The title “Roaring Twenties!” does double duty: it marks the Buffalo Chamber Players’ 20th anniversary season, and it signals a program that reaches back to the actual 1920s, when Leoš Janáček was writing some of his most urgent chamber music and Francis Poulenc was emerging as one of the Paris new wave’s most distinctive voices.
About the Show
The ensemble, made up primarily of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra musicians, opens its anniversary season with a program pairing Janáček and Poulenc alongside Franz Schubert and Caroline Mallonee, a living composer whose inclusion reflects the group’s consistent practice of placing classical tradition in conversation with contemporary writing. The juxtaposition of Schubert with those early-20th-century modernists is the kind of programming move the Buffalo Chamber Players have made a signature: rather than offering a survey, they propose a comparison.
Founded in 2007 by BPO violist Janz Castelo de Armas (a Puerto Rico native and Peabody Institute alumnus), the ensemble built its philosophy around something older than the modern concert hall: the coffeehouse model Bach helped establish in early-18th-century Leipzig, where serious music arrived alongside informal conversation and a drink. The group’s first concert featured BPO Music Director JoAnn Falletta as a soloist, a signal of institutional credibility that the Players have kept earning since. That founding ethos has carried them through nearly two decades of Western New York premieres, collaborations with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, and a reputation described as “one of the finest things to happen to the region’s classical scene.” This is their 20th season.
Venue & Logistics
Asbury Hall at Babeville, the anchor venue for this western New York ensemble’s Asbury Hall series, holds 1,200 — on the large side for chamber music, which means the intimacy this repertoire depends on has to be constructed rather than assumed. Doors open at 7 p.m.; music begins at 7:30 p.m. A cash bar is available, and parking is free in the Asbury Hall lot and along Delaware Avenue.
Tickets
General admission is $28 in advance, $32 day of show. Student tickets are $5 at the door with valid ID. A season subscription covering all four Buffalo Chamber Players performances at Asbury Hall — including concerts on March 10, April 14, and May 19, 2027 — runs $100. Tickets are available through Tixr or the Babeville Box Office (Monday–Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; no fee for cash, 3% for credit card). Buy tickets.