(symphonic music) - So our group is called the Mill Avenue Chamber Players.

We were started in 2008, actually with an entrepreneurial grant from ASU.

We do about 50 concerts a year before the pandemic and have recorded three albums and have had a really great time playing chamber music together.

We actually have spent quite a bit of time playing string quartets.

So, string quartet music was way too difficult for wind instruments as they were, when we first started playing in the orchestra, but now, the technique and the instruments and the virtuosic playing, people can now take a look at music that wasn't accessible to them before.

Mostly because string players don't have to breathe anywhere, so they can just keep rolling forever.

And we like a challenge, so we've done some of those.

And then Tom's being a little bit bashful, but he actually composed two of the pieces that we played tonight.

- Yeah, yeah.

Two of the pieces that we played tonight that I composed are from a larger set of works that I've worked on called the Impressions.

This was the first movement and the last movement.

And the first movement was written for my mother.

She gave us, me and my three brothers, a very happy carefree life.

I wrote that just about, kind of the careless nature of the way that I grew up.

The last movement was written for her mother, my grandmother, and that started because one day she called me and told me to write her a nocturne.

And I was like, yeah, that sounds great.

I can do that, okay.

We try as an ensemble, as a composer, to project a certain mood, and I hope it's somewhere close to where they are when they're listening to the music.

(symphonic music)