Free Concert in Fayette

             Well last Saturday night was a very pleasant surprise, I must say. When I was first exploring Fayette, I saw a flyer in the library for a free concert at the opera house in town, and decided that I would check it out. Tonight was said concert, and it turned out to be highly enjoyable! And free! Which just makes it that much more enjoyable. :) The group is called Red Cedar Chamber Music. There are two permanent members, and then they often have guest musicians playing with them. At tonight’s concert the guest was a cellist. They play on authentic 19^th century instruments for much of their music, which is incredibly cool. Also, tonight they played almost entirely music from modern composers, many of whom were from Iowa! And one of the composers was in the audience! Very neat (his name is Harvey Sollberger, for anyone who is interested in looking him up). Now normally I am not always the biggest fan of modern music, but I actually really liked the majority of the concert. I must admit that the one composer makes me free incredibly inadequate. He was born in 1987. Need I say more? Lol. He is from Dubuque, but went to school at Juliard, and is now getting his masters at Yale. Yeah. He is the current composer in residence for the group, and one of the pieces they performed was written by him just this year, so we were some of the first people to hear it played. It was hauntingly beautiful. They played one other short piece by him as part of a collection by various composers, and that one was written when he was 16. It was also incredible. Which is just, ridiculous. I mean, it’s great, don’t get me wrong. But it is hard not to be envious of those geniuses lol. Anyway, I will definitely keep an eye out for things by him in the future. His name is Michael Gilbertson.

The whole concert sort of revolved around Dvorak in a way, which was an interesting concept. Especially since they only played one piece actually written by him. But nearly everything else was inspired by him, or a response to one of his pieces of music. For instance, the composer who was present, Harvey Sollberger, wrote a piece called Spillville that was a response to a four piece movement Dvorak wrote when he was in the states and briefly staying in Spillville Iowa! So cool! 

Another really neat thing about the concert was that the musicians spoke a little bit about each piece before they played, which helped to make the music even more enjoyable, at least to me. Afterwards, when I was handing in the comment card that they had asked us to fill out, the guitarist came up and was speaking to me about their music. He was very nice, super informative. It was great getting to talk to him a little bit.

Overall, it was a fantastic way to spend my Saturday night. I only wish my family could have been there, especially my dad and my sister. I think they would have really loved it. :)