Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs Presents Vasks, Vodka and Venison

Warm Springs, VA – The final concert of Garth Newel Music Center’s 2012 Pub Series is this weekend. The pub series features the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and it offers a different type of concert and dining experience at Garth Newel. Tobias Werner is the Cellist and Co-Artistic director at Garth Newel.

“Part of the idea was to encourage people to come up to Garth Newel who might have never been there,” says Werner. “Since it’s a free concert, there’s no risk in trying it. And we move the piano actually to the middle of the stage and have chairs all the way around it so people can be very close. They can look over our shoulders and be really involved in the concert. It will be very casual, jeans and t-shirt if it’s warm enough, kind of concert. Nobody should feel they need to dress up.”

The evening is pay as you wish and no tickets are required.

“The name of this Saturday’s Pub Series concert is Vasks, Vodka and Venison,” says Werner. “So the concert is free, there will be free venison chili, some rolls and some sweets afterwards, a cash bar and a free concert.”

It is helpful to make reservations for the evening, but it’s not required.

“Vasks is the name of the composer, Peteris Vasks,” says Werner. “One of the pieces we will play is the Piano Quartet by Peteris Vasks. We play about an hour of music. In addition to the Vasks Piano Quartet, we will play the Adagio for Piano Quartet by Italian composer Fabrizzio de Negri. He is one of our finalists of our 2012 composition competition. We started that last year. This was our second year and we enjoyed his piece a lot, so we will play it and it will be the world premiere of this piece. It has never been played before.”

The Pub Series Concert is Saturday night March 10 at 7:30 at Garth Newel Music Center. Doors open at 7.

“We started doing them last year,” says Werner. “And they were surprisingly successful. We had no idea what would happen, how many people would show up. We had great numbers. People seemed very excited. I enjoyed the casual atmosphere of the concert. I enjoyed seeing people there who have never been to a classical chamber music concert. And this is classical chamber music and it’s all fairly new music. It’s all very different, but not your traditional Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms. It is all kind of contemporary chamber music. And I really enjoyed seeing people getting excited about hearing new classical chamber music and somewhat more edgy music. And it is just a joy to see people excited about music we are playing.”

For more information or to make a reservation, contact Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs at 540-839-5018. Or visit the website at garthnewel.org