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REFLECTION
September 13, 2005
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By Marion Fay
Kensington resident Joanne De Phillips, both a physician and a pianist by training, pursued a musical dream, and, almost single-
handedly, brought it to life in the form of an innovative chamber music series. Founded in 1993, Berkeley Chamber Performances
(BCP) presents five concerts per season, featuring established traditional repertoire but also music that “probes and bends the
boundaries of tradition,” as De Phillips puts it.
Concerts are held in the beautiful Berkeley City Club, a California Historical Landmark noted for its blend of Romanesque and
Moorish architectural styles and its award winning gardens. Designed by Julia Morgan, the architect of the Hearst Castle, the
building completed in 1929, opened in 1930 as a residence and social club for women, then in 1962 for men as well.
Known today as Morgan's “little castle,” the Club is located only a block from the University of California, Berkeley, De Phillips'
alma mater. Ornate yet stately, with its upstairs Ballroom and leaded glass windows, the building itself inspired her musical
dream. Invited in 1980 to play the piano for a Christmas party at the Club, De Phillips knew, as soon as she entered the “little
castle” that she had encountered something “wondrous, a beautiful and a welcoming venue for audiences and musicians alike.”
But De Phillips' vision of a chamber music series gave way temporarily to professional demands. In 1969, while working as a
freelance pianist and teacher, De Phillips, who'd majored in music at UC Berkeley, had decided to make a complete career change.
Though once deterred by cultural biases against women entering the medical field, she had not forsaken her earliest dream, a
childhood dream, to become a physician. De Phillips continued to play the piano, but she returned to U.C. Berkeley to take pre-med
courses and then earned concurrent M.D. and M.P.H. degrees from the University of California. In fact, she was working as a general
internist and an emergency room physician when she first visited the Berkeley City Club.
Deeply absorbed in her work from the late 1970s onward, De Phillips found the experience of serving as a medical professional
during the full explosion of the AIDS epidemic “gratifying yet overwhelming.” In the 1980s, when the acronym AIDS had not even been
coined, there were no medications, and many of her emergency room patients, and later, co-workers, succumbed to the disease. “To be
working, without much to offer, in an environment where so many people I knew were afflicted became increasingly difficult, De
Phillips explained. In 1988, she accepted a position at Oakland's Peralta Hospital as a doctor responsible for admitting patients,
including those with inadequate medical insurance or without a local physician, and following their treatment.
In early 1993, a long-time Berkeley City Club member invited De Phillips to join. Feeling the time was right, she soon became a member, and within several months, had started a concert series under the umbrella of the City Club's Arts Section. For the first few years, De Phillips not only coordinated the concerts but did all the legwork herself, contacting performers, setting dates, conducting publicity — and paying for everything out of her own pocket. Had it not been for her own deep passion for music, De Phillips muses, she could never have fit these new responsibilities — and the seemingly endless phone calls — into her rigorous work schedule as a physician. In the beginning, the series presented traditional chamber music while also giving local musicians an opportunity to play pieces not frequently heard. The first concert, held on September 21, 1993, featured a Dvorák Piano Quartet along with pieces by Debussy and Bartók. Other early concerts included string and wind ensembles playing works by lesser-known composers, such as Carl Nielsen, Juan Orego-Salas, and Ludwig Thuille. Performers appreciated the City Club ambiance, and audiences began to grow. “What a “wonderful way of connecting people,” De Phillips soon realized, prompting her to hold complementary post-concert receptions in the lovely tiled-ceiling Venetian Room adjacent to the Ballroom. Audience members can converse with each other — and with the musicians — while sipping wine and enjoying cheeses, fruits, and pastries.
Berkeley Chamber Performances became a non-profit corporation in April 1997, and a Board of Directors was established to facilitate fundraising. This change in financial potential permitted other changes: BCP began to contract entirely with professional musicians, and its unique programming goals were solidified. “We didn't want to become another stuffy, tuxedo-bound chamber series,” De Phillips, who serves as Board President, made clear. “And we weren't going to focus narrowly on string quartets from the war-horse stable.” Instead, BCP decided to expand its already diverse range of styles. Concerts include early and modern music as well as contemporary works, pieces that open new horizons in chamber music, and thus form a “living tradition,” as De Phillips refers to it, while still giving up-and-coming groups an opportunity to perform repertoire of their choice. In the 2003-2004 season, for example, The Whole Noyse, with its sackbuts, cornets, and recorders, gave lively sound to Italian songs and dances from the 16th and 17th centuries. And the equally well-established Streicher Trio performed the cultivated chamber music of Mozart and Beethoven on period instruments in a concert series that also featured the Empyrean Ensemble and its dazzling presentation of contemporary works by Adams, Ligeti, and Yu-Hui Chang. For a 2005 fundraiser headlined by the chic and charming Baguette Quartette, BCP recreated a Parisian café in the City Club Ballroom. Francophiles and music-lovers from around the Bay Area delighted in the valse musettes, javas, and Gypsy tunes played by French-born accordionist Odile Lauvalt and her ensemble. Enthusiastic audience responses have ratified the BCP Board's programming-choice work. Now in its 12th season, Berkeley Chamber Performances revitalizes a rich tradition yet encourages innovation. Chamber music encompasses jazz, brass ensembles, and world music, along with string quartets and piano trios, Joanne De Phillips points out. The criteria, she explained, is that a group be small enough to play in an intimate setting, and that it possess a high level of musicianship no matter who the composer or what the instrument or time period.
The upcoming 2005-2006 season reflects this distinctive musical mission. At the opening concert on Tuesday, September 27, the nine -voice a cappella ensemble, Coro D'Amici, directed by Michael Senturia, will perform classical repertoire from the Renaissance to contemporary, including works from its Summer 2005 concerts in Florence and Rome. In November, BCP hosts a program from the Indian classical tradition, featuring Alam Khan playing sarod — a teak lute characteristic of Northern India. In early 2006, the Luna Nova Quartet offers a unique musical voice, a mandolin instead of the traditional second violin, in its original interpretations of classical string quartet compositions. Concerts will be held either in the Ballroom, which has a performance stage, or in the Club Drawing Room where audience members sit on the same level as the performers. Such musical intimacy replicates early 17th-century chamber concerts held in private homes, where family and friends were introduced to the “boundary-probing” music of that era. And, as then, when chamber concerts often followed dinner, contemporary audiences can dine at the City Club prior to a musical event. Active herself as a chamber musician, De Phillips, who now works at Alameda Hospital, somehow finds time to guide and nurture the BCP series while caring for her patients. “To create something beautiful in a way that involves the ideas and interpretations of others can be great fun,” she has concluded, “and a meaningful expression of democracy at work.” For more information about Berkeley Chamber Performances, call (510) 525-5211 or visit the series' website.
(Marion Fay is an Instructor of Humanities at the College of Alameda (in Alameda, CA), where she also produces a concert series, and is a freelance writer on the performing arts and literature.)
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