gift card to Capogiro.  And as a bonus, if you refer a friend and they mention your name, you both get a $5 card.   This means you could rack up some serious gelato spending money, and get unlimited access to some of the best musical events in town all year for only $30.

Why Our Unlimited Pass Is the Best

If you’re a student and haven’t gotten an Unlimited Student Card yet, allow me to emphasize what an amazing program it is.  Here’s a recap of what you get, all for just $30:

• The ability to reserve a ticket for any concert in advance, the day of the concert or even at the door (subject to availability)
• Preferred seating.  We’ll always give you the best available seat.  No kicking you upstairs like all those other student rush programs.
• Special post-concert events throughout the season:  think craft beer tastings, locally roasted coffee, good stuff like that.
• Exciting giveaways at concerts throughout the year.
• Referral rewards, aka gelato on us!

To purchase your card today, reserve seats or get more information on any of our 65 concerts, simply call our Box Office or e-mail me directly at bpotter@pcmsconcerts.org.  I look forward to seeing you at a concert soon!

While some of us miss the old PCMS logo (remember it?), we’re excited to finally be consistently branded now with the exception of the sticker on our office door.  Somehow, as an efficient nonprofit, we simply can’t justify spending the money to change that!

Like most purveyors of “serious” culture, we often pine after the young people who support Philly’s beer bars (Local 44, Sidecar, and SPTR we’re talking about you!), online sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the dozens of cafes in each neighborhood but who find themselves in a concert hall only once in a blue moon – if ever.

Well, in the next few weeks we’re launching a few programs aimed at engaging Philadelphia’s unparalleled group of young urbanites and university students.  We have two things coming:

• PCMS Young Friends – this is not your traditional “young friends” program, but we honestly couldn’t think of a better name, so it stuck.  If you’re under 35, you’re in luck at PCMS:  not only do you get the chance to win a Flip Camera every month throughout the 09/10 Season, you also get access to last-minute FREE tickets when available, and your own special pickup table at all PCMS concerts.  Not bad, right?
• As usual, if you’re a student under 35, things get even better: show us your student I.D. and we’ll happily hand you an unlimited pass to all PCMS concerts (65 of them this season) for only $30.  Just reserve your real ticket in advance via email, Twitter, Facebook or even telephone (you can have front row seats if they’re open, we won’t push you to the back of the hall!).  That beats $10 tickets any day, so tell your friends!

We’re looking forward to a busy September and an incredible 09/10 Season.  Help us out by sharing word of these new programs with your friends, family, and colleagues!  Contact me with any questions about our programs, or about how you can help support PCMS’ mission of affordable, accessible, and world-class music in Philadelphia.

Among the many developments in the Box Office this summer, we’ve unveiled a new Young Friends program that we’re really excited about, and we were thrilled to add Thomas Hampson’s recital to our already full fall schedule.  This special evening with America’s top baritone has quickly become a hot ticket (tip for blog readers:  as of this posting, only about 50 remain), so if you are a vocal enthusiast or a fan of American song, I recommend reserving your seats today.

Summer at PCMS is about more than selling tickets, though.  Here are a few personal highlights from our busy summer.

• Bradford spent a week in Canada in July, fly fishing, visiting family and otherwise exploring New Brunswick and the coast of Maine.  Earlier in June I got married in northern Vermont and honeymooned in Montreal.  Pictures upon request!
• In August Bradford, our head usher Guy, my wife Jamie and I took a road trip up to the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and man, was it great.  It was my first visit to Marlboro, and I was just blown away by the beautiful setting, the atmosphere, and of course, the music making.  We spent our mornings at swimming holes and farmers’ markets, listened in on some afternoon rehearsals, and were treated to brilliant music-making each evening in the concert hall.  Of the many memorable performances, I particularly enjoyed the baritone John Moore’s rendition of Dover Beach – hopefully we’ll get John to Philadelphia soon – and Marina Piccinini, Susan Babini and Amy Yang’s performance of George Crumb’s otherworldly Vox Balaenae.  With masked musicians, a blue-lit stage and a panoply of unusual sounds emanating from the flute, Crumb’s composition is at once avant-garde, sensory and strangely musical.  If your tastes run towards the adventurous, I recommend giving this piece a listen when Dolce Suono performs it in January as part of their program at the American Philosophical Society.
• I’m also happy to announce that as of September 1, I will be working in the office full-time, selling tickets, doing writing and design work, jump-starting our new Young Friends program and more.

