Unitarian Universalist Fellowship 
Uplifting Concerts in a Wet Month
Originally appeared in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, Friday, January 29, 2010
During January, in San Luis Obispo, classical music seemed to rain down on us all.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, but looking back on the year's first month, I recall wet weather and inspiring concerts - some of them at the same time.
The weather stayed clear for W. Terrance Spiller' s Jan. 8 solo recital, at the Spanos Theatre at Cal Poly. Spiller, who begins each year with a concert, offered a lovely program of mostly Chopin, culminating in an epic reading of the great B minor sonata. The program included a lyrical rendering of Bach's E minor partita and a rousing romp through Bartok's Two Romanian Dances.
The sun shone two days later at the Methodist church in Los Osos, where flute virtuoso James Walker joined members of the San Luis Obispo Symphony for a chamber concert. Walker essentially is to the concert flute what Lynn Harrell is to the cello and in both cases, these men performed with soulful mastery.
Walker's concert included an especially memorable piece, Claude Bolling's flute-dominated "Jazz Suite."
One of the bestselling classical crossover pieces of the 20th century, Bolling's delightful confection featured piano by Mark Sherman and bass by Ken Hustad.
Jazz without drums is never easy. But Hustad's round, fat bass tones supplied the necessary rhythmic grounding, and Walker switched between alto flute, concert flute and piccolo with ease.
By the time the Tolosa Strings, convened at the Unitarian Fellowship on Jan. 17, the rains had begun. This local group had not played since 2007, and the facility, while comfortable, has an unfinished look. But the acoustics were fine, the players superior and the program was built around one of' the masterworks of Romantic music, Schubert's String Quintet in C major, D956.
Paul Severtson, coprincipal of our symphony,gave a helpful but rather lengthy lecture before the performance that highlighted how Schubert packed this 50 plus minute quintet full of unexpected surprises.
Then, accompanied by the sound of gently falling rain, they were off. Complex passages were clear and clean, tempi moderate, emotions consistently contemplative. Ken Hustad's plucked cello resonated as fully as his bass had in the Bolling Jazz Suite.
That week, the rains hit hard but eased up Sunday the 24th in time for the Festival Mozaic Wintermezzo concert at Congregation Beth David. This synagogue is not only refreshingly green in its design, but has (to my ears) the best acoustics of any house of worship in the county.
Scott Yoo, as always, was a genial host. The program included the Adagio from Bruckner's String Quintet, a tone poem from American modernist John Harbison, and, most appropriately, the Schubert Quintet we had heard the Tolosa group, play a week before.
Tempi were considerably faster than the Tolosa performance, and the Mozaic group offered high drama in place of the Tolosa's mellower meditation.
It's a sign of Schubert's genius that both performances were equally satisfying, right as . . . rain.