Giving Bach: Youth orchestra to offer charity concert in Lake Worth Beach
Camerata di Magdalena will perform Baroque classics Feb. 7 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church to raise money to feed the homeless
A group of young musicians is coming to downtown Lake Worth Beach next weekend for a special gig. But they won’t be jamming at the Bamboo Room or Propaganda.
Made up mostly of teenagers, Camerata di Magdalena is not your typical teen music group.
The 19 musicians, ranging in age from 10 to 18, are part of a string orchestra with a dual mission: Performing music from the Baroque period (1600-1750) and raising money to feed homeless people in Broward County.
You can catch the Camerata’s next performance Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church at 100 N. Palmway in Lake Worth Beach.
It’s free and open to the public, with a suggested donation to benefit the Holy Grill of St. Nicholas, a mobile food truck based in Pompano Beach. Reservations are suggested. Click here to reserve a seat.
It’s something you won’t want to miss, said Margot Emery, managing director of The Core Ensemble, a performance group that helps provide cultural events for the church.
“We present the Camerata annually because they are delightful, talented and working to preserve a great artistic tradition,’’ she said.
The ensemble’s fourth performance at St. Andrew’s will be led by two concert masters from Broward County, one a seventh-grader, the other a 10th-grader. It will include a performance of Mozart’s Horn Concerto #3 with 17-year-old soloist Brooke Freeman of West Palm Beach.
“I’m not sure there’s another youth ensemble like it in South Florida. Maybe not anywhere,’’ said Eric Berken, a private violin teacher who formed the Camerata in 2017 and serves as its music director.
“The kids play meaningful music from the Baroque era. It’s not the kind of music they play at the public schools. It’s the real thing. And they play mostly without a conductor, so they learn how to play together really well,’’ he said.
Heres a video clip of the Camerata performing in Lake Worth Beach in 2025:
Emery learned about the Camerata when she happened to hear a WLRN interview one day in 2019, two years after the orchestra was formed. She tracked down Berken and recruited the young musicians to perform in Lake Worth Beach.
“I loved the dual mission of training young musicians in the performance of Baroque music and raising money for community feeding programs,’’ she said.
The ensemble is based at The Episcopal Church of Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Martin in Coral Springs, where the musicians — students from Palm Beach and Broward counties — practice each week to prepare for seven concerts during the school year.
Most performances have been at churches, although Berken remembers the first pandemic concert in 2020, a rendition of Handel’s Water Music at an outdoor community swimming pool in Boca Raton.
Though the kids probably wouldn’t mind scoring a gig at a large performing arts venue like the Kravis Center, their performances thrive in a church.
“Music in the Baroque era was written to be played in churches more than a stage setting. Churches were the performance spaces in those centuries,’’ he said.
Last year, they performed at an Episcopal Diocesan Convention in Boca Raton in front of more than 100 clergy from across Florida.
“These kids put a full hour or hour-and-15-minute performance together in six rehearsals, and the rehearsals are each two hours,’’ said Berken, a music composer from northeast Ohio.
“It really keeps them on their toes,’’ he said. “They’ve got to go home and learn the music on their own because we just have time for them to put it together in rehearsals every week. It’s as close to a professional schedule as you can do. I’m really proud of the work they do.’’
As the musicians graduate high school, Berken plugs the turnover by tapping the talent pipeline of youth musicians studying under private music instructors.
He takes pride in preparing the kids for careers in music, even if many do not go on to a music career. The ensemble’s concert master in 2017, violinist Gabriel Esperon, now performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
It was Esperon, when he was just 16 in 2017, who helped inspire the idea of performing concerts to help the needy, Berken said. A Broward County priest suggested they play benefit concerts for the Holy Grill, a charity based at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Coral Springs that had just launched in 2017.
“We were just starting off. They were just starting off. They needed funds. We partnered right from the beginning,’’ Berken said.
Since the Camerata’s formation, the ensemble has played more than 40 concerts and raised nearly $70,000 for the Holy Grill.
“The kids really enjoy being able to play their music for a cause,’’ he said.