Music that Soars in Our Beautiful Countryside

PHOTO CAPTION: A select group of well-known musicians, several from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and also including Eugene Drucker and Roberta Cooper, will be playing for one performance only this coming Sept. 21st at Tydeman Farm in Germantown presented by Jazz and Classics for Change. The classical music concert begins at 4PM with music by J.S. Bach, Brahms, Dohnanyi and Beethoven. For tickets, go to www.jazzandclassicsforchange.org.

Music that Soars in Our Beautiful Countryside
GERMANTOWN – One of the joys of having acres and acres of land is the opportunity to create a venue for musicians in which they can play exquisite music that enhances the space and the scenery.
Each year, Gili Melamed-Lev, a pianist and co-founder of Jazz and Classics for Change, assembles an ever-changing group of talented professional musicians to play a variety of concerts in the Hudson Valley and the Berkshires.  The venues differ, but each concert features inspiring classical pieces – all chosen to uplift the audience. In fact, JCFC’s guiding principal was coined by Leonard Bernstein: “This will be our reply…”, he said, “to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

The concert scheduled for September 21st certainly fulfills that mandate. The program will open with a gorgeous transcription of an organ piece by J. S. Bach arranged for violin, viola and bass. It will be followed by two pieces for violin and piano: the beautiful Romanza in F by Beethoven and a fiery, energetic piece by Brahms from the FAE Sonata that was written by 3 composers – Brahms and Schumann among them, as a birthday gift for the well-known virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim. The last piece on the program is the piano quintet in C (for 2 violins, viola, cello and piano) by Ernst von Dohnanyi. Melamed-Lev says, “It is a masterful piece, rich with sweeping melodies, drama, lyricism and a strong sense of hope.” In fact, JCFC is driven by the belief that music has the power to transform lives. It strives to build connections through music that enrich, inspire and honor the lives of all people.

The venue, Tydeman Farm in Germantown, is a favorite for both audience and musicians. Says cellist Roberta Cooper (American Symphony Orchestra), “The acoustics there are quite beautiful and don’t suffer as other ‘outdoor’ performing spaces can.” It is a refurbished barn in a field – relaxed, capable of being open on all four sides in beautiful weather, or shut down a bit if the day is inclement. In either case, the music soars through the building and out to the adjacent fields. It is a perfect location for classical music.

The concert takes place beginning at 4PM on Saturday, September 21st. Tydeman Farm is located at 564 County Route 10, Germantown. Tickets are available at the website: www.jazzandclassicsforchange.org.   Musicians include Eugene Drucker – violin (founder and first violinist of the Emerson String Quartet), Roberta Cooper – cello (American Symphony Orchestra), Krista Bennion Feeney – violin (principal of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s), Dana Kelley – viola (Orchestra of St. Luke’s), John Feeney – double bass (Orchestra of St. Luke’s) and Gili Melamed-Lev – pianist and co-founder of Jazz and Classics for Change.