With ACMP’s rapidly growing community of chamber musicians, Play-In season is never over!

After all the National Chamber Music Month Play-Ins in May, our NAOC councilor Christina Wolf (in Vancouver, Canada) organized another Play-In in June at a small art gallery on Granville Island, an artsy enclave with a popular public market right under one of the main bridges leading from the Lower Mainland to downtown Vancouver.

Christina might win ACMP’s Most Picturesque Play-In Award. The one I attended in May was at a space with a small independent coffee roaster, art gallery, blackbox theater, art studios with mountain views – and…an outdoor sauna! Does it get better than that? About the more recent Granville Island Play-In, Christina reports, “We had a great group and everyone had time to play.  We had about a dozen music lovers join us for the socializing too (not pictured) so that made it even more celebratory.”

Meanwhile, in Fort Collins, Colorado, ACMP Board Secretary and local NAOC representative Carol Osborne held a late June Play-In at a local church. She tried something that I did when Joseph and I organized the big Play-In in Houston, Texas at the Chamber Music America National Conference: namely, hiring a conservatory student as a ringer. Colorado State University graduate student cellist Axel Gallegos (in the purple T-shirt, second from the right in the photo below) was happy to play chamber music for pleasure with a festive group of local adult amateur musicians.

From my experience organizing Play-Ins, it’s always difficult to find enough cello players, with the exception, again, of the exceptional Christina Wolf, who also wins ACMP’s Most Cello Players at a Play-In Award. At Christina’s May Play-In in Vancouver, there were too many cellists and not enough violins, which never happens. It made me think of another Play-In tip: always have sets of parts on hand for multiples of one instrument, and if you think you won’t have enough violins but ample violists and cellists, a set of parts for Bach’s Brandenburg 6 is a must!