Thursday, November 16, 2023 
7 pm 

Join the Buffalo Chamber Players in their return to the AKG! The opening program looks back at the ensemble’s sixteen-year history and explores trends shaping chamber music today.   

The concert includes Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20, written in 1825 when the composer was just sixteen years old, presented alongside works created in the past sixteen years. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024 
7 pm 

A duet is the smallest unit of collaborative music and the most intimate form of musicmaking. Revel in a program celebrating music for two in common and unusual instrumental pairings.   

Thursday, April 11, 2024 
7 pm 

Experience composers from the Nordic Region, both historic and contemporary, and their close connection to nature, the environment, and the human condition. 

Thursday, May 16, 2024 
7 pm 

Joan Tower’s Purple Rain (2020) for string quintet belongs to the composer’s series of “purple” works featuring the viola. Tower, who experiences synesthesia, explains that “purple is the color—in all its various hues—that most reminds me of the viola. In this quintet, ‘rain’ symbolizes many things: a steady repetition of light and heavy rhythms, flows of ‘held’ singing (particularly in the viola duets), and a kind of rapid ‘cascading/rolling’ in rivulets of sixteenth notes.” 

Tower’s Purple Rain is paired with Johannes Brahms’s String Quintet No.2 in G Major, Op. 111, which uses the same instrumentation (two violins, two violas, and cello).