Nikolay Medvedev’s Fusions

 by Maureen Buja  September 21st, 2026

In this recording on SOMM Records, Russian pianist Nikolay Medvedev (b. 1986) takes three composers, the Ukrainian Nikolai Kapustin and the Americans George Gershwin and Earl Wild, and presents us with a powerful and flowing examination of that wonderful fusion of classical pianism and jazz.

Nikolay Medvedev (photo by Dusia Sabol)

Medvedev opens with Nikolai Kapustin (1937–2020) and his Piano Sonata No. 2, and we can hear immediately how the composer fuses the classical form of the sonata with stylistic elements from jazz – this is not a classical-sounding piano sonata by any means! Although so much of his work sounds like it’s improvised at the keyboard, the composer fervently declared that music had to be written down: ‘All improvisation, as far as I am concerned, is written down, and it is all the better for that; it is allowed to mature’.

Nikolai Kapustin (photo by Schott Music / Peter Anderson)

This is followed on the recording by George Gershwin’s Three Preludes. Gershwin (1898–1937), who wanted to write music for both popular theatre and the concert hall, had the dream of writing his own set of 24 Preludes for Solo Piano, as so many composers before him had done. His first Three Preludes were published in 1927; he wrote 5 other works intended to be part of his final 24, but by the time of his death in 1937, only the first three had been published as a set.

The Three Preludes were all part of Gershwin’s mix of classical and jazz that he first brought to the world in his Rhapsody in Blue.

Carl van Vechten: George Gershwin, 1937 (Library of Congress, LCCN 2004662906)

A selection from Kapustin’s 8 Concert Études, Op. 40, again gives us Kapustin’s unique merging of the classical (the étude) and jazz. These were not intended to be played as a set, and so Medvedev gives us 5 of them. I. Prelude gives us Latin rhythms. II. Reverie is less international jazz than Ukrainian-influenced. VI. Pastorale puts the listener somewhere between Scott Joplin’s ragtime and Gershwin’s jazz from Porgy and Bess. VII. Intermezzo takes us into the world of stride piano, and the études close with VIII. Finale, a number full of fast drive and motion.

American pianist Earl Wild (1915–2010) made his name not only for his virtuoso performances but also for his piano transcriptions and arrangements of both jazz and classical music. For this recording, Medvedev has chosen Wild’s 7 Virtuoso Etudes after George Gershwin, published in 1954 and 1973, and both revised in 1975, for multiple fusions: jazz, the etude, and the paraphrase, combined with Gershwin in the hands of Wild.

Wild had heard Gershwin play both the Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, and when he created his Virtuoso Etudes, he used music from all facets of Gershwin’s career: the fun of I Got Rhythm and the heartbreak of The Man I Love.

Earl Wild

The recording closes with one more work by Kapustin, his Variations, Op. 41, from 1984. Rather than a variation set, it’s more like an ongoing variation on a theme that never seems quite to end. It’s a delight of light pianism and requires virtuosic hands to keep it all in motion.

Nikolay Medvedev brings a technical skill to these works that raises them from popular to virtuosic. Particularly in the Wild pieces and the final Kapustin Variations, it would be easy to lose track of the essence of the work in the midst of all the fireworks, but Medvedev keeps it all together in style.

Fusions: Nikolai Kapustin, George Gershwin, Earl Wild

Nikolay Medvedev, piano
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD 0724

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‘55’ Katia & Marielle Labèque

 by Frances Wilson  September 23rd, 2026

For more than half a century, pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque have held a distinctive place in the musical landscape. Celebrated for the brilliance and precision of their ensemble playing, they have also pursued a career marked by an unusually wide-ranging curiosity. From Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Ravel to Stravinsky, Messiaen, Philip Glass and Bryce Dessner – and far beyond the conventional boundaries of classical music into jazz, minimalism and popular culture – the Labèque sisters have consistently resisted being confined by repertoire, genre or expectation.

Katia and Marielle Labèque (Photo by Umberto Nicoletti)

Their latest release, 55 (released in June 2026), celebrates an extraordinary 55 years of recording. It features a collection of 25 newly recorded tracks, including several world premiere recordings, plus 30 drawn from an impressive archive spanning 1970 to 2024. The result is not a conventional career retrospective, but a fascinating survey of the repertoire, composers, and ideas that have shaped the sisters’ artistic lives.

