MASTER CLASSICAL

North Shore Chamber Music Festival opens its 2023 season with a virtual “Master’s Guide to Orchestral Auditions,” featuring renowned violinist Alexander Velinzon.

BY MITCH HURST THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

Northbrook residents Angela Yoffe and Vadim Gluzman often talked about staging classical music concerts, but it wasn’t until the husband-and-wife team—both well-traveled professional musicians; she’s a violinist and she a pianist—drove by the Village Church of Northbrook one day in 2011 that the proverbial lightbulb was lit.

They decided to pop into the church and the first person they met was its music director at the time. Less than a year later, North Shore Chamber Music Festival organized its first performance. Yoffe serves as Executive Director while Gluzman is Artistic Director.

“We had a dream that was very often mentioned between the two of us and to some of our friends and colleagues about how wonderful it would be to bring all of our wonderful friends to perform,” Gluzman says. “Somehow it never materialized until we went grocery shopping at sunset on Church Street. Angela said, ‘Look at that beautiful church. What if we could present concerts there?’”

Twelve years later, North Shore Chamber Music Festival will launch its 11th season (one season got canceled due to the pandemic) with a “Master’s Guide to Orchestral Auditions” conducted by Alexander Velinzon, a world-renowned violinist and Associate Concertmaster at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Velinzon has played with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Seoul Philharmonic.

During the event, which will be streamed from PianoForte in downtown Chicago, Velinzon will be working with Lalita Svete, a 2018 recipient of the Festival’s Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund. The fund was established in 2015 in honor of Gluzman’s former teacher and has provided financial and artistic assistance to college and precollege students from around the world.

The masterclass is one of four planned events the festival will present during the upcoming season. Others include a screening of the documentary, Jens Nygaard—Life on Jupiter, an Emmy Award-winning film about the world-renowned conductor who founded the Jupiter Symphony in

New York. The screening will take place March 19 at PianoForte in Chicago. On April 30, the festival will present a performance by three Fomin Scholarship winners at KLAVIERHAUS in New York City. The organization’s flagship event, the annual North Shore Chamber Music Festival, will be held June 7 through 10 at Village Church in Northbrook and will feature the works of French composers. The festival has come a long way over the years.

“We are fortunate that after decades of performing all over the world to have great friends who are extraordinary musicians and so we invited them to come and play,” Gluzman says. “At first we couldn’t provide food and hotel stays because our budget was so incredibly limited, so we invited our friends.”

Little by little, the organization grew, and it now draws a worldwide audience through its online streaming of performances. Gluzman and Yoffe have received notes from Australia to Monte Carlo thanking them for the classical programming the festival provides.

“With the pandemic, we realized we can't just sit idle. We started a series of online and in-person events at PianoForte and we now have thousands from all over the world,” he says. “There was a lot of positive that came through the online experience. Of course, nothing can substitute the inperson experience and the emotional impact and social experience of receiving music together.”

While the North Shore Chamber Music Festival’s audience has grown, so has its base of donors. The organization is funded entirely by individual donors and foundations, but Gluzman pays tribute to strong friendships he and Yoffe developed while performing on the road who helped get it all started.

“The nucleus was our friends who just said they loved the idea. They wanted it to happen, and they contributed,” he says. “Not only that, they welcomed our artists into their homes, they fed them, they healed them when they were sick. They are now friends with our artists, spending vacations together. We’ve seen the community grow in front of your eyes. It’s very beautiful.”

For more information about North Shore Chamber Music Festival’s upcoming season, visit nscmf.org.