Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By TOM LAVENTURE
Ironwood — The Garland City Chamber Players will be celebrating the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven all year, including this Sunday’s 3 p.m. performance in the second-floor mezzanine of the Historic Ironwood Theatre.
The chamber group will be performing Beethoven’s “Violin Sonata No. 4.” The 1801 piece known as the German composer’s Opus 23, came just a year after completing his first symphony.
“We’ll be doing Beethoven every time,” said Andrew McInnes, a violinist with the chamber, regarding the monthly performances at the HIT on last Sunday of each month.
The chamber will also be performing two works from Erik Satie (1866-1925), a French composer of the late 19th and early 20th century. The first piece will be “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear,” which is a selection from Satie’s “Piano Four Hands,” to be performed by chamber pianists Neil Paynter and Jaryd Traaholt.
“This will be one piano with two players,” McInnes said. “The Piano Four Hand is very exciting.”
The chamber will continue with selections from Cabaret songs by Satie, to include Tiffany Darling, a soprano vocalist.
“Satie is not performed very much but he was a very influential composer,” McInnes said. “The Cabaret songs are incredibly fun, and the art song is very interesting and very pretty.”
The free afternoon performances include refreshments and a chance to mingle with the artists and community following the performance. Donations will go to supporting HIT renovations and programming.
The Garland City Chamber Players are members of the Chequamegon Bay area Garland City Consort, which formed in 2016 as the only cooperatively-owned for-profit orchestra in the area, McInnes said. The consort is also the only year-round orchestra, Baroque chamber orchestra, and touring orchestra in the area, he said.
The visual art presence in the region is well recognized while the presence of classical musicians is also impressive but is just now showing its presence, he said. What this means is that more local musicians in the area are available to perform in addition to the outside artists who are invited to area venues, he said.
“A lot of people are used to traveling out of the area to get their (classical) fix, if you will,” McInnes said. “It is nice to be able to meet them and give them the music they want in the places they live.”
The Consort performs 36 times annually, including a summer series that include a June stop at the HIT. In addition to the last Sunday series at the HIT the chamber has a second sunday series at Saron Lutheran Church in Ashland, and a Music in the Museum series at the Ashland Historic Museum, where they utilize an 1830s piano that is being restored.
The approximately 20 Consort players of the full orchestra got together to create smaller ensembles such as duos and trios and that is where the chamber group was formed, he said.
“We reformed in 2019 and are enjoying a lot of success and doing more chamber music, not just Baroque, but Classical and Romantic and some modern,” McInnes said.