ISLANDS' SOUNDER
Article: "Chamber Music Festival sets upcoming schedule"
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Printed from OICMF-contributed press release

The Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival (OICMF) will host its seventh annual festival Aug. 24 - Sept. 3, 2004. OICMF will present three evening concert sets (original and repeat concerts), one family concert, special open rehearsals, free pre-concert talks and post-concert "Meet the Artist" receptions. OICMF will also present two, one-hour concerts as part of its Orcas•trations Series.

This year's programming by Artistic Director Aloysia Friedmann will pay tribute to the classics, with works by Brahms, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Stravinsky, and Vivaldi. However, her reputation for unexpected programming promises that audiences can expect a few surprises throughout the 11-day event.

Friedmann, violinist and violist, and Artistic Advisor Jon Kimura Parker, internationally acclaimed pianist, will be joined by 14 renowned musicians.

Season brochures will be mailed island-wide at the end of June, and tickets go on sale Wednesday, July 21, at Orcas Center. Tickets range from $17 to $27; students 18 and under can attend concerts for $10. Family concert tickets are $7 for adults and $3 for children. All Festival concerts will be held at Orcas Center.

Those interested in sponsoring Festival events can choose from the remaining two reception sponsorships ($500); six pre-concert talk sponsorships ($250); and 14 artist sponsorships ($1,500).

OICMF is also happy to announce that in January the Festival was awarded third place in the Festivals division co-sponsored by Chamber Music America (CMA) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). This award is presented annually to ensembles, presenters, and festivals that demonstrate a commitment to contemporary chamber music programming, especially works written since 1980. OICMF was recognized alongside two more mature festivals: the Moab Music Festival (12th season) and SummerFest La Jolla (18th season).

We are writing to give our heart-felt thanks to Island Market for sponsoring our 35th anniversary dinner...There are too few opportunities to enjoy "classical music with a view." Aloysia Friedmann and Jon Kimura Parker provided us with one of those opportunities by sharing their virtuosity on violin and piano, respectively, in an intimate concert of favorite works. This served to whet our appetites for the upcoming Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival of which Aloysia is artistic director. Their concert was a perfect anniversary gift.

ISLANDS' SOUNDER
Editorial: "We're so lucky that Parker and Friedmann are members of our community."
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
By Ted Grossman
Islands' Sounder Editor

We've said it several times before, so please bear with us while we say it again. Jon Kimura (Jackie) Parter and his wife Aloysia Friedmann are community treasures.

They were on Orcas last Sunday, having come up from Houston, Tex., where Jackie is a music professor at prestigious Rice University. They came to the island for a much-deserved spring break.

And how did they spend their one-week vacation? performing last Sunday afternoon at the Music Advocacy Group concert, the proceeds from which benefited the school music program. A few hours later, they were back at it, performing at a fundraiser in which Children's House preschool launched a $1.5 million endowment campaign.

Every summer the pair brings us one of each year's highlights, the Chamber Music Festival. Last December they contributed to the quality of island life by performing in the community theater presentation of "A Christmas Carol," which benefited The Funhouse.

It doesn't require a great deal of research to realize just how much this couple contributes to our quality of life. We haven't the slightest doubt that all of these fundraisers benefited from their presence. People who otherwise would have stayed home attended the concerts primarily to see Jackie and Aloysia.

Indeed, we are very fortunate that they have chosen Orcas as their home.

THE SEATTLE TIMES
The Year in Classical Music: Seattle celebrates some musical milestones
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Melinda Bargreen, Music Critic
The following excerpt appeard in this story listing highlights of 2003:

Programming coup: The tiny Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival's artistic director, Aloysia Friedmann, pulled off the coup of the season, putting together a discussion/concert program with piano legend Claude Frank (who portrayed Beethoven in a fillm) with nonagenarian filmmaker/photographer Otto Lang, plus Gerard Schwarz and Jon Kimura Parker. What synergy!

Well, the dust has settled on another Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival (OICMF) and plaudits abound.

I attended two concerts, courtesy of a dear friend, and enjoyed them very much. While we offer bluegrass, country, modern, spiritual and pop as well as individual instruments from alto sax to zither, here on our island, it certainly speaks to our tastes that diversity is a hallmark for us.

The thing that stands out with OICMF is the excellent organizaitonal abilities of all the volunteers and staff. Without naming names, I see careful planning, outreach into the community and especially the highest quality of performers and staffing plus quality attention to service for ticket holders.

OICMF is also to be congratulated for its efforts to keep the cost of tickets reasonably priced.