The story begins and ultimately comes full circle with Olivier Messiaen. Katia and Marielle were just 17 and 19 when Messiaen asked them to record his monumental two-piano work Visions de l’Amen, himself overseeing the recording. More than five decades later, the final track of 55 returns to that beginning with the work’s concluding Amen de la Consommation. It is an eloquent way to close the circle, reminding us how deeply contemporary music has been embedded in the Labèques’ artistic identity from the very start.

There are familiar works for piano duo and piano 4-hands – by Debussy and Ravel, Dvořák and Bizet, Brahms and Fauré – but alongside these sit the experimental and minimalist worlds of Luciano Berio, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, John Cage, Howard Skempton and Bryce Dessner, before returning, via Stravinsky, to Messiaen.

55 is organised in three sections – Wild is the Wind, Of a Bright Garden and Points of Light – moving freely across musical periods and styles; for example, Nina Simone‘s Wild is the Wind, heard in a transcription for two pianos and played with a relaxed expansiveness, sits alongside Margaret Bonds and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.  

It is gratifying to see a particular emphasis on women composers, including works by Hélène de Mongeroult, Grażyna Bacewicz, Dora Pejačević, Margaret Bonds and Lili Boulanger. For Katia and Marielle Labèque, bringing these voices into the collection is not merely an exercise in historical correction but part of the same spirit of curiosity that has always driven their music-making: a desire to seek out connections, contrasts and repertoire worth hearing.

Above all, 55 reveals remarkable artistic continuity. Across recordings separated by decades, one hears the qualities that have long distinguished Katia and Marielle Labèque: rhythmic vitality, clarity, colour, imagination and an almost instinctive understanding of one another at the keyboard. At the heart of this collection is the wonderful sense that these two musicians remain as inquisitive and adventurous as ever – still discovering music, still making connections and still asking where two pianos and four hands might take them next.

55 is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

Javier Perianes (Born on September 24, 1978) When Silence Speaks

 by Georg Predota  September 24th, 2026

The Spanish pianist Javier Perianes was born on 24 September 1978 in Nerva. He graduated in piano studies from the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Seville and received additional guidance from Richard Goode, Alicia de Larrocha, and Daniel Barenboim.

Winning first prizes at the Concurso Internacional de Piano Premio Jaén and the Concurso de la Fundación Jacinto e Inocencio Guerrero launched his international career, and his Harmonia Mundi recordings have received critical acclaim.

To celebrate his birthday, let us take the opportunity to sample his recording of Música Callada by Catalan composer and pianist Federico Mompou.

Javier Perianes

In an interview published by Miami Clásica on 10 October 2011, originally in Spanish, Perianes was asked how he approached Mompou’s Música Callada. “It is music based on silence, which is the great accomplice of musicians.” Mompou took the term from a poem by St. John of the Cross, and it basically means “music that does not sound.”

“To approach it, you need inner silence and to be free of prejudices. It seems easy, static, but the concentration of emotion is devastating. The recording was made in one day, in a single sweep, which is how I believe it should be approached.”

Mompou is best known for his solo piano music, characterised by elegance, direct melody, and the deep, haunting emotions of folk music. The meditative qualities of his music seem to conjure ritual and ancient mystery.

A Weak Heartbeat

Federico Mompou, 1955

Música Callada, which roughly translates as “Music of Silence,” is a cycle of 28 short piano pieces organised in four books. Composed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was Mompou’s last work for solo piano, and the composer considered it a high point of his career.

A key to understanding this music is a poem by the Spanish-Christian mystic St John of the Cross (1542–1591), published in his Cántico Espiritual.

The quiet night,
before the break of dawn,
the music of silence,
the resounding solitude,
the meal that refreshes and awakens love.

De la Cruz provides commentary on the passage reading, “This is silent music, for it is quiet and still knowledge, without an audible voice; and thus, in it, one enjoys the sweetness of music and the tranquillity of silence. The soul says that the beloved is silent music.”

These thoughts are echoed by Mompou, who explained, “This music has neither air nor light. It is a weak heartbeat. One cannot ask it to travel more than a few millimetres through space, but it has the task of penetrating the deepest recesses of our soul and the most secret regions of our spirit.”

