Welcome to Barefoot Chamber Concerts. We present short programs of really good chamber music in an informal setting. All our regular Friday night programs (60-75 minutes with no intermission) are in the wonderful wooden acoustic of the Parish Hall of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, and start at 6 p.m. Light refreshments are available.
Additionally, for two of our concerts this year (the New Esterházy Quartet, and Elizabeth Blumenstock / Janine Johnson) we have added a Thursday night performance with Pizza at the Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church at 1422 Navellier Street in El Cerrito. Those concerts will start at 6.30, and the pizza will be hot at 6.15.
Also at Hillside, by popular demand, multi-instrumentalist and singer Shira Kammen will reprise her role as the preseason mistress of the equinox, this time with a difference: Shira Kammen and Patrick Ball will present a special “preseason” performance entitled “The Drowning of the City of Y’s and other stories” Patrick Ball, we’ll known as a master storyteller and harpist, and Shira will take us way, way beyond the bounds of chamber music into the realms of all that is strange and wonderful. We are told the program is in English, and a thorough knowledge of Breton, medieval English, French, Cornish, or Welsh is not necessary. You will quite literally be drawn into the performance. Like last year, that show will be in the Hillside Swedenborgian Church in El Cerrito, against the backdrop of the Sunset. We hope you can make it, and we’re sure you’ll have a great time if you do.
Our regular 2012-2013 Season brings you nine concerts from very different spheres of chamber music. In October, local harpsichord superstar Katherine Heater will open our season with a program of sumptuous excess by decadent French people. In November we have 2 concerts: first, two of Telemann’s legendary Paris Quartets (and more) will be played by Katherine Heater, Peter Hallifax, Carla Moore and Janet See. Also in November, The New Esterházy Quartet returns with a program of early Haydn and late Beethoven. In December, again back by popular demand, Les Violettes will play a concert of songs and intstrumental music by Purcell and his French admirers.
In January, we are delighted to be able to present Elizabeth Blumenstock and Janine Johnson playing Bach sontatas for violin and harpsichord. In February, violists Hallifax & Jeffrey with violinist David Wilson will play a concert of music by the inimitable and irascible Matthew Locke. In March, violinist Cynthia Freivogel returns with Telemann’s lovely music. In April, Julie Jeffrey and Lynn Tetenbaum will play German viol duos, and in May Les Grâces will play a concert of “Italianisme”, the Parisians’ idea of Italian style in Paris, c. 1700.
Tickets have not gone up (unlike almost every other concert series we know): they will be $15 at the door (Seniors and SFEMS members $13), ages 18 and under admitted free. We encourage you to buy tickets online; all online tickets are less than the door price. If you click the link next to the description of the concert for which you’d like to buy tickets, you will arrive at the BrownPaperTickets (fabulous efficient easy online “fair trade ticket service”) site for that particular concert. You can pay by credit card on their secure site and then BPT can snail-mail you the tickets or we’ll hold them for you at will-call at the door.