‘Musical Chairs’ and Music Mountain

The venerable Music Mountain chamber concert venue, on Music Mountain in Falls Village, Conn., has announced that it will cancel its summer schedule of classical music, jazz and more due to COVID-19 concerns.

This is the first time since Music Mountain was created 91 years ago that a season has been canceled.

Creative solutions

“Music Mountain has a proud history of finding creative ways through adversity,” reports a press release announcing the cancellation. “In 1942, World War II threatened to put the brakes on the summer music festival. In his report to the Board of Managers dated Oct. 2, 1942, Jacques Gordon, founder of Music Mountain and the Gordon String Quartet, wrote, ‘As the summer approached, we came to a complete standstill … no salaries, no money to advertise concerts, and no gas … then, an idea came to me to organize the Quartet on Wheels.

“By the end of their two-month season, the quartet had taken 22 concerts on the road, including one Young People’s Concert at the regional high school in Falls Village. By Gordon’s estimation, they reached nearly 8,300 people — an amazing accomplishment, especially with wartime restrictions.”

Music Mountain Artistic and Executive Director Oskar Espina-Ruiz vowed last week to find similarly creative ways to bring music from the mountain to patrons and fans. The website at www.musicmountain.org will have updates; you can also find some of Music Mountain’s interesting history under the “about” tab. 

Many fascinating stories about the concert hall and the beloved Nicholas Gordon (the son of Jacques, he ran Music Mountain from 1974 until shortly before his death in 2017) can also be found in The Lakeville Journal Co. archives at the Scoville Memorial Library website, www.scoville.advantage-preservation.com.

A fictional chamber group

If that doesn’t satisfy your craving for tales about music and musicians, Kent, Conn., part-time resident Amy Poeppel has a new book, called “Musical Chairs,” about a fictional chamber music group.

The book follows a COVID-like summer in the Northwest Corner as cellist Bridget Stratton finds herself unexpectedly in residence at her Kent country home with her 20-something daughter and her best friend, Will (with whom she founded a chamber music trio many years ago). 

In nearby Sharon, Conn., is her father, the celebrated and charismatic conductor Edward Stratton. 

Bridget’s younger sister, Gwen, is also in residence at their father’s house, where she performs make-overs on her elder sister and drops Northwest Corner resident Meryl Streep’s name casually into conversation.

Poeppel said in an interview with Compass last week that she didn’t base her fictional trio on the real-life Gordon Quartet (although the original violinist in the fictional Forsyth Trio was named Jacques, as in Jacques Gordon; just sayin’ …).

She’s not a musician herself, but her two sons are. Her eldest, Alex, is an audio engineer, a guitarist and a graduate of Berklee College of Music; her middle son, Andrew, plays the drums; her  youngest, Luke, is studying classical composition and musicology. 

Through them, Poeppel said, “I became interested in the dynamics of a chamber group. I decided to place my two main characters in that world as longtime friends who are the founding members of a classical piano trio. They are forever losing their third member!”

The musician characters continually reference their favorite works, so this is a fun book you can read with your Spotify or Pandora nearby. 

But the real plot of the novel has less to do with music than it does with the domestic dramas that arise when adult family members unexpectedly find themselves living together in one household for an indeterminate amount of time. 

Many of us can certainly identify with that.

“Musical Chairs” won’t be released until July. House of Books in Kent is now taking pre-orders for signed copies (www.houseofbooksct.com or info@houseofbooksct.com). 

Even if the quarantine is over by then (one hopes), this witty dive into the world of classical music, families and dilapidated country houses will be a fun beach read.