Dan's Papers - April 3, 2009 - Chamber Music Series Finds a Home at the SCC

While the summer is normally teeming with cultural events for fans of all genres and types of art - music, visual art, theater - there's a lack of interesting events to keep East End residents busy during the fall, winter and even into the spring.

But fans of chamber music will be excited to learn that a new series will be kicking off at the Southampton Cultural Center on April 3 to fill the cultural void. Organized by Marc Levine, a professional violinist who last summer organized a similar series at Stony Brook Southampton, the series will feature standard chamber music as well as contemporary takes on it and baroque.

A graduate of the University of Stony Brook, where he studied the violin and received a musical arts degree, Levine discovered the performance space at Stony Brook Southampton, for the most part, was unused and convinced the college to allow him to organize a music series there, though the school didn't have the money to fund it. Still, Levine finagled a deal where he was able to use the space for free and the musicians would be paid from money made through ticket sales. Also, the majority of the musicians booked has an affiliation with USB, in order to have a cohesive theme for the series.

"This is about as grassroots of a thing as you can get," Levine said.

However, just as he was planning to once again utilize the college's performance space, this time for his spring series, he was informed that because the campus has been growing, there were now costs associated with renting the space that were out of the college's control. Desperate for a venue for his fledgling series, members of Levine's e-mail list suggest he consider approaching the Southampton Cultural Center, which embraced it. "Everyone was excited, and interested," Levine said. He struck a deal similar to the one he had with the college, where he could use the space for free and the bands walk away with the ticket sales. A handful of students from Southampton High School, who are required to perform a certain number of hours of volunteer work each school year, stepped in to help out with tasks such as handling ticket sales and handing out programs.

The first performance of the series will feature The Escher String Quartet on April 4 at 3 p.m. The group has performer at prestigious venues around the world, including Manhattan's Lincoln Center and Symphony Space, Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center and the Louvre in Paris. For more information, go to escherquartet.com.

The next afternoon, April 5, features the more experimental and avant-garde Yarn/Wire, which performs contemporary music for two pianists and two percussionists. For more info on this New York City based group, go to yarnwire.org.

In what Levine considers to be a showcase concert, April 18 will feature internationally renowned musicians USB professor Arthur Haas, on harpsichord, and Dana Maiben, on violin, will perform selections of baroque music. "This is really special," Levine said. "These are some of the premiere baroque musicians in the world. It's going to be a fantastic concert. They are one or two generations ahead of the rest of the groups [performing in the series.] These are our teachers. They're the people we've been learning from."

Levine will take the stage on May 3 as a member of a new group, Southampton Cultural Center Chamber Players, an ad hoc chamber music group. "It's a great group of players that formed for the purpose of the series," Levine said. "The idea is that we have a lot of freedom to do a lot of different things."

Closing out the series, harpsichordist Gabriel Shuford (www.gabrielshuford.com) will perform on May 10.

But Levine hopes, and is fairly confident, that this will not be the end of the series, or of his relationship with the SCC. "I'd love to see the Cultural Center say, 'This is great. Let's keep doing this,'" he said. "I'd love to see them continue doing this during the year, when the community really needs this service. ... Personally, I think if the community gets behind the series, I can't see how it wouldn't happen."

General admission tickets are $20, while tickets for seniors and students are $10. For more information, go to www.southamptonculturalcenter.org.