Ensemble d’Accord was founded six years ago in an Oak Park living room. Pianist Mary Ann Krupa Stickler says, “We were originally a trio–flute, oboe, and piano–of women who’d gone to American Conservatory together. Two of us were married and had very small children, and we were not playing anymore because children take up too much time. The oboist was doing symphonic work and missed doing the small stuff. We got together just to play, just to remind ourselves that we were still musicians, just to keep up our skills. Then we started doing small jobs, like wedding receptions. We decided to do a ‘big concert,’ just for fun. Then things just sort of ballooned.”
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For their big concert at the American Conservatory, the trio added Rhodes, a bassoonist, and a French horn. Eventually they became part of the respected Unity Temple concert series. “Some of it was because we really were good, we really did play well, they liked our choice of music,” Krupa says. “And some of it was that we were all women–‘Oh, isn’t that neat!’ We’re personable, we talk to the audience–we’ve always done repertory that the audience was not familiar with, so we talk about it. It made us quite unique.”
“Our rehearsals used to be hysterical because of the kids,” Krupa recalls. “When Carla [Krupa’s daughter, now six] was a year and a half old, she’d be there in her walker all during the rehearsal. We’d have a box of Cheerios at the piano, and we’d keep throwing Cheerios to her just to get through a movement. Sometimes we’d have screaming kids. And when they’d get a little bigger, they’d want to sit at the piano with you, they’d want to help. We used to have to bring a baby-sitter to the concert to watch the kids–between three women, we had seven of them.”
“The personality thing got to be real tough–some of them were not married and had no children, and had a real hard time coping with having kids around. We try to rehearse late at night now and send the kids up to bed–my kids can sleep through anything, Hindemith, Brahms–but we couldnt get rid of them all the time. So we ended up with people who are not bothered by kids.” There is something about the sound of the oboe, Krupa reports, that makes small children cry.
Bright, witty, and fun is in fact a fair description of the typical Ensemble d’Accord concert. The members’ intelligent commentary and their generally superb playing make their concerts something more than the usual stuffy chamber-music affair. WFMT recently booked them for the 1990 series of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts.
