Before becoming a member of Quartetto Gelato, Peter De Sotto played the violin in the Toronto Symphony.

And, he was a strolling Gypsy violinist at a restaurant, just like his father, who is still performing at age 84.

Don't assume the two jobs didn't fit together nicely when De Sotto helped form Quartetto Gelato back in 1994.

"We are an eclectic mix," he says, adding with a laugh, "We are four friends who got together to play classical music and somewhere along the line, something went terribly wrong."

The group has changed some members and now includes Alexander Sevastian on accordion and piano, Carina Reeves on cello and its newest member, Kornel Wolak, who De Sotto says "does freakish things on the clarinet that aren't supposed to be done."

In addition to his classical/Gypsy violin, De Sotto plays the mandolin and sings tenor.

The eclectic quartet will be performing two Christmas concerts here on Saturday.

The first will be a free concert at the Brossman Business Complex in Ephrata at 11 a.m. and the second at Gretna Music at Elizabethtown College at 7:30 p.m.

They will play Corelli's Christmas Concerto along with "standard Christmas fare" done in a very unstandard way.

You can expect to hear Gypsy violin pyrotechnics, which De Sotto says are featured prominently in their concerts.

"I valued what I did. Even though I was a classical symphony player, I still felt what I was doing in the restaurant was a great musical art, something that was being forgotten, that I wanted to bring to the concert stage," he says.

De Sotto considers himself as much an entertainer as a musician.

"Our credo is we take music seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously," he says. "We are a well-disciplined classical group but at the same time, our shows have a lot of joking, comedy. That's where the Gelato from our name comes in. We've got so many flavors."

Quartetto Gelato revels in the idea of four strong individual musicians.

"We pride ourselves in the uniqueness of our personalities," De Sotto says. "We try to show those personalities on stage."

De Sotto has belonged to other groups, but it wasn't a good fit.

"I spent a year with a string quartet where I felt I really couldn't breathe," he says. "I couldn't find the same commitment to the music. What Quartetto Gelato does is we play by memory. There are no music stands. I feel like more of an entertainer. I am telling jokes, but we are classical players too."

De Sotto's sense of playing music on his own terms started early.

With a father who played Gypsy violin, De Sotto says he had no choice about lessons and was started on the Suzuki method at a young age.

"I didn't take to it. I hated it, I wanted to quit," he remembers. And so he did.

"But my family would get together and play around the piano, and I was left out in the cold because I didn't play," he says. "So I picked up the violin and began playing for my own amusement. I found it easy. When I wanted it to happen, it happened."

He soon fell in love with classical music and remembers weeping when he heard a cello concerto.

"I was overwhelmed by the power and the majesty," he says.

He loved — and played — all kinds of music.

"I dabbled in rock, did a little jazz, folk music, whatever I could do to play music," he says.

De Sotto says when he and his kindred spirits formed Quartetto Gelato, they expected the classical music world to disapprove.

"At the beginning, I really expected we'd be shunned by classical people, but quite the opposite happened," he says.

Classical audiences and musicians loved them. They quickly got jobs and have traveled all over the world.

They work so much, De Sotto had to give up his gig with the Toronto Symphony.

"People really liked it, they seem to get it," he says. "Not that we really care if they do. We just do what we want, what comes naturally."

Quartetto Gelato Popcorn Concert

Sat. 11 a.m. Free.

Main Theater

124 E. Main St.

Ephrata

Quartetto Gelato Full Concert

Sat. 7:30 p.m. $25, $30 adults over 26,

$12.50, $15 ages 19-26, $1 for ages 18 and under

Leffler Chapel, Elizabethtown College

361-1508
www.gretnamusic.org