performance, appreciation & education
Our Mission
The rich history and tradition of chamber music reaches back over 300 years. The Second City Chamber Series has built tradition of its own, now celebrating over forty years of outstanding music-making in Tacoma. Over its distinguished history, the Second City Chamber Series has presented more than two-hundred composers, over six-hundred works, and more than three-hundred performers to thousands of audience members.
Throughout this flurry of activity, however, the mission and vision of the Second City Chamber Series has remained constant—to promote live chamber music.
Haeyoon Shin and Kevin Krentz get intimate on the cello
The Second City Chamber Series exists to foster live chamber music in an inter-generational context. Our programs are designed to appeal to young people as well as to their parents in addition to the “traditional” audience of classical music.
Second City Chambers Series’ accomplishes these goals by focusing on performance, appreciation, and education:
Performance: The Second City Chamber Series offers chamber music in year-round concerts that take place at various venues around Tacoma and Pierce County
Appreciation: The Second City Chamber Series reaches out to audiences by inviting them to different interesting venues around the South Puget Sound that have the potential to foster the appreciation of chamber music. For many, concerts are as much about experiencing music in an evocative context as they are about music
Education: The Second City Chamber Series carries on an education program for young people called the Young Chamber Players. The Young Chamber Players are selected by audition and are coached by Second City Chamber Series artists. The students perform each Season on one of the Series’ regular slate of concerts. In addition, conversations with artists, program notes, and thematic programming serve to make all concerts educational experiences for all patrons. The Second City Chamber Series also has a policy of admitting all persons eighteen and under to its concerts free of charge.
ABOUT SECOND CITY CHAMBER SERIES
Natalya Ageyeva
The Second City Chamber Series—Tacoma’s own award-winning producer[1] of professional chamber music concerts—has been dedicated to the quality performance of chamber music masterworks both old and new since its founding by pianists Willa and William Doppmann in 1977. Each year since, the Second City Chamber Series has brought together many of the finest musicians of the Northwest and beyond to perform interesting, challenging, and entertaining chamber music in an artfully assembled series of chamber music programs for audiences around Pierce County, and with a visibility that extends throughout the Puget Sound. Since its inception, the Series has performed at the Great Hall of Annie Wright School, but has since expanded its operation to include concerts in varying venues around Tacoma and Pierce County, among them Lakewold Gardens, First Lutheran Church in Tacoma, and Skyline Presbyterian Chuch where SCCS offers a youth program, open to middle-school and high-school students throughout Pierce County, known as the Young Chamber Players.
Founded by William and Willa Doppmann in 1977 and nurtured by its longtime Artistic Director Jerry Kracht from 1982-2007, Second City Chamber Series concerts often combine well-known works of the classical masters with the less known works from cultures and traditions around the world. This deliberate, artistic combination of the old and the new creates a unique programming tradition that is well-known by audiences in the region and respected by critics. Artistic Director Svend Rønning (2007-present) has continued these traditions, while also creating thematic programming, designed to educate and to entertain.
By promoting awareness and appreciation of chamber music for its listeners and providing a convenient and ready forum for its performers, Second City has truly become first for chamber music in Tacoma.
[1] Unlike many classical music organizations that present traveling artists (who may play the same concert in Seattle, Spokane, New York, and Tacoma, the Second City Chamber Series has a tradition of producing concerts that are individually developed for Tacoma audiences.
OUR FOUNDers
William Doppmann (1934-2003)
Winner of the Naumburg, Michaels and Leventritt Competitions, William concertized in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and the Far East. His performances as recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with major orchestras, including the Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Detroit, Seattle and Tokyo Symphonies, were consistently met with the highest critical praise. “Fanfare” magazine called him an exceptional pianist, one of the great unheralded keyboard artists of the late twentieth-century. He appeared at numerous festivals including Marlboro, Cleveland s Blossom Festival, Ravinia in Chicago, the Hong Kong International Festival, Chamber Music Northwest and the Kuhmo International Festival in Finland. His 1986 New York recital at Lincoln Center was described by the New York Times as one of the most distinctive of the season.
As a composer, Mr. Doppmann received two NEA Consortium Grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the University of Michigan Alumni Citation of Merit, and an ASCAP Annual Award nearly every year from 1993 until his death. In the Northwest he served as Artistic Director of Chamber Music at Port Townsend for twenty-five years and, together with his wife, pianist Willa Doppmann, was co-founder of Tacoma’s Second City Chamber Series.
Mr. Doppmann made recordings for Nonesuch, Delos, Finland’s Kuhmo Festival Recordings, and Albany Recordings. Praise for Four American Piano Sonatas, released by Equilibrium Recordings in 1999, was widespread and was typified by Stuart Hamilton s (CBC) comment: “The performance is profoundly musical, the virtuosity stupefying.”
Mr. Doppmann most recently appeared in recital on the Second City Chamber Series in November, 2011. He passed away from complications of cancer on January 28, 2013 on the island of Hawai’i in the company of his beloved wife, Willa, and their son, Greg.
The Second City Chamber Series honored William “Skip” Doppmann during the 2013-2014 Season with two recitals in the Spotlight Series entitled “Doppmann the Pianist” and “Doppmann the Composer.”
Willa Doppmann (1939-2018)
Willa was Artistic Director of the Second City Chamber Series from 1977 until 1982. She received her formal training at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and also served on the piano faculty there. She later taught piano at Southwest Texas University in San Marcos. Upon returning to her native Pacific Northwest in the mid 1970s she soon figured prominently in many performances of chamber music in the Tacoma area, most notably as co-founder, with her husband, pianist William Doppmann, of the Second City Chamber Series.
Under her leadership the Second City Chamber Series won both the Allied Arts Award for Cultural Achievement and the Tacoma/Pierce County Civic Arts Commission Award for Community Contribution in the Arts. In addition to her chamber music activities, Mrs. Doppmann also appeared locally as piano soloist with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra and the Pacific Lutheran University Symphony Orchestra, and in two-piano performances with her husband. The Second City Chamber Series produced a compact disc recording of the Doppmanns performing works of Rachmaninoff, Lutosławski, Mozart and Debussy and Ravel for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Series in 2002.
Willa Doppman most recently appeared on the Second City Chamber Series in January, 2007, performing “Sessions with Dr. Cyclops,” a work commissioned by the Second City Chamber Series composed by her husband, William Doppmann.
She passed away on November 5, 2018 on the island of Hawai’i in the company of her beloved son Greg and his family.
The Second City Chamber Series honored Willa Doppmann during the 2019-2020 Season in a program entitled “Willa Doppmann and Her Legacy,” performing some of her favorite chamber works as well as a new work composed in her honor by Artistic Director Emeritus Jerry Kracht, “‘Incantation’ on a Poem by Willa Doppmann.”