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The world-renowned Alexander String Quartet performs this month at St. Luke's Episcopal Church.
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St. Luke's debuts chamber music series
By Shari Kaplan
Taking advantage of some of the season's best attributes--late hours of daylight and a propensity to stay out late on hot summer nights--St. Luke's Episcopal Church has organized a new program of classical music concerts, the Sunset Series: Chamber Music at St. Luke's. Performances are scheduled for July 10 and 31 and Aug. 21; all begin at 8 p.m.
The first concert is by the Alexander String Quartet, a San Francisco-based group that consists of Frederick Lifsitz and Ge-Fang Yang on violins, Paul Yarbrough on viola and Sandy Wilson on cello. The quartet formed in New York City in 1981 and has been performing at major music venues throughout North America and Europe since then.
In San Francisco, where the quartet members make their homes, they have served for the past 10 years as directors of the Morrison Chamber Music Center's instruction program at San Francisco State University and as the ensemble-in-residence with San Francisco Performances. They also maintain visiting residences at colleges and universities in New York and Pennsylvania.
In May of 1995, Allegheny College awarded honorary doctor of fine arts degrees to the musicians in recognition of their contributions to the arts. In December of the same year, BMG music service's Munich-based label Arte Nova Classics invited the group to record Ludwig van Beethoven's complete quartet cycle. The recording is now available in boxed format. The quartet has also commissioned nearly two dozen works by Bay Area composers. Among the most recent are String Quartet No. 2 and String Quartet No. 3 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Wayne Peterson and a new work by Richard Festinger.
The program at St. Luke's consists of Beethoven's Quartet in E flat op. 74, "The Harp"; Samuel Barber's "Adagio," from Quartet op. 11; Wayne Peterson's "Can This Grass Be Blue," from Quartet No. 3; and Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet in F minor op. 80.
The July 31 Sunset Series concert features Julian and Paul Hersch, a cello/piano duo who will perform Suite No. 1 in G major by Johann Sebastian Bach and sonatas by Beethoven and Frederic Chopin. The concert on Aug. 21 by the Stanford Woodwind Quintet consists of an eclectic program of works by Mozart, Ibert, Vivaldi and Hindemith, as well as a quintet by Nancy Bloomer Deussen, a local composer.
St. Luke's Sunset Series is supported in part by a grant from the town of Los Gatos. Donations for tickets are $20 per performance or $40 for the three-concert series. Rates for students and senior citizens are $12 per performance or $30 for the series. Tickets are available a half hour before each concert and can also be purchased from the church office. For more information, call 354-2195.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
