MostArts

This week has been the inaugural MostArts Festival: summer music & art. There have been evening concerts and noontime hour-long "Sound Bites" all week. I don't think I realized how much I'd been missing hearing live music. Today's noontime "Sound Bite" included Piano Trio Number 2 by Dimitri Shostakovich. I have a recording of piano trios 1 and 2 by the Oslo Trio and it's one of my favorite CDs but I don't think I've ever heard Number 2 live. I was thrilled.

As the trio (piano, violin, cello) progressed, I noticed that a student with whom I've had a number of interesting conversations got up and left. I ran into him as I walked home and he said he was viscerally disturbed by the music and had to leave. Each to his own, and I just responded that the visceral reaction showed he was alive.

The noontime chamber concerts have been my favorite part of the festival, with a few works each day by a variety of composers. The musicians are from around North America and vary quite a bit in age. There's a clarinetist -- Camila Barrientos Ossio -- that I love. She plays beautifully and it is interesting to watch her move to the music. She was part of an ensemble that played the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in yesterday's Sound Bite.

Also as I was walking home, one of the pianists that is judging the young pianist competition (Anthony Pattin) was remarking to a local couple that he's been pleased with the festival so far and that chamber music festivals of this quality are not common. He predicted that they'd be lining up next year. I sure hope that Lisa Lantz, the responsible music professor at Alfred University, can pull it off again.