I hate waiting in lind for anything—does that ring a bell for anyone? But I'll brave the line just once next year to enjoy OICMF. Thanks again for a very special musical treat.

SEATTLE TIMES
Music Review: "Brilliant Finale for Orcas Concert Series"
Friday, August 29, 2003
By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times Music Critic

ORCAS ISLAND—In six years, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival has grown from a weekend event to a series of 10 concerts over 10 days—but it has grown in more important ways, too. It has become a huge community asset, a tourist draw, and an artistic collaboration that brings in imposing talent in entirely unexpected ways.

And all this without losing the family feeling that seems to unite every soul in the little Orcas Center with the artists on the stage.

This year's "Art Eternal" concert, heard Tuesday night and reprised in a shorter Wednesday matinee, is a good case in point. Festival artistic director Aloysia Friedmann pulled together all kinds of interesting threads and themes for this program, reuniting the venerable film director Otto Lang with pianist Claude Frank, Lang's collaborator in a 1966 documentary film about Beethoven. The pair, now 95 and 77, respectively, hadn't gotten together in nearly 40 years. They discussed their work onstage, followed by performances of great Beethoven works linked to the movie (called "Beethoven: Ordeal and Triumph"), and then a showing of the film itself. It's a thought-provoking and deeply affecting movie; Frank plays Beethoven, with his dazzling fingerwork shot from below, beneath the hands.

What a pleasure to hear Frank, who played the middle movement of the "Pathetique" Sonata Wednesday afternoon, in all his mature wisdom. Lang is still a dapper, razor-sharp raconteur of remarkable aesthetic skills. (More evidence of Lang's great eye could be seen on the walls at the Orcas Center: riveting photos from his recent book, "Around the World in 90 Years.")

Festival artistic advisor Jon Kimura Parker, who also is Friedmann's husband, was on hand for a flash of brilliance in Beethoven's longest of three cadenzas for his Piano Concerto No. 1. Later, he returned for the evening concert to partner William VerMeulen in Schumann's Adagio and Allegro for Horn and Piano. VerMeulen's clean, smooth tone and technical accuracy were exemplary.

More Schumann followed, with Lisa Bergman joining Parker in the seldom-heard Andante and Variations—a work requiring two pianos, two cellos (Desmond Hoebig and Toby Saks) and horn (VerMeulen). Its thematic material is stretched a bit thin, but the main melody is vintage Schumann, and it flowed as smoothly as water in this performance. Friedmann and violinist Stephen Rose gave a beautiful account of the challenging, energetic Martinu "Three Madrigals" for Violin and Viola.

The finale, an incendiary reading of Mendelssohn String Quintet (Op. 87), was led by violinist William Preucil in his best "take-no-prisoners" mode, with Gwen Starker Preucil, Friedmann, Hoebig and David Harding matching him line for line.

ISLANDS' SOUNDER
Editorial: "We're so lucky to have Parker, Friedmann among us."
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
By Ted Grossman
Islands' Sounder Editor

Most celebrities who have homes in the San Juans come here to escape from their hectic lives in the big cities. They are people who treasure their privacy, and who spend their time in homes at the end of hidden, dirt roads, surrounded by trees and water. They also choose not to get involved in the life of this community.

I can't say I blame them, because these are people who are always in the public eye elsewhere. No wonder they make sure to get away from all that stuff while they are here.

However, there are two celebrities who don't fit the mold. They're Jon Kimura (Jackie) Parker and Aloysia Friedmann, and their idea of getting away is playing at a senior luncheon, instructing children in elementary school music teacher Pamela Wright's class, performing at the annual benefit concert for the school music program or, as they did last Wednesday, playing for the youngsters from Children's House preschool.

We know this from having watched Jackie and Aloysia. We've seen them helping to make this a better community for years.

Both are delightful conversationalists, except when the conversation turns to, say, Jackie's recent concert at the Hollywood Bowl, or a past performance at Carnegie Hall. Jackie and Aloysia don't want to spend a lot of time being told how wonderful they are. These humble and gracious people prefer to talk about, say, the local musicians whom they consider to be exceptionally talented.

And they aren't just talking. Jackie and Aloysia are following it up this year with action. They have invited a local woodwind quintet (with six musicians - no joke or typo) and the Olson violin trio to perform at something new at this year's Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, pre-concert picnics. Jackie says the invitations were extended in the hope of making this a true community music festival. He might have added that they also are providing an incredible thrill to our local musicians, and without compromising the world-class quality of the main concerts.

