Chamber Music at Caroga Chapel

Read the article on Kathryn’s Korner here.

Chamber Music at Caroga Chapel

I’ve told you guys over the years how much I loved classical music, specifically baroque chamber music, which is my favorite kind of music.

Well, August 17th, just around the corner on Chapel Drive, from where we live on East Shore Road in Caroga Lake, The Caroga Lake Chamber Music Festival with founder Kyle Price was presented.

Price with seven of his musical friends presented chamber music from the likes of Dvorak, Beethoven, Brahms and Mendelssohn along with the lesser known compositions of Arensky, Zemlinsky and Shostakovich. And the performers, although all young, had plenty of credentials. Some have appeared on NPR Radio’s “From the Top” and violinist Eva Kennedy performed with one of my personal favorite singers, Michael Feinstein. The high quality of their musicianship was obvious in the performance.

In looking through the bios of the musicians who played cellos, violins and violas, I saw several had connections with the Cleveland Institute of Music, which in and of itself is quite prestigious.

Besides being from Cleveland, I studied voice there at CIM with instructor George Vassos for a year before going to Indiana University School of Music on an opera scholarship.

Now, I confess that while I used the scholarship to help finance my schooling, I don’t really like opera music (read “can’t stand it” actually) and so I wound up studying jazz and scat singing under the great Eileen Farrell. I also studied theater and dance, so I was a “triple threat” in training as a future entertainment performer.

I also wound up assisting the tap instructor, Michael Sokoloff, who ran the “dance and movement” department in the school at IU.

I remember the singers at the Cleveland Institute of Music were treated like divas and tended to be opera students where I didn’t really fit in.

But back to the chamber music at Caroga Chapel.

With the setting in the woods by the lake, it was just an enchanting evening and not to be missed.

I certainly hope this is just the first installment of many future chamber music festivals for our little corner of paradise here in Caroga Lake.