A vocalist and string quartet come together in an unlikely pairing

A deep baritone voice, accompanied by a string quartet and pianist, blanketed the audience in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church during a South Coast Chamber Music concert on Sunday, Oct. 13.

The South Coast Chamber Music Series is a series of concerts performed in New England presented by the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra that features classical chamber music.

Janice Weber, who is the artistic director of the South Coast Chamber Music Series, organizes the programs with some input from the musicians and the guest performers.

Each concert series features a guest musician, and at the Oct. 13 performance, the guest was New Bedford native Philip Lima. 

“Philip was the background, the basic spine, the anchor,” Weber said.

Lima started his music career when he was a student in the New Bedford Public Schools.

“When I was in school, they made sure that it was a very rigorous choral and instrumental training program,” Lima said.

Lima credits the New Bedford Public Schools for kick-starting his music career

“That’s where I started,” he said.

Lima started out as an instrumentalist before turning to voice, but in the South Coast Chamber Music Series, the two came together.

“My first instrument was viola, so the fact that we could do that one number that was just viola and voice was amazing,” he said.

Combining a string quartet with a vocalist is not usually seen, according to EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, a violinist in the quartet.

“That’s a rare pairing — string quartet and voice — so it’s really such a treat to play with a vocalist,” she said.

The musicians performed Dover Beach by Samuel Barber, which was specifically written for a quartet and voice, Holmes-Hicks said.

“For my kind of voice, Dove Beach with a string quartet is a must,” Lima said. “I wouldn’t say it’s Mount Everest, but maybe it’s a Kilimanjaro.”

The musicians also played spirituals that Lima already had arranged for voice and string, which he chose to perform because of New Bedford’s abolitionist history, he said.

The concert also featured several pieces that didn’t have a vocal component.

“We tried to put in the program pieces that would give [Lima] a rest and have more varied instrumentation,” Weber said.

All together, the program offered concert goers a wide variety of songs that people don’t often hear in one sitting, said Leo Eguchi, the quartet’s cellist.

“It’s been kind of like a smorgasbord,” he added.

The musicians didn’t start rehearsing as a group until two weeks ago, but now that the concert series has begun they will be playing with each other across New England.

“Most of us live in Providence and Boston, and it’s so nice to come down to the South Shore and play for such a wonderful community,” said Anna Griffis, the quartet’s violist.

The Oct. 13 concert was part of the first concert series of the season and Weber said she expects to see the same people at future performances.

South Coast Chamber Music will return to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Dec. 1, Feb. 2, March 30 and May 4.

“I think most of them have season subscriptions, so they’re a really wonderful, loyal, enthusiastic crowd,” Weber said. “They’re very devoted listeners.”