Our last concert on May 7, Empowered, will feature soprano Emily Pogorelc, praised for her "lively, incisive soprano" by the New York Times, in chamber music inspired by strong female characters. This concert will feature John Harbison's Mirabai Songs--Mirabai, a 16th-century Hindu mystic poet, was 27 when her husband was killed in a war. She refused to die on her husband's funeral pyre, as was the custom, and instead left her family compound, wrote poems to Krishna, and sang and danced them in the streets.

On Sunday January 26th at 2pm, Chamber Music at Bethany will trace the music inspired by Song of Songs. Featuring 2019 Grammy Award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and Dan O'Connell on french horn along with CM@B Co-Directors cellist Nick Photinos and pianist Yasuko Oura, the program features music across five centuries inspired by one of the most intimate and sensual poems of all time, the Song of Songs. This erotic love poetry at the end of the Bible (seriously, check it out) has inspired centuries of composers from the middle ages to today, and we'll offer works from Monteverdi to Britten and beyond exploring this unabashedly lush text.

Program:
Britten: Canticle I: "My beloved is mine and I am his", Op. 40
Tanaka: Song of Songs
Wilson: Mvmts 1, 5, 6,9 from Musings: An Ode to the Greek Muses
Caccini: Chi e costei
Monteverdi: Vespers Nigra Sum
Rachmaninoff: Sonata for Cello and Piano, Mvmt. III. Andante
Britten: Canticle III: "Still falls the rain", Op. 55

Our co-director Tim Munro will be joined by flutists Jennifer Gunn and Emma Gerstein for an evening of flute music.

Come join us for gorgeous chamber music by Dvorák and Schulhoff.

Emily Pogorelc, soprano, Tim Munro, flute, Nick Photinos, cello, and Yasuko Oura, piano

We are presenting a dynamic trio Haven Trio, comprised of Lindsay Kesselman, soprano, Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet, and Midori Koga, piano in an all American program. Come and hear music of living composers Lee Kasselman, Lori Laitman, and Rolf Jacobsen in a program described as “The imperishability of humanity’s songs amidst a chaotic world.”

Is there is a whiff of conspiracy about Chamber Music at Bethany's season-opener? Or it all just a simple misunderstanding?

No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. We at CM@B are simply here to serenade you with the musical best that two (totally-not-conspiring) countries, Russia and America, have to offer.

CM@B Co-Directors Yasuko Oura and Tim Munro will be joined by a string quartet made up of some of Chicago's best players, and busy bass baritone Sam Handley, a rising Chicago star praised for “his rich, burnished” voice.

For our third concert, Co-Artistic Director Yasuko Oura will be joined by Emily Birsan, soprano, Nathalie Joachim, flute, and Nicholas Photinos, cello for mostly French chamber music.