Two days after my visit with Jane Stein Wilson in Nanaimo, I got to play with her again in Vancouver at the official ACMP Vancouver Worldwide Play-In organized by local NAOC councilor Christina Wolf on Victoria Day – Monday, May 20, 2024. (Christina is pictured above, front-left.)

Twenty string players and two pianists attended, from Vancouver and its outlying suburbs, Vancouver Island, Bellingham, Washington and The Bronx, NY (guess who!). Christina rented three large rooms from Arts Umbrella, a well-known children’s arts school located in Granville Island – one of Vancouver’s top tourist locations with numerous art ateliers, artisanal boutiques and its famous public market.

As long-time ACMP members and readers of this blog surely know, there are so many ways to organize a Play-In. For this one, Christina opted for the round-robin drop-in approach. She brought four crates of chamber music parts with her for all combinations of multiple strings, with or without piano. Violist Colin Miles and pianist Bill Bruneau also brought sets of parts from their collections. With Christina’s encouragement, participants moved freely from room to room to play different repertoire with different people. Christina often sent runners to recruit players where needed – “We’re about to play The Trout – we need a bassist in Room 1!”

While many hard-core ACMP members (Jane Stein Wilson included) are not in favor of this practice, the Vancouver Play-In participants often doubled parts to maximize participation. One thing I found especially touching was how more experienced chamber musicians were willing to spot less experienced players, allowing them to experience the thrill of playing big chamber works by Dvorak and Brahms by playing along with their part or, in some cases, helping them keep track of where they were by cueing them in or pointing to places in their part where needed.

At the end of the Play-In, Christina brought everyone together in the largest room to sight-read the unannounced “Mystery Piece.” This year’s selection was the Suite for String Orchestra by Christopher Wilson. A great time was had by all!

For me, personally, a highlight of the Play-In was reconnecting with my dear friend Anita Zaenker whom I have known since we were both nine year-old aspiring string players in the newly launched Vancouver School Strings program, and who was among my closest High School friends. Her mother, the late great pianist Ailsa Zaenker, often accompanied the school string orchestra, and she eventually became my piano teacher. I was thrilled that Anita’s father, Karl Zaenker, was also at the Play-In. Karl is a retired Professor of German from the University of British Columbia and avid amateur violist who cofounded the local community orchestra the West Coast Symphony Orchestra in 1970. (You can see Karl, second from the left in the Play-In photo at the top of this article. To his right is Jane Stein Wilson, in the yellow T-shirt.) Like Jane Wilson’s family, the Zaenkers personify ACMP’s mission of intergenerational chamber music playing for pleasure! Anita often brings her sons to play along with her at WCAMS (West Coast Amateur Musicians Society.)

After the Play-In, many of the participants continued festivities with food and drinks at The Keg on Granville Island. Hill and I joined briefly, but we had to run off to return the double bass we borrowed from the local jazz musician and economist Clyde Reed. Thank you, Clyde!

For those of you in the Vancouver, B.C. area, save the date for the next Worldwide Play-In event: May 4, 2025. With any luck, I will see you there.