Please stop in, say hello and tell us about your summer!

While I don’t like to bring politics into our Society, it’s important to let you know that without new action, both the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund (PCF) will have zero funding allocated for the upcoming year.  That’s right: zero dollars for Arts and Culture at both the city and the state level.

PCMS, like cultural presenters nationwide, depend on grants and donations to supplement ticket sale income.   The PCA has been a consistent supporter since our founding in 1986, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund has recently increased its support – both of these factors make it difficult to visualize a season without their important support.

If you care about the arts in our City and State as much as I do, please take a moment to contact your representatives and stress to them the importance of this funding.  Without action in the coming week or two, both sources of funding will be lost for the entire upcoming year.

Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Take Action Resource Page

I was pleased by the following quote, since we presented the Beaux Arts Trio for so many years:

Now I am suddenly debating, if only with myself, the relative merits of pianists Grimaud, Lang Lang and Pollini, as I had once weighed the merits of Clapton, Hendrix and Harrison. 

Goodbye Crosby, Stills and Nash — hello Beaux Arts Trio!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and send it to any of your friends who have yet to discover classical music, Beethoven, or PCMS!

Roll Over, Beethoven: How An Old Rock ‘n Roll Editor Got Hooked on Classical Music

During these tough economic times, when many foundations and corporations are pulling back on their contributions to non profits, we have been very fortunate to see so many of our patrons step forward and make contributions to our annual fund.  These donations, both small and large, allow PCMS to continue its tradition (23 years now!) of balanced budgets and invest smartly in the marketing and customer service innovations that improve the concert experience for our patrons.  Of course, PCMS remains committed to presenting the world’s top recital artists and chamber music groups, and next season is shaping up to be a truly outstanding collection of over 60 performances.

As we begin the New Year, I’m proud to thank each of you recently supported PCMS through a year-end gift, and look forward to seeing everyone at a concert soon.

Sincerely,

Jacob Smith
Development Director

Vladimir Feltsman, piano
Friday, January 9, 8 pm
Perelman Theater

Eric Owens, bass
Tuesday, January 20, 8 pm
American Philosophical Society

Marina Piccinini, flute
Emanuele Segre, guitar
Friday, January 23, 8 pm
American Philosophical Society

Muir Quartet
w/ Menahem Pressler, piano
Sunday, January 25, 3 pm
Independence Seaport Museum

Anton Kuerti, piano
Friday, January 30, 8 pm
Independence Seaport Museum

Tokyo Quartet II
Friday, February 6, 8 pm
Independence Seaport Museum

Musicians From Marlboro II
Wednesday, February 18, 8 pm
American Philosophical Society

Brentano Quartet
w/Hsin-Yun Huang, viola
Sunday, March 1, 3 pm
Independence Seaport Museum

Ida Levin, violin
Peter Stumpf, cello
Cynthia Raim, piano
Monday, March 9, 8 pm
Perelman Theater

Los Angeles Piano Quartet
Friday, March 13, 8 pm
Independence Seaport Museum

Christopher Maltman, baritone
Wednesday, March 25, 8 pm
Perelman Theater

Quatuor Mosaïques
Wednesday, April 15, 8 pm
Perelman Theater

Order online at www.pcmsconcerts.org or call us at 215.569.8080 or visit our offices at 1616 Walnut Street.

PCMS Holiday Concert Card

If for any reason December 17th comes and goes without getting in on these great offers – do NOT despair – Our Discounted Holiday Gift Card – 3 tickets to any concert(s) for just $60 – may still be purchased through December 24th. Due to overwhelming popularity we’ve extended this special deal an extra 5 days, so take advantage of it and introduce a friend or family to great music during 2009.

