(bright classical music) - Chamber music is my favorite kind of playing.

I get to wield and move my sound around depending on who I'm playing with at any given moment.

I love doing that kind of stuff.

It stretches me and I really like that.

- The core foundational skills that we need for orchestral playing are rooted in chamber music.

(plaintive string music) And some of the best music in the world is written for string quartet.

So I think it's important for the musicians and for the listeners to get that unique experience.

(plaintive string music continues) - We have an artistic advisory committee made up of musicians, and they discuss the repertoire that's gonna be performed in all of these various chamber concerts.

(somber classical music) - We form our own groups.

We pitch our own ideas for chamber works.

And we cross our fingers that our piece gets picked and that we get to play.

(laughing) (bright classical music) We performed the Bowen "Fantasy" for four violas.

The group was comprised of Becca Albers and Marlea Simpson, Jude Park, and myself.

Bowen was an English composer and piano player, but he also played many other instruments, including French horn and the viola.

And he actually preferred the viola to the violin, so he wrote a lot of viola works.

All of his music is so beautiful and romantic.

We get these soaring melodies that we can slide around on and be like juicy, and that's just not something that composers really write for the viola very often.

So he really understood our core and our hearts.

(soaring classical music) - We played Igor Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du soldat," which was written in 1918.

It's a story of a soldier on his way home who makes a deal with the devil.

He gives up his violin, also known as his soul, for riches and power.

And it's a story of how he works his way back to regaining his violin, but then in the end, loses it because he wants it all.

And nobody can have it all.

(bright classical music) So Rui, our violinist, is sort of the protagonist of the story.

He represents Joseph and his violin and his soul.

We've got a rockstar of a bass player, Kyle Sanborn, who's one of our newer members of the orchestra.

Gabi and Fei, our principal clarinetist and bassoonist, have different characteristics in the group.

And Doug and myself, trumpet and trombone.

(regal classical music) And then our percussionist, Kevin Watkins, he plays the part of the devil usually.

And you can hear that in sort of the deeper rhythmic drumbeat kind of feel of his music.

(bright classical music) Stravinsky uses all sorts of interesting things.

You'll hear the bass player going boom, bum, boom, bum, boom, bum, but meanwhile, the beat is going something like.

(fingers snapping) (rhythmic classical music) It presents all sorts of interesting challenges for the ensemble to sort of find its way through that.

(bright string music) - [Lydia] We all know how to play with each other already, because we play in orchestra every day together.

And so that part kind of just came naturally.

- I would love for that, at the E major, to actually be just a little bit more fluid if it's possible.

- A piece for four violas is pretty much unheard of.

(laughing) (bright string music) Pieces written for four of the same instrument are really rare, because of course, they all sound the same and have the same register.

The roles of all of us were sort of similar to the roles of each instrument in a regular string quartet, which is two violins, viola, and a cello.

Becca was just way up in the stratosphere, (laughing) just like shifting around up there, mimicking the first violin.

(intense string music) (violists laughing) - Just like softer than one, but louder than three.

(musicians laughing) - Playing chamber music brings all of us onstage just that much closer together.

I play quite a bit in a brass quintet made up of a couple of our trumpet players, our principal horn player, and our principal tubist.

When we sit onstage with the full orchestra, there's a connection there because we've played 1,000 hours together just the five of us.

(upbeat classical music) - When we play in these small groups, we all get to have a say and we all get to bounce off of each other and get inspired ourselves by the other people in the group.

And I always feel inspired by the musicians here.

(soaring string music) Chamber is so exciting.

It's different from what you get when you come to the orchestra to watch a huge performance.

You get to see four people who have these unique ideas blend them all together and create something really magical.

(soaring string music) - The fact that this orchestra supports our chamber music concerts really speaks to how they want to nurture the artistry of each and every individual musician.

(audience applauding) Chamber music is one of the finest ways for us to stay in closer contact to our community.

It's a wonderful thing.

(audience continues applauding)