Jackie and Aloysia never put on airs, and I would be hard pressed to find two people more skilled at putting people at ease. I say this as someone who is generally very intimidated by celebrities. But Jackie and Aloysia make everyone on Orcas feel like all of us are their best friends.

Beginning this Saturday, August 23, the sixth annual Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival will begin. It will start with a picnic in the Orcas Center Madrona Room, and out on the lawn, followed by a lecture about the night's concert, and conclude with a concert featuring two pianists, two percussionists, and Canada's premier salon music group, Viveza. One of the two pianists is Jackie Parker. Can you think of anything more delightful than world-class music performed by a dear friend? I can't. I've already got my tickets.

ISLANDS' SOUNDER
Feature: "A Celebration of Chamber Music"
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
By Ted Grossman
Islands' Sounder Editor

Jon Kimura (Jackie) Parker and Aloysia Friedmann will never forget their first Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. The pair planned and organized the whole thing, they performed in all three concerts, and the next day they got married.

Things have come a long way since that first festival back in 1998. Jackie and Aloysia now have a four-year-old daughter, sophie, and they have since turned over their day-to-day operations to Executive Director Victoria Parker, of Eastsound. And the festival has grown dramatically, from three concerts in 1998 to 11 this year.

Although it has always been called a festival, it was more of a series of concerts — fabulous concerts, to be sure — but little more, Aloysia admits.

Gradually, however, it began to live up to its name. "We wanted to add a festive element," Aloysia explains. "We wanted to create some pre-concert excitement," and in a way that celebrates the talents and the hard work of many local musicians and volunteers. Jackie and Aloysia say it's their way of thanking the community for all its support. "They have embraced us," Aloysia says. "It is truly wonderful."

Four of this year's concerts will be preceded by picnics in the Orcas Center Madrona room and out on the lawn. Two will be accompanied by music performed by talented local musical groups such as a woodwind quintet (with six musicians—honest) and the Olson (violin) trio. All the picnics will be immediately followed by informative and entertaining lectures given by professional musicians explaining the concert program.

And then will come each day's highlight—the concert itself. This year's schedule consists of six different programs, all performed by world-class musicians who will be traveling to Orcas Island from all over the United States plus several foreign countries.

And what about these programs? They're proof of Jacki and Aloysia's eagerness to try new formats, in new venues and, in one particular case, an opportunity for Orcas Islander Antoinette Botsford to present the world premiere of her story, told to music. Botsford, who has won renown throughout the Pacific Northwest for her storytelling, was in Fairbanks, Alaska last year sharing the stage with a world-class flautist who happened to be married to a double bass player. The woman was lamenting the fact that there were no musical compositions for flute and double bass when Botsford offered to write the story on the condition that the flautist compose the music. To make a long story short, the story "The Gnome and the Firebird," will make its world premiere Saturday, August 30 at 1pm at Orcas Center. Botsford will tell the story, while flautist Lorna McGhee and bassist Wilmer Fawcett (not the musicians who were in Fairbanks) will present the music. Andrea Hendrick created the airtwork for the fair tale.

The festival also has a new venue this year. The Living Room will host Canada's salon music ensemble "Viveza" in two concerts Sunday, Aug. 24, at 2pm, and Monday, Aug. 25 at 6pm. The ensemble has won many awards, Jackie says, convinced that the group will be an exciting new addition to the festival.

Prehaps the most innovative concert is entitled, "Art Eternal: Beethoven on Stage and Film." It will be a mix of live music from the Orcas Center stage, plus a 53-minute film entitled "Beethoven: Ordeal and Triumph," which was produced and directed by Otto Lang, and will be presented Tuesday, Aug. 27, at 7:30pm and Wednesday, Aug. 28, at 2pm.

RAFFLE
Somebody is going to win an image of this year's festival. It's a painting by local artist Frank Loudin that was enhanced by Linda Hamm's embroidery. Hamm puti n countless hours on the project. She even closed her store, Nature's Art, for several days in order to complete the work in time for the festival.

The wall hanging will be displayed in the Orcas Center lobby throughout the festival, Aug. 23 - Sept. 1, and will go to a lucky raffle ticket holder whoes name will be picked during the closing concert. the winner does not need to be present to win.

Raffle tickets are $5/one ticket or $25/six tickets. They can be bought at Nature's Art or at the OICMF merchandise table throughout the festival.