The Quartet will end its 45-year run after that May concert, one in which founding cellist David Soyer, now 85, will rejoin the ensemble in a symbolic farewell, Schubert’s Quintet in C, featuring the only five members who have shaped the ensemble..

A PCMS season without the Guarneri is all but impossible to imagine, for the ensemble played in the series’ opening in 1986, and more than 30 times since then. Its repertoire has embraced Beethoven, Dvorak and Schubert, Lutoslawski, Bartok and Berg.  With guest artists, its reach has extended even farther.

Any future without the Guarneri is equally impossible to picture. This is the seminal American quartet, not the oldest, but the one that helped to change the ambitions of a generation of string players, expanded horizons in conservatories and refigured the listening habits of the country.  Before the four players joined hands in 1964 and committed to a life as quartet members, chamber music in America was almost a private matter. True, the Juilliard Quartet, at home in New York City, played mainly in university series; the Budapest Quartet was moving into its final years; the LaSalle Quartet made Cincinnati a place to study for European quartets.

In the 1960’s, conservatory students learned the big concertos and set off to play in major halls as soloists or orchestral players. Once settled, they sometimes played chamber music. Philadelphians with long memories recall that chamber music was proscribed for Philadelphia Orchestra members in the same year the Guarneri was founded. Small ensembles diverted orchestra musicians’ attention from their true profession for which they were being paid year-round.

And, Philadelphia played its role in the Quartet’s founding – rather like the nation’s. Three of the four players had studied at the Curtis Institute; all attended the summer festival at Marlboro, Vermont, where Rudolf Serkin, Adolf Busch, Felix Galimir, Marcel Moyse and Pablo Casals combined to bring the largely European tradition of chamber music into the center of a generation of American instrumentalists’ consciousness.

At Curtis, director Efrem Zimbalist, part of the tidal wave of Russian and Ukrainian violinists who defined the instrument at the time, said chamber music was something you did in retirement, and implied that great violinists played concertos; the lesser talents?  Maybe chamber music.

But in this antagonistic atmosphere, violinists Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley and Michael Tree, and cellist David Soyer declared their dream achievable and plunged in. Quartet life is often and sometimes tiresomely compared with marriage, but like marriage nobody knows for sure how it works until you do it. Their first hurdle was in deciding who would play viola and how the violinists would sit.

These players had to learn how to balance profession with home life, how to mediate differences in the tight and sometimes explosive world of intimate music making.  They needed to find managerial support to convince concert promoters that a quartet could actually find an audience. And they had to support themselves, wives and families.

They were lucky early on to find a berth at Harpur College in Binghamton. There they had practice space and a schedule that encouraged their own development through discoveries while planning repertoire and touring schedules.  Soon, the ensemble was on its own, a true American quartet playing for audiences just getting used to the idea that quartet repertoire may be the most sublime in the Western heritage.

Their very existence caught the fancy of the media. This must be the most documented quartet in history. Films, interviews, books, TV documentaries traced their growth, revealed bits of their lives inside and outside the quartet, showed squabbles in rehearsal and on planes. The Guarneri seemed larger than life, but wondrously accessible, quixotic, even lovable.

Not beginning with a firm image of themselves, the Quartet defined itself as it went along. Fired with the love of the core repertoire, the players took on Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Haydn.  Where European quartets could bring repertoire from their own countries, the very American Guarneri had to show themselves musical polyglots, capable of enunciating Ravel and Debussy, Shostakovich, Arriaga and Britten with the same aplomb as native speakers.

Other fledgling ensembles – crowding down the road cut by the Guarneri – called them the “imperial” quartet, explorers of what everyone knew as the great masterpieces. Yet those critics forgot that the Guarneri was among the first to record all six Bartok quartets, music that had seemed thorny and impenetrable only a few years before the Guarneri recorded.

