ECMS News
A Letter from our Artistic Director
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What a year it’s been! Despite the various challenges of re-launching the series, we were able to experience entertaining, impassioned and profound performances by Trio Duende, pianist Vladimir Feltsman, the Adler Fellows of the San Francisco Opera, and the Pacifica Quartet. We added a second opportunity to hear and get to know our amazing artists with the “Concert + Conversation” series, held on the Sunday following each concert. Our artists visited Northcoast Preparatory Academy, Eureka High School and Arcata High School. We embraced the challenges, pushed the envelope, and thrived.
Next season will be even more ambitious. We are presenting three string quartets from as close as San Francisco and as far afield as London, each with its own distinctive voice, each representing the best of the next generation. We’re bringing you soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and her musical and life partner, pianist Ryan McCullough. Ryan grew up in Eureka and now can be seen on PBS, as well as on concert stages throughout the world. Lucy is one of the most talented, musically and intellectually probing sopranos of her generation. I’m also excited to be returning to the series as a performer in Trio Duende. I couldn’t be more excited to welcome back pianist Awadagin Pratt and cellist Sophie Shao.
A goal of mine is to present masterpieces that haven’t yet been heard on our series. To this end we proudly feature local pianist Daniela Mineva in collaboration with members of the Telegraph Quartet, and I will be joining forces with both the Telegraph and the Castalian Quartets as a violist to present Brahms’ two viola quintets. These masterpieces represent what many consider to be among his greatest works.
We’re also increasing our commitment to education. Keep an eye out as we plan innovative ways to reach students and adults in the community.
So thank you for being part of the Eureka Chamber Music Series. None of this happens without you! I look forward to continuing our musical journey together.
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Tom Stone, violinist
Artistic Director
Eureka Chamber Music Series
www.eurekachambermusic.org
New Board Members
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We are pleased to welcome to our board of directors Dr. Luther Cobb and Elizabeth Morrison. Both longstanding patrons of the Eureka Chamber Music Series and practitioners of music themselves, they are an easy fit for the organization, and we are glad to have their collaboration in bringing high level classical music to Humboldt.
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Elizabeth Morrison is a cellist and lifelong lover of chamber music. When she lived in Eureka during the 90s, she attended the Eureka Chamber Music Series from its inception. Certain concerts- the Australian String Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet, the Cypress Quartet- still glow in memory. She also treasures the times she and her late husband Ralph Morrison had the honor of playing piano trios with ECMS founder Pearl Micheli. Returning to Eureka in 2019 after spending 20 years in the Bay Area, she was thrilled to find ECMS still going strong. She brings to the board her experience leading Chamber Musicians of Northern California, a Bay Area nonprofit. She is a member of the Eureka Symphony, and enjoys playing chamber music, especially in Julie Fulkerson’s garage.
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Dr. Luther Cobb is one of six brothers, all of whom studied piano, and he first started playing around age five when his older brother Carl started lessons with the piano teacher next door, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Luther would plunk down out of sight on the porch outside the teacher’s living room, listen to Carl’s lessons, and then go home and play them on the piano they had at home. He got a high school diploma in piano performance after 12 years of private study. When he went to college for Chemistry, he still chose to study as a private student with one of the faculty, and bought a piano to put in his dorm room at Michigan State when he was a Resident Assistant in the dorms his junior and senior years. When he decided in 1997 to leave the Stanford faculty and move here, he brought the Bosendorfer Imperial concert grand piano formerly owned by Richard Britt, an attending surgeon at Stanford in Neurosurgery and dear friend, and when he learned that the Humboldt Breast Health Project (now the Breast and GYN Health Project) was thinking of a fundraiser for their wonderful institution, he offered to play a program up here that he had done some 20 years before. Dr. Cobb thinks music, especially live performance, is one of the great joys, both intellectually and spiritually, of existence. He feels lucky to participate as an occasional performer and enthusiastic audience member, and is grateful for the opportunity to support this wonderful organization that brings this great quality of performance to our community.