It's Date Night: Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival

It’s Date Night. Light the candles. Spread out the rose petals.
And open… a can of SpaghettiOs.

Written by: Timothy Christie, Founder & Artistic Director, Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival

If you’re not familiar with the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival (WWCMF), let me introduce you. Every June, WWCMF presents 32 musical events over 24 days, working with more than 20 venue partners around Walla Walla from local wineries to the VA Hospital, featuring a roster of between 20 and 30 of the finest classical musicians in North America. There are free kids’ concerts, community outreach performances, and all manner of ticketed evening shows in concert halls and wineries around the valley. We play great music in small venues where audiences are practically onstage. If WWCMF were a meal, it would be a multi-course tasting menu of fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients with wine pairings served at the chef’s table, all for ridiculously affordable prices from free to $30. Delicious. WWCMF is the perfect date night for you and that special someone. You should try it sometime.

Unfortunately, now is not the greatest ‘some time,' at least as far as the chef’s table is concerned. Earlier this Spring, I met with the WWCMF Board, and together we made the difficult decision to cancel the June 2020 edition of the festival. It was to have been our 13th season. Lucky, right? Poof! In the time it takes to sneeze, the June festival vanished like a cloud of tiny droplets into six feet of separation. No more fresh ingredients. No more tasting menu. No more chef’s table.

However, we do not cancel date night for public health emergencies. We adapt. WWCMF is still here for you. Throughout June and July, WWCMF is presenting performances by locked-down festival musicians, recorded in locations around North America. So light the candles, spread out some rose petals, and open… a can of SpaghettiOs.

If live chamber music is like dining at the chef’s table, then live-streamed chamber music is like delivery, and recorded chamber music is akin to more shelf-stable delicacies, better known as canned food. Before you judge, I’ll point out that canned food runs the gamut from high-end Galician seafood to summer bounty from your own garden to the Proustian recollection of childhood that is the humble SpaghettiO. Canned food does not mean ‘bad’ food by default. Sometimes all it takes is a massive public health emergency to remind you that there is much to love about canned food. For one thing, it’s always there for you, ever loyal. You can’t say that about morel mushrooms (unless they’re dried or canned).

Recorded music is sometimes called ‘canned music.’ For example, when a studio orchestra records movie music, all of the musicians wear headphones— we call them ‘cans’— and play to a click track. Once a section of music is recorded to the producer’s satisfaction, it is said to be ‘in the can.’ That sweeping romantic theme when the lovers finally kiss? It was recorded to an impassive electronic click in a room lit with bare fluorescent bulbs and union-mandated breaks. Even the click track is a canned substitute for a basic element of musicianship, internal pulse. Time is money, and the canned click gets things done quicker.

On the rare occasion that movie music defies the constraints of a click track, the musicians play ‘in the air,’ or without cans. Music made in the air is alive, flexible, and perishable, like fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients. Think Galician seafood at $300 a tin. Music made wearing cans is shelf-stable and predictable. Think SpaghettiOs at $.99 a can. Both are beautiful, especially when a raging pandemic dictates that we can’t get together at the chef’s table.

You can access the trove of WWCMF video recordings, lovingly made by festival musicians at the peak of freshness, preserved online and ready for you to enjoy. So, maybe the best ‘some time’ is now after all. Check it out and let us know what you think. One last thing, music on the internet sounds way better if you listen through headphones, you know, cans. WWCMF’s motto during the pandemic is “Music Never Stops.” Nor should date night. And remember, you can’t spell SpaghettiOs without the big O.

Enjoy your date.