Buffalo Chamber Players at the AKG – May

Experience creative music programs performed by our region’s finest performers in a unique and inspiring setting.  The Buffalo Chamber Players presents innovative music programs performed by our region’s finest musicians.  Formed in 2007 by Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra violist Janz Castelo de Armas, the group comprises members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and other distinguished area musicians. The group’s critically acclaimed concerts explore both historical chamber music masterworks and works by living composers.

Purple Rain

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. 

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).