Pictured, from left, are Marian Byard, Joanna Nordland, Katie Ferrie, Mandy Andrews, and Carrie Hayes. Amanda Andrews and Katie Ferrie recently launched the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble and achieved nonprofit status, providing free and unique concerts for the Jamestown community to enjoy. Submitted photos

A new musical ensemble is hoping to provide a unique concert experience for the Jamestown community.

The Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble was recently launched by directors Amanda Andrews and Katie Ferrie.

“We started this year and we officially have our nonprofit status as of Sept. 21,” Andrews said. “We are trying to do a kind of non-traditional but traditional type of ensemble. Jamestown doesn’t really have anything like this.”

Ferrie explained the ensemble is the “next step up” from a community orchestra; however, it enjoys more flexibility than a traditional chamber orchestra or a symphony orchestra. The Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble provides a different musical offering than other groups in Jamestown. Members are also only required to make short term commitments.

“It’s something different we can offer,” Ferrie said. “We’re all busy, we have families, we have other jobs. We’re all very active musicians and this allows us to be able to play a concert, but if we’re busy the next one, there’s always another chance to jump in, so it’s not a set in stone schedule for anybody.”

By operating through a non-traditional ensemble structure, Andrews and Ferrie said they are able to invite friends and colleagues they have worked with before to be a part of short-term commitments and perform music that is not often heard in traditional ensembles.

Having performed music together over the years, Andrews and Ferrie said they decided to start their own ensemble in Jamestown because “there’s really nothing like this” in the area. While the two directors are used to traveling for musical performances, they decided to embark on a mission this year to bring their musical experience to their own community.

While the idea of the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble only originated in March, the group has already had success and accomplished one of its major goals.

“We achieved one of our biggest goals, which was achieving nonprofit status,” Andrews said.

The ensemble practices and performs its concerts at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jamestown. Andrews said the goal is to perform about eight concerts each year for the community.

“That’s a pretty ambitious number of concerts, especially for a new ensemble,” Ferrie said. “Mandy and I have literally an entire notebook full of pieces we’d love to play and programs we’d love to do. Our big problem is picking and choosing and settling on one idea or another, so along with having as many as eight concerts in a season, we’re taking programs that are very different.”

Although ensembles are traditionally known for performing classical music, the Chadakoin River Ensemble is planning to perform a variety of musical genres. The ensemble’s first concert was in August, and featured classical compositions; however, the ensemble quickly differentiated itself from other groups through a unique Halloween concert earlier this month and is planning another unique concert experience in November.

“Our very first concert was probably the most traditional, classical thing we’re doing the entire year,” Ferrie said. “We’re doing a big event coming up on November 4 called Autumn Musical Tapas.”

The ensemble is partnering with Music for Your Mouth, a restaurant in Mayville that is one of the group’s sponsors for the November concert. The concert will feature a string quartet and will give attendees the chance to enjoy a reception hosted by Music for Your Mouth at St. Luke’s following the performance. Ferrie said that while the ensemble’s concerts are always free and open to the public, the reception for November’s concert will require advanced registration.

The Autumn Musical Tapas concert will feature music from different genres.

“We’re not playing anything classical on the whole program,” the directors said. “We’re playing music from movies, music from a show that’s on Netflix right now, we’re playing the Latin dances and we’re even playing Jimi Hendrix and Queen.”

Andrews and Ferrie hope the ensemble will be able to make a positive impact on the community by providing a wide-range of concert experiences throughout the year.

“We’re hoping that we can have a really good impact because classical music is kind of hard to find around here,” Andrews said. “We’re just hoping to add to that and offer more of a variety and reach a wider range of individuals. I think educationally, it will be really interesting for the community having that variety of things that we’re playing.”

With the recent designation of the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble as a nonprofit organization, the group hopes to take advantage of grant opportunities that could provide resources to sustain the group for many years.

“We would really like to be able to pay our players well and hopefully break even,” Ferrie said. “We’ve done everything out of pocket. Paying the musicians properly is a big deal to Mandy and I. We don’t care if we ever get paid to do this, but we want to work with musicians that can really play their instruments, people that have spent their entire lives working towards it.”

Andrews and Ferrie want the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble to be a long-term group that can continue to grow and provide musical offerings for the community. By utilizing their nonprofit status for potential grant opportunities, both directors hope to take care of their members and keep their concerts free for the public.

“We’re trying to be an ensemble that cares about the players as much as we care about donations and grants,” Ferrie said.

Apart from the non-traditional structure of the ensemble and the variety of musical genres performed by the ensemble, the group is also unique for its arrangement of musical compositions. While most ensembles feature the violin as the leading instrument, Andrews and Ferrie play the viola and the cello, forcing them to create fresh arrangements for the musical pieces performed at their concerts.

“We take music that isn’t necessarily written for our instruments,” they said. “We take things and we arrange them to fit different instrumentation. While it might be a piece people know, they’re going to hear it very differently.”

As the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble prepares for its November concert, the group also is utilizing the livestream technology at St. Luke’s to provide the community with an alternative way of viewing the concert if they are not able to attend in-person. The ensemble’s first two concerts have been livestreamed and are available on YouTube. Andrews and Ferrie said the groups has already started receiving increased support online.

“People are starting to become aware of us which is really great,” they said. “Even if people can’t be there in person to show support, it’s nice to see that people are still looking for us online.”

After accomplishing so much in a short period of time, the Chadakoin Chamber Ensemble is looking forward to a bright future in the Jamestown area. As the ensemble continues to expand, the directors said increasing their budget through grants and donations will be a top priority.

“It took off like crazy and we’ve done a huge amount of work in a few short months,” they said. “We have a million ideas, so getting grants to continue these endeavors would phenomenal. We dream way bigger than we have the time or the budget for. It would be nice to be able to have the means to continue to do this.”