Future Virtuosos Taking The Stage Spokane String Quartet Spotlights Young Musicians

Thu., April 22, 1999

Travis Rivers Correspondent

Concerts by the Spokane String Quartet are known for bringing young guest artists to Spokane. This season’s programs have already seen violinist Misha Keylin and pianist Tadeusz Majewski. Sunday’s quartet concert will feature a whole troop of young musicians of promise - all from Spokane and the Northwest.

The best-known guest is Jason Moody, a 17-year-old violinist from Dover, Idaho, just south of Sandpoint. Moody appeared last season as a soloist with the Spokane Symphony at The Festival at Sandpoint. He achieved national recognition from his appearance last summer on National Public Radio’s “From the Top.” And last weekend, Moody was Garrison Keillor’s guest on “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Moody will perform J.S. Bach’s demanding Chaconne from the Partitia in D minor.

He began his violin studies with Carolyn Hatch, whose Fiddle Hatchery in Sandpoint and later in Creston, British Columbia, has produced a whole school of young fiddlers who also play classical violin. Hatch’s Creston String Orchestra will conclude Sunday’s concert with works by Corelli and Holst.

Three Spokane-area string quartets will play as well. The Eastern Washington University String Quartet (Melinda Bassett, Jody Knox, Laura Appert and Sean Lamont) will join the Spokane String Quartet in two movements from Mendelssohn’s Octet. The Spokane Youth Orchestra Quartet (Marilyn Bassett, Sarah Heck, Daniel Dawson and Erin Lally) will play a movement from Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 18, No. 2. And the Knox Quartet (Marilyn Bassett, Michele Bassett, Kim George and Dan Delaney) from Ferris High School will perform a movement from Brahms’s Quartet in A minor.

The program also includes the Festiva Trio’s performance of the “Gypsy” Rondo from Haydn’s Trio in G major. Members of the group - Lisa Gonnella, Aaron Ring and Kim Houglum - are participants in the Junior Chamber Artists program begun at Holy Names Music Center by Aida Mechetti.

Two young soloists who are members of the Spokane Symphony will round out Sunday’s concert. Adina Plesa, a member of the orchestra’s violin section, will perform Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata No. 3. Scott Dixon, the symphony’s assistant principal string bass, will play Giovanni Bottesini’s Concerto in B minor with the Spokane String Quartet accompanying.

“People worry that classical music study is dying out,” said Kelly Farris, the first violinist of the Spokane String Quartet, a group that also includes Jane Blegen, Karen Walthinsen and John Marshall. “Then I heard about a program at Ferris High School where students get together at 7 a.m. to play chamber music.

“When I started thinking about some of the unusually talented kids we have right here in Spokane,” Farris said, “the whole idea of letting people hear some of them just snowballed from there. I think of this as a part of what we do as a quartet besides just playing concerts.”

CONCERT Spokane String Quartet The Spokane String Quartet will perform Sunday at 3 p.m. at The Met. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $6 for students, available at Hoffman Music, G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.

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