UVa begins inaugural Chamber Music Festival

Charlottesville has a reputation for being a festival town.

The Virginia Festival of the Book is in March; the Charlottesville Dogwood Festival is in April. LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph and the Charlottesville Community Band Festival follow in June. The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival’s in September, as is the Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival. The Virginia Film Festival is in early November, right after Halloween.

Heritage Theatre Festival and Ash Lawn Opera Festival keep summer’s stages filled for fine-arts fans. And don’t forget to look at the wine list. Wine and agricultural festivals include Montpelier’s in May and Monticello’s Harvest Heritage Festival and Orange’s Wine, Wings and Wheels in October, to name just a few.

And, yet, the surface barely gets scratched. Chocoholics, strawberry lovers, apple pickers, beer aficionados and fingerstyle guitarists all have their own festivals, too.

Everyone does, it seems, except for fans of the performance faculty in the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music.

This weekend, that’s all going to change.

The inaugural UVa Chamber Music Festival will offer a concert by the Rivanna String Quartet at 8 tonight and a brass recital by trombonist Nathan Dishman and horn player Susan Fritts at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, both in Cabell Hall Auditorium.

This weekend is the first of two that’ll put the McIntire faculty in the spotlight. The next event in the four-concert series features the Albemarle Ensemble at 8 p.m. Feb. 3, and a faculty recital featuring violinist David Sariti and flutist Kelly Sulick follows at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 5.

Rivanna String Quartet violist Ayn Balija, the festival’s director, said that the new festival will bring together the faculty recitals that previously were spread throughout the academic year. It also has the potential of uniting different kinds of fans — traditionalists who love the classic string-and-woodwind chamber repertoire on Sunday afternoons and newcomers who’d like to hear more brass works and contemporary composers, maybe on a Friday night.

“It’s going to be, oh, exceptional performances,” Balija said. “People seem to be really excited about the concept of the festival. People are really taking a lot of pride in this.”

Folks who’ve attended the faculty recitals for years can expect the musical quality to stay high, Balija said. What’s changing, Balija said, is that the concerts will be accessible to more people because they aren’t locked into Sunday afternoons.

Having a festival structure also will offer more opportunities for brass, more room for new works, fresh transcriptions and overlooked, rarely played period gems — and a come-as-you-are spirit that welcomes jeans.

Chamber music fans from all backgrounds will get to hear something new.

“Hindemith has written many things for every instrument under the sun, but Mozart never wrote for the trombone,” Balija said.

In Sunday’s recital, Dishman and Fitts will have plenty to play from a variety of composers, including Hoagy Carmichael, Eric Ewazen, Norman Bolter, John Ivenson, Volker David Kirchner, Lev Kogan, Chris Hazell and Yitzhak Graziani. Joining them on different works will be pianist John Mayhood; trumpeters John D’earth, Jim Kluesner, Matt Kuhns and Chris Thompson; trombonists Gary Elwell and Tom McKenzie; bass trombonist Robert Mott; and John Visel on tuba.

Tonight’s concert will bring the Rivanna String Quartet — violinists Daniel Sender and David Sariti, Balija and cellist Adam Carter — to the stage. The program features Ludwig van Beethoven’s “String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2, ‘Razumovsky,’ ’’ plus “Phantasy Quartet for Oboe and String Trio in F minor, Op. 2,” a competition winner penned by a then-19-year-old Benjamin Britten, and Antonin Dvorak’s “Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155.”

Special guests will include pianist Mimi Tung and Aaron Hill on oboe.

The Feb. 3 program will include works by Paul Taffanel, Jean Francaix, J.S. Bach, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Samuel Barber and Eugene Bozza, performed by the Albemarle Ensemble — Sulick, Hill, Fritts, bassoonist Elizabeth Roberts and clarinetist Rob Patterson.

Sariti and Sulick will team up with Maywood for the Feb. 5 faculty recital, which will feature works by Erwin Schulhoff, Judith Shatin, Martin Amlin, John Harbison and Robert Schumann.

Balija said she was “completely floored” by the support she has received from Richard Will, chairman of the McIntire Department of Music, and fellow music faculty members. Ticket sales already have been brisk.

The sky’s the limit for future programming, and there’s room for everything — except stuffiness. If a few stereotypes get shot down along the way, that’s fine with Balija.

“We’re not always wearing tuxes,” Balija said. “There’s no formality in terms of dressing up or anything.”

Tickets for each event are $20, $10 for students, free for listeners younger than 18 and free for UVa students who reserve their seats in advance.