“Three members of Seattle Symphony had just started playing when a trio of black pugs stashed in an upstairs bedroom starting howling. Mozart will do that to some creatures,” writes Nicole Brodeur in Tuesday’s (4/7) Seattle Times. “But it’s the rowdy risk you take when you invite artists from the stage of Benaroya Hall into the homes of symphony subscribers, which is what happened the other night at the Laurelhurst home of Kevin and Rena O’Brien. Musicians Susan Gulkis Assadi (viola), Benjamin Lulich (clarinet) and Byron Schenkman (piano) played in the O’Briens’ living room for an audience of 24 subscribers…. People sipped wine and nibbled on shrimp and cheese and crackers before settling into the living room to hear the musicians play Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt Trio,’ written in 1786 specifically for the viola, clarinet and piano combination…. Symphony-board chair Leslie Jackson Chihuly … said the neighborhood Friends of the Symphony parties started a couple of years ago with a series of questions: ‘Who are the people closest to us? Our subscribers,’ she said. ‘How do we show thanks to them, and how do we create an intimate experience where we can talk to them, meet them, where they become friends of ours?’ ”
Posted April 8, 2015