The Guarneri has had a special gift for the big pieces. They have won recording honors for the three Beethoven Op. 59, and all the other Beethoven quartets, plus Mozart, Schubert and Dvorak works.  Their approach has always been exploratory rather than didactic. Listeners have come away from concerts wondering if they had heard right. Was that the Op. 132 we remembered from only three years ago?

The answer was “no,” for the classics were always under re-examination, tempos adjusted or junked, details re-imagined. Intriguingly, the new works – by Bolcom, Rorem, Derek Bermel, among others, in first performance – seemed settled, authoritative and even final.

So much a timeless part of the musical scene, signs of change were hard to digest. When founding cellist David Soyer left, it sent a shudder through the chamber music world.  The Amadeus Quartet in England had stopped playing after the death of their violist. The Guarneri suddenly seemed finite and mortal.  Yet the ensemble found Peter Wiley, who had been a student of Soyer’s and who knew the other players well – and musically well.

The decision to stop playing after this season cannot have been easy, yet the tradition of quartet has to be recognized.  Orchestras can annually regenerate themselves and play for decades and decades. A quartet is much more personal. It is the sum of the four players’ thinking, musical beliefs and backgrounds. Personnel changes may add to longevity (a managerial function), but take away from personality (the founding musical urge).

The players have been notably withheld about their thoughts on ending such an emblazoning career.  Learning how to stop may be as difficult as it was learning how to start on an unmapped route.  For listeners, the Guarneri’s work remains on recordings. For quartet members, their work stands in the newspapers, where concerts by string quartets directly descended from their decision – 45 years ago – are scheduled everywhere. What courage! What standards! What a gift to music!  What a gift to us!

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society expresses its thanks and appreciation to Daniel Webster for this special tribute.

Launching a new website is a bit like premiering a new piece of music – you work hard for months in relative solitude, only to place your efforts on public display and hope for a positive response.  We hope you like what we’ve done!

As one of Philadelphia’s largest music presenters (60+ concerts and an additional 50 education events this season) and the most expansive presenter of chamber music in the country, PCMS is constantly looking at how it can improve patron experience.  For us, service is very personal – we retain our own box office staff (instead of outsourcing), know most of our ticket buyers by name, and are available at concerts to meet and listen to audiences.  As a result, we’ve been listening to people ask question like:

• “What about music on the website?”
• “Do you offer student ticket programs?”
• “I didn’t even know that you presented jazz concerts!”
• “How can I learn more about the violinist who is coming next week?”

When I started working at PCMS last October, I was immediately excited about how we were in a unique position to raise the overall experience for our patrons online.  With a background in internet marketing (6 years running a design firm with my wife, Meghan) and a passion for live music (I’m trained as a bassoonist) along with the outstanding staff and board at PCMS, I knew we had the right energy to get it done.  Working with  the entire staff, we came up with the key items to address in the new site:

• Improved navigation – with such diversity of events, we needed to help people find things easier/quicker
• A way to connect with audience members and carry over the warm customer service we have in person and on the phone
• Cutting edge technology to help speed up load times, optimize content for Search Engines, and help the staff manage a much bigger site with “Web 2.0″ features

We’ve tried to make it easier to browse our concerts by including “recommended” and related events alongside the one you’re exploring.  Also, we spent a long time building a sort feature on the main tickets page, so that you could choose an artist name, venue, month, or genre to help you get to know our season quickly and easily.  Finally, we’ve started an organizational blog so that you hear directly from the committed staff members that make PCMS and its wonderful events possible.  We’ll be writing about the artists we’re presenting, how to prepare for and enjoy concerts, the music scene in Philadelphia (and beyond), and more!  We hope this helps you – our audience and friends – to stay connected with the PCMS family.

If there is one thing we at PCMS want to accomplish each day, it’s to help you explore the great music we present, and to make your concert-going experience the best it can be.  This includes your experience on our new website, so please drop me a note or comment on this blog entry to let us know how we’re doing, and what we can do better.

Sincerely,

Jacob Smith
Development Director