Chamber Music OC emerged from a residency at Irvine’s Great Park to become O.C.’s undisputed center of the genre.
Seasoned Orange County listeners will recall a time in the not-so-distant past when the classical music scene was still pretty quiet here; before Segerstrom Concert Hall, before Soka Performing Arts Center, before CSU Fullerton’s Meng Hall, in short before the County became such a vibrating hive of musical activity.
At least for this listener, who had previously attended performances in office suites, piano stores, commercial kitchen-adjacent lobbies, and helicopter-ridden public parks, it would have been a big stretch to imagine the county having a vibrant, lively, permanent venue devoted solely to chamber music.
Here we are, though. A regular stop for the world’s major artists, a home for top notch ensembles, some spectacularly well-appointed performance spaces, and, stationed in Lake Forest, Chamber Music OC, dedicated specifically to one of the most challenging and rewarding of musical genres.
Founded by violinist Iryna Krechkovsky and her pianist husband Kevin Kwan Loucks, Chamber Music OC emerged from a residency at Irvine’s Great Park.
“We proposed an idea of chamber music concerts each month in a different configuration,” said Krechkovsky, “We invited our musician friends and made the performances free to public, and it grew from 20 people to having to repeat concerts twice, where we couldn’t fit the hundreds that were coming to the concerts.”
It became apparent to them that there was an unmet regional hunger for chamber music, a genuine interest and appreciation for the art form, and not enough supply to meet the demand. The next step was easy to see.
“We started an organization that would allow us to share our joy,” she said. “ You can’t ask for anything better. And it opened up all sorts of possibilities. We thought bigger.”
Bigger, in this case, meant building out a facility that serves Chamber Music OC’s performance, education and community engagement efforts. The space features an acoustically engineered hall for performances and classes, a full-service recording studio with HD livestreaming capabilities, and two concert grand pianos.
“We are all about chamber music,” she said. “I think it’s the greatest medium for artists and the future for classical music. It’s entrepreneurial and broad and allows for so many possibilities, it allows us to think outside the box, and I think that’s one reason why you’re seeing the buzz and excitement.”
2024-25 season includes jazz, master classes
The Ukraine-born Krechkovsky boasts an extensive international resume. Performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, soloist with the Lviv National Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Sinfonietta among many, even a TED talk. With all that, she’s found herself drawn back to the intimacy only chamber music can afford.
“For me, chamber music is all about personal human connection,” she said. “With chamber because you can see the interaction between individuals, and you know where the sound is coming from. You’re empowered to understand the music on a much deeper level, if done well. You don’t need special knowledge of the music or an ‘OK’ to be moved by it or not.
“Once you are moved by the experience, it’s something that stays with you; whether you’re an audience member or performer, you feel that. As a practicing musician who plays a lot of chamber music, there’s nothing like that experience. It’s working together, being collaborative, being better as a unit than as an individual. There’s no place for ego, because if that’s part of the equation it’s no longer chamber music,”
And while live performances are the heart of the organization’s work, training the next generation of performers is its soul.
“We have a robust pre-college program, the young artist program, with 40 students each year,” she said. “They enter into a curriculum of chamber music, work with the great artists that visit us for master classes and panels. We encourage students to be creative, we offer business and entrepreneurship seminars, a curriculum that is not purely teaching. The concepts go beyond playing music. And whether they go to a great conservatory or a
university with a great music department, they can go on to pursue medicine or physics and still have an appreciation of music.”
Among those who will be providing master classes, workshops and lectures for the students: violinists Lina Bahn, Chair of the String Department at USC's Thornton School of Music, and Annie Fullard, founding member of the Cavani String Quartet and Chair of Chamber Music at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
“We have students who are a part of our program for six years, from middle school through high school,” she said, “and they go to wonderful universities, and they have a place to come back to and they often do, just to keep in touch, or ask for advice, or record or do projects. It’s so great to have a physical space where they can do that.”
The 2024-25 season opens with jazz pianist Todd Cochran and his trio TC3, and includes Trio Céleste in collaboration with The Da Camera Society, as well as an program of mixed chamber music featuring the organization’s resident artists and faculty.
