A Chamber Music Series With a Charitable Heart

August is undeniably the city’s richest month for chamber music. The La Jolla SummerFest’s barrage of 11 concerts in less than three weeks brings some of the biggest names in classical music to Sherwood Auditorium. Although the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s annual festival is first-rate in every aspect, the $27 single ticket price for these de luxe musical outings is a definite hindrance to music lovers on a tight budget.

Enter Susan Barrett and her MUSE series of Sunday evening chamber music concerts at the La Jolla Congregational Church. The local oboist and impresario has put together nine weeks of programs, Aug. 2-Sept. 27, whose admittance price is an unspecified donation at the church door. But Barrett, who was a free-lance player in New York before moving to San Diego several years ago, had more than economics in mind when she inaugurated the MUSE series last summer.

“I want people to take pride in their local musicians. I can’t abide the idea that quality music-making is the sole province of name musicians from somewhere else,” Barrett explained. “We don’t have the glamour of the well-heeled festivals, but we offer an informal approach, a homier, neighborhood setting where members of the audience can mingle with the players at intermission and after the concert.”

Barrett started the MUSE series last summer at Jones Jewelry, a small La Jolla store on Prospect Street, beginning her evening concerts after the store had closed for its Sunday business. The programming and unique setting proved popular, but the store could accommodate fewer than 40 people.

“I realized that I needed a bigger hall, so we looked into the Congregational Church, which could seat over 100 and was just around the corner on Ivanhoe. We’ll be giving the concerts in the church’s social hall, rather than in the sanctuary--I didn’t want to connect the series with religion, pagan that I am.”

Barrett’s inspiration for her informally designed concerts came from her former oboe teacher, the late Josef Marx, a performer, musicologist and music publisher whose New York apartment was a chamber music Mecca for three decades.

“Every week, he hosted an informal chamber music evening that would frequently last until 1 in the morning,” she said. “While the musicians played in one room, others read or socialized in adjacent rooms. Sometimes artists would sit and sketch to the music.”

Because Barrett inherited Marx’s music library of more than 2,000 scores, she rarely needs to call a music store. Understandably, her series features music for oboes and other double reed instruments, including the bass oboe and English horn, instruments often overlooked when string players control the programming.

The opening Aug. 2 program features a double reed sextet playing Mozart, Telemann and Hertel Other ensembles on the series include classical guitar duo Fred Benedetti and George Svoboda (Aug. 16), flute and contrabass duo Nancy and Bertram Turetzky (Sept. 6), the Orpheus vocal ensemble (Sept. 13), and the Pacifica Woodwind Quintet (Sept. 27).

Oboist Scott Paulson, Barrett’s pupil and series publicist, came up with the MUSE name. According o Barrett, the acronym stands for “Music You Every Sunday,” no doubt a twist of humor best understood by veteran double reed players.

Reacting to the plight of Los Angeles residents after the April riots, concerned musicians at La Jolla’s St. James Episcopal Church will donate their services in a benefit performance of the Faure Requiem Aug. 16 at 4 p.m. Proceeds from the event will go to the relief fund administered by the Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles. Stephen Sturk, St. James’ music director, will conduct the Requiem, which will feature soprano Virginia Sublett and baritone John Polhamus as soloists.

San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi returns to the podium of the Waterloo Festival in New Jersey tonight to conduct Bartok, Tchaikovsky, and Respighi. This marks Talmi’s third annual visit to the festival founded by principal conductor Gerard Schwarz. . . . Classical soprano Ellen Lawson sings a program of Broadway show tunes tonight at 7 p.m. at the Noah Homes to benefit the Spring Valley residential facility for developmentally disabled adults. . . . Pacific Men’s Chorale music director Bob Boucher will audition singers for his male chorus starting Aug. 10 at the San Diego County Educational Center complex in Linda Vista. Phone 447-2213 to schedule an audition.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

VIENNA BY THE BAY

If overtures and waltzes by both Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss the younger define a relaxing summer evening’s entertainment, Wednesday’s SummerPops offering, “A Night in Old Vienna,” should fill the bill handsomely. Veteran pops conductor Norman Leyden will lead the San Diego Symphony and soprano Kerry O’Brien starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Embarcadero Marina Park South pops site.