For many music lovers, the return of violinist Victor Costanzi and cellist Eugene Osadchy to the local stage is well worth celebrating. As artists and as producers, the two contributed much to the emergence of Vancouver’s now-thriving chamber-music scene before departing, Costanzi to a freelance career in New York City, and Osadchy to a professorship at the University of North Texas.

“It’s a look at the past, and there’ll be lots of nostalgia,” says a former Vetta String Quartet companion, violinist Joan Blackman, of the two concerts Costanzi and Osadchy will play this week. “People are coming from as far away as Nelson and all sorts of places to hear their old friends play, and there’ll be family there as well. It’s like a birthday celebration!”

In fact, it is just that: Costanzi and Osadchy’s return marks the 30th anniversary of Vetta Chamber Music, the concert series they began in 1985 before bequeathing it to Blackman in 2007.

At first, the Vetta series was simply a way for its eponymous string quartet to perform. “They just played for their friends, and their friends came and brought more friends. I think they paid themselves from what was in the kitty at the end,” says Blackman, on the line from her Salt Spring Island home. “It was really just about exploring the music, and sharing what we, as musicians, loved.”

Once Vetta’s founders had emigrated, however, running a Vancouver series from the U.S. proved problematic. “At one point they decided, ‘Okay, we’re going to pack it in,’ ” Blackman reveals. “But then they thought, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t let it die. Let’s give it to Joan!’

“At first, I was a little shocked, because I had no idea how to run a series,” she continues. “But I think my passion for being able to share my love of chamber music somehow got me through. And since then I think we’ve doubled the audience, at least.”

If Blackman has her way, those crowds will double again. Vetta’s 2015-16 season features a fine mix of chamber-music classics and more contemporary offerings.

“I like to bring things that are actually quite well-known, and then juxtapose them with something that is unknown,” the artistic director explains. “For instance, in the spring we’re playing a single-string version of [Antonio] Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and everybody plays that. But then we’re going to have Jeffrey Ryan’s piece Seasons of the Sea—and it’s narrated by Rosemary Georgeson, the First Nations storyteller, which is a completely new thing for our audience. But I’m hoping that because they’re both ‘seasons’—and because they’re both music, you know—that a connection can be made between what’s happening nowadays and what happened back in Italy.”

As for this week’s birthday party, Blackman says that she had no hand in picking the tunes or, apart from Osadchy and Costanzi, the performers. “What I said to them,” she notes, “was ‘Look, you guys choose a program, with your favourite pieces and your favourite people.’ ”

The Vetta veterans have enlisted violist Yariv Aloni and pianist Arthur Rowe to complete their all-star quartet, and they’ll be tackling time-tested scores by Franz Schubert, Gabriel Fauré, and Johannes Brahms. Like the musicians, these three works will be old friends to lovers of chamber music—but in such an intimate and celebratory setting they’ll no doubt be heard anew.

Vetta Chamber Music presents Vetta Reunion at West Point Grey United Church on Thursday and Friday (October 1 and 2).