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Music from Angel Fire celebrates 41st season

Just as Santa Fe's summer classical music season is winding down, things are heating up to the north, thanks to Music from Angel Fire. Its two-week season features some impressive players and adventurous repertory, with performances in Raton and Taos as well as Angel Fire, running from Thursday, August 15-28.

Violinist Ida Kavafian served as the group's first artistic director from 1984 to 2019. She was succeeded in the role by the duo of flutist Tara Helen O'Connor and violinist Daniel Phillips, both well known to Santa Fe audiences from their many performances with the chamber music festival here.

"All artistic decisions and the visions for the festival theme, programs, and artists each year are done jointly," Phillips says. "Tara keeps us organized and also has the pulse of who the finest contemporary composers are."

Phillips launches the 2024 season with a Polonaise by Henryk Wieniawski, a celebrated 19th-century violin virtuoso and composer whose works were written to showcase his skills. O'Connor and cellist Natasha Brofsky follow with Heitor Villa-Lobos' The Jet Whistle, a 1950 composition named after its final movement, in which the flutist uses a special playing technique to imitate a jet plane taking off.

O'Connor and Wendy Chen, resident pianist for the 2024 festival, play "Vesper Flight" by Kenji Bunch, one of three works by the contemporary American composer on the Music from Angel Fire season. (See "A Bunch of notes" sidebar for more about Bunch.) "Vesper Flight" was commissioned by O'Connor as a memorial to her recently deceased parents and was first performed in 2021.

The program closes with Johannes Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor, one of two pieces in the genre he wrote almost simultaneously around 1861. It was more revolutionary in its form and style than its A Major companion quartet, which led to its relative neglect for some time. Now it's highly regarded, with commentator Donald Francis Tovey opining that "the first movement is one of the most original and impressive tragic compositions since the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

6 p.m. Thursday, August 15; Taos Center for the Arts; $50-$55

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If you'd like to know more about how the chamber music sausage is made, especially without the involvement of a conductor, the festival's open rehearsal is your opportunity to eavesdrop on the process.

11 a.m. August 16; Angel Fire Community Center; Free

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Pianist Chen launches the group's second concert with a prelude and three etudes by Frédéric Chopin, after which Phillips joins her for Gabriel Fauré's Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in A Major. His opus 13, the work premiered when its composer was 31; its success propelled Fauré's career into high gear and secured his first publishing contract.

The concert closes with Felix Mendelssohn's String Quintet in A Major, the first of two works in the "viola quintet" form — adding a second viola to the string quartet — that Mozart had deeply explored with six such works. Mendelssohn's quintet opens with a Mozartian first movement, followed by an intermezzo that is a heartfelt but not elegiac memorial to his friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz.

The third movement is a scherzo with a vigorous, lighthearted quality, which was one of Mendelssohn's specialties, while the finale reflects the composer's interest in the music of Bach, highly unusual at the time, with its middle section of five-part counterpoint.

6 p.m. August 17; Angel Fire Community Center; $50-$55

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Asked to elaborate on a personal favorite in the season, both artistic directors identified the same work, which will be featured on August 18 in Raton and August 22 in Taos. "We are showing Buster Keaton's genius silent film Sherlock, Jr. with a live music score for string quartet and piano written by genius pianist Steven Prutsman, our 2022 composer in residence," Phillips says. "Full audience participation in booing and cheering will be encouraged."

The pianist for the film screening is Chen, who will be joined by The Dolphin Quartet, four advanced performers from The Juilliard School. They're part of the festival's commitment to developing young talent, which brings two student quartets to northern New Mexico each summer for outreach programs in area schools as well as public performances.

The Raton program, which is free of charge, also includes the Chopin piano works and the Mendelssohn string quintet described above.

3 p.m. August 18; Shuler Theater, Raton; Free

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Not many of the manufactured titles for chamber music concerts include the word "terror," but this one does: Chiaroscuro: Terror to Tranquility. The terror comes first, courtesy of Kenji Bunch's Hobgoblinry for Viola and Harpsichord, performed by violist Toby Appel and harpsichordist Kathleen McIntosh.