“This music is silent because it is heard inwardly. Restraint and reserve. Its emotion is secret and takes sonic form only in its resonances beneath the great cold vault of our solitude. I hope that my Música callada, this newborn child, will bring us closer to a new warmth of life and to the expression of the human heart, always the same and always renewing itself.” (Fundació Frederic Mompou)

Making Silence Audible

Javier Perianes, Música callada

In his 2006 recording, Javier Perianes approaches this music with extraordinary delicacy but without grand sentimentality. His performance has an emotional directness that suits the ephemeral character and lets the poetry emerge silently.

It almost sounds like Perianes is making silence itself perceptible, as if making listeners aware of the space from which the sounds emerge. The clarity of his playing uncovers the tension beneath the surface. As such, it has been suggested that Perianes evokes the music’s spiritual dimension with great consistency.

Under Perianes’ hands, Música callada becomes purely contemplative music, aiming to convey the point of indifference between the music and the listeners.

7 Best Performances of Clair de Lune, According to YouTube

 by Emily E. Hogstad  September 19th, 2026

“Clair de Lune” is one of the most popular pieces in all of classical music, and there are countless versions on YouTube alone.

But which ones have actually captured the most listeners there? And which one is the most watched of all?

We ranked the seven most-viewed “Clair de Lune” performances on YouTube (as of 2026) and listed them in reverse order, saving the most popular for last.

The results may surprise you. The list includes a violin, a theremin, a classical guitar, and an audience of elephants.

Claude Debussy, ca. 1908, photo by Félix Nadar

Only three of the seven performances are for solo piano. What they all share is the breathless beauty that makes “Clair de Lune” one of the most beloved – and ubiquitous – pieces of classical music ever written.

7. David Oistrakh

4.5 million views  

As we mentioned, not all of the performances on this list are for solo piano. One breathtaking example: this violin-and-piano performance by David Oistrakh, recorded in Paris in 1962 with Frida Bauer at the piano.

Oistrakh was one of the great Soviet Russian violinists of the 20th century, and everything that made him legendary is present here: the tonal warmth, the complete absence of ego, the sense that the music is simply passing through him rather than being performed.

David Oistrakh, 1972

The violin carries the melody with a breathy vocal quality that a solo piano can’t replicate.

This was one of the first great violin performances ever uploaded to YouTube (all the way back in September 2006), and it inspired and influenced an entire generation of violin lovers. It is a fitting performance to kick off this list.

6. Gregoire Blanc

5.9 million views  

The second performance on the list isn’t for the piano; it’s for the theremin. The theremin is a deeply odd instrument. Invented in 1920, it is played entirely without touch. Instead, the performer’s hands move through open air to shape pitch and volume.

Leon Theremin playing a theremin

The theremin’s tone meshes intriguingly with Debussy‘s liquid melody; both exist somewhere between the corporeal and ethereal.

Blanc plays with complete emotional commitment, never letting the instrument’s inherent strangeness become the point.

It’s also worth noting that in 2020, he pinned a frustrated comment:

Claravox Centennial | “Clair de Lune” Performed by Grégoire Blanc & Orane Donnadieu  

Whether you check out the original viral video or his updated version, take a listen. It’s spooky, a little comical, and deeply moving all at once – and proves that Debussy’s music can survive all kinds of adaptations and reinventions.

5. Roxane Elfasci

11 million views  

Roxane Elfasci studied business at the prestigious HEC Paris before switching careers and devoting herself to the guitar. Judging by this recording, it was a solid choice.

“Clair de Lune” is a difficult lift for guitarists. The original piano writing can be dense, and the voicing is spread across a wide range that the guitar was never designed to handle.

Roxane Elfasci

However, Elfasci makes the challenges sound easy. Her virtuosic approach to the arrangement creates an almost spectral shimmer.

Eleven million views later, this performance demonstrates decisively that a talented guitarist’s interpretation can rightfully earn its place beside pianists’.

4. Seong-Jin Cho

11 million views  

Seong-Jin Cho is the first pianist on this list.

In 2015, he won the International Chopin Competition – arguably the most prestigious piano competition in classical music – and was signed by Deutsche Grammophon, home to many of history’s great pianists.

Seong-jin Cho (photo by Christoph Köstlin)

This recording comes from his 2017 Debussy album on DG, released on the eve of the composer’s death centenary.

It is an immediate argument for why a Chopin specialist makes an ideal Debussy interpreter: the touch is exquisite, the voicing luminous, the control of colour absolute.