TICKETS
They're still availble for four concerts: Orcas•trations Series featuring Viveza, Sunday, Aug. 24, at 2pm at The Living Room; the "Rhythm Lounge" concert the same day, 5:30pm at Orcas Center; "Art Eternal: Beethoven on Stage and Film" concert Wednesday, Aug. 27, from 2:30 to 4pm; and the matinee family concert featuring the story written by Botsford Saturday, Aug. 30, at 1pm at Orcas Center.

TICKET STAND-BY POLICY
Each concert day, the Orcas Center Box Office will begin making a waiting list at 10am for people seeking tickets. Throughout the day, the Box Office will re-sell returned tickets as they are received during business hours (10am - 4pm). It will re-open one hour prior to each evening concert to sell remaining tickets to those on the waiting list who show up in person. The box office will be closed, however, Sunday, Aug. 24. Those hoping to get tickets that day can call the Orcas Center Box Office Saturday, Aug. 23, from 10am to 3pm, to be placed on Sunday's waiting list.

PICNICS
They are scheduled as follows: Saturday, Aug. 23, 5:30pm (Woodwind Quintet performs 6-6:30pm). Sunday, Aug. 24, 4pm. Saturday, Aug. 30, 5:30pm. Monday, Sept. 1, 5:30pm (Olson Trio performs 6-6:30pm).

Bring your own dinner to the picnics, or purchase a boxed meal provided by Christina's Restaurant. Join the party and dine al fresco at picnic tables laid with beautiful linens, flowers and candles under the canopy tent on Orcas Center's front lawn. Beverages will be on sale at the picnics.

VOLUNTEERS
Approximately 60 islanders have given of their time to the festival. Twenty have opened up their homes to the musicians. The festival is headed by a board composed of 13 islanders. It is headed by president Valerie Anders.

SEATTLE TIMES
Music Review
Thursday, September 6, 2001
By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times Music Critic

ORCAS ISLAND—The playing was hot enough to melt the rosin right off the strings, and the eight players of an adrenaline-charged Mendelssohn Octet had just finished a first movement so incandescent that first violinist William Preucil had trouble staying in his chair.

“Whoooo!” came the collective gasp from the sold-out audience in the pause that followed. “Yeah, I’m beat,” quipped Preucil to the listeners, bringing down the house.

That gives you an idea of the atmosphere of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, where white-hot music-making takes place in an atmosphere so friendly that it’s a family affair in the cozy mostly-Orcas audience — and on the stage, too.

Artistic co-directors Aloysia Friedmann, a violist, and her pianist husband, Jon Kimura Parker, have assembled a corps of musicians that proves talent does indeed run in families.

Friedmann was joined by her father, Martin Friedmann, on viola; Parker by his pianist brother, James. Preucil was joined by his violinist wife, Gwen Starker Preucil, his sister, Jeanne Preucil Rose, and her husband, Stephen Rose. The cellists were Toby Saks (artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival) and Desmond Hoebig, who (like J.K. Parker) teaches at Rice University.

The concert was the fifth of six in the festival’s fifth season. The remarkably diverse program opened with the brothers Parker in William Hirtz’s incredibly elaborate two-piano arrangement of Harold Arlen’s “Wizard of Oz” score (accompanied by images from a 1993 “Wizard of Oz” production at the Orcas Center, projected onto an onstage screen).

One of the high points was William Preucil’s remarkable Debussy Violin Sonata (with James Parker at the keyboard), illuminated by Preucil’s forceful musical personality and exquisite control. The Dick Hyman Jazz Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet was a hybrid that selcom broke free from the constraints of the string quartet form (though Jon Kimura Parker and clarinetist Owen Kotler were given great virtuoso jazz riffs).

It was the Mendelssohn, however, that made the pulses hum. Whipped into a frenzy by Preucil in the first-violin chair, the players responded with the kind of viscerally exciting music that raises listeners right out of their seats. If music is the universal language, this Mendelssohn Octet makes linguists of us all.

A FESTIVAL FAVORITE RETURNS FOR CHAMBER MUSIC’S SUMMER SHOW
(Note: This article is in reference to the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, but it is a nice
feature on OICMF’s Artistic Director Aloysia Friedmann)

Veterans of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, which opens its 21st season Monday night at Lakeside School, know well the visage and name of Aloysia Friedmann. As well they should, for the musician has been a festival regular for nearly 15 years. Most think of her as a violist. However, violin is her first instrument and remains so outside of Seattle festival circles.

“It is entirely because of Toby Saks that I play the viola,” Friedmann said. Saks is the founding artistic director of the Seattle festival.

