Feeney to perform with String Quartet

By Travis Rivers
Correspondent
The Spokesman-Review
Feb. 23, 2006

Kendall Feeney has developed a reputation for innovative classical music programming. Her 10 years as director of Zephyr, Spokane's former 20th-century chamber music series, produced thematic programs featuring Dada experimentalism, 1920s expressionism – even a "post-polka" program taking that dance far beyond Lawrence Welk.

Feeney will bring her gift for thematic programming to "An Afternoon of Song and Dance" when she appears as guest pianist with the Spokane String Quartet on Sunday at The Met.

Quartet members include violinists Kelly Farris and Tana Bland, violist Jeannette Wee-Yang and cellist Helen Byrne.

"When Kelly gave me the option of playing a piece he came up with, or my designing a program with the members of the quartet, there was just no question," Feeney says. "The opportunity to design a program is something that really appeals to me."

The program began with her desire to perform Antonin Dvorak's "Dumky" Trio, a work based on the dumka – a song that is a mixture of heroic narrative and lament.

"From there, the whole program came to include works that involved the treatment of folk music by Czech composers of classical music, both in the 19th and 20th centuries," Feeney says.

In addition to the Trio, members of the quartet will perform Dvorak's "Cypresses" – a rarely performed instrumental transformation of songs he wrote early in his career.

"The interesting thing for me in going beyond the programming I did for Zephyr is the opportunity to go from one century to another, rather than just being confined to the 20th century," Feeney says.

The 20th century will be represented Sunday through two works by Bohuslav Martin: his Madrigals for Violin and Viola, performed by Bland and Wee-Yang, and the Variations on a Slovak Folksong for Cello and Piano, featuring Feeney and Byrne.

A member of the music faculty at Eastern Washington University, where she teaches piano and directs the university's Contemporary Music Ensemble, Feeney was born near Los Angeles and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in piano performance from the University of Southern California.

She has been featured in solo and chamber music performances in the United States and in Taiwan and Japan and has been heard on National Public Radio. She was named the 1997 Individual Artist of the Year by the Spokane Arts Commission.

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