The American String Project

What’s more fun than playing chamber music with friends? Convening a whole orchestra’s worth of friends. Bassist Barry Lieberman is doing that for the eighth year in a row with his American String Project, three concerts featuring top players from the area and across the country. The repertory is mostly string quartets (on Wednesday, Haydn, Shostakovich, and Brahms; Mendelssohn, Janácek, and Dvorák on Friday; Dvorák and Brahms on Sunday), discreetly rearranged by Lieberman to include a bass part for himself, righting the wrong chamber-music composers have done his instrument. The result is pretty much the finest small-orchestra playing Seattle has to offer. (Which should be put at the service of living composers; it’s been said before, but it’s high time the well-established ASP started commissioning works, or at least playing something more recent than 1949.) Benaroya Recital Hall, 200 University St., 292-2787, www.theamericanstringproject.org. $10–$35. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 14-Fri., May 16; 2 p.m. Sun., May 18. GAVIN BORCHERT
Wed., May 14, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., May 16, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., May 18, 2 p.m., 2008