I am, of course, referring to chamber music. While most of us musicians are not anywhere near endowed with the power or wealth of royalty, we can transform our lot into something approaching that (at least in the artistic sense) by playing some of the great works of chamber music that have been written over the past 300 years or so.
This past week I was at the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, which plays its concerts in an acoustically wonderful barn at the Signal Hill Ranch (owned and acoustically tweaked by Howard Johnson) located between Twisp and Winthrop, Wa. It’s a stunning site for concerts, with views of much of the middle portion of the Methow (pronounced MET-how) Valley, and depending upon the timing, the rising moon.