Dock Street Theatre, Charleston
June 8 & 9, 2018

St Lawrence String Quartet violinist Geoff Nuttall is now in his ninth year as director, curator and host of Sopleto’s chamber music program, a format that sees a wealth of American and international talent perform 11 programs, three times each, over the two-and-a-half weeks of the festival. Nuttall’s boundless enthusiasm is pretty infectious, and he functions as both gifted musical partner and ebullient emcee. Bite size concerts, morning and afternoons, weigh in at an hour and a quarter and go down easily thanks to savvy programming and world-class musicians.

Peter Moore, Doug Balliett and Todd Palmer. Photo © William Struhs

My first featured a pair of songs by Rachmaninov, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and music by Doug Balliet, this year’s composer-in-residence who also happens to be a double bassist and writer with a weekly show on New York Public Radio (multitasking is clearly a must at Spoleto). Not only did we get the world premiere of Balliet’s quirky Fanfare for Trombone, Double Bass and Bass Clarinet once, Nuttall bounded onstage afterwards and commanded a repeat performance and a second aural bite of a fairly toe-tapping morsel....