November 26, 2025 • 3:32 pm 0
Seattle Chamber Music Society presented Richard O’Neill and Jeremy Denk in a sold-out recital Sunday. Here’s my review for The Strad:
Seattle Chamber Music Society brought the inaugural season of its new Signature Series to a compelling close with this sold-out recital by violist Richard O’Neill – best known as a member of the Takács Quartet – and pianist Jeremy Denk.
Filed under: Beethoven, review, Seattle Chamber Music Society, The Strad, viola
July 21, 2025 • 10:07 pm Comments Off on Yes, Chef – With Strings Attached
My story on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s upcoming second edition of the Tasting Notes program:
Before they ever shared a stage, James Beard media award-winning cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt and violinist James Ehnes had already discovered a mutual obsession with the art of cooking and Beethoven string quartets. ..
Filed under: James Ehnes, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Seattle Times
July 17, 2025 • 10:27 pm Comments Off on Another Evening at Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2025 Summer Festival
From my review for The Strad:
With the other major classical institutions largely on summer hiatus, the Seattle Chamber Music Society takes centre stage in July, commanding the city’s musical life with a month-long festival that has been packing Benaroya Hall’s chamber music venue. Its varied slate of mainstage concerts, related events and guest artists has become a cultural fixture. Indeed, SCMS is expanding its presence with the recent announcement of an extended year-round season of offerings….
Filed under: James Ehnes, Mozart, review, Schumann, Seattle Chamber Music Society
July 8, 2025 • 8:38 am Comments Off on Smolder and Spark: Seattle Chamber Music Society Launches Its 2025 Summer Festival
I covered Sunday’s opening concert for Bachtrack:
The Seattle Chamber Music Society has not only emerged from the pandemic slump stronger than ever but seems to have hit on a golden formula. The opening concert of its month-long 2025 Summer Festival attracted a devoted audience to fill downtown’s 536-seat Nordstrom Recital Hall to near capacity – even before the concert officially began…
Filed under: Fanny Mendelssohn, James Ehnes, Mendelssohn, review, Seattle Chamber Music Society
May 27, 2025 • 7:26 pm Comments Off on Dover Quartet in Seattle
My review for The Strad of this past weekend’s Dover Quartet performance, presented by Seattle Chamber Music Society:
On a glorious spring Sunday in Seattle, the Dover Quartet drew a full house to the 536-seat Nordstrom Recital Hall for a splendid afternoon concert – no small feat given the lure of sunshine and blue skies on a holiday weekend. Notably, the audience included a sizable contingent of younger listeners – a testament to the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s outreach efforts and to the appeal of this Signature Series concert, which closed the organisation’s inter-season extension between its winter and summer festivals.
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Filed under: review, Seattle Chamber Music Society, string quartet
March 20, 2025 • 12:34 am Comments Off on James Ehnes in The Strad
Along with my feature on Abel Selaocoe in Strings, my other cover story this month is a profile of the fabulous violinist and music director James Ehnes for The Strad:
Over a weekend in early December 2024, James Ehnes was in Seattle to perform all ten violin sonatas of Beethoven, partnering with pianist Orion Weiss. Presented in two concerts, each met with rapt attention, the performances were part of a new initiative of Seattle Chamber Music Society (SCMS) to engage audiences during the long interval between its flagship summer festival and the winter festival starting in late January.
Filed under: James Ehnes, profile, Seattle Chamber Music Society, The Strad
January 23, 2025 • 5:14 pm Comments Off on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Winter Festival 2025
Friday night is the opening concert of Seattle Chamber Music Society‘s Winter Festival 2025 (over this weekend and next). Some wonderful programs to look forward to: Brahms Op. 34; a fecund piano quintet by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, written when he was 18 (SCT is represented on this weekend’s Seattle Symphony program as well); Bartók’s Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion; Enescu’s Octet; Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata; Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” in the original sextet version (with James Ehnes in the ensemble, and more.
Filed under: music news, Seattle Chamber Music Society
July 31, 2024 • 2:57 pm Comments Off on Ani Aznavoorian’s Family-Made Cello
A new post for The Strad on this month’s just-concluded Summer Festival presented by Seattle Chamber Music Society:
With its roster of several dozen internationally prominent musicians, the just-concluded 2024 edition of the Summer Festival presented by the Seattle Chamber Music Society involved a de facto summit of priceless string instruments in action….
Filed under: cellists, luthier, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Strad
July 1, 2024 • 12:14 pm Comments Off on 2024 Summer Festival with Seattle Chamber Music Society
Tonight is the opening concert of the 2024 edition of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s annual Summer Festival. I wrote a preview for The Seattle Times here:
Sure, the Seattle Chamber Music Society has a menu of the usual star composers — Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák — for its Summer Festival running July 1-26. But this year, the festival is boasting an actual menu that will be designed onstage by Seattle star chefs. …
Filed under: James Ehnes, music news, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Seattle Times
March 12, 2024 • 7:55 pm Comments Off on Seattle is a (West) Coastal Haven for String Players
My latest piece for Strings magazine:
“To describe the beauties of this region will, on some future occasion, be a very grateful task to the pen of a skillful panegyrist,” reported Captain George Vancouver in 1792. Vancouver led the first European expedition to chart Puget Sound—as he dubbed what would become the US portion of the larger Salish Sea long inhabited by the Coast Salish indigenous peoples. Many of the British place names conferred by Vancouver have endured, but the area’s best-known city, Seattle, founded by white settlers in 1851, stands apart as being named after an indigenous leader, Chief Seattle (using the Anglicized version of his actual Lushootseed name, Siʔaɬ)…
Filed under: Seattle Chamber Music Society, Strings
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MEMETERIA by Thomas May 