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?

Live professional chamber music is one of the most cost-efficient ways to make beauty audible and known. The proximity our concerts offer and the tools we provide allow our audience to open their hearts to be touched by that beauty. We start by correcting mistaken assumptions about chamber music:

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?

Time, beauty and proximity.

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 since in our digital age, the economics of music have been driven by the number of clicks, contemporary music has given up that role, especially when digitalized. Live classical chamber music concerts is where string quartet converse about the nature of time, and is sorely needed today.

Beauty: “The most fundamental aesthetic value, which calls us, just in perceiving it, to have profound joy, to be elevated to what is transcendent, and to have reverence. Beauty is a primordial phenomenon–that is, it must be perceived to be known; it cannot be adequately explained or analyzed in terms of some other set of properties. It is also an objective property of things, and in particular, it is a property of every value: it is the enjoyable appearance or “face” of every value, its privileged manifestation.” (from the Glossary of the Hildebrand Project). Classical composers have been making beauty known to those who experience their music. This is a contemporary need.

Throughout history, much of this time and beauty was becoming known through the efforts of church musicians presenting concerts accessible to all, beyond their congregation. Public libraries often complemented this effort in the 20th century. Nowadays, few churches can support a musical staff able to address both their internal liturgical needs, and concerts of beautiful music for their larger community. We provide a sustainable outreach alternative to these churches, sharing the costs of presenting concerts between different venues, with professional musicians delivering a very high quality of chamber music. Libraries can benefit as well too, with a different cost-sharing structure. We see churches and libraries as our partners in offering proximity and accessibility.

FOUNDERS: ALICJA and HERVÉ BLANQUART