Cedar Valley Chamber Music offering free Friday concert

Charles City one of two guest-hosting cities for musicians

Presenting Cedar Valley Chamber Music

Charles City Trinity United Methodist Church

7 p.m., Friday July 15

By Kate Hayden | khayden@charlescitypress.com

With the help of a former violinist, Cedar Valley Chamber Music will not charge admission for Friday’s concert at Trinity United Methodist Church.

Chamber musicians will present as part of the year’s theme “Through the Looking Glass,” playing arrangements for up to six people of songs that typically require an average of 65 musicians.

“The part where (Alice) eats the little cake, she goes from a regular size to quite small, is the premise of the show,” director and Cedar Valley Chamber founder Hunter Capoccioni said. “We hope you get a different perspective, and you hear the music much differently then you would with a full orchestra. It’s a play on that idea of the looking glass.”

The concert is presented freely to the public thanks to underwriting from the Virginia Zastrow Smith Endowment for the Performing Arts, a Charles City foundation that funds classical musicians performing in the area.

The endowment was founded in honor of Smith’s 80th birthday, committee chair Janiece Bergland said, 12 years before Smith passed away in May.

“We’ve had choirs, orchestras and small ensembles. The idea is it’s free to the public,” Bergland said.

The group tries to host at least one ensemble each year and has hosted multiple chamber orchestras or collegiate groups in the past.

Smith graduated from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in 1945 with honors as a violinist and taught in the Charles City school district. Smith was also a member of the Wartburg Community Orchestra.

“She was passionate about classical and quality music,” Bergland said.

This is the second year that Cedar Valley Chamber is touring Iowa towns in a new outreach program, Capoccioni said. Charles City and Elkader will be featured hosts for the 2016 summer season.

“The board of directors and I started looking to expand our mission to take classical music out into the communities,” Capoccioni said. “We select two towns in Iowa each summer to target … Charles City was partly on our list because it really fits perfectly, and has a venue that’s really great for performing arts.”

The Chamber music group is made up of 14 resident Iowans or musicians with strong ties to the state, including musicians who were raised in the state or came to study in the state’s private or public universities. About six of those musicians will be at Friday’s performance in Charles City.

“Some of them come from Canada or as far away as Brazil. The thing that connects them is Iowa,” Capoccioni said. “We sort of have a nice community feeling to the concert. A lot of people from those (home) communities will come travel to hear the musicians. It’s really fun for us.”

The gatherings are an informal way to bring classical music to a broader audience, he added.

“Chamber music is often a genre that’s misunderstood. They think it’s very intellectual or inaccessible,” Capoccioni said. “It’s a very informal, fun and interactive event. The audience doesn’t need to come dressed in their Sunday best.”

“It’s about coming as you are and hearing great music with Iowa musicians, rather than any of the formalities,” he added.

The group is in it’s 11th performing season, which includes five full concerts and eight outreach concerts and other free events, Capoccioni said.

For a full list of Cedar Valley Chamber’s 2016 schedule, visit CedarValleyMusic.org.

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