San Francisco is the city that ties the guest performers to the Quirings, a Coquitlam couple who on Dec. 31 will host their 12th annual New Year’s Eve recital at the Evergreen Cultural Centre.
Violist Reg Quiring and wife Rosemary O’Connor, a pianist, will play three compositions with Ian Swensen, Cassandra Bequary and Heather Hay — each of whom studied or is currently teaching in the city by the bay.
Swensen, who has performed at past QuiRing in the New Year shows, is the Isaac Stern Chair of Violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He taught Bequary, who is now with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s second violin section.
Hay also earned her master’s degree in music from the conservatory. A former member of the renowned Purcell String Quartet, Hay is the assistant principal cellist with the Vancouver Opera orchestra and, for the past two years, has collaborated with O’Connor, a native of San Francisco.
“She’s a big fanatic of chamber music,” O’Connor said of Hay.
For their two-hour concert, which includes intermission and a sparkling wine reception afterward, Quiring and O’Connor will start their program with Handel’s Sonata in A-Major transcribed for viola and piano.
“It makes for a beautiful opener,” O’Connor said, “because it’s in a warm key… New Year’s Eve is such an interesting time of the year: It’s dark but there’s also this warm feeling that we get as we close the year and look ahead. This piece is captures that mood.”
The key will be carried through to Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 2 in A-Major, performed by O’Connor and Swensen.
O’Connor said she’s looking forward to tackling the work as “it has been on my hit list. I’ve been obsessed with it for the past year and I felt like something was calling me to that piece.”
Finally, all five musicians will close the event with Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, considered to be one of the best chamber music works of the Romantic era.
“It’s such a blast to play,” O’Connor said. “It’s so energizing and we’ll be sending off the crowd really happy.”
O’Connor said the semi-formal performance will end well before midnight so ticket-holders can get home or to an after-party to ring in 2020.
• For tickets to QuiRing in the New Year Dec. 31, call Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam) or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