Bach provides the tranquility, in the form of his Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor, with soloists Kemp Jernigan (oboe) and Daniel Phillips (violin). Traversing the distance between terror and tranquility falls to Ernö Dohnånyi and his early String Quartet No. 2 from 1906.

This sadly underappreciated Hungarian composer was a contemporary of Béla Bartók, but his music wasn't as daring. He was a superb craftsman, however, much in the manner of Johannes Brahms, and he deserves rediscovery. The Dohnånyi will be performed by The Dolphin Quartet.

6 p.m. August 21; United Church of Angel Fire; $50-$55

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Antonín Dvorák's beloved "American" String Quartet in F Major was composed in 1893, during the composer's summer vacation in Spillville, Iowa. It was part of his three-year American sojourn running the National Conservatory, a progressive music school in New York.

The Vizsla Quartet makes its premiere with the Dvorák piece. They're all students at the Curtis Institute of Music where Kavafian teaches; the group's unusual name comes from her passion for breeding and training the Hungarian hunting dogs.

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Sherlock, Jr. is also on this August 22 performance, as is the Sonata for Flute and Piano in C# Minor by Mélanie Hélène "Mel" Bonis, a pioneering French female composer who wrote more than 300 works during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

6 p.m. August 22; Taos Center for the Arts; $50-$55

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Music from Angel Fire launched a composer-in-residence project in 1986 and it now has a roster of distinguished participants including Richard Danielpour, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bright Sheng, Chick Corea, Roberto Sierra, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, Kevin Puts, Libby Larson, and Jennifer Higdon.

This year's composer in residence is Marc Neikrug, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival's artistic director, who will talk about his new work for Angel Fire at a free meet-the-composer event on August 23. Neikrug's Oboe Quartet in Ten Parts, which was co-commissioned with Chamber Music Northwest and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, receives its New Mexico premiere the following evening.

"Marc composed a quintet for piano and strings for my quartet to play with him," Phillips says, "and we have played several other of his works, including a theater piece called Through Roses [which] unfolds a powerful story about a man's personal experience in a Nazi concentration camp. The new piece for Angel Fire doesn't have an explicit story but it does have Marc's gripping emotional musical language."

1:30 p.m. August 23; United Church of Angel Fire; Free

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Music from Angel Fire celebrates its 41st anniversary this year with a potpourri program titled Fiesta 41!. It opens with the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 in an arrangement for four cellos, then proceeds with Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Violin Op. 27, No. 5, performed by Dongyoung Jake Shim of The Vizsla Quartet, and Kenji Bunch's "Next Train" performed by violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu.

Tara Helen O'Connor will be joined by the festival's string players for "Oblivion" and "Libertango" by Astor Piazzolla. They're two of the composer's most popular tangos, with the former having a more traditional quality and the latter, which has been recorded more than 500 times, celebrating his creation of nuevo tango. The finale is a Vivaldi concerto for four solo violins and continuo, featuring all the string players in this year's festival.

6 p.m. August 23; Angel Fire Community Center; $40

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Imagine this: A music publisher once paid Mozart not to compose. Right after the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, Mozart signed a contract to write three piano quartets (piano plus violin, viola, and cello), a genre he essentially invented. The first sold poorly, since the piano part was so difficult, and the publisher paid Mozart the rest of the down payment to abandon the others.

Luckily for us the second one, in E-flat Major, had already been written. It's an ingratiating and expansive piece, especially in the final movement, which has such a bravura piano part that it often sounds like a mini concerto.

The Angel Fire premiere of Marc Neikrug's Oboe Quartet in Ten Parts follows, featuring Kemp Jernigan, oboe; Daniel Phillips, violin; Toby Appel, viola; and Angela Park, cello. The concert closes with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major. The soloist group is two flutes and a violin, which gives the concerto an especially bright and sometimes perky sound, thanks to their high registers.

