WALDOBORO — Cellist April Reed-Cox and pianist Matthew Mainster will perform a program of cello and piano on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 4, at 4 p.m., 2023, at Broad Bay Congregational Church, 941 Main Street in Waldoboro. The music will range from the Baroque to the Neo-Classic and Romantic. As Matthew Mainster says, “This is music you could lose yourself in, played in this church where the sound expands and resonates.”

Together, they will play the Adagio and Allegro movements of Sonata No. 6 in A Major by Luigi Boccherini, the 18th c. cello virtuoso famous for his warm and elegant compositions. Then, they will follow with the Shostakovich Cello Sonata Opus 40 (1934), a piece that starts sonorously, full of lyricism, and builds to a frenzied end.

Solo, April Reed-Cox will play the Suite No. 3 for Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Today the cello suites are thought to be the pinnacle of solo musical expression, with the third suite as the most sensuous of the six, according to Broad Bay, in a news release. But they had largely disappeared until a young Pablo Casals discovered and recorded them in 1936.

Solo, Matthew Mainster will play Handel’s Minuet (as romanticized by Wilhem Kempff), which Mainster describes as being “utterly transporting for such a simply, haunting melody.” He’ll follow it with a piece by Luke Faulkner, a British composer about his same age.

He selected “Dance of the Shadows” because, he explains, “It struck me as the perfect pairing with the Shostakovich from the moment I heard it because they share a similar aura. But where Shostakovich’s sonata explores “shadows” with tumultuous complexity, this short piece takes a more impressionist line. To put it another way, Shostakovich is in the trenches while Faulkner’s spinning around a ballroom by candlelight!”    

April Reed-Cox has been playing the cello since she was four years old. She graduated college at 20 as a performance major, got her MA, and immediately joined the Greenville (SC) Symphony Orchestra. These days she plays for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. She has also played with numerous folk artists and groups. She was a key and founding member of the Ale House String Band. She records and has been featured on over fifteen albums). Lastly, she teaches at Bay Chamber Music School.

Matthew Mainster graduated from Yale in 2010 with degrees in organ and piano. He won several prestigious competitions for the organ, including the 2007 Violette Cassel Organ Competition. These days he performs, accompanies others, teaches at Bay Street Chamber School and is the Director of the First Congregational Church in Camden. In addition, he’s the author of the Giggleswick series for young adults, books that evolved from the doodles he would draw on the back of musical compositions.

The concert is free to the community and donations are accepted.  

This concert is the third of the Church’s four concerts this autumn. Vocalist and guitarist Erasmus More (Joe Cough) with his wife, Lindsay Cough, will conclude the series with a concert of the music of winter, Christmas and the holidays, Sunday afternoon, Nov. 26, at 4 p.m.

Broad Bay Congregational Church United Church of Christ is an open and affirming congregation.