Network for New Music will continue its 40th anniversary season programming, “40 at 40,” with the concert “Companions” honoring Richard Wernick, Feb. 21, at the newly renamed Peter Benoliel Germantown Branch of Settlement Music School. The concert’s program focuses on the composer’s “duo for cello and piano,” but new commissions by Ingrid Arauco, David Crumb, Yinam Leef, Philip Maneval, Jay Reese and one mystery composer also will be performed.

 All of the composers were once students of Wernick, who was a longtime teacher at the University of Pennsylvania and who also served as contemporary music consultant to The Philadelphia Orchestra during the tenure of music director Riccardo Muti. Performers will include cellist Thomas Kraines and pianist Charles Abramovic. As an added attraction, the program also includes premieres by TJ Cole and Mt. Airy native, Eliza Brown.

 Brown’s work, “Switch Sides,” is scored for piccolo/flute, clarinet, electric guitar, violin, viola cello, and double bass. The work frequently changes moods and timbres, taking the audience on a journey in which the traditional rules of music-making are challenged.

 Artistic Director Thomas Schuttenhelm explained, “A lot of people will associate Wernick’s name with his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece, “Visions of Terror and Wonder” (1977), but most have never heard it because there isn’t a commercial recording available. I first came to know his name and his music through my own instrument, the guitar. I remember hearing Wernick’s “Da-ase” (1996) on an album called “Newdance,” curated and performed by David Starobin.”

 He continued, “On this concert, we are excited to feature Tom Kraines and Charlie Abramovic – two incredible interpreters of Wernick’s music. Most recently Tom performed Nick’s “Suite No. 3 for Solo Cello” with Network, May 7, 2023. Charlie played his ‘Third Piano Sonata,’ January 21, 2021, in celebration of his 87th birthday. It was on this same concert that they performed the ‘Scherzetto’ from his ‘duo for cello and piano.’” 

 The concert honoring Richard Wernick will be at 7:30 p.m.  The Peter Benoliel Germantown Branch of Settlement Music School is at 6128 Germantown Ave. in Northwest Philadelphia. Visit networkfornewmusic.org.

 Jasper Chamber Concerts

 Jasper Chamber Concerts will present its next recital Thursday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, 20 East Mermaid Lane, Chestnut Hill. The program features String Quartets by Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and Grazyna Bacewicz. 

Visit jasperchamberconcerts.com for ticket information.

 Filament Baroque

 The Baroque instruments ensemble, Filament, will present a concert, Feb. 7, featuring music drawn from the salon of Anne Louise Brillon. She was a brilliant harpsichordist and was the frequent hostess to Benjamin Franklin when he worked as the newly independent United States’ ambassador to the Court of King Louis XVI in Paris. Filament is led by John Walthausen, organist and music director of the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown.

 The concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catherine St. in Queen Village. For ticket information visit filamentbaroque.com.

 Trio Excelsior! At Woodmere

 Chestnut Hill’s Woodmere Art Museum continued its series of “Classical Saturdays” Jan. 25 with Trio Excelsior! in a program of music by Anton Arensky and Astor Piazzolla. The recital drew an audience that overflowed Woodmere’s Rotunda, one of the region’s most beautiful and resonant concert venues.

 “Trio Excelsior! is comprised of pianist Marja Kaisla, cellist Elina Snellman-Lang and violinist Yevgeniy Dyo. Although relatively newly formed, they played with an astounding level of flawless ensemble, immaculate tuning and unshakeable balance.

 Although Arensky’s Trio in D minor is not quite an unimpeachable masterpiece, it assuredly deserves more notice from piano trios than it receives. Its four movements are well formed in the traditional structures of the romantic piano trio, it expresses deeply felt emotions convincingly developed, and it offers its players ample opportunities to express themselves.

 That’s precisely what Kaisla, Snellman-Lang and Dyo accomplished Saturday afternoon for their appreciative audience. They played with bracing precision, scintillating rhythmic dazzlement, shimmering timbres and explosive expressivity.

 After intermission, they offered proof that Antonio Vivaldi wasn’t the only composer to sketch a musical portrait of the seasons. “Master of the Tango” Piazzolla proffered his own “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” and Trio Excelsior! brought it to a local audience in style.

 ‘Jubilate!’

 Germantown’s Richard Raub conducted “Jubilate!,” the Academy of Vocal Arts’ annual concert of sacred vocal music Saturday evening, Jan. 25, at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr. Presiding over a bevy of AVA’s talented budding opera singers and the AVA Opera Orchestra, he proffered a survey of some of the most beautiful sacred vocal music from a repertoire ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi through Felix Mendelssohn and Ralph Vaughan Williams to West Chester’s own Samuel Barber. Both the singing and the playing were superb.

 You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.