Community Calendar

The Eureka Chamber Music Series presents its first-ever Summer Music Festival. Repertoire for the evening includes Elena Ruehr's "Prelude Variations" for viola and cello, performed by Ethan Filner and Sophie Shao; a Balourdet Quartet performance of "String Quartet No. 1 in E minor (From My Life)" by Bedřich Smetana; and the famous String Octet in E flat Major, Op. 20, composed by Felix Mendelssohn when he was just sixteen years old, and performed by the Balourdet, Filner and Shao, and violinists Tom and Iris Stone. Summer Music Festival Passes are available for $180.

Join Eureka Chamber Music Series as we present a FREE outdoor concert at the Sequoia Park Gazebo, right next door to the Sequoia Park Zoo! Violinist Tom Stone, violist Ethan Filner, and cellist Sophie Shao will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach outside with light amplification. Enjoy the music of one of history's most spiritual composers in a gorgeous, tree-filled setting right in the heart of Eureka. Bring friends and family and spend an hour of your Sunday with us in celebration of art and nature! And it's FREE!

The second concert of the Summer Music Festival begins with Tom Stone, Eric Filner, and Sophie Shao performing "String Trio No. 1 in E flat Major, Op. 3" by Ludwig van Beethoven and ends with Filner, Shao, and the Balourdet Quartet playing the romantic "String Sextet No. 1 in B flat Major, Op. 18" by Johannes Brahms. Between these traditional chamber works, the Balourdet Quartet will share a performance of "Galaxy Back to You" by the Korean American composer Nicky Sohn, who composed the work expressly for the Balourdet.

A special concert preview features conversations with Martin Kuuskmann, bassoon soloist for Orchestra I and Adam Stern, OCMA Associate Conductor. Learn about Kuuskmann and the North American premiere of Tõnu Kõrvits’ Beyond the Solar Fields. Kuuskmann studied at Tallinn Music High School in Estonia, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Yale School of Music. Widely recognized as one of today’s great bassoon virtuosos, he has fifteen bassoon concertos written especially for him, including the one performed in the Festival. Alongside his work in classical and chamber music, he collaborates in jazz projects, serves as Associate Professor of Bassoon at the University of Denver, and maintains an expanding recording catalogue that includes three Grammy nominations.

This concert features a unique combination of musical offerings. The plan and intent of Nielsen’s Helios Overture is to depict the rising of the sun, its journey overhead through the day, and its setting in the evening over the sea with the Greek god Helios, who personified the sun. Then the musical journey moves into the solar system with the North American Premiere of Tõnu Kõrvits’ composition Beyond the Solar Fields, written for our soloist, Martin Kuuskmann. This entire program will delight and inspire an appreciation for the woodwinds. We further explore beyond the earth and feature bassoon artistry with Carl Maria von Weber’s composition for bassoon and orchestra Andante & Rondo ongarese. The evening ends with performance of Brahms Symphony No. 3 that moves us into this uncertain world and ends quietly for us to ponder our existence.

Conductor Adam Stern will introduce the theme and preview the stories about selected compositions. Stern will introduce our Orchestra bassoon soloist, Nicole Buetti. Enjoy a discussion and information about the music for the upcoming performance. This engaging midday gathering provides insight into the music and creative process. Meet Nicole, award-winning composer and educator with over 400 recorded and published musical works in a wide variety of genres. She has been composing professionally for more than 25 years. Buetti will be the featured soloist on contrabassoon with a performance of Ruth Gipps' Leviathan, a delightful miniature evoking the legendary aquatic creature that likely was a whale (see pages below for several images).
Learn more about Adam Stern at https://www.adamsternconductor.com/; and Nicole Buetti at https://www.nicolebuetti.com/bassoon-music.

The Pops Orchestra presents The Stuff of Legends at Marshfield Auditorium at 7 pm. This lively concert features music inspired by myths and fables. This concert includes a collection of works steeped in the ever-rich world of fantasy, from Greek mythology ("Orpheus in the Underworld") to King Arthur's court ("Camelot") to "The Wizard of Oz" ("Wicked"). Included also in the selections are My Neighbor Totoro, symphonic favorites from the operas of Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, and our Festival Orchestra’s own Nicole Buetti as a featured soloist on contrabassoon for Ruth Gipps' Leviathan!

The event will feature the work of composer-in-residence Elena Ruehr, an award-winning faculty member emerita at MIT. This is a rare opportunity to interact with a composer of her stature and to hear not only her viola and cello sonatas performed by the artists they were composed for, Ethan Filner and Sophie Shao respectively, but to hear the world premiere of her new "Violin Sonata," written for and performed by Tom Stone and pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng. There will be plenty of time allotted for conversation between artists and the audience.

Meet Percussion soloist Terry Longshore and learn about the program selections for Orchestra Concert II: Our Blue Home. The final piece of the festival features Longshore as soloist for Losing Earth composed by Adam Schoenberg. This is a unique percussion concerto commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 2019. Schoenberg traced the history of percussion, the most earthy and grounded instruments, and in many cultures is considered the heartbeat of music.
Longshore is the percussion soloist for the Oregon Coast premiere of Losing Earth. His genre-crossing work blends the artistry of the concert stage, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of a rock club. He maintains an active career as a performer, composer, and educator, serving as Professor of Music, Artist in Residence, and Director of Percussion Studies at Southern Oregon University, where he directs Left Edge Percussion and the SOU Percussion Ensemble. Longshore has premiered more than 100 works for solo percussion, ensemble, orchestra, and theatre, including the 2023 premiere of Teddy Abrams’ Mammoth with Yo-Yo Ma and the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave.

Next up on the ECMS Summer Music Festival calendar is another Concert and Conversation presentation, "The Golden Age of Violin Making," on Friday, July 24th at 7:30. This will be a unique opportunity to learn about the history of the kinds of rare, centuries-old instruments played by many of the ECMS featured artists. Hear the difference between a Stradivari, an Amati, and a Guarneri violin in person, all the while surrounded by the beauty and tranquility of The Lutheran Church of Arcata campus.