Musicians who stick to the script

The Oregon Coast Symphony Festival continues its free Sunday chamber music series with a performance by Trio Musicorum Medicorum and the Cherry City String Quartet at Atonement Lutheran Church in Newport this Sunday, March 15.

The trio features Rebecca Reese on cello, Andrew Bonner on piano and Newport Symphony violinist Alistair Kok. It takes its name from the musicians’ careers outside the concert hall, as each member also works in the medical field in the Portland area: Kok as a dentist, Bonner as a naturopath and Reese as a physician specializing in cranial osteopathy and homeopathy.

Although the group has performed together for several years, each musician has built a distinguished career individually. Bonner holds music degrees from Harvard and Brandeis universities and also studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. Kok grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, and holds degrees from Virginia Tech, the Ohio State University College of Dentistry and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout New England, Ohio and Virginia and joined the Newport Symphony as a core member and first violinist after moving to Portland in 2015. Reese studied cello at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Denver, taught at the University of Alaska and later worked as a freelance musician in Los Angeles, performing with orchestras and chamber ensembles and recording music for film and television.

The trio will perform Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Trio in E-flat Major.”

Opening the concert will be the Cherry City String Quartet, a group of Salem-area high school musicians featuring Ai Nguyen and Audrey Howard on violins, Zoe Ditzel on viola and Elena Harchanko on cello. The quartet will perform three movements from Antonín Dvořák’s “String Quartet No. 12, Op. 96,” known as the “American.”

The chamber music series is presented by the Oregon Coast Youth Symphony Festival. Admission is free, with donations accepted at the door. Nonperishable food items will also be collected for the Newport Food Pantry.

Sunday’s concert begins at 2 pm at Atonement Lutheran Church, located at 2315 N Hwy. 101 in Newport. For more information, go to youthsymphonyfestival.org.