The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WALLA WALLA - Beethoven's "Harp" is a feast for the ears and the eyes that elementary school kids in Dayton will soak up at the Columbia County Rural Library Friday as the annual Walla Walla Cham­ber Music Festival kicks off this week.

The quartet composition, which has four movements, showcases the range of emotional and tonal adven­tures just a small group of players can take its listeners on. Each of the instruments - three violins and a cello - go off on their own musical journey before coming back together time and again.

The piece gets its nick­name from the tight picking of the violin strings reminis­cent of a harp. Beethoven's chef d'oeuvre of tonal ten­sion management is both popular and accessible, par­ticularly to kids, and it's just one small stretch on the long and winding road unfolding before festival goers June 6 - 29 this year.

"We try to mix it up," said Tim Christie, the series' founder and artistic director, who will be joined by some 20 world-class musicians coming and going for 23- day event. What that means is complementing the better- known compositions with lesser known but equally entertaining pieces from composers who include American contemporaries.

"We don't always have to play the super stars of clas­sical music," Christie said. Each of the performances have at least one "anchor" piece for listeners new to classical music to hang on to and creations by composers who barely make mention on Wikipedia.

"Kreutzer," the festival's sold-out book-ending per­formance for the valley at the jimgermanbar on Thurs­day, June 25, is a case in point with Tolstoy's literary work by that name as the musical inspiration featuring Beethoven and the Czech composer Leos Janacek.

In between are open re­hearsals from 10 to noon at AMO Art on Tuesday, June 18, offering a "mixed reper­toire" and at Chief Springs' Fire & Iron Brewpub, featur­ing Leoffler String Quartet in One Movement.

The entire festival - 27 appearances in all - is one big infusion of chamber music into the greater Walla Walla area with paid per­formances blended with rehearsals and free concerts offered as educational op­portunities.

The approach blurs the lines between spotlight ap­pearances earning income for the yearly program and events that allow spectators to listen in on the musicians' intimate practices.

"We emphasize process over product," as Christie put it.

Over the three-week pe­riod, musicians from as far away as Charleston and as close as Seattle come and go to make up in-residence quartets or quintets travel around the area.

Left: Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival founder and artistic director Tim Christie practices his violin. Right: Chamber musicians practice at an open rehearsal at what was then Skye Book & Brew in Dayton in 2011.

The force behind it all is Christie, a violinist and vio­list who serves on the music faculties of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma and the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. The solo violist for Brace New Works since the group's incep­tion in 1997, Christie has performed and premiered numerous solo and cham­ber works of the 20th and 21st century. He currently performs with the Pacific Northwest Ballet orchestra, the IRIS orchestra of Ger­mantown, Tennessee, and the Seattle Opera.

Christie, a native of Washington, D.C. who be­gan his musical studies at the age of 9, strives to make mu­sic accessible, so accessible that performances like those at jimgerman's Heaven vir­tually place the players in the audience while the free "outreach" concerts give youngsters access to some of the best-trained performers in the field.

That kind of intimacy gives those with ears drawn to classical music a chance to develop their skills as "active listeners," Christie said. "It's going to be a great series."

For the festival's com­plete schedule and tickets, visit www.wwcmf.org.