Seattle Times
By now, fans of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival know to expect the unexpected from this feisty little organization with an award-winning history. Thus it wasn’t all that much of a shock to hear music of “unprecedented weirdness,” as the young composer Gabriel Kahane described his set of five recent songs that he performed with acoustic and amplified musicians in the opening concert of the festival Tuesday. Last Tuesday’s concert also included a fire-breathing and high-spirited opener (Paul Schoenfield’s “Who Let the Cat Out Last Night?”) performed all-out by two bona-fide stars, violinist Chee-Yun and pianist Jon Kimura Parker, succeeded by a Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia, with the outstanding young cellist Alisa Weilerstein joining Chee-Yun. The twelfth season of Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival continues through this Saturday, August 29.