About Ashmont Hill Chamber Music
Our Mission
The mission of Ashmont Hill Chamber Music is to build community through the shared experience of music. We present accessible, affordable, and intimate concerts of the very highest caliber that reflect and celebrate the diversity of our community – both onstage and in the audience – and engage young people in programs that uplift and inspire.
We further our mission by:
- Producing an annual series of musical events featuring some of the world’s most innovative and celebrated artists
- Creating collaborations with Project STEP, the Ashmont Boys Choir, and other organizations that support the music education of young people from all walks of life
- Developing community concert partnerships in order to engage the broadest possible audience
- Providing refreshments after each concert to foster conversation between the audience and artists
- Keeping our ticket prices affordable – and admitting children free of charge
About Ashmont Hill Chamber Music
AHCM grew out of informally organized house concerts in the Ashmont Hill neighborhood of Dorchester starting in the 1970s. Until 2014, these concerts were performed by a resident ensemble.
This format changed with the retirement of our first Artistic Director in 2014 and the appointment of our new Artistic Director. Now, with the exception of the concert series at the Gardner Museum and the Celebrity Series, both high-end presenters, Ashmont Hill Chamber Music is the only organization in Boston that presents world class touring musicians from Boston and beyond.
Recognized artists who have performed recently include the Borromeo, Jupiter, Armida, Parker, Balourdet, Harlem, and Verona Quartets, the Claremont Trio, Merz Trio, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, HUB New Music, pianists George Li and Victor Rosenbaum and Zhu Wang, soprano Jeanine De Bique, bass-baritone Dashon Burton, violinists Tessa Lark, Randall Goosby, Nathan Amaral, Geneva Lewis and Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), celllists Sterling Elliott and Gabriel Cabezas, and tabla maestro Sandeep Das.
Artistic Director – Mary Beth Alger
As the founder and artistic director of the successful Chappaquiddick Summer Music Festival, which she ran for fifteen years, Mary Beth Alger brings to Ashmont Hill Chamber Music Series a wealth of experience in developing exceptional programs of chamber music with world renowned artists. The series also garnered her praise for the personal connection she established with her audiences and the greater community. The series was profitable for all 15 years.
Ms. Alger was also president of the Board of Directors of the Hingham Symphony Orchestra (now the Atlantic Symphony), a board member of the Janus 21 Chamber Music Series based at the Longy School in Cambridge, and a development associate at the South Shore Conservatory.
When she is not involved in the world of classical music, Ms. Alger teaches art history at Bridgewater State University, where she loves to explore connections between the visual arts and music.
Board of Directors
John Young, Interim President, Treasurer
Margaret Mack, Clerk
Arthur Bowen
Sara Eisenman
Thomas McCarthy
Katalin Mitchell
Anne Seligsohn
Christopher Walter
Advisory Board
John Berg
David R. Godine
Hilary Hoge
Joan Moynagh
Florence Rawls
History of Ashmont Hill Chamber Music
The seeds for Ashmont Hill Chamber Music were planted as for back as 1973 with a house concert ar 86 Ocean Street, on Ashmont Hill in Dorchester. This first concert included works by Beethoven, Janacek and Ravel, performed by pianist Henry Shapiro, cellist Susan Salm, and violinist Masako Yanagita, all from New York. Held in the home of Norman Janis, the concert drew its audience from neighbors and friends. Audience participation was enthusiastic and tremendously supportive, and a pattern was set that would continue with outstanding musical house concerts over the next twelve years.
In addition to drawing on acclaimed musicians from afar, many of the early concert programs also included talented neighbors. Christmas concerts saw a local men and boys’ choir from All Saints Parish singing as they stood on the beautiful grand staircases of Victorian houses. Concerts included the Codman Square Bell ringers, A violinist with the Boston Symphony and a singer with the Opera Company of Boston. All together there were more than twenty house concerts since that first one in 1973.
The informal house concerts came about largely through the Ashmont Hill Neighborhood Association, which held monthly meetings. There musicians in the neighborhood met people who wanted to hear music.
In May 1978, Rachel Goodwin, Artistic Director Emeritus, performed at one of the house concerts when she moved to Boston, and continued to give concerts and lecture recitals in her home over the next three decades. She founded the organization Ashmont Hill Chamber Music in 1985. The organization began to recruit chamber musicians from the Boston area to perform in Dorchester so that the great tradition of chamber music in the neighborhood would continue. The organization planned a series of four concerts for its first year and has continued this practice to the present day. Callled “Ashmont Hill Chamber Music”, the organization was incorporated on July 2, 1985, and received non-profit status on January 17, 1986.
A Special Concert Memory
Violinist Randall Goosby with Project STEP violist Nathan Theodore, performing the Rondeau from Mozart’s Duet No. 1 in G major for violin and viola, from our concert on February 13, 2022.