The tempo is more relaxed than many interpretations. In 2018, he told YourClassical, “I listened again after I played it and my producer said, ‘Oh, you play a little bit slower than the others,’ and then I still felt this is the right tempo for me. Perhaps I will play differently in ten years, but for now I think this is the right tempo.”

This extra space allows every harmonic shift to breathe and settle. The result is a “Clair de Lune” that possesses an almost spiritual gravity.

3. Menahem Pressler

12 million views  

Few pianists have lived as cinematic a life as Menahem Pressler.

He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1923, fled the Nazis in 1939, and in 1946 won the Debussy International Piano Competition – a competition named after the same composer whose music he would return to again and again for the rest of his life.

This particular performance, made when Pressler was nearly 90, was filmed in Paris in 2012.

Menahem Pressler

His playing here conveys an overwhelming sense of love, generosity, profound empathy, and wisdom. This is someone who has lived with this music for decades; it has clearly become a kind of second skin for him.

After a long and celebrated career, Pressler died in 2023 at the age of 99.

2. Paul Barton

15 million views   

This is the only entry on this list where the audience matters as much as the performer.

Paul Barton studied art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London before pursuing a career as a concert pianist – a career he eventually set aside when he travelled to Thailand in the 1990s to teach piano.

While there, he became involved with Elephants World, a sanctuary for rescued logging and trekking elephants, and began bringing his piano to play for them.

Paul Barton © bach-cantatas.com

In this video, his audience is Ampan, a gentle 80-year-old elephant with impaired sight. As soon as Barton begins playing, Ampan starts wagging her ears – an elephant’s way of saying, “I am intrigued by this.”

“Their breathing actually slows down when you play, which tells me they are relaxed and happy,” Barton has said.

“Clair de Lune” has moved many millions of humans over the past century-plus. It’s heartwarming to realise it has also delighted other animals, too.

1. Rousseau

69 million views  

At 69 million views, this is the most-watched performance on this list by a significant margin – and it belongs to someone who has never shown their face.

Rousseau is an anonymous American pianist who launched their YouTube channel in March 2018 and built one of the largest classical music audiences on the internet almost entirely through a single innovation: a reactive visualizer that accompanies each performance, lighting up keys as notes are struck.

The effect is somewhere between a piano recital and a meditation. The visualizer makes the architecture of the music visible, the voices separating into colour, the harmonies blooming across the keyboard.

Tens of millions have watched this performance of “Clair de Lune,” proving that the music itself and its visible structure are deeply intriguing to viewers.

Conclusion

Together, these seven performances have accumulated well over 128 million views – a number that says something significant about “Clair de Lune” itself. Few pieces are as beloved.

Whether it’s a 1962 violin recording, an anonymous pianist with a light show, or a concert pianist playing for an elderly elephant, the music retains its magic.

If there’s a takeaway from this list, it is that there is no single definitive “Clair de Lune.” Only the versions that find you at the right moment matter. We hope one of them has touched your heart.

Ukraine and the Music of Resilience

 by Maureen Buja  September 21st, 2026

‘Resilience’ became the term of choice during COVID, showing our ability to live through the deadliest epidemic in memory and thrive. In the same way, the word has been applied to Ukraine’s struggle against Russia’s invasion. As the country Russia thought it could overcome in 3 days reaches 1,650 days under siege, Resilience has become one of its defining characteristics.

Solomiya Ivakhiv

In this fashion, violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv brings us a recording of Ukrainian music from living and lesser-known Ukrainian composers. The recording was made in Lviv under the constant threat of Russian missile attacks.

Victoria Vita Polevá

The most striking piece on the recording is the opening, Victoria Vita Polevá’s searing lament, Bucha. Lacrimosa was written in 2022 in direct response to a brutal massacre in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha as Russian troops were withdrawing. The lament is in 3 parts, starting with a solo violin representing the souls rising to their eternal rest. Percussion is omnipresent as a threatening force that culminates in the middle section. In the end, the violin motif returns but without any idea of comfort or resolution. It’s left to the woodblocks for their final dry statement on the future.

Hanna Havrylets, 2019

Hanna Havrylets composed Ex Libris in 1993 for poet and violinist Sofia Maidanska to perform on a tour of North America. The suite of four movements ‘responds to Maidanska’s poetry with fantasies on traditional themes marked by their modal harmony, fusing art and folk music techniques of repetition and ornamentation rather than development’.

