Chamber Music Makes A Comeback At Cultural Center

To simply play Brazilian music, it takes rhythm. It takes flavor. But to play it well, that is an entirely different story, according to Omar Chen Guey.

“You could argue that to really play this music, the Brazilian blood needs to be there,” said the Brazilian violinist during a telephone interview last week. “It’s great stuff, this music. You don’t get to hear it every day.”

For the first time, on Saturday, January 7, Mr. Guey is bringing a strictly Brazilian program to the Southampton Cultural Center for a performance included in its annual “Chamber Music Series.” The 90-minute concert will bring out what Mr. Guey calls “the gems of the classical music of our time” and features some of the biggest names in Brazilian chamber music composition, from Heitor Villa-Lobos—the “father of Brazilian modernist music” who infuses his work with local flavor, Mr. Guey said—to Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, who is recognized as second only to Mr. Villa-Lobos.

Mr. Guey’s friend and composer Raimundo Penaforte has even arranged a suite from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” for the violinist to play. It includes “I Feel Pretty,” “Somewhere” and “America.”

“There’s a good variety, a good mix, so it shouldn’t feel too long,” Mr. Guey said of the upcoming performance with a laugh. “It will be interesting at all times.”

Mr. Guey, who has graced the stage at the Southampton Cultural Center twice already, descends from a family of musicians, all of whom play violin, among other instruments, he said. But the musician attributes everything he knows to his father, who began training him at just age 4.

In 1994, Mr. Guey moved from Brazil to the United States, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan School of Music. He earned his master’s from The Juilliard School, and his doctorate from Stony Brook University in 2009—which is where, seven years ago, he met pianist and future wife Lin T. Guey, who will be performing alongside him this weekend.

“She was studying piano and earned her Ph.D. in applied math and statistics,” Mr. Guey recalled. “She was studying many, many, many years. We haven’t played too many performances together. She’s quite busy with her career as a research scientist for a bio-tech company in Lexington. This is the biggest program we’ve done together.”

Nearly all of the performers in this year’s “Chamber Music Series” lineup have some tie to Stony Brook University. The series, which highlights the baroque to the contemporary, was started by Marc Levine in 2007 at the Stony Brook Southampton campus and moved to the Cultural Center three years ago.

Mr. Levine scouts for talent by word of mouth and through the college’s Musical Arts doctoral program—where Mr. Guey and Mr. Levine, a fellow violinist, first met in 2003 and have since earned their degrees, he said.

“I think he’s fantastic. He’s amazing,” Mr. Levine said of Mr. Guey during a telephone interview last week. “Omar’s a really, really great violinist and amazing musician. It was really wonderful to play with him, and I still like to play with him when I can.”

Another group that Mr. Levine says is bound to keep audiences watching is the Bryant Park String Quartet, the first ensemble-in-residence at Stony Brook University’s Community Music Program, which will play the Southampton Cultural Center on Saturday, January 14. The Manhattan-based group features Anna Elashvili and Ben Russell on violin, Nathan Schram on viola, and Tomoko Fujita on cello. Though founded just six years ago, the young quartet has given recitals at Lincoln Center, Staller Center for the Arts, the Austrian Cultural Forum and Des Moines Art Center.

“They are very serious and realistic about what it takes to be a real quartet,” Mr. Levine said. “They have a very long-term vision and understand starting as a quartet and having it become successful takes a very long time. But they’re very persistent, consistent and doing good work. I know the group sounds fantastic.”

More than ever before, classical seems to be taking a backseat in the music dialogue, Mr. Levine said. Now is the time to bring it back because classical music offers what other genres cannot, he said.

“Classical music brings out certain kinds of emotions and depths of emotion that other music doesn’t always achieve,” he said. “Every community needs to have live classical music. I think that even just once a year would make a difference in someone’s life. It would inspire them and make clearer what’s happening in their lives that they’re feeling. It’s a magnifying glass.”

“But in terms of classical music performance east of Stony Brook during the year, not during the summer, there’s almost nothing,” he continued. “This is literally the thing that’s happening.”

Southampton Cultural Center’s “Chamber Music Series” will continue with a concert by Omar Chen Guey and Lin T. Guey on Saturday, January 7, at 7 p.m. Up next, on Saturday, January 14, the Bryant Park String Quartet will perform at 7 p.m. Concerts will continue through May. Tickets are $20, or $10 for students. For more information, call 287-4377 or visit southamptonculturalcenter.org.