EDITOR’S NOTE: After press time and the initial publication of this story on The Beachcomber’s website, “Virtuoso Masterworks for Violin with David Riley and Jasper Wood” was canceled due to an injury to one of the players. Ticket holders for Friday’s performance can either get a refund, exchange their tickets for a different performance, or convert their purchase to a donation to VCA. Call the box office, open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, at 206.259.3007.
Fans of highbrow music, rejoice — several upcoming island concerts promise virtuoso performances.
One must-see event, “Virtuoso Masterworks for Violin and Piano with David Riley and Jasper Wood,” will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, at Vashon Center for the Arts. The pair will play masterworks by Beethoven, Vitali, Fuerst and Gershwin.
Tickets, $15 to $32, can be purchased in advance at vashoncenterforthearts.org. A pre-concert talk will take place at 6:30 p.m.
Another enticement for music lovers will be seven new performances on the island by the tenth annual Salish Sea Early Music Festival, taking place from January to May on Vashon, with 12 p.m. concerts held at Vashon United Methodist Church.
The first of these concerts, at 12 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at the church, will be “A Little Evening Concert for Louis XIV,” channeling an evening of entertainment for the Sun King, who in his later years demanded the music of his youth in small chamber music settings. Musicians will include baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan, baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh, violinist Courtney Curoda and violist Victoria Gunn.
The second concert, at 12 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, at the church, will boast Mozart flute quartets played by eight-keyed flutist Jeffrey Cohan, violinist Carrie Krause, violist Victoria Gunn and cellist Caroline Nichols.
For more information about these and other upcoming concerts, visit salishseafestival.org/vashon. Admission is by suggested donation of $15 to $25, with those 18 and younger admitted for free.
Perhaps the most sure-to-be-dazzled upcoming island performance, a return engagement to Vashon by virtuoso Russian pianist and composer Vyacheslav “Slava” Gryaznov, will take place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, at Vashon Center for the Arts. A pre-concert talk will take place at 6:30 p.m.
Gryaznov is an artist of the Moscow Philharmonic Society and an artist-in-residence with The Drozdoff Society in the United States. Recent performances include ones with the Berliner Philharmonie and at Carnegie Hall, Ehrbar Hall in Vienna and Mexico City’s National Center for the Arts. He has been a soloist with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and Dnipro Philharmonic. In addition to all this, Gryaznov has also authored more than 30 concert arrangements and in 2014 signed a publishing contract with Schott Music (Germany). In 2018, he released a CD of his Russian transcriptions on the Steinway & Sons label.
His Vashon concert will include works by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy and Ravel. For more information and tickets to the concert, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org.
