Kentucky Center Chamber Players bid adieu

• The finale marks the end of the ensemble's long run with nearly 150 concerts and two recordings.
• Concerts have included a range of works by Mozart%2C Stravinsky%2C Elliot Carter and Joan Tower.
• "Chamber music was where you could really hone your skill%2C" said Dallas Tidwell.

In 1982, pianist Joanna Goldstein moved to Louisville to take a teaching job with Indiana University Southeast. Piano performance had been the focus of her doctorate degree from New York University and her master's degree from The Juilliard School, and that led to interest from other area musicians.

"Within a couple of months, I got a call from a Louisville Orchestra violist, Harold Levin. He asked me if I wanted to get together and play some chamber music," Goldstein recalled.

Other orchestra musicians, including Dallas Tidwell, a former clarinet player with the Louisville Orchestra, joined in just to play at private gatherings, and before long the group gave a few low-key public concerts. Tidwell was taken with the music they were playing from those early days.

"It was a genre I didn't really know very well, but I knew that chamber music was where you could really hone your skill, make decisions on your own and negotiate with other players about how a piece should be played," Tidwell said.

What could be called initial classical music jam sessions grew into a new arts group for Louisville when the ensemble took up residence at the newly built Kentucky Center and named itself the Kentucky Center Chamber Players. For nearly 10 years, the ensemble's members have included Goldstein (piano), Tidwell (clarinet), Peter McHugh (violin) and Megumi Ohkubo (cello). Story continues below the gallery.

Now, after 32 years of performing with a core group of four musicians — and incorporating some of the region's top musicians for concerts with music requiring more players — the Kentucky Center Chamber Players have decided to bid the public adieu.

The final concert March 8 at University of Louisville'sComstock Concert Hall marks the end of the ensemble's long run, with nearly 150 concerts, two recordings and a repertoire that has balanced the classical and contemporary works by a range of composers, including Mozart, Ravel, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bartok, Charles Ives, Elliot Carter, Paul Hindemith, George Crumb, Joan Tower, Claude Baker and David Baker. The ensemble also has embraced opportunities to perform commissioned works by regional composers, including David Anderson, Marc Satterwhite and Frederick Speck.

For the upcoming concert, the ensemble will play a new work by another local composer — "Variations" by Daniel Gilliam. Also on the program are Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" in the original version for 13 instruments (which will be accompanied by a series of photographs by former Courier-Journal photographer Pam Spaulding), and Beethoven's Trio in C Minor for violin, cello and piano.

"We all have very mixed feelings about it," said Goldstein of this final concert marking the end of the ensemble's work.

That work has included more than playing music. Ensemble members tasked themselves with other duties. Goldstein handled responsibilities related to promoting the concerts. Tidwell often handled most of the scheduling, including arranging for recording equipment and setting up sessions for the two CD's the ensemble produced.

"We were just tired of all the behind-the-scenes work," Goldstein said. "And we're not as young as we used to be."

She added that some members have had heath issues as well. That includes Tidwell, who was diagnosed with lymphoma four years ago. He had undergone chemotherapy and retired last year from his post as a University of Louisville music professor. Tidwell is now undergoing alternative treatments offered through clinical studies.

"I am very disappointed that my fight with cancer has left me too weak to play this final concert," Tidwell said.

Matthew Nelson, U of L assistant professor of clarinet, will play in Tidwell's stead for the final concert, which Tidwell described as "bittersweet."

"It's been difficult to maintain given the busy schedule of our professional lives," Tidwell said. "But playing with this ensemble also been the highlight of our professional lives — especially to be performing such a range of music at a high level."

Violinist McHugh, who played with Tidwell in the Louisville Orchestra where he was concertmaster before retiring from that institution in 1985, began playing with the ensemble nearly 30 years ago. He said achieving a high caliber of playing came in large part from working with his fellow musicians over so many years.

"Dallas and I have been playing together as long as everybody," said McHugh. "Sometimes I know what he's going to do before he knows what he's going to do." That kind of intimate knowledge of fellow musicians is crucial for success in a chamber music ensemble, he added.

McHugh became a core member of Kentucky Center Chamber Players about a decade ago.

Last year, Tidwell, Goldstein, McHugh and Ohkubo worked together to choose the music for the final concert. Like many of their previous concerts, the music has what Goldstein called a "meat-and-potatoes repertoire" with pieces that are likely less well known.

"In pretty much every way, our programs mixed instrumental and vocal and at times had dancers," she said.

Among the many guest artists that participated in the players' concerts were past and present Louisville Orchestra members; orchestra conductors, including Jorge Mester and Lawrence Leighton Smith; singers, including Tidwell's wife and former U of L music professor Edith Davis Tidwell; and dancers and former Louisville Ballet leaders and choreographers Alun Jones and Helen Starr.

Jones and Starr worked with the ensemble on the a 2013 performance of Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du soldat" ("The Soldier's Tale") that included chamber orchestra of clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, violin, double bass and percussion, a baritone and three ballet dancers.

Among the most frequent musicians to play with the group were flute player Kathleen Karr and her husband and bassoon player, Matthew Karr, who are both principal musicians with Louisville Orchestra. Goldstein said they were much more involved before they began raising their own family.

Matthew Karr, who remembers playing at the ensemble's first concert, said being an ensemble member taught him about running a nonprofit organization and gave him the opportunity to play music he otherwise would not have had the opportunity to play. He said he sees the ensemble's departure creating "a tragically large hole in Louisville's musical life."

Composer Gilliam said he has known of the ensemble's work since he was in high school and attended Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts, where Edith Davis Tidwell was an instructor. He described their repertoire as one encompassing "challenging and amazing work."

Gilliam includes the players' 2002 performance of Olivier Messiaen's ethereal "Quartet for the End of Time" among those challenging works. Written for violin, clarinet, cello and piano by the composer when he was imprisoned in a German prison during World War II, the music uses a combination of instruments often noted as unusual.

Gilliam decided to base his 15-minute piece, "Variations," on that same quartet of instruments, which also reflects the instruments played by the Kentucky Center Chamber Players' core members. He said his ideas for "Variations" came after reading Wallace Stevens' 20-part poem "Variations on a Summer Day."

While many will mourn the closure of the Kentucky Center Chamber Players, member musicians noted Louisville now has other chamber music groups, including the Ceruti Chamber Players and Bourbon Baroque.

Goldstein said she finds the monthly sessions of Classical Revolution, musicians performing music in the casual setting of The Bard's Town, encouraging and akin to some of the Kentucky Chamber Players' performances at the Jazz Factory, which closed in 2008.

McHugh, who recalled performing for tens of thousands of schoolchildren at Louisville Gardens when he was with the Louisville Orchestra, also noted that city organizations seem to be stepping up efforts to involve young people in classical music. He suggested those efforts could give birth to more chamber music.

He noted Gheens Great Expectations Project, launched in 2004 with the support of the Gheens Foundation, the Fund for the Arts and the Kentucky Center to present young classical musicians in concert and in community residencies, and The Macauley Chamber Music Competition for high school and college musicians sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Louisville. (This year's competition is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 28, at U of L's Comstock Hall.)

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.

IF YOU GO

What: "Grand Finale: Kentucky Center Chamber Players"

The program includes Beethoven's Trio in C Minor for violin, cello and piano; "Variations" by Louisville composer Daniel Gilliam for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (commissioned for this concert); and Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" in the original version for 13 instruments (two first violins, two second violins, two violas, two cellos, bass, flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano).

When: 3 p.m. March 8

Where: University of Louisville, Comstock Concert Hall

Cost: Free

Information: (502) 327-9675; kyccp.org