Colorado Valley Chamber Players to Present Inaugural Concert Sunday

My favorite theme when writing for the Record is noting that which makes our community so special. Let’s just be frank: you’re not gonna find James Dick’s music of Festival Hill or the Bugle Boy or the Round Top experience in other rural locales. Not to mention our Casino Hall or the world-class Quilt Museum. And one seldom mentioned asset but clearly should be: the first-class archives department of our local library.

I could go on. But stop the presses. There’s a newbie in town. A brand-new chamber music organization ... and series … one whose founders are youthful but highly skilled ... whose music will be exciting and accessible, and whose future will be sure to add to the richness of the character of the Fayette County lifestyle.

Last Friday’s Record announced the founding of the Colorado Valley Chamber Players (CVCP). Now we see what their inaugural concert will be.

The historic St. James Episcopal Church (across from the H-E-B) will host this first CVCP event that features the two founders of the chamber organization, Miles Gillette-Bockhorn and Isabelle Jamois. These superb musicians, pianist and flutist respectively, will put on a virtuosic program with a French theme that is sure to wow the audience. I know I won’t miss it.

The Debussy, a homage to Chopin’s famous etudes, will no doubt prove to be the favorite of many. But there are two highlights I am particularly looking forward to.

Framed by centuries of musical imagination, Marin Marais’s Les Folies d’Espagne and François Borne’s Carmen Fantaisie illuminate two very different kinds of virtuosity. The Carmen Fantasie is based on Bizet’s well-known and loved opera, Carmen.

Marais’s variations— first written for the viola da gamba—unfold over a simple, instantly memorable pattern that, as I understand it, was a runaway hit across Europe. He thus turns a familiar tune into a hypnotic display of invention that generations of composers would keep on reinventing.

François Borne (1840– 1920) was a French flutist. His interpretation of Carmen Fantaisie, by contrast, is a blazing showcase gathered up from Bizet’s most irresistible melodies, specially crafted to dazzle on the modern Boehmsystem flute—the 19th-century redesigned instrument with ring keys and a new hole pattern that made the instrument louder, nimbler, and more in tune. For years his Fantaisie barely survived in the dark. Eventually, scholarship restored Borne’s brilliant work to the spotlight, revealing how clever he was at tailoring its fireworks to show off that upgraded flute.

As a layman, I can tell you one of the most attractive effects of a Gillette-Bockhorncrafted program is its accessibility. It doesn’t matter if you do not know the piece—or the artist, even—Miles’s selections will thrill you, enchant you even. He just has that gift. I am honored to know these young artists, and I am familiar with their approach to musical selection. Further, this I also know: the audience members this Sunday will speak in the future of their being there—for that very first performance.

And, yes, how brilliant it was.

The 45-minute, five-piece program will be: -Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de Printemps (5:05) -Claude Debussy: Études (Nos. 1, 7, and 10) (8:30) -Henri Dutilleux: Sonatine (9:30) -Marin Marais: Les Folies d’Espagne (10:00) -Georges Bizet / François Borne: Carmen Fantaisie Brillante (11:00) The inaugural concert, A French Prelude with flute and piano will take place Sunday, May 31 at 3 p.m. at St. James Church, across from the La Grange H-E-B. Admission is free, and a free-will-donation will be appreciated. For more information, visit cvchamberplayers. org or stjameslagrange. org or call (979) 968-- 3910.