Bohdan Kryvopust

Bohdan Kryvopust is represented by two pieces composed in 2024. On the River commemorates the protestors killed in Kyiv’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) during the demonstrations in January and February 2014 when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected the idea of closer ties to the European Union in favour of closer ties with Russia. Much as in Polevá’s lament, the violin is left to pick up the pieces but doesn’t bring the work to a calm resolution.

His Ukrainian Suite was commissioned by the Ukrainian Institute of America and Bohdan Gerulak, in memory of his late wife, the journalist and translator Marta Skorupsky. At its core is the folk song Oh, Wondrous Birth, which tells the origin story of Ukraine and Crimea as the land of ancient Scythia. The second movement recognised the beauty and headstrong temperament of women from the Hutsul region in western Ukraine (and the home region of our violinist). The final movement, When I Got My Draft Notice, takes its title from another song from western Ukraine, but one that feels more relevant now.

Osyp Zalesky

Bohdana Frolyak, 2017

An older-generation composer, Osyp Zalesky (1892–1984) built his career in the US after training at the conservatoire in Lviv and studying with Guido Adler in Vienna. He worked in Buffalo, New York, and founded its local Ukrainian Music Institute. Bohdana Frolyak arranged his part-song Autumn Song for violin and orchestra.

Ihor Sonevytsky

Bohdana Frolyak’s own Nocturne on the recording comes from a suite for cello and piano she wrote in 2008 in memory of the composer Ihor Sonevytsky, commissioned by his widow Natalia Palidvor. The bittersweet melody and its major/minor-switching harmony have been reworked for violin and orchestra.

Roman Prydatkevych

Roman Prydatkevych’s Ukrainian Rhapsody No. 1 is very much in the tradition of late-Romantic violin music; Bohdana Frolyak’s modern arrangement gives it a fresh twist, calling on composers from Korngold to John Williams to create a work with both concert and filmic imagery.

Yuriy Shevchenko

As an encore, Solomiya Ivakhiv plays the arrangement of Ukraine’s national anthem by Yuriy Shevchenko, completed shortly before the composer’s death from COVID in 2022. 

Again and again, the music and composers on this recording reinforce Ukraine’s place in music: connected to the world, yet with its own unique sound and connection to its folk and people. Many of these composers have found their homes in other countries, but still maintain their links to their homeland. This recording showcases not only Solomiya Ivakhiv’s violin playing but also the beautiful music from home and the many composers who have helped define it.

Music of Resilience
Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin
With the Academic Symphony Orchestra & INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Roman Kreslenko and Serhii Khorovets
Naxos 8.579191

All That Jazz and Chamber Music Too – Chatter Spreads the Word

by Richard Linnett  September 24th, 2026

Begun with missionary zeal as an informal gathering in a defunct Albuquerque gas station back in 2002, the Chatter chamber music collective — a unique network of classical and neo-modern musicians and composers — is expanding their latest ChatterPDX offering in Portland, Oregon, and their East Coast affiliated GatherNYC. The New York chapter is announcing this week that after five years at the Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle, they are moving to a new venue, Jazzcultural, a jazz joint on W46th St in Manhattan.

GatherNYC concerts take place every Sunday at 11am and include a spoken word performance plus a two-minute celebration of silence in the middle of the show, a format pioneered by Chatter in Albuquerque. GatherNYC founder and cellist Laura Metcalf has been performing with Chatter for some 16 years, and her co-founder, husband and classical guitarist Rupert Boyd first performed there in 2013, which marked the debut of their cello + guitar duo Boyd Meets Girl. They have since performed as a duo around the world, released two albums and a third to be released in 2027.

Metcalf & Boyd, NYC (Photo by Harold Levine)

“The vibe, acoustics and intimate nature of the club make it the ideal venue for our upcoming season,” said Boyd. “Jazz and classical music are two vital art forms. So different, yet at their core, so similar, and we love the idea of each helping the other to thrive in New York City.”

Meanwhile, back at the mothership in New Mexico, Chatter launched a new series of casual evening performances on 6 September at Unit B, a popular jazz, blues and rock dinner club in Santa Fe. Called B-Sides (as in “besides our other shows”), the series is in addition to the group’s weekly morning events every Saturday in Santa Fe and Sunday in Albuquerque, their once a month Late Works performances of experimental, post-classical music on first Fridays every month and their dinner theatre classical Cabaret events on occasional Sundays at the Albuquerque Museum.

