Dolce's sweet sounds roam musical landscape

Four-piece ensemble packs along a rich grab bag of styles

SANDPOINT - The cup of yerba mate tea stops in mid-air, interrupted in mid-sip, as composer Rich Beber cradles his cup and ponders the question before him.

How, he was asked, would you describe your new musical group, Dolce?

“I don't know what it is,” he said at last, topping off his cup from a small teapot on the table in front of him. “We do our classical music and then intersperse it with jazz and Latin arrangements.

“When bassoon, cello, clarinet and piano play ‘Night Train' - I don't know what you call it.”

Dolce - a musical term that directs musicians to play “sweetly, softly” - began to come together about 18 months ago when Beber and fellow Pend Oreille Orchestra member Loi Eberle were packing up after a performance by the local group led by Mark and Caren Reiner.

Eberle, a cellist from Bonners Ferry, suggested that they meet informally to read through bassoon and cello duets. The sessions began with Mozart and moved into the Baroque canon, which is chock-a-block with material for two musicians. “There's a lot of Baroque music for almost every instrument,” Beber said. “I guess they just sat around and played all the time back then - they didn't have TV.”

As calls came in for them to play weddings and wine bars, the duo added clarinetist Jeff McLagan to fill out the sound. Herr Mozart came through again when they reached into his trio repertoire as a starting point.

The ensemble followed a creative tangent when pianist and flute player Laura Clark moved back to Sandpoint, at first experimenting with the sounds of Latin music with the current configuration accompanied by piano. But it wasn't until Clark pulled out her flute that the quartet concept really took form.

Once again, it was Mozart who provided the foundation for artistic growth, this time in the form of one of his best-known choral works.

“We took the ‘Kyrie' from his ‘Requiem' because the four-part transposition fits us really well,” Beber said. “The bassoon plays the bass, the tenor part is played by the cello, the alto line is on the clarinet and we put the flute on soprano. And that's what got the Dolce quartet idea going.”

As the ensemble grew, Dolce held on to its “anything goes” approach to making music. In a set that already included classical and Latin favorites, jazz standards and 12-bar blues seemed to slip in without a hitch.

“There are basically no boundaries,” Beber said.

This past weekend, Dolce premiered an original composition in three movements by Beber - his “Quartet for Piano, Clarinet, Cello & Bassoon” - at the “Music for Food” concerts that featured lyric soprano Amy Craven and included a set by the recently formed Swing Street Little Band, all of whom performed at a pair of Flat Hat Productions fundraisers for the Bonner County Community Food Bank.

“The piece I wrote could be considered modern, because it tweaks the listener's ear every once in a while,” the composer said. “I wrote it so that we all would have to stretch a little as musicians.

“That must be the teacher in me,” added Beber, who retired last year from a 35-year career as a band instructor, the last four of which were spent at Clark Fork and Sandpoint high schools.

With his original piece successfully launched, Beber is gearing up to pen a woodwind quartet for the Dolce; even as he is arranging for the performance of what he described as “a substantial piece” he's written for a larger ensemble.

Beber's eyes sparkle from underneath a pair of bushy brows when he talks about the flurry of creativity that led to the completion of these original compositions. He sips his tea and then smiles, recalling a humorous pitfall that comes with riding the wave of inspiration that has kept him glued to his musical scores for the past several months.

“When you get this many pieces going at one time, you have to be careful,” he admonished. “Otherwise, you start stealing melodies from yourself.

“I'll be writing along and think, ‘Wow, that sounds good! But it also sounds - familiar.' ”