Copious Notes

Jonathan, Aaron, Margie and Benjamin Karp on a hike during a family vacation in Tucson. Photos by James K. Bashkin.

The Chamber Music Society of Central Kentucky will pull off quite a feat Sunday afternoon: It will get the Karp ­family together at one time.

For years, the busy Karps have enjoyed individually prominent roles in Lexington music. Dad Benjamin is a cello professor at the University of ­Kentucky, a soloist and chamber ­musician in the area, and he is an ­adjunct professor at Indiana University. Mother Margie is the assistant concertmaster for the Lexington Philharmonic; is on the ­adjunct faculty at UK, teaching violin and viola; and is a chamber musician.

Before going to ­Washington University in St. Louis, older son ­Jonathan was the ­concertmaster of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras’ ­Symphony Orchestra. Younger son Aaron, a junior in the math, science and ­technology program at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, was the principal ­violist in the ­Kentucky All-State Orchestra.

Occasionally, the Karps join forces as a string quartet, as at the Chamber Society’s annual Chamber Players of Central Kentucky concert, featuring area musicians. The Karps will play the first ­movement of Felix ­Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 and Dmitri ­Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8.

Margie says the Shostakovich was her sons’ idea. “Both of them just love that piece. Both of them have played parts of it before with different quartets with CKYO and different groups. Then we went to see the Emerson String Quartet at Centre College last year, where they played that, and they said, ‘We have to play that.’”

It will continue a familial collaboration that dates to days when Jonathan was just starting to play violin and Aaron would sit on the floor and bang on a drum.

Neither child was exactly a musical prodigy. Benjamin says their instruments took a fair share of abuse, including fingerboards that had to be glued back on. But they were born into a family where music is a natural part of life.

Read the rest of this entry »