Outside threatening storms painted the skies gray above my view of Commencement Bay.  Fighting the mother of all colds, I was feeling decidedly gray and stormy, myself, until I hit the Antique Sandwich Company.  I now believe in the restorative powers of a pot of Plum Passion Tea and great live classical music.

Franko Fontaine and David Hirst, along with the Antique, presented a talented group of five educators (mostly musical) called the King Street Quintet â€" on flute was Anne Carpenter, Ken Brown played Oboe, Ruben Watson played the oboe’s cousin the clarinet, David Cripe played the woodwind grand-daddy bassoon, while Tracy Cripe rounded out the quintet on French Horn.  David Cripe also played a piano for the “Serenade for Flute, Horn and Piano,” and introduced quite a few of the pieces, a task shared with Brown and Watson.

Opening with “Three Shanties,” the quintet reined in the crowd; the Mozart “Quintet in E Flat” put me in a place next to Heaven, while the “Serenade for Flute, Horn and Piano made both my mother in law and me sigh in pleasure, “ahhh, that’s nice.”

Glancing around the crowd, I noted young and old, readers, thinkers, sketchers, and one guy who was either listening intently or falling asleep.

After the intermission, Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (with accompanying narration by fabulously top-hatted and boa-ed Christianson Elementary librarian Danielle Eller, reading Ogden Nash,) captivated many of the kids young and old.  The exception was my own child, who’d grown music weary by this point, and dragged off her grandma, leaving me to enjoy a large hunk of afternoon in peace, with lovely music, and the remains of a pot of tea.  Really, it was my kid’s loss, as the “Tortoises” movement of the carnival included a hilariously slowed down version of the Can-Can, and the finale if the Carnival was none other than the song played in Fantasia 2000, as flamingoes played with yo-yos.  I had to close my eyes and giggle, remembering the film, and revel in the fact that only five musicians were able to fill the space with the breadth of sound that a symphony of musicians created for the Disney film.

The Klughardt piece “Quintet, Op. 79” daunted me, in title and historical time frame; I’m generally accustomed to being irritated by music from the latter part of the 19th century. I like Bach, Handel, Mozart, and their ilk, and I’ve always felt that the grandiose symphonic stuff following those composers has always been sort of large-scale pompous.

When Cripe introduced the Klughardt piece as being “romantic” in the Wagnerian-symphonic sense, I felt this sense of imminent dread.  As it turned out, the piece rocked my world.  It contained the first Andante grazioso I’ve ever found really interesting at first listen-through (Andantes are typically the moderately slow movements filled with emotion; I’m a cold-fish classical music listener, I’m afraid) and the final movement’s Adagio-Allegro molto vivace lived up to it’s descriptive name and had me delighting in rapid-fire, staccato notes peppered throughout the piece. 

The quintet ended on a flapper-esque jazz piece, “You Cannot Shake That “Shimmie” Here."  The extremely patient, polite and adorable young (very young!) man at the table next to mine did shake his bear’s “Shimmie” while Watson’s clarinet wailed and the rhythms of a Jazz era overtook the space, ending on an informally up note.

The intimacy and informality of the Antique served as the perfect classical music backdrop with freedom to nibble, sip, read, and draw, the accessibility of a sometimes intimidating musical form was enhanced.

I studied violin and viola for eight years, and have enjoyed classical music for many more than that.  I thought that I knew what I liked, and what I didn’t.  Today at the Antique, my perceptions were altered, and in the process, I had a simultaneously relaxing and invigorating afternoon.  The Classical Sundays will run through April 1 at 3 p.m., and will include everything from music students and their teachers to guitar, piano, strings, and voice, and many combinations of the aforementioned.  Open contribution is recommended, and the boho ambience and stress reduction services are free. â€" Jessica Corey-Butler