Cara Lieurance

Tomorrow night in the Light Fine Arts Center at Kalamazoo College, two young cellists, returning from their respective colleges or conservatories, will co-lead a program of works by Bach, Handel, and Barriere, with Carl Witt accompanying.

The Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck reaches the end of its 31st season this week with concerts on Thursday and Friday at 7:30 pm in the Woman's Club of Saugatuck. Returning as a key player is Alicia Eppinga, the principal cellist of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. She begins the program with the Cello Sonata Op 19 by Sergei Rachmaninov, a work which, while beautiful, brings up a sensitive issue for cellists seeking accompanists - the piano part is notoriously difficult. Luckily for her, she says, pianist Drew Le suggested they play it. The rest of the program features famous works of Edvard Grieg - the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 and the Holberg Suite - arranged for eleven strings by Adam Liebert, another Grand Rapids Symphony member and a performer at the Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck. 

Wayne Powers' life as an entertainer - actor, singer, comedian, radio host - has taken him from coast to coast and everywhere in between. Living in Kalamazoo for the last three years, he re-energized his love of singing, and began to plan a studio recording. The resulting album, If Love Were All, has just been released in the U.S., and a local album release concert and celebration will be held Tuesday, Aug 7, from 7-10 pm at the Union Cabaret and Grille in Kalamazoo. 

In an interview with Cara Lieurance, Wayne Powers recounts his early experiences as an out-of-his-depth teen jazz singer in New York clubs, which put him on a track that would lead to a job with music legend Henry Mancini's publishing business in Los Angeles. He became a member of the Off The Wall Improv group, a training ground for young comics (Robin Williams was one of his improv partners). Powers broke into television, and starred for two seasons on NBC's 13 East. After its surprise cancellation, he chose to leave television and return to music, recording 1993's Plain Old Me.  Now, after 25 years (and yet another career as a popular radio host), Powers recorded the "saloon" songs that have been touchstones for him through the years.

Violist Barbara Corbató, assistant principal violist of the Grand Rapids Symphony and a member of the Perugino Quartet, talks with Cara Lieurance about the two masterworks featured at the Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck this week: Robert Schumann's Quintet Op 44 and the Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op 67 by Amy Beach.  Corbató says that she's looking forward to playing Beach's Quintet, which was a landmark work by an American woman composer.

The concerts are at 7:30 pm Thursday and Friday evenings, at the Saugatuck Woman's Club. 

Western Michigan University's Merling Trio and bassist Tom Knific will appear at the Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck this week to perform a program of favorites by Brahms and Mozart, and new additions to their Great American Songbook project. Starting two years ago, the trio began commissioning arrangements for piano, violin, cello (and sometimes bass) of songs by composers like George Gershwin and Harold Arlen, and up to Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson. Gene Knific, the son of Tom and Renata Knific and a versatile young composer, wrote the new arrangements for the group.

The Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck concerts are Thursday and Friday at 7:30 pm at the Saugatuck Woman's Club.