The West Stockbridge Chamber Players Harvest Concert

On Sunday, October 29th at 4 p.m. the Old Town Hall in West Stockbridge will be the setting for an eclectic and deeply felt benefit concert by the West Stockbridge Chamber Players. Among its offerings will be the premiere of esteemed Berkshire-based composer Eric Shimelonis’ For the Love of Music: An Invocation Dedicated to Stuart Kuller.

The performance will feature an acclaimed group of musicians, including Chamber Players’ artistic director Catherine Hudgins on clarinet, William Hudgins on clarinet, Sheila Fiekowsky on violin, Stephanie Fong on violin, and Adam Esbensen on cello. Along with Shimelonis’ piece, the program will highlight the rich and varied world of classical music, spanning centuries, starting with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Divertimento No. 5, K. 439b. The next piece, The Generation of Hope by prominent Israeli clarinetist, educator, conductor, and composer Eva Wasserman-Margolis, was composed in 1994 for the solo clarinet. Czech-born Gideon Klein’s String Trio, which continues the concert, was written in 1944 in the Terezin concentration camp shortly before the composer was sent to Auschwitz and, ultimately, his end. The concert will conclude with Czechian Bohuslav Martinů’s Serenade for Violin, Viola, Cello, and Two Clarinets — a very unusual instrumentation — composed in 1951.

With the generous help of the Chamber Players and the loyal audiences who flock to these concerts, the West Stockbridge Historical Society has been able to make tremendous strides during the past few years in turning the Old Town Hall — an iconic building which anchors West Stockbridge’s downtown — into a community center, history museum, and acoustically perfect home for the West Stockbridge Chamber Players.

Tickets ($35) can be reserved at weststockbridgehistory.org. Limited attendance — first come, first served.