6 p.m. August 24; Angel Fire Community Center; $50-$55

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Classical music from three of the "B" composers comprises the repertory for the August 28 concert, but two of them aren't Beethoven and Brahms. Luigi Boccherini is up first, with his Flute Sextet in A Major, Op. 16. Boccherini spent much of his adult life in Spain, as resident composer in a royal court where there must have been an excellent flute player. He wrote a series of flute quintets and sextets as a result, and they feature a demanding cello part in addition to that for the flute, which he almost certainly played himself.

The next atypical B follows — it's Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and his Violin Sonata in F Major. Biber was both an exceptionally skilled violinist and a very forward-looking composer; in Britain's The Observer Tarik O'Regan wrote of his sonatas, "One can find every permutation of double-stopping, counterpoint, and near-impossible passagework here."

While the fifth of Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos was written for three solo instruments — flute, violin, and harpsichord — plus the continuo group of strings, it could also be considered the first harpsichord concerto, thanks to the instrument's prominence throughout.

Bach seems to have written the part as a showcase for the two-keyboard harpsichord and its wider range of possibilities. It will be played here by Kathleen McIntosh, with O'Connor and Benny Kim taking the solo flute and violin roles, respectively.

6 p.m. August 28; Baptist Church of Angel Fire; $50-$55

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You'll be two years older at the end of this season-finale concert than you were at the beginning. After a J.S. Bach flute sonata featuring O'Connor and McIntosh, Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Astor Piazzola's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires will whiz you through 24 months in about 70 minutes.

Vivaldi's version consists of four violin concertos, each of which depicts activities during the corresponding season. Each concerto was first published with a sonnet, possibly written by Vivaldi, specifying the inspiration for the music. That for the summer concerto includes the following passage, as a thunderstorm approaches:

(Slowly and quietly to very fast and loud)

The fear of lightning and fierce thunder

Robs the shepherd's tired limbs of rest

As gnats and flies buzz furiously around.

Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, the Argentinian tango master Piazzolla revolutionized the traditional form by adding elements from jazz and classical music and forgoing the vocalist. The resulting nuevo tango was often scored for violin, electric guitar, bass, and piano, in addition to Piazzolla's bandoneon (a German-invented concertina), combining aspects of chamber music composition with improvisation in performance.

His version depicting the four seasons in Buenos Aires was written over a several-year period and premiered as a cycle in 1970. The Angel Fire performance uses an arrangement by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov that recasts the work for solo violin and small orchestra, à la the original. It also incorporates several musical quotations from the Vivaldi, using the Southern Hemisphere's inversion of the seasons, with Piazzolla's spring featuring music from Vivaldi's fall, and so on.

6 p.m. August 29; Angel Fire Community Center; $50-$55

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A Bunch of notes:


Composer-performer Kenji Bunch was born in 1973 in Portland, Oregon, studied composition and viola performance at The Juilliard School, and now lives in his hometown, where he teaches at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Philharmonic.

As a performer and as a composer, Bunch has balanced his interest in cutting-edge classical composition with a deep exploration of vernacular music, serving for more than 15 years as a fiddle player and vocalist with the band Citigrass, which describes its style as "urban bluegrass."

"Kenji's work has strong roots in American traditional music," says Music from Angel Fire's Daniel Phillips. "He also has just a stunning imagination. His style is very powerful and immediately understandable."

The son of a Japanese immigrant mother and a political/social activist father, Bunch wrote that he "combines his interests in history, philosophy, nature, and intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogue with the intention to entertain, inspire, and facilitate healing with his music — at times with vulnerable sincerity, irreverent humor, dazzling virtuosity, or by confronting difficult issues of trauma from our shared histories."

His music has been performed by more than 70 American orchestras and was cited by Alex Ross in his seminal book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Picador, 2008). Critic Anthony Tommasini dubbed him, "One of the new faces of new music" in The New York Times. — M.T.