B-Sides Chatter at Unit B

David Felberg, violin, and Judith Gordon, piano played Christopher Cerrone’s Violin Sonata  

The sold-out maiden voyage of B-Sides featured Metcalf and her Overlook Quartet performing chamber works by young contemporary composers Gabriella Smith and Kim Osberg. They were joined by ChatterPDX founder James Shields on clarinet for a brilliant Kenji Bunch composition. Shields also played his own solo jazz-infused work Duo No. 7 accompanied by Chatter founder and violinist David Felberg. Pianist extraordinaire Judith Gordon closed out the event with Felberg on works by Thomas Ades and Christopher Cerrone. Flutist Jesse Tatum made a surprising cameo performing a breathless, extraordinary recitation of the first part of Kurt Schwitters’ 1932 Dadaist sound poem Ursonate. The audience and the Unit B staff were spellbound during the entire show.

Overlook Quartet played Gabriella Smith’s “Carrot Revolution”  

“When we heard we were having a classical show tonight, we didn’t expect this at all,” said Eli O’Brien, who was waiting tables and listening intently. “It was so totally different. Amazing.” His reaction was seconded by Unit B owner Dharm Skotting-Segal. “Absolutely brilliant,” he gushed. “An incredible new experience.”

I caught up with Shields on his long road trip back to Portland with his wife, violinist Emily Cole, a frequent cross-country journey for the couple. A former Principal Clarinet with the Oregon Symphony, Shields founded ChatterPDX in 2024 as an offshoot of the New Mexico operation and it is flourishing, attracting overflow audiences. In keeping with Chatter’s underground punk rock-like ethos, performances are held on Sunday mornings in a former men’s clothing warehouse in downtown Portland with occasional evening shows at the Gordon House, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed gem outside of town. ChatterPDX recently unveiled an ambitious composers in residence program in which select artists are commissioned to create new works that are premiered by Chatter in Portland, New Mexico and NYC, and are subsequently recorded, releasing an album every year.

Shields, Metcalf & Felberg

James Shields, clarinet, and David Felberg, violin, performed James Shields’ “Duo no. 7”  

“We have multiple commissions that are three-year fellowships,” said Shields. “We’re giving them a brand new commission each year for three years, and we’re also playing their pre-existing works. We have three fellows at a time and they are on staggered entry, with one following after another.” Two current fellows, both born in the ’90s, are Kim Osberg and Akshaya Tucker, the latter’s cello and wind octet “That Amber Glow” premiered in New Mexico in August. Spoiler alert, pianist and popular young Chatter regular Luke Gullickson will be number three, official announcement forthcoming.

Shields is an exuberant, robust musician with an outgoing personality. He bravely bailed from his cushy symphony orchestra career because as he says, it was a better fit for him to be performing and managing on a more DIY level. “I came out of the pandemic, hit a wall, had performance anxiety and got a wake-up call that I needed to take a chance and see if Chatter would work in Portland. It became established so quickly, it was surprising.” The Portland organization now mounts almost 60 performances a year, often with 150 people or more in attendance.

Shields is an eloquent champion not only of classical music, but also its neo-modern or post classical subsets. Contrary to recent headlines in the popular press that bemoan an aging audience and slumping attendance at major venues like the Hollywood Bowl and the New York Philharmonic, he doesn’t believe classical music is “in crisis.” He’s optimistic that the culture is blossoming at a grassroots regional level as local chamber music outfits attract young musicians, composers and enthusiasts across the country, very much like Chatter.

“We’re now starting to have more impact and are more essential,” he said. “With larger institutions there is such a separation between everything, and specialization, which cuts off the people who are performing the music from the people who are deciding what’s going to be programmed and marketed. Chatter changes the paradigm. Our process is undertaken by a smaller group of people and there’s more overlap between the different roles. Audiences really resonate with that.”

Are there more Chatter chapters on the horizon?

“Occasionally, people will approach us and ask about it. Someone in Seattle was asking and someone in Detroit, but so far we have two offshoots that are working really well.”

Richard Linnett is a journalist, author and amateur horn player. He writes music reviews for The Strad and is the author of the non-fiction books The Eagle Mutiny and In the Godfather Garden: The Long Life and Times of Richie the Boot Boiardo. He lives in New Mexico.