The Seattle Chamber Players are a chamber ensemble focused on contemporary music, founded in 1989 in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

, U.S. In January 2004, the group was awarded the

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming. , the core members are Laura DeLuca (

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

), David Sabee (

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

), Mikhail Shmidt (

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

), and Paul Taub (

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

). DeLuca, Sabee, and Schmidt are members of the Seattle Symphony (SSO); Shmidt is also a former member of the Moscow State Symphony; Taub is a professor of music at Cornish College of the Arts. Other players are brought into the orchestra for specific performances. For example, a series of performances of

Ástor Piazzolla Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (, ; March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His works revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed ''nuevo tango'', incorporating elements from ...

's tango

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

during the 2004–2006 season featured

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and conductor

Pablo Zinger Pablo Zinger is a conductor, pianist, writer, composer, arranger, lecturer and narrator, specializing in the music of Ástor Piazzolla, tango, Spanish zarzuela, and Latin American vocal and instrumental music. Biography Pablo Zinger was born in ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

n bandoneonist Alexander Mitenev,

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

Leonardo Granadas,

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

tango vocalist

Katie Viquiera Katie is an English feminine name. It is a form Katherine, Kate, Caitlin, Kathleen, Katey and their related forms. It is frequently used on its own. People Sports *Katie Boulter (born 1996), British tennis player *Katie Clark (born 1994), Briti ...

, Slovene

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

ist

Borut Zagoranski Borut may refer to: ;Places * Borut, a settlement in Neum; see List of populated places in Bosnia and Herzegovina ;People *Borut Bilač (born 1965), Slovenian long jumper *Borut Božič (born 1980), Slovenian professional road racing cyclist *Boru ...

, and

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

ist Michael Partington.

n musicologist Elena Dubinets, music research coordinator for the SSO, joined the ensemble in 2002 as artistic advisor, and has been largely responsible for transforming them from a local to an international institution, hosting international festivals such as ''Icebreaker I: Voices from New Russia'' (2004) and ''Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices'' (2004); the planned ''Icebreaker III'' (2006) will feature music from the countries of the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...

. They have travelled twice to

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

, scoring critical successes in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, St. Petersburg, and

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

, and are scheduled to tour

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

, and

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

in spring 2005.

Recordings

* ''Otis Spann: Music of

Wayne Horvitz Wayne Horvitz (born 1955) is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer. He came to prominence in the Downtown scene of 1980s and '90s New York City, where he met his future wife, the singer, songwriter and pianist Robin Holcomb. He ...

'' (Periplum) *

Reza Vali Reza Vali (born 1952 in Ghazvin) is an Iranian musician and composer. Reza Vali was born in Iran and studied at the Tehran Conservatory. In 1972, he attended the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, where he studied composition. He ...

's ''Folksongs (Set No. 15)'' (release expected 2005)

External links

Official siteArt of the States: Seattle Chamber Players
live performance of ''1987'' (2008) by composer Anna Clyne
'Ep. 48: Paul Taub, flutist'
Interview by Tigran Arakelyan {{authority control Musical groups established in 1989 American orchestras Musical groups from Seattle