Mozart’s Divertimento in E Flat, Sonata in C (No. 3) by Gioachino Rossini and a set of original genre-bending compositions by PROJECT Trio.

Three’s Company.

WWCMF inaugurates the First Annual Winter Festival with a Festival Series performance at the acoustically magnificent Power House Theater. The program will begin with the Sonata in C (No. 3) by Gioachino Rossini, the composer of iconic comic operas such as The Barber of Seville, The Turk in Italy, and The Italian Girl in Algiers. For this performance WWCMF incorporates PROJECT Trio, rescoring the work for flute, violin, cello and double bass.

PROJECT Trio will then take the stage for a set of original genre-bending compositions. Jazz, Folk, Rock, Classical? Who knows or cares? It's great chamber music.

The program concludes with Mozart’s finest chamber music composition, the Divertimento in E Flat for violin, viola and cello. Mozart is famous for his theater piece The Magic Flute. While The Magic Flute is played in the most prestigious opera houses the world over, it is a more humble work, intended for a vaudeville-style theater. The original audience enjoyed lots of falling down and misunderstandings of the sort one finds in an episode of Three’s Company. Yet Mozart gave them a work of infinite tenderness and humanity, carefully hidden beneath all of the falling down.

In the more intimate medium of chamber music, he thankfully gives us just such a tender and human work in the Divertimento for string trio, K 563. The title suggests no more than a pleasant diversion… light music for a light occasion. However, no composer imbues chamber music with such heavenly proportions or such meaning as does Mozart in his only work for this form. Three is company, indeed.

Artists: Timothy Christie and Maria Sampen along with Greg Pattillo, Peter Seymour and Eric Stephenson of PROJECT Trio

The Mozart Divertimento in E Flat, K. 563

The Mozart Divertimento in E Flat, K. 563, has been called Mozart's greatest piece of chamber music. It is number one in the Coaches' Poll. The BCS rankings agree, and we anticipate seeing the Divertimento play for the National Championship in January. Sound ridiculous? It's not.

Six movements, three players: “every note is significant, every note is a contribution to spiritual and sensuous fulfillment in sound.” So penned noted Mozart scholar, Alfred Einstein (no relation), regarding the E Flat Divertimento. Would you care for some spiritual and sensual fulfillment? Please join us at Foundry Vineyards and get some.

Artists: Maria Sampen, Timothy Christie and Eric Stephenson

Downtown Music

Wikipedia describes Downtown Music as "not distinguished by any particular principle, but rather by what it does not do: it does not confine itself to the ensembles, performance tradition, and musical rhetoric of European classical music, nor to the commercially defined conventions of pop music."

Then what does it do? Come find out.

On Friday, January 13, Brooklyn, New York's PROJECT Trio is going to bring some Downtown Music to downtown Walla Walla. More specifically, to the Charles Smith Wines Tasting Room on Spokane Street.

 We're goin' Downtown, baby.

Artists: Greg Pattillo, Peter Seymour and Eric Stephenson of PROJECT Trio