Concordia Chamber Players Brings Valerie Coleman's Shotgun Houses to Bucks County

On Sunday, April 12 at 3:00 PM, Concordia Chamber Players presents "Life Stories" at Trinity Church, 6587 Upper York Rd, Solebury, PA — and among the highlights of this remarkable program is Valerie Coleman's Shotgun Houses, a vivid and deeply personal work for clarinet and string quartet that traces the journey of a West Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood and one of its most famous sons: Muhammad Ali.

Coleman, one of the most celebrated composers of her generation, grew up in the same community as Ali, and Shotgun Houses is her tribute to both the man and the place — an aural history that moves from the warmth and vitality of a thriving neighborhood to a tender ballad, to a quietly powerful reckoning with what time has done to that community. It is storytelling at its finest.

Performing the work will be an exceptional ensemble: Grammy-winning founding member of the Harlem Quartet, violinist Melissa White; violinist Siwoo Kim, praised as "incisive and compelling" by the New York Times; violist Leonid Plashinov-Johnson, laureate of the Primrose International Viola Competition and member of the San Francisco Symphony; clarinetist Shaquille Southwell, Principal Clarinetist of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra; and Concordia's Artistic Director and Grammy-nominated cellist Michelle Djokic.

Tickets are available at concordiaplayers.org/tickets. Students under 18 are always admitted free, with one accompanying adult admitted free per child.