Michele Medina’s Chamber Musicians: Craft Lake City Performer
Music Interviews
Michele Medina’s Chamber Music
mmvolar.com
Contemporary classical music is an oft neglected genre with few empowering or practicing opportunities for individuals who are not students or professionals. Local violinist Michele Medina has been challenging that notion, creating spaces for chamber musicians to learn music and perform together. Michele Medina’s Chamber Musicians will perform “Quartet in C,” a piece by local, University of Utah–based composer Dr. Igor Iachimciuc with Michael Nebeker on violin, Katherine Deneris on viola and Ryan Stocks on cello for Craft Lake City’s DIY Festival.
For Medina and other classical musicians, the term DIY is quintessential to being a musician. Not only does Medina encourage different musicians to learn a variety of different pieces, but she also arranges different outlets for musicians to perform their art instead of being pigeonholed into the cliché wedding string quartet. Medina says, “Salt Lake, Utah, is filled with people who’ve studied violin, viola, cello, whatever, since they were little, and when they graduate college, they don’t have anywhere to go except for playing string quartets for weddings, or maybe they’ll win a spot in the symphony, so I feel like there’s a lot of room for musicians to perform in one of those venues that isn’t one of those two things.” This gives musicians the opportunity to perform chamber music with like-minded artists and also gives audiences a chance to explore what chamber music has to offer and appreciate the music without necessarily having to go to a formal setting such as the symphony hall.
What DIY Fest attendees can expect of Michele Medina’s Chamber Musicians, Nebeker says, is that, “They’re going to get hit with a strange string quartet that was crafted in Salt Lake City by a [local] composer.” Catch the chamber musicians at the DIY Fest on Sunday, Aug. 14 on the KRCL Stage from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m., and learn more about Michele Medina’s vision for classical music at mmvolar.com.
For more information about CLC DIY Festival programming, click here.