ECMS Summer Music Festival Mainstage Concert Finale

The finale of the Summer Music Festival will be presented at The Lutheran Church of Arcata on Sunday, July 26th at 7:30 p.m. The world premiere of Ruehr's "Four Bird Songs" will be performed by Stone and Shao. Using actual birdsong as the source material, Ruehr composed this four-movement work for the performers and for the Eureka Chamber Music Series. Rounding out the program is the boundary-breaking "String Quartet No. 11, Op. 95," the last of the "middle quartets" by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by the Balourdet Quartet. The concert closes with "String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36" by Johannes Brahms, composed just five years after his first sextet, which the festival program featured a week earlier. This pairing offers an interesting comparison between the earlier work's lyricism and the later work's greater textural complexity and expressiveness.
The Eureka Chamber Music Series was born from a labor of love, started decades ago by Pearl and Bob Micheli, a conservatory trained pianist and voice teacher, and a fine amateur violinist, respectively. The Michelis moved to Eureka in the early nineteen-nineties and began hiring classical musicians to travel to Humboldt County and play concerts for a small but dedicated audience.
Incorporated as a non-profit in 2019, the Eureka Chamber Music Series continues to enrich the cultural landscape of the north coast by bringing world-class musicians to Humboldt County and by ensuring that the mission of ECMS is community supported and sustainable. Public concerts presented in Eureka and Arcata, as well as county-wide educational outreach programs, are funded through the generosity of local businesses, individuals, and foundations, as well as by subscription and individual ticket sales. Local support makes these music programs possible.