WICKER PARK — Would you like some Mozart with your rhubarb and perhaps a quieter Sunday experience than a Ribfest or dueling art fests?
A free classical music concert by the Symphony Sounds Quartet is scheduled Sunday until 12:30 p.m. and will coincide with the Wicker Park Farmers Market, 1500 N. Damen Ave.
Returning to the park for a fourth season to present the first of a three-part "Second Sundays" concert series, the members of the quartet will perform in "Schiller Grove," by the corner of Damen Avenue and Schiller Street near the chess tables, just south of the Farmers Market vending booths.
Symphony Sounds members are: violinists Matthew Cataldi and Julia Birnbaum , violist Ryan Loeckel, and cellist Sarah Marsh.
Sunday's concert will explore the theme of "Whimsy" using excepts from compositions written by Haydn (1781, "The Joke"), Mozart (1791, "The Magic Flute Overture"), and Strauss (1874, "The Laughing Song from Die Fledermaus").
In addition to works by classic composers, the quarter will also play a 2004 composition, "String Quartet #2" by the very modern composer, Marc Mellits.
In program notes published in Our Urban Times, Mellits describes his composition's three movements as being influenced by imaginary machinery inspired by trains, the melodic music from children's toys, and lastly, a communist Patriotic song, which Mellits said he "warped and changed to find the beauty within the ugly."
In addition to Sunday's concert, which is presented by the Wicker Park Advisory Council and the Wicker Park Garden Club in partnership with the Chicago Park District with funding from the Special Service Area taxing district #33 and several community groups, the quartet will present two other Sunday concerts from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the following dates: July 14 (theme of "Death") and August 11 (theme of "Jazz").
For more information, including musician bios, visit wickerpark.org.
