ACMP member pianist and violist Arlene Hajinlian is as active a chamber music organizer as she is in sharing her time and space for social causes. This Thanksgiving holiday weekend she came up with a way for adult amateur chamber musicians to have a lot of fun while raising money to support New Yorkers in need.

Since 2017, Arlene has served on the board of Music for Food, the all-volunteer musician-run nonprofit fighting food insecurity in 22 cities in the United States, Canada and Taiwan. The renowned violist Kim Kashkashian founded Music For Food in 2010, with the belief that both music and food are essential to human life and growth. Since 2010, professional musicians have volunteered their talents and all proceeds have gone directly to a food bank or soup kitchen in their area. To date, Music for Food has generated funds allowing food pantries around the world to create more than 3 million meals. The New York City chapter has a partnership with Broadway Community.

The Thanksgiving holiday is all about food – and Arlene’s fabulous idea was to host three consecutive chamber music parties as a benefit for Broadway Community, through Music for Food. She provided delicious food and drink and an opportunity to play chamber music for pure fun with friends, old and new – all of this in exchange for a free-will donation to Broadway Community. Kim Kashkashian was delighted by this idea, telling Arlene, “This is a fantastic initiative and I think it will have long-lasting resonance!”

I attended the opening night party on Friday. Arlene should eventually publish an official chamber music party cookbook; the food was wonderful – most of it homemade – and paid tribute to her Armenian heritage. There were eight of us in attendance, with Arlene doubling on viola and piano. We divided up into two rooms, and over the course of four hours we played Schubert’s monumental cello quintet, a Mendelssohn piano trio, two Haydn quartets, two movements of Brahms’ G major sextet, and Anton Arensky’s quartet for violin, viola and two cellos (for the rare occasion when one actually has too many cello players!) For me the highlight was playing with violinist Laura Chang’s thirteen year old son, Matthew. He held his own sight reading all of this extremely demanding repertoire.

On Saturday afternoon, Arlene pulled together a whole new menu, both culinary and musical. Tom Novak was in attendance. In addition to being the Board Chair of Music for Food and Director of Artistic Planning at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tom is a fabulous bassoonist who brought a cornucopia of works for bassoon and strings, by Danzi and Devienne, among others.

The third and final party on Sunday afternoon was a trio of reunions of many sorts! Violinist Mary Ellen Shea and cellist Beverly Au had played together as kids in Westport, Connecticut music school, but hadn’t seen each other in over 40 years. After 20 years, violist Amanda Carye reconnected with cellist Jennifer Jahn. Jennifer is the President of the Fontainebleau Association, where Amanda was a student there 20 years ago at the Chateau in France. Meanwhile, Jennifer and Beverly had played in the Columbia University Orchestra together over 30 years ago. 

Over the course of three days 21 musicians ate, drank and played merry music in Arlene’s home while raising over $1200 for Broadway Community. What a meaningful way to celebrate Thanksgiving while giving back to those most in need – and anyone could do this anywhere to fight food insecurity in their area.