20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY september 7-13, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com A world-class chamber musician in Monterey County invites listeners to rethink classical music. By Agata Pop˛eda Wu’s World magine an ivory-yellow, single-family home at the top of a hill on a sunny Sunday Spring afternoon. Even getting here—if you are lucky enough to get an invitation to attend a private concert—brings aesthetic pleasure. The neighborhood is Corral de Tierra, green and hilly, with the views of Santa Lucia Range to the south. Clearly, there’s a garden party to be held in the house, sprawling and stately from the outside, built on a steep hill, with other equally impressive mansions to the right and left. The hill and the house are soaked in sunlight, with a few strategically placed trees and garden flowers offering dark green umbrellas of foliage. Drivers, on their best behavior, are gently rolling up the hill to park in an orderly line. People—some dressed up, some carrying plates of food—approach the front door, which is ajar. They follow the directions of the man of the house, Ryan Goodfellow, who is slightly sweating in his blue Sunday shirt, while figuring out logistics and sending incoming food to the kitchen. No time for it now; food is only a dessert here, an afterthought. The main meal is for the ears, and possibly other senses. It is a house concert for up to 50 listeners, all sitting in the same large living room area where on other days, the lady of the house, violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, practices for many consecutive hours. “Give me a good practice space,” she likes to say. “Everybody knows that about me. Even at festivals, you always find me at the practice room.” Today, instead of practice, it is a Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu practicing in the living room of her home in Corral de Tierra. She practices five hours daily, on average, and sometimes twice that much. Photos by Daniel Dreifuss
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