Classics Northwest celebrates the sextet and initial era of rebrand

Classics Northwest will be celebrating the end of its first season since rebranding with a relatively rare string formation: the sextet.

Late last year, artistic director and Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey wanted to expand the musical range of Northwest BachFest. With desires to display all kinds of musical excellence, a rebrand as “Classics Northwest” came to fruition.

Since then, Bailey has taken the first steps in showing off the best musicians and pieces he can find – including the more unorthodox. As Classics Northwest winds down ahead of their summer concerts in locations such as Manito Park, Bailey wanted to conclude with a celebration of chamber music through the more standard quartet as well as the rare yet powerful sextet arrangement.

The standard quartet consists of four musicians with two violins, a viola and a cello. Meanwhile, the more uncommon sextet variation holds six musicians with two violins, two violas and two cellos. With just two musicians added to the mix, the sheer sound of a sextet is often compared to that of an actual orchestra, especially within an intimate venue like Barrister Winery.

“They are verging on the sound stage of a small symphony, that’s how broad it becomes,” Bailey said. “With this format, I just wanted to blow the rafters off of Barrister. I just wanted to put something that is really significant where we’re used to hearing smaller scale chamber work.”

To achieve this grander formation, Bailey and his cello needed reliable and familiar faces, such as the critically acclaimed Balourdet String Quartet. With performances in famed venues like Carnegie Hall and recent developments as the first Quartet-in-Residence at the Seattle Chamber Music Society under their belt, Bailey praised the group as “one of the great rising star string quartets.”

With another viola still necessary, Bailey turned to Spokane’s own Nick Carper, a veteran of the Spokane Symphony as their principal violist.

“When you play this kind of material, you want the least amount of variables possible,” Bailey said. “You’ve got to trust the musicians … It’s going to be so much fun to make music with your friends and explore the top of the mountain chamber music wise.”

The Balourdet String Quartet will perform first during the Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon concerts before Bailey and Carper join to create the sextet. This was a choice made by Bailey in order to give the audience a full understanding of just how unique a sextet is.

“You need something to compare it to,” Bailey said. “Once you hear the quartet, then you hear how it changes so drastically by adding two more instruments to it. It’s pretty wonderful.”

Although performing pieces by legendary composers such as Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Tchaikovsky isn’t an uncommon choice, their sextet orchestrations are often swept under the rug because of the unusual grouping.

“They are magnificent pillars of chamber music, but not played as much as they should be,” Bailey said.

As Classics Northwest prepares for their summer performances, Bailey looks to add a definitive stamp on the initial era of the rebrand with this weekend’s concert series while also celebrating what they have been able to accomplish so far.

“The theme was basically expansion and growth and vision and forward thinking,” Bailey said. “This concert to me, in so many ways, is a punctuation mark of our last chapter and our celebration of chamber music.”