The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra’s Winter Series is underway. The completely free, online four-part series features some of the province’s favourite musicians.

 

 

Rachel Kristenson, Momoko Matsumura and Minna Rose Chung are certainly no strangers to the MCO. The three are all members of the orchestra though what may come as a surprise is that the three actually haven’t performed together as a grouping before. 

“I had a lot of fun doing this,” says violinist Rachel Kristenson. “They’re fantastic musicians.”

After being grouped together by the powers that be, the trio was then tasked with finding repertoire to perform — a break from the usual prescribed performance as members of the orchestra. 

“They just threw us in the water, lovingly,” says cellist Minna Rose Chung. “As mainly chamber musicians with the MCO, we typically don’t deal with that.” 

Settling on a program which spans a few centuries and certainly more than a few octaves in the tried and true grouping of violin, viola and cello, heavy hitters Mozart and Beethoven are paired with Glière and Piazzolla. 

After a full day of recording both audio and video in studio, the result is yet to be seen by the players, which is set to premiere on the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra’s YouTube channel. 
 
“I’m not a big fan of watching or listening to myself,” says violinist/violist Momoko Matsumura. “Honestly, I’m nervous but we had a very good engineer, so I hope he did some magic.” 

Certainly little magic is required for a trio as long-overdue and talented as this.

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