Contrabass virtuoso Bert Turetzky is bringing an all-classical chamber music program to Dizzy's this Friday. August 5 at 8:00 p.m.

Turetzky will be performing Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet In A Major, (more widely known as the Trout Quintet), and the Piano Quintet by Austrian composer J.N. Hummel.

Appearing with Turetzky will be pianist Karen Follingstad, violinist Alyze Dreiling, violist Susan Ung, and cellist Lorie Kirkell.

Turetzky's interest in politics is actually the impetus for this concert of chamber music.

"I'm a political junkie, and the partisan antics going on in Washington have made me very disturbed," said Turetzky. "So about a month ago I began working on this piece, which is very beautiful, as a kind of therapy, because I'm very upset the country has been driven to edge of bankruptcy..."

According to the bassist, Franz Schubert was never actually a "professional" composer. Turetzky describes him as a school teacher and "original bohemian."

Apparently, Schubert and some friends hiked deep into the German country-side and ran out of money. The innkeeper where they were staying proposed that Schubert write a piano quintet based on the earlier Hummel piece--in exchange for room and board.

"The Hummel Quintet was the model, and the Trout Quintet is the masterpiece," according to Turetzky.

Schubert was 22 years old when he wrote the Trout Quintet in 1819, though it wasn't published until a year after the composer's death in 1829.

Can 19th Century Chamber Music actually chill out the anger many of us have towards our thoroughly broken and dysfunctional political system?

Find out Friday night. $15 cover, (Students $10). All ages welcome.

photo by Michael Klayman; concert poster by Jamie Shadowlight