This past Fall the ACMP Board of Directors voted to honor the SoCal Chamber Music Workshop with its 2025 Susan McIntosh Lloyd Award for Excellence and Diversity in Chamber Music Education. The award is by nomination, and given each year in honor of the late Susan McIntosh Lloyd (1935 – 2018), a passionate educator who served on ACMP’s Board of Directors for many years, edited our newsletter, and drew the many cartoons featured in those newsletters in the 1970s and 1980s. 

About the Susan McIntosh Lloyd Award

ACMP gave this award to SoCal in honor and in memory of Ron Goldman (1939-2023), who served on ACMP’s Board of Directors twice, from December 2005 through April 2014, and again from January 2022 until his passing on December 12, 2023. Ron joined ACMP in 1965, and was an avid organizer of chamber music sessions in the San Diego community until his passing. In 1978 he famously founded the SoCal Chamber Music Workshop and ran it for the first 35 years with his wife Wynonna and sons David and Marc, who survived him. Ron was a guiding light in the chamber music community and ACMP will forever cherish his memory.

Guided by Ron, who was ACMP to the core, the SoCal Chamber Music Workshop embodies ACMP’s mission. SoCal is administered entirely by hardworking and dedicated volunteers. One of the directors is Julie Park. Just before the holiday season, I had the opportunity to chat with Julie about SoCal and her long history with Ron.

More Reflections on Ron

San Diego-based ACMP member violist Adam Birnbaum had played for years in Ron’s quartet, who played the Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130 at his memorial in March 2024. Adam shared the transcript of the touching speech he gave before their performance:

We are Ron’s San Diego quartet, and it has been a hard year for us – hard to play the music that reminds us too much of Ron, but loving it so much that we play it anyway and the joy and grief get all mixed up together.

The passing of a wise elder confronts us with the impossible-to-answer questions, like “what was this all about”, “what’s the meaning of life?”.  Ron’s example asks us rather “what do I want the meaning of my life to be, and what am I going to do about it?”

Ron was born the same year as my father, at the start of World War II, and I live in their world.  

We live one moment at a time, just as our parents and grandparents did.  I was tiny, naked, helpless, crying – mom and dad fed me, kept me warm, gave me love, showed me how to survive incomprehensible amounts of transformation.  Just as their parents did for them, and their grandparents before them. 

Music flows through our lives. We carry the voices of our parents in our innermost selves, felt the timbre and tone of their music and before we could understand the meaning of their words.  We sing to our children and grandchildren the lullabies we absorbed as babies.  

It’s the same with the classical tradition. Beethoven opus 130 was written almost exactly 200 years ago.  It’s been almost a half century since it was first played at this workshop.  We performed opus 18 number 4 with Ron almost a quarter century ago.  God willing we will play Beethoven quartets until the day we die, and countless others will play them long after all of us here are gone.

When we play music together, we feel each other’s presence, respond to each other’s emotional and physical impulses.  And over time we learn each other.  23 years I got to play with Ron!  When I close my eyes and feel my inner quartet Ron is RIGHT THERE across from me, that SOUND, that alive, crackling, warm, powerful, propulsive SOUND – that Russian growl, the clicking articulation, the rich wrist vibrato, the humor, the brilliance.  

Ron believed we could all improve – why be content with what you can do NOW?  When he hugged you it was sharp and hard and came with a slap on the back.  In November, hearing me play violin he said “you’ve got potential!”

This workshop is proof that Ron believed every one of us here has potential.  When I am here I feel an overwhelming amount of love for all of you, overwhelming gratitude.

THANK YOU RON for teaching me the music that has kept me alive and in one piece for all of these years.  Thank you for these beautiful people searching for wisdom with me.

And thank you Herr Beethoven for this Opus 130 Cavatina, which, every time we’d play it Ron would quip “we’re practicing for my funeral, hehe”. Well, I guess it’s not quite a funeral, and Ron, this is for you.  It’s hard to play this without you – we’ll observe a moment of silence after we are done.