Frames Advisory Committee Member
Kelly Garrison is director of the Da Camera Society which presents Chamber Music in Historic Sites. Called “undoubtedly the most imaginative, permanent floating concert series in Southern California, if not the nation,” (Applause Magazine), the program has been acclaimed as a model by local critics. “Amid all the local competition, the series that is simply the best – in venues, in consistent quality of performance, in the power to rejuvenate the listener as only live musical events can – is CHAMBER MUSIC IN HISTORIC SITES” (Los Angeles Times). With 21 to 29 concerts each year staged in relatively intimate settings, the Society is both the largest and the smallest presenter of chamber music in the Southland. Their historic-sites programs have included newly-discovered music of the California missions at Mission San Fernando, Marcus Roberts at the Dunbar (a focal point during Central Avenue’s golden age of jazz), music from the court of Louis XIV at a Pasadena “chateau,” a children’s concert of Japanese traditional music at the Aikido Center in Little Tokyo, the great Milt Jackson at Union Station, the Tallis Scholars in an English Gothic-styled church, and Poncho Sanchez at the Mayan Theater.
In addition to enriching the Southern California community with outstanding musical performances celebrating our cultural landmarks, the Society’s mission includes the goal of making a difference in the community by bringing music into the lives of those most in need of its enriching and affirmative powers – low-income and diverse audiences of young people, seniors, the disabled and the disadvantaged.