Late last month the U.S. Census Bureau released new numbers that showed that 29.1 percent of Rochester residents live below the poverty level.  That kind of statistic usually galvanizes lawmakers, ministers, and social workers. Now it seems to be moving classical musicians, too. For the first time locally, professional classical players are working together with volunteers in a sustained, long-term effort to help the city's poorest residents.

The First Muse Chamber Music series at Rochester's First Unitarian Church will offer regular concerts featuring players from top-notch groups such as the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Two things make this an unusual series: first, ticket prices are unusually low ($5-$10 per concert), and second, 25 percent of the ticket revenues from each performance will go toward supporting the congregation's social ministries. Proceeds from the next concert will help a group working to ease the problems of hunger, housing, and homelessness.

"I feel I'm really fortunate to be where I am," says Melissa Matson, principal violist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She started the First Muse series last year after an experience working as a volunteer with elementary children at Rochester's Lincoln School No. 22.

"Classical musicians sometimes get into a protective cocoon," Matson says. "Tutoring kids in reading and math, I could see improvement week after week. I felt like I was helping."

Matson donates her services as the artistic director and a performer in the First Muse series. The concerts are run by volunteers. Last season, performances benefited the church's Hunger, Housing, and Homelessness Task Force and the UU/Schools Partnership, a group of volunteers that tutors and raises money for city school supplies and field trips to places such as the Strong National Museum of Play.

Matson knows what it's like to receive an unexpected gift.

One day, about 10 years ago, she stepped onto an elevator at the Eastman School and found herself face to face with now-retired composer Verne Reynolds. Having just heard the premiere of his new cello sonata, written for cellist Bob Taylor, she teased the composer on the elevator, asking when he would get around to writing a viola piece for her.

About a year later, when Matson married Taylor, Reynolds and his wife, Shirley, stopped by her house with a wedding gift. When they arrived, the composer's wife gave her a golden gazing globe for her garden. Then Reynolds handed Matson a red folio.

In it was a new viola sonata, written especially for her.

"They were driving out of the driveway and I was pulling out my viola to start to play," Matson says with a laugh. "There was something thrilling about being the first person to open those pages, to see Verne's handwritten music notation, and to put bow to string, being the first to hear the phrases and colors of his imagination."

In three parts, the sonata marries virtuosic playing with long, melodic lines. In the last movement, "Velocity," the viola and piano bubble along together with astonishing precision, sustaining three minutes of near-perpetual motion. It's clear that Reynolds, a French horn player and founding member of the Eastman Brass, possesses an innate sense of how to write for the viola, which has roughly the same range.  In a letter tucked into the score, he wrote that he sought to display several qualities of the viola "from lonely melancholy to exuberant virtuosity."

"Reynolds has this really satisfying sense of phrase, with large, lyrical intervals," Matson says. "I just love the way it fits the instrument."

Matson premiered Reynolds' Sonata for Viola and Piano in 1999, and she'll perform it again September 14 in the First Muse series, with pianist Barry Snyder. In addition to the Reynolds sonata, audience members will hear Zoltan Kodaly's Duo for Violin and Cello performed by RPO violinist David Brickman and cellist John Haines-Eitzen. All of the musicians will join together to play Antonin Dvorak's energetic and rarely heard Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major. 

Future First Muse concerts will feature music by Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms (February 8), and RPO flutist Joanna Bassett and guitarist Shiuen-Huang Tzeng on Franz Schubert's lush Quartet for Flute, Guitar, Viola, and Cello (May 3).

Mary Lyubomirsky, who coordinates music and arts programs at First Unitarian, says church members are happy to host the First Muse series.

"When you realize all you have," she says, "it's natural to look outward and see needs greater than your own. We have so much abundance."

Matson agrees. "Music should be a muse for everybody," she says.

First Muse: ChamberMusic @ RochesterUnitarian

First Unitarian Church of Rochester, 220 S Winton Rd

Sunday, September 14

7:30 p.m. | $5-$10 | 271-9070, rochesterunitarian.org