As a child -- the daughter of well-known Seattle musicians, violinist Martin Friedmann and oboist Laila Storch -- she studied piano and violin. Then, in her midteens, she abandoned the piano to concentrate on the violin. By the time she was 20, she was concertmaster of the Seattle Youth Symphony and a student at the University of Washington. New York and the Juilliard School beckoned, and off she went with her violin, eventually receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the school.

When Saks came bidding for Friedmann’s services for the 1988 festival, she offered the viola part in several works, including Dvorak, Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakoff.

“I never had a lot of interest in the viola,” Friedmann said. “My father played both instruments, as do other violinists, so the idea was hardly strange. I immediately said yes and got to work in my apartment. I took some lessons.”

The viola, situated between the violin and the cello, is tuned a fifth lower than the violin, and for reasons of convenience, its music is usually written in the alto, or viola, cleff, while the violin is written in the treble clef and the cello in the bass clef.

“My festival debut was in one of the largest pieces in chamber music, the Dvorak Piano Quintet. I was very nervous. But it went well, and I continue to play viola in chamber music in Seattle and in my own festival (Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival).”

However, in New York, where Friedmann lived from her student days at Juilliard until last year when she and her husband, pianist Jon Kimur Parker, and daughter, Sophie, moved to Houston, she played the violin.

Friedmann was encouraged to study music by her parents. “I had the best possible background. My dad, from Vienna, had a natural feeling toward Viennese and German music, all that Schubert and Beethoven. My mom played Bach so beautifully. My first teacher was my father, until Emanuel Zetlin (a well-known teacher at the UW) at 12. They are avid travelers who love the world. From them I got a rich education on culture and life itself.”

The one thing she was not encouraged to do was to study the oboe. Her mother, a former member of the wind quintet Soni Ventorum and the UW faculty, said one oboist in the family was enough.

“I’ve learned to love the viola,” Friedmann said. “I have developed an affinity for the instrument, so it is not so difficult to go back and forth. However, there are adjustments that always have to be made between the two: the bow arm and bow speed, tonal considerations, how to produce a beautiful sound on the viola as opposed to the violin. I took to the viola very naturally so when I don’t play it for awhile and return to it, the feel of the instrument comes back pretty easily. Learning the alto clef was similar to learning a new language. But I mastered it. When I have the viola in my hand, I think alto clef, and when I have the violin, I think treble clef.”

If you had to make a choice between the two instruments, what would it be?

“That is very difficult. The joy of playing each instrument is completely different. With the violin you have the capacity of more brilliance and melody. The first violin line is often more pleasurable than the viola line. However, with the viola there is warmth and beauty and an inner range that is very rewarding and the opportunity to be a neighbor and colleague with the cello. But if I had to make the choice, I would choose the violin.”

On occasion Saks has asked Friedmann to play the violin, once during the same concert.

“Switching back and forth can be tough. For my own sanity, I would prefer to focus on one instrument at a time. However, if I have to do it, I would rather play the violin in the first half and the viola in the second. It is easier to stretch out than go the other direction.”

This season, Friedmann was scheduled to play the viola part in Brahms’ String Quartet in F on Wednesday and a chamber reduction of Mozart’s E-flat Piano Concerto (K.449), with her husband as the soloist, July 5. However, when Martin Beaver canceled his festival appearances because he had joined the Tokyo String Quartet as first violinist, Saks asked Friedmann to also take over the second violin part in Frank’s F Minor Piano Quintet, also on July 5.

After graduation from Juilliard, Friedmann stayed in New York and became a freelance musician, playing with various chamber ensembles and orchestras, including the American Symphony Orchestra and St. Luke’s. She even did Broadway musicals and period groups.

“Those were my crazy days. I did it all, and am grateful for the experience. I am pretty much able to tackle anything.”

Friedmann is founding artistic director of the five-year-old Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.

“Our festival at the end of the summer grows every year. I wanted to start at the same high level of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival,” she said.

A number of the musicians in the Orcas festival appear at the Seattle festival, including violinists William Preucil and Gwen Starker Preucil and, of course, Parker. Pianist Jeffrey Kahane joins them this season.

Friedmann and Parker are so committed to Orcas, and perhaps so eager to avoid summers in Houston, where Parker is a new member of the Rice University music faculty, that they bought a house on the island, not far from where the elder Friedmanns have had a summer place for years.

“In some ways, Orcas is more of a home to me than anywhere else, especially now that we have a child. We plan to spend our summers here. At least most of them.”