Sasha Callahan, Leo Eguchi, and Catherine van der Salm at J. Christopher Barrel Room for WVCMF 2022. Photo by Rachel Hadiashar.

After nine memorable seasons through Covid, wildfires, musicians’ injuries, cutting-edge and timeless music, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival will be back in Oregon wine country for three successive weekends Aug. 2 through Aug. 17. This season, founders violinist Sasha Callahan and cellist Leo Eguchi, with partner and arts leader Eve Callahan, will be celebrating more than the music of living composers such as that of Portland’s Caroline Shaw, Kian Ravaei and works by such long-gone venerable composers as Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn who have influenced them. Each concert is at 5:30 pm, and accompanied by glasses of wine that resonate with the music.

WVCMF will be commemorating its 10th-year anniversary, and the musical ensemble – and its audiences – have plenty to toast, premium wines in hand. Returning musicians aside from violinist Callahan and cellist Eguchi include violinist Megumi Stohs Lewis and violists Charles Noble and Bradley Otteson.

The WVCMF leaders are proud of their “unique approach to programming,” Callahan said, and of the vision that they’ve held steady for a decade to include old and new music of well-known and rising-star composers, and artists of various colors and countries, accompanied by wines from hosting wineries: Newburg’s Appassionata Estate/ J.Christopher, Dayton’s Sokol Blosser Winery and Archery Summit, wineries less than an hour by car from Portland.

Over their 10 years, WVCMF musicians have worked with such composers-in-residence as Joan Tower, Jessie Montgomery, Portland’s Kenji Bunch, Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov and Gabriela Lena Frank of multi-cultural lineage, to name a few. WVCMF featured their music at winery concerts, blew away audiences with composers’ new works, and made a CD, Her Own Wings, with Frank in J. Christopher’s (now Appassionata Estate ) cellar room. Frank, by the way, who runs the Gabriela Frank Creative Academy of Music that further educates and inspires up-and-and-coming composers, tipped Callahan and Eguchi off to Akshaya Tucker, this year’s composer-in-residence, whom Frank said was an emerging composer to keep an ear open to.

Callahan and Eguchi took note, and hired Tucker as composer-in-residence for this season, their 10th anniversary year. “Her approach to composition blends her training in Western and Indian Classical traditions, and she pulls inspiration from varied interests from mythology to climate change,” Callahan said. “She’s been receiving tremendous accolades and attention, with commissions, premieres and performances by some of the most exciting soloists and ensembles performing today.”

Commissions have come from Carnegie Hall, Piano Spheres, Brooklyn Rider, violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Lucia Lin, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Brooklyn Rider, A Far Cry, members of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Salastina Music Society, and many others have performed her work.

In 2018, Tucker was one of first to graduate from Frank’s California academy, and her Breathing Sunlight piece for cello and violin will be featured the second week of the festival, Aug. 9-10 at Sokol Blosser Winery. The previous week, Aug. 2-3 at Appassionata Estate/J.Christopher, Tucker’s world premiere On Whose Head He Danced, based on an Indian story of Krishna dancing on the head of serpent Kaliyah, will be the headliner. The viola quintet is the first commission that Callahan and Eguchi have made. Each concert will feature one of Tucker’s works.

Commissioning a new work

Bringing a new piece into the chamber music world seemed a fitting way to celebrate their 10-year musical effort. A single-vineyard pinot noir from the winery will be bottled in honor of the piece.

“The best birthday present we could imagine was investing in the repertoire of the future by supporting a composer we love and bringing a new work of chamber music into the world,” said Callahan, who grew up in Oregon and now lives in Boston with husband Eguchi and daughter Freya, where Callahan and Eguchi perform in a vast array of East Coast concerts.

For the finale on Aug. 17 and Aug. 18 at Archery Summit, the ensemble will play Beethoven’s exuberant String Quartet Op. 59, No.1. The festival rarely misses a chance to feature Beethoven; this time it will be a piece composed at the apex of his career and talents, and one with “depth, range and joy,” as Callahan said.

The joy of JOY

Besides making chamber music accessible to audiences with their informal concerts in barrel and tasting rooms, WVCMF musicians have created a partnership with Junior Orchestra of Yamhill (JOY) introducing underserved children to world-class musicians and composers.

Since 2021, WVCMF has supported the work that JOY teaching artists do during the year to engage and inspire Yamhill county children through music. JOY provides free music and string education, and is the only rural El Sistema program in Oregon. WVCMF musicians provide coaching, mentorship, and exposure to internationally acclaimed composers and musicians.

“We’ve played and performed side by side with these wonderful young musicians,” Callahan wrote in an email, “and we’ve brought several of our composers to work with JOY, illustrating that composers are living, breathing people using music to express themselves and to tell their stories.”

WVCMF has co-commissioned a piece with their group in Boston, the Sheffield Chamber Players, on behalf of a collaboration with a group called City Strings United. WVCMF and JOY musicians will play together side by side. The 2024 composer-in-residence Kevin Day wrote a new work for professional string quartet and students called Overture to Springtime that will premiere in November.

Over 10 years, WVCMF musicians have been good citizens, contributing to the musical culture in part of Oregon’s rural area. They’ve helped to make music and wine fun and intimate instead of stodgy, yawn-inducing and sit-still-boring, of which many classical concerts remain guilty.

They deserve to celebrate. Tickets may be available at Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival.