“The central idea,” Mika Inouye said in an interview last week, “is that music is something to share with friends.”
Inouye, pianist, educator and artistic director of The Durango Chamber Music Festival, knows whereof she speaks. For the last few years, Inouye and music impresario Scott Hagler have successfully parried the idea of concerts as social events with considerable success.
Next week, Third Avenue Arts, Hagler’s promotional platform, will sponsor the Durango Chamber Music Festival. Now in its ninth year, the festival will present 10 noon-hour concerts – June 5-9 and 12-16 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Concurrently, The Durango Chamber Music Academy and four other organizations are conducting five music camps for children ranging in age from 5 to 18.
“We have 86 students this year,” Inouye said, “all instruments in five camps: The Chamber Music Academy, young musicians and young composers, a beginning guitar camp, and the Piano Academy at Fort Lewis College. We’re so lucky to have so many music teachers and music students in the area. And by adding a concert a day where all can come together, we can offer them a complete musical experience.”
The 10 noon-hour recitals have been scheduled to conclude morning classes for some of the students. In turn, the noon recitals begin the afternoon sessions for the other students.
“But everyone’s invited to the noon recitals: our students, teachers and, of course, the public,” Inouye said,
The idea that music is to be shared with friends is central to the European conservatory model. Individual practice sessions, classes, chamber groups and performances are all part of the picture, which the Academy, now in its sixth year, has merged more fully into the early summer festival.
“Scott and I talked about how we could combine the Academy with the Festival, and the theme of ‘music among friends’ is the concept we settled on.”
Inouye said she and Hagler learned a lot from the success of the Bach’s Lunch format. For over a decade, Hagler organized his Bach Festival around evening concerts plus half-hour noon recitals. People flocked to the daytime performances. The model seems to appeal to Durango music lovers.
As artistic director, Inouye has had the daunting task of inviting about 40 regional musicians to perform in a similar format. The programs range from classical music to jazz, folk songs to flute trios, and on the last day as a kind of finale, a full rendering of Dvorák’s Quartet No. 12. To name only four of the 40 musicians participating in the noon-hour recitals, the Dvorák Quartet will feature violinists M. Brent Williams and Lauren Avery Heuser, violist Ginger Williams and cellist Sandy Kiefer.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theater Critics Association.
If you go
What: The ninth annual Durango Chamber Music Festival, 10 concerts over 10 days, featuring more than 40 regional musicians.
When: June 5-9, 12-16. Performances begin at 12:15.
Where: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 910 East Third Ave.
Tickets: $5 at the door, $45 festival pass, $30 for students and children, available online at www.durangochambermusic.com or by calling 903-7427.
More information: A detailed schedule of all 10 recitals is available on the DCMF website.
