Our Mission is to make chamber music more accessible

• By presenting professional chamber music concerts with free admission,
• by choosing repertoire that tells the story of this art form, and
• by giving “listening keys” so any audience member can be prepared for optimal appreciation.

Our Vision is local and professional.

Many professional classical musicians live in the Long Beach and surrounding communities. It is possible to bring people together to provide opportunities for shared experiences of music, fostering education and unity. UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL can be the recognizable name where professional musicians share the chamber music they love while being fairly paid for their skills and preparation. 

UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL is a fiscally-sponsored affiliate of InterMusic SF, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music. (EIN 94-3298643)

Question or comment? Call Hervé at 626 278 0786 or email upcloseandclassical@gmail.com .

How we started?

In 2023, Alicja and Hervé Blanquart started organizing chamber music concerts with free admission in both San Pedro and Long Beach, in churches, under the dba UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL (UCC), with an initial $5000 loan and a dedicated bank account. UCC became in April 2025 a fiscally-sponsored affiliate to IntermusicSF, a non-profit organization specializing in small-ensemble music, received a grant from the Colburn Foundation and sponsorship from the Port of Long Beach. This support has allowed UCC to present 37 concerts with free admission to a cumulated audience of 2,265 as of June 2026. We are planning 32 concerts for an expected audience of 3,200 in 2026-27.

What is the impact of our work?

The proximity our concerts offer and the listening keys we provide are transforming our audience’s perception of chamber music in three ways:

1- Wordless music is not “background”, it is meaningful. This meaning is accessible through active listening.

2- Chamber music is not “long”. Musical form is realized in time. Mankind has always used music to understand time.

3- In chamber music, vulnerability is cherished. Musical ensembles are small by choice. When the power of technology seems limitless, live chamber music reconnects us with the vital need humans have to make music with instruments, proven by a 40,000-year history.

This reconnection happens in thousands of individual ways thanks to our concerts

What needs do we address?

In the 4th century, St Augustine wrote: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I do not know”. Since he wrote his Confessions, music has often been preferred to words to discuss the nature of time. But most people have not benefited from such discussion for the last 100 years. Despite Henri Bergson’s powerful argument using music to demonstrate that Albert Einstein’s notion of spacetime was incomplete, in their famous 1922 debate, time has since been widely misunderstood as homogeneous, and musical tastes have evolved in new ways, for example to value a predictable beat over flowing rhythm. Goethe described a string quartet as “four intelligent people conversing with one another”. The true nature of time is always a subject of such conversations. For example, as Bergson explained to Einstein, the nature of simultaneity is obvious to a trained listener appreciating musical counterpoint. The speed of light is irrelevant to such knowledge, made accessible through music. Good conversations have rhythm, not a predictable beat. They happen “up close”, and classical music shows how seemingly incompatible ideas can simultaneously be beautiful, and foster peace. We need more such conversations in our 21st century!

FOUNDERS: ALICJA and HERVÉ BLANQUART