The next installment of Camerata Pacifica’s Concerts at Home streams live Sunday, Aug. 2, at 10 a.m. (YouTube) and 5:30 p.m. (Facebook), after which it will take its place in the Concerts at Home archive: www.youtube.com/cameratapacifica.
The concert will feature Bridget Kibbey (harp), and will include performances by other stellar Cameratans such as Catherine Leonard (violin), Guillaume Pirard (violin), Agnes Gottschewski (violin), Richard O’Neill (viola), Ani Aznavoorian (cello), Warren Jones (piano), and Adam Neiman (piano).
As for the program, Adrian Spence seems to want to surprise us, although he has provided the following clue: “Have you read Edgar Allan Poe‘s short story, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’? We suggest reading it before next Sunday’s program. Here it is, from the Poe Museum’s website:” www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death.
The Poe story, a parable of the sorry fate awaiting those who reject social distancing, will presumably “speak to our condition” as the Quaker George Fox would said.
Those not sated with Poe’s horrors, might want also to consult Daniel Defoe‘s “Journal of the Plague Year,” a detached and chilling eyewitness account from the 17th century: www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm.
Or Albert Camus‘ great novel “The Plague,” about a (fictional) epidemic that strikes an Algerian city in the 1940s (thought by some commentators to be an allegory of the Nazi occupation).
Nothing like a pandemic to get us reading and listening with new focus.
For more information, call 805-884-8410 or visit www.cameratapacifica.org.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.