Musicians Rebecca Rust and Friedrich Edelmann returned to Skyline’s theater October 20 to perform several pieces before heading back to Germany.
The couple, who have been married and performing together for 36 years, performed from 11:00 to around 12:30. They played mostly duets and one solo by Rust. This the second time the couple has performed for Skyline, having first performed around the same time last year.
Rebecca Rust and Friedrich Edelmann are world-renowned musicians who have performed concerts all over the world including Europe, Africa, Japan, China, and Israel, as well as here in the Bay Area.
“We have played in San Francisco at Old First Concerts and at the Jewish Community Library,” says Edelmann. “We played at UC Davis, at Rossmoor, in Danville, and other places of the Bay Area. These were all regular concerts.”
Rust herself was born in Concord and later moved to Germany with her husband.
“We met in a European orchestra in Belgium,” Rust says. “We were all students from 22 different countries and then I went back to New York. I finished my studies, and eventually ended up in Germany.”
According to the couple, one of the reasons they willingly came back wasn’t just for the joy of performing, but for the chance to perform for the young minds in attendance.
The students in attendance during the Skyline performance were mostly from the music department, the most notable being from Jude Navari’s choir class.
After the performance, the couple had a Q and A segment in which the students asked them various questions, personal and professional.
At one point, a student asked Rust what her favorite piece to work on was. Rust answered by stating that she enjoys playing any given one at any given time, and that on average her favorite is whichever she’s working on at the time.
The couple came back to Skyline at the request of Barbara Daley, who had worked together with Navari to set up the event.
“Jude Navari and I worked together to get a grant, which was through our division dean Donna Bestock,” says Daley. “And there’s a special fund for certain events such as this one. We wouldn’t usually have money for special events like this.”
In addition to having a hand in helping setting up the event, Daley also got the couple to perform last year when they first met in the Skyline library.
“Last year they came to the library where I just happened to meet them because they came in to find a poetry book,” says Daley. “That’s how we discovered each other, as they came in looking for an English translation of a Greek poem that they needed for a performance.”
It was then that Barbara asked if they could play here, and they agreed. The two of them were touring the area at the time, and just happened to drop by the Skyline library. Daley believes that were it not for that book, they probably would never have met and performed here.
