Live Music and Fine Dining in Natchez MS.

About the Chef
Voted one of the 20 best women chefs in the country by USA Today.

Esther Carpenter, proprietor, is the fifth generation to live at and own The Elms. She returned to Natchez in July 2006 to renovate and restore The Elms to its place in Natchez history. Esther is a well known artist, recognized by Architectural Digest, and her artwork is available in Arts Natchez Gallery in downtown Natchez. The stenciled master suite at The Elms is an exquisite example of her work.

About the Performer
"…solid musicianship, admirable sensitivity to the nuances of tone and a lively rhythmic sense." - The New York Times

Joseph Stone holds a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, both degrees in clarinet performance. He first studied piano in Natchez MS in childhood, later switching to clarinet before entering conservatory. Piano also was studied privately for the Bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School. A professional clarinetist for over 20 years, his extensive musical career featured solo performances of Claude Debussy's Première Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra with the Rochester Philharmonic in the Eastman Theatre, and the Mozart Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in New York City's Alice Tully Hall. His chamber music appearances in New York at Carnegie (Weill) Recital Hall and Merkin Concert Hall, and in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress and the Organization of American States among others, presented premiere performances of works by composers such as Karel Husa, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Jacob Druckman, George Perle, John Cage and Roberto Sierra, garnering enthusiastic praise from critics in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and The Washington Post; other performances on tours across the United States, in Canada and Puerto Rico received excellent reviews locally. Chamber music residencies were served at New York's Hunter College and the Americas Society/Center for Inter-American Relations. Orchestral appearances as principal clarinetist include a Carnegie Hall performance of Alberto Ginastera's Variaciones Concertantes, the North American premiere of Rossini's Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra, the Wagner Society Festival at Princeton University, and many years with The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players and Opera Northeast. Since 1997 Joseph has played only piano, and in summer 2006 he returned to Rochester for piano studies with Howard Spindler, Chair, Piano Department, Eastman Community Music School.
Since launching this piano concert series at Stone House in 2006, Joseph has performed piano recitals for over 36 group tours. Some of the elite groups for which he has performed at the Stone House include American Cruise Lines - Queen of the Mississippi, Nomads Travel of Detroit, Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Silver Bay Tours of California, Tauck Tours of Memphis, Ken Ward Travel of Atlanta, Lighthouse Tours, Elderhostel and Road Scholars. Additionally, since 2003 more than 350 piano performances have been presented for Stone House Bed and Breakfast guests. In 2011 he appeared as pianist at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, MS. Joseph's latest out of town appearance was September 22, 2012 at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, where he played a classical piano introduction to the catwalk fashion show featuring Prophetik Designs by Jeff Garner.