By Robert Croan The splendid Chameleon Musicians ended the first season in their new venue in the Broward Center’s pleasant Abdo Room on April 29 with an intense, serious-minded all-Brahms program. With cellist and Chameleon founder Iris Van Eck joined by pianist Kemal Gekic and Michael Klotz (who alternated between violin and viola), the ensemble contrasted Brahms’s … [Read more...]
Amernet Quartet provides engaging opening to Chameleon season
By Robert Croan Martin Luther King was the focus of the first concert by Chameleon Musicians in the group’s inaugural season at the Broward Center – a totally engaging performance Jan. 14, by the Amernet String Quartet and Chameleon’s founder-director, cellist Iris van Eck. The series’ new venue is the Center’s Abdo River Room – a sleek, modern space, if not quite as … [Read more...]
Amernet Quartet masterful in Schubert, Onslow at Chameleon
By Robert Croan The Adagio movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major is one of the most sublime, transfixing moments in all music. The entire work, composed shortly before the composer’s early death in 1828, is one of the greatest achievements in the chamber music genre. It’s dramatic, it’s anguished, it’s pugnacious, it’s soul-searching, and it’s very, very difficult … [Read more...]
Clarinetist Miklis sparkles at Chameleon Music
By Robert Croan The spectacular virtuosity of clarinetist Julian Milkis, the only student of the venerable Benny Goodman, was showcased on Chameleon Musicians’ Jan. 29 concert in the Josephine S. Leiser Opera Center in Fort Lauderdale. It was a program that exploited the instrument as much as the performer, however. As always in this enterprising series, Chameleon’s … [Read more...]
Chameleon trio masterful in Villa-Lobos, Mozart
By Robert Croan The grand-scaled Divertimento in E-flat Major (K. 563) is Mozart’s only composition for string trio, one of the first ever composed for that combination, and to this day considered the greatest work in that form. A probing, technically accomplished performance of this 45-minute opus, a very serious work despite its seemingly lighthearted title, took up … [Read more...]
Chameleon’s piano quartet rarities delight, impress
By Robert Croan Two of the three composers represented on Chameleon Musician’s season finale Sunday afternoon were names that few, if any, members of the audience had ever heard before. The delightful and enthusiastically received concert, in the Josephine S. Leiser Opera Center, featured rarely heard piano quartets by Dora Pejačevič and Zygmunt Noskowski, along with a … [Read more...]