On Friday, October 27, in the Wachsman Concert Hall, the Harlem Chamber Players, based in Harlem, New York, performed a slate of contemporary music. The group consists of violinists Ashley Horne and Claire Chan, violist William Frampton, and former Deerfield cello instructor and cellist, Wayne Smith. Smith participated in the group even while teaching at Deerfield.
According to their website, the Harlem Chamber Players are “an ethnically diverse collective of professional musicians dedicated to high-caliber, affordable, and accessible live classical music” and “build[ing] diverse audiences for classical music in general through community and educational outreach … while creating opportunities for classically trained musicians of color.” Their performance at Deerfield was one way for them to further their pursuit of their mission.
The Harlem Chamber Players’ special program consisted of six contemporary pieces. The program was split into two halves of male and female composers. Additionally, the program included two pieces that the Chamber Music class had learned last year. Between each movement, the different members explained the background of the piece to inform the audience of the piece’s significance. One piece included was African American composer Frederick Tillis’ Spiritual Fantasy No. 12. Tillis recently passed away in 2020 in Amherst, so his daughter’s surprise appearance in the audience resulted in an emotional embrace between her and the quartet accentuated by a standing ovation. Tillis’ daughter was one of many people in the audience who were not affiliated with Deerfield Academy but came after seeing promotions in nearby towns.
Violist Yoonsa Lee ’25, who is also an associate editor for the Scroll, was a member of two separate chamber groups that played both Florence Price’s Juba from her String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor and Jessie Montgomery’s Strum. Lee said that she found it very inspiring to hear professionals perform the pieces she’d learned, especially works from contemporary repertoire. She noted that there were only a few recordings of both Juba and Strum online, saying, “I’ve gained many new ideas and my interpretation of [Strum] grew much stronger by hearing another group perform.” This concert inspired her own performance of the piece in Northampton two days later.
Planned since February 2023, this concert was almost one year in the making and marks the first time the Harlem Chamber Players have performed at Deerfield. Director of Music Thomas Bergeron explained that he first learned about the Harlem Chamber Players through seeing Smith’s resume. Since then, he wanted to bring that group to campus for a long time “because of their unique mission and the way that they program their concerts to showcase composers that aren’t typically represented in chamber music concerts,” he said.
Mr. Bergeron added that the concert was brilliant and the program was thoughtfully structured, saying, “They were able to tell a compelling story in an hour with the pieces they chose to play and the different techniques they demonstrated.” The impromptu appearance of Tillis’ daughter had such an impression on Bergeron that he said he is considering programming a work from Tillis for either the Orchestra or the Advanced Chamber Music class to perform in the near future.