Better late than never, but I think you'll enjoy these notes from our April
Fool's Day concert, which had the premieres of string trios by Ian Whitney
and our Composer-In-Residence R.C.  Barrows..  (Those of you who subscribe
to various other music lists may already have seen it.).  Mr. Whiney wrote
most of his own, Barrows did the rest.

--------- Forwarded message ----------

April Fool's Day Concert... where the music is serious, but the
program notes are not.

Yi-Huan Zhao Violin
David Sage Viola
Kevin Buck Cello

WHITNEY: Caprice (World Premiere)
BARROWS: String Trio No. 3 in C minor (World Premiere)

Intermission, if you're lucky

BEETHOVEN: String Trio No.1 in E-flat Op. 3 (World Premiere...
ha, made you look)

1. Allegro con brio
2. Menuetto allegretto
3. Adagio
4. Menuetto moderato
5. Finale. Allegro

So that all may enjoy the performance: 1.) Please deactivate all
electronic watches, pagers, and cellular phones prior to performance
because they're incredibly annoying and people get really ticked off when
they sound during a concert.  2.) Please do not applaud between movements
of a piece, as it disrupts the flow; rather, hold applause until each piece
is concluded.  It's been this way for well over a century, so get used to
it.  3.) Please do not take photographs during the performance as it is
distracting to performer and audience alike.  Please photograph only at the
conclusion of a piece, when performers are receiving applause.  But, then,
anyone who does not realize this is probably too dim to operate a camera,
anyway.  4.) Out of respect for the performer(s) and your fellow audience
members, please do not converse during the performance.  Even a whisper
can distract fellow concert-goers, who are encouraged to (quietly) maim
talkers.  5.) While we encourage exposing children to great music, any
audience member, regardless of age, who cannot attend without distracting
other members will be asked to leave and sent to bed without supper.  6.)
If it takes you ten minutes to unwrap a cough drop, please go away.  7.)
Lady, please stop messing with your keys.  We're trying to listen to the
concert.

Performers, programs, dates, and times are subject to change without
notice, so there.

* * * *

April Fool's Day Program Notes

Ian Whitney is the son of a Jedi Knight and a small-time bar waitress/mezzo
soprano from Paris, France (as opposed to Paris, Texas).  He gave his first
European tour at age 4, giving sell-out performances in Paris, London,
Rome, Frankfurt and Krakow.  He first crossed the Atlantic at 6, giving a
sell-out recital at Carnegie Hall.  Since this dazzling start, Ian's career
has done nothing but plummet, until he resorted to taking up composition at
15 purely to support the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed.  He
doesn't perspire and has broken up 94 marriages, caused 104 heart attacks
and has been known to stop traffic on Sunset Boulevard with his devastating
good looks.  Ian plans to finish his Bachelor of Music, which he started
this year, and take up stripping or card dealing or perhaps both.

Because Mr. Whitney lives in Australia, today's performers will either
need to turn their scores upside-down, or else stand on their heads while
performing his piece, in order to read his music.

When he's not busy overthrowing democratic governments, Ian enjoys a stiff
drink or nine, and is quite fond of kicking couples who dress in matching
outfits.  Hard.

R.C.  Barrows, Composer-In-Residence/Artistic Director for the Culver
Chamber Music Series, hails from Maine.  Not only that, but he rains
from Massachusetts, and snows from Vermont.  Such is the precipitous life
of a modern classical composer.  The composition of his String Trio No. 3
would have been impossible had he not written two others before it.  It is
either a single-movement piece with elements of several movements condensed
into a single concise unit, or else it's a single-movement piece vastly
over-inflated into several movements.  Or maybe it's a bottle of floor wax.

In response to several complaints from regular concert-goers of the Culver
Chamber Music Series, Mr. Barrows has taken an antacid prior to today's
concert.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is well known to have gradually lost his
sense of hearing until he eventually became totally deaf.  What is less
well known is that he also gradually lost his sense of smell.  He first
noticed this in his late 20s when, while passing a bakery, he noticed he
could smell the strudel better with his left nostril than with his right.
The deterioration of his once-acute olfactory sense left the composer
devastated, as is reflected in his heart-rending letter to his friend
Schnauser, in which he poignantly declared, "Mein Schnozz ist kaput."
Modern medical scholarship has resulted in the diagnosis that Beethoven
suffered from the rare condition of nasal tinitis, which sometimes caused
him to think he was smelling one thing, when, in fact, he was smelling
something else, or nothing at all.  Recent research has uncovered that his
nasal problems may have been responsible for ending his romance with his
famous "Eternal Beloved," whose identity has finally been established as
that of Fannie Brunhilde, a disinherited aristocratic young woman whose
family disowned her when she refused to look down her nose because it
caused her to bump into things during walks.  An additional letter to
her has been uncovered which sheds light on the possible reason for
the dissolution of their romance: "I feel my ailing sense of smell is
driving me mad...  Yes, there are good days on which you smell like a
freshly-perfumed young lass, but there are others when you smell like
formaldehyde, and still other days when you smell like really old
decomposing fruit.  This cannot go on.  Man, what a bummer."

   Today's Featured Performers

Yi-Huan Zhao, violin, would have been born in Japan had he not been
born in China.  This confusion over his birthplace caused him to become
disoriented, which is why he is no longer in the orient.  He gained
international musical recognition for his performance of the Brahms Violin
Concerto.  Even more remarkably, this performance was accomplished while
the members of the orchestra was on strike, forcing him to dash madly about
the stage from one instrument to another in a helter-skelter attempt to
compensate for their absence.  In school, he used to get beaten up at
recess, and, to this day, he still cowers in fear if someone moves too
suddenly.  Quit teasing him.

David Sage, viola, graduated from California Institute of Arts in 1997
with an emphasis in music stuff.  He is not only an active member of
several southland orchestras, but also a radioactive one as well.  You
would be well-advised not to stand too close.  He had planned on performing
in today's concert while perched on one of the blades of the rotating
ceiling fan above the stage, but he kept bumping his head on the ceiling
during rehearsal.  If he stays on his medication, we need not be nervous.

Kevin Buck, cello, used to weigh over 300 lbs, at which time he was known
as Kevin Buck-and-a-half.  He is, in fact, an actual buck who underwent
drastic cosmetic surgery in order to appear as a human cellist.  This guise
is but one facet of his evil master plan, for, one day, he will lead vast
herds of rampaging elk on a vengeful quest of global domination.  You will
pay, humans, you will pay...

Jocelyn Wang
Culver Chamber Music Series
www.bigfoot.com/~CulverMusic