She’s A Classic Kendall Feeney Helps Chamber Music Climb To Unprecedented Popularity In Spokane With Her Group Zephyr

Maybe you’ve seen those posters around town: “Zephyr - Chamber Music With An Attitude.”

What attitude? Or more to the point, whose attitude?

The ‘tude in question belongs to a 37-year-old concert pianist named Kendall Feeney, who started Zephyr five years ago.

Here’s an example of her attitude toward chamber music: “A lot of times in contemporary or modern music, you have to know the secret handshake to enter into this world… . It has kind of catered to this group or elite… . I cannot tolerate that. I can not tolerate it.”

And here’s an example of her attitude toward life: “I do try to be careful with my hands. But I also love sports and volleyball. I don’t want to be a weenie about this stuff.”

Besides volleyball and practically any other team sport, her passions include bicycling, reading (Robertson Davies and Annie Dillard are favorites) and taking care of her dog Pemba, a mixed breed of “uncertain lineage” who followed her home one day. And her main passion, of course, is Zephyr, a 20th century chamber music series.

Kendall Feeney is Zephyr. But she doesn’t like to put it quite that way. She prefers to say that she is “the constant” in Zephyr. Zephyr is not a set group. Zephyr is more like an idea.

And a successful idea at that. Zephyr drew 135 to its first concert and now averages about 225, which is wildly successful in the world of modern chamber music. Seattle, for instance, doesn’t even have an ongoing 20th-century music series.

“My parents (from Long Beach, Calif.) go to a lot of concerts of all kinds, and for a 20th-century music program, there might be 50 people there from the whole L.A. area,” said Feeney. “And they come to Spokane and see all of these people turning out for this, and they just think the Spokane community is so terrific.”

To understand Zephyr and its unique appeal, it helps to understand the woman behind it.

Feeney was born and raised in Long Beach, and she fell in love with music early. By age 7, she had dedicated herself to the piano.

“I already knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she said. “It was classical music all the way.”

She went on to Pomona College and then the University of Southern California, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance.

She took a job as a pianist and teacher at the State University of New York in Potsdam, N.Y., where she stayed a year. She got married, moved to Spokane with her husband, a physician (she is since divorced), and began to perform in events such as the Northwest Bach Festival, Cathedral in the Arts series and the Spokane Chamber Music Association series. She also performed, and continues to perform, solo piano recitals.

“But mostly I’m a chamber musician,” she said. “Although I play some solo, my love is collaborating with other people. It’s pretty lonely being a solo pianist backstage waiting to go on. It’s just you. I’d much rather be backstage with my colleagues.”

At about the time she moved to Spokane 10 years ago, something happened that shook her entire world. She developed tendinitis in her left elbow. It would not go away.

“I couldn’t play it all, it was so painful,” she said. “It was very traumatic. There was a point where I didn’t know what I’d do - gosh, I had been working since I was 7 years old to do this.”

She heard about a piano teacher in New York, Dorothy Taubman, who works with pianists who have severe tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome. For several years, Feeney flew back to New York four weeks a year. Taubman retrained Feeney to play in a way that overcame the problem.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me, because now I can play better,” said Feeney. “A lot better. And I can teach people, help them with their injuries.”

Feeney now is the only teacher in the Northwest trained in Taubman’s methods. She retrains several students in Spokane who have hand injuries, and she flies to Seattle every month to retrain pianists from Seattle, Vancouver and Portland.

“I love that part of my life,” said Feeney.

After recovering from the tendinitis, Feeney was hired by Eastern Washington University to teach piano and music classes. One of the classes she taught was a course called “Music in the Humanities,” aimed at non-music students. It actually became one of the catalysts for Zephyr.

She required her students to go to classical concerts, and they would come back saying that they were intimidated by the entire scene.

“They said they didn’t understand what was going on,” she said. “What was the conductor for? They thought it was stuffy. And I wanted to bring these people into my world, which I think is so fabulous. How could I do that?”

She wanted to create a chamber music series that would be non-stuffy, would eschew “museum pieces,” would be wildly creative and would sometimes be just plain wild.

So one day, she was at a string quartet performance, and at intermission she struck up a conversation with Spokane arts patron Paul Sandifur Jr. about why nobody performs music from this century. He agreed to help fund the first concert, and Zephyr, which literally means west wind, was born.

“I don’t know exactly how I came up with the name Zephyr,” said Feeney. “But I liked the sound of it, and it was onomatopoeic for what I was trying to do.”

In subsequent years, Sandifur’s mother, the late Evelyn Sandifur, became an enthusiastic supporter, patron and friend. She was instrumental in securing Zephyr’s place in Spokane’s arts scene.

The Zephyr hallmarks were established early on.

First, the relationship between performers and audience should be informal. Feeney always gives a talk to the audience before each piece, helping them understand what they are about to listen to.

“Classical music is supposed to be this rarefied thing - you don’t just talk about it,” she said. “But I like nothing better than talking about music.”

Another Zephyr hallmark: The music ought to expand the traditional definitions of chamber music, or even the definitions of music itself.

Which is why, in one Zephyr concert, Feeney actually played the piano from the inside, plucking and strumming the strings like a harp (the piece was written that way).

Then there was a piece for amplified flute and percussion that Feeney once programmed for Zephyr.

“There were places where the flutist would actually talk into the flute,” said Feeney. “Chinese poetry. It was this wonderful, breathy sound. Just the sound of that, in a darkened room, is something that the audience had never experienced.”

This season’s first Zephyr concert might lift some eyebrows, too. It’s called “A Zephyr Cabaret: Berlin Theatre Songs,” and it will re-create the music and atmosphere of a Berlin cabaret of the 1920s.

It’s hardly the stuff of a traditional chamber music series, but Feeney doesn’t care.

“I just taught this course in Degenerate Art and Music, degenerate being the label the Nazis used for it,” said Feeney. “It’s an era I’m fascinated with. This may be the lightest program I’ve presented. These are cabaret songs, meant for entertainment, but a lot of them are very political.”

Three singers and a band will perform. Every Zephyr performance has different musicians, although Feeney usually plays in at least one piece in every program.

Overall, Feeney is delighted with her musical life in Spokane.

“I feel really happy to have this concert series, where I can play music that I choose, with musicians I want to work with, in a place that is so beautiful,” she said. “L.A. - I needed to get out. And I’m not tempted to go back.”

However, she confesses to one unfulfilled interest.

“If I wasn’t a pianist, I’d want to work with primates,” she said. “There’s just something about that that’s really fascinating to me. I’m crazy about animals.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PREVIEW “A Zephyr Cabaret: Berlin Theatre Songs,” will be the first Zephyr concert of the year on Saturday, 8 p.m. at The Met. Tickets are $14 and $12 for adults, $8 for students. Season tickets and tickets for this performance are available through all G&B Select-a-Seat outlets, or by calling 325-SEAT or 1-800-325-SEAT.