Mark Tiarks, for The New Mexican (Aug 14th, 2024)

3CR - Third Coast Review

Chicago Arts and Cultural, Curated
Review: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Performs Fantastic Program of American-Inspired Music at Harris Theater

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center opened their season in a fantastic way at Harris Theater on Tuesday night. Based on an American-inspired theme, the program included well known and lesser-known works written in the US. Three of the composers actually were Americans: Aaron Copland, Henry Thacker Burleigh, and Arthur Foote. A Czech composer, Antonín Dvořák, was brought to America in the 1890s to direct the newly established National Conservatory of Music in New York. He was also on the program.

CMS of Lincoln Center employs a large assortment of musicians enabling them to cover the whole chamber music repertoire. 13 musicians took the stage on Tuesday night, including the co-artistic directors, pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel, who was a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, with whom he played for 34 years.

Han introduced the evening with praises to the Harris Theater, which has been around for 20 years, and a thoughtful explanation of the program. She retold the story of how Dvořák discovered the African American Burleigh, who was a janitor working at the school, beautifully singing American folk songs and spirituals from the south. Dvořák himself regularly drew from folk music, and he befriended Burleigh. With his help, Burleigh got a formal music education as a baritone and composer, and he set to music several folk spirituals and other music from the American South. While he emphasized vocal music and popularized Black American art songs, Burleigh also turned to instrumental music, which is how the concert opened on Tuesday.

Right after her remarks, Han sat at the piano with violinist Francisco Fullana for a lovely performance of Southland Sketches. This work in four movements has plenty of lyricism and soul, which Han and Fullana milked to the fullest. In the third piece, Allegretto Graziano, Fullana showed off nice technique, playing harmonies on the violin with double stops. He also had a very animated stage presence. His ensemble interaction with Han was great.

Finishing the concert's first half was my favorite work by Dvořák, String Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 97, American, which he wrote while he was here in the US. As Han mentioned, it's not well known or frequently performed, which, to me, is a shame. It's a delightful work, filled with mood, drama, and passion.

Providing this excellent performance were violinists Danbi Um and Sean Lee, violists Paul Neubauer and Daniel Phillips, and cellist Edward Arron. From the opening introductory sections, they produced a lush, oozing sound that carried the oomph of a larger ensemble. Intonation was generally great, even better after Neubauer did a quick tune up after the opening movement. I really liked their quiet approach to the finale, which splendidly built up to the dramatic ending.

Enjoying an excellent performance of a favorite work is what I live for. Luckily, that was only the first time that happened on Tuesday night. It happened again later.

The concert's second half started with another little appreciated work by another American working at the turn of the 20th Century, Arthur Foote, who was from Boston. His Nocturne and Scherzo for flute and string quartet added to the night-music popularized by Frederic Chopin.

Flautist Tara Helen O'Connor opened the piece with a lovely melody while Sean Lee and Kristen Lee on violins, Neubauer on viola, and Finckel on cello played quiet backfill. As their playing intensified, they succeeded in producing the night affect on the sound. The Scherzo was filled with fun a frolic. It was reminiscent of Mendelssohn, although with harmonies more typical of the early 20th Century.

To close the concert, CMS Lincoln Center brought everyone back onstage for Aaron Copland's 13-part arrangement of Appalachian Spring, my favorite piece of American music. In addition to Han on piano, O'Connor on flute, and the eight string players who had already played, they added David Shifrin on clarinet, Marc Goldberg on bassoon, and Anthony Manzo on double bass. While lacking the brass and percussion scored for full orchestra, Appalachian Spring "light" is every bit as dramatic and passionate.

From the quiet, sunrise-like clarinet opening, they played with care and precision. Immediately afterward, Copland uses a rising, six-note theme, in pairs of three, and the players passed it around effortlessly. A common challenge is ensuring that the obligato piano does not overwhelm, but Han blended with the other players seamlessly. This music is remarkable for how poetic and sentimental it is, especially in the variations formed by the Shaker theme "Simple Gifts" and the passages leading up to it. This performance captured those feelings magnificently.

For the second time in the evening, I got to hear a fabulous performance of a favorite piece of music. Ahhhhh. ... The joy of living!

CMS Lincoln Center returns to Harris Theater on December 13 for its annual performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. This is always a treat. Ticket info can be found here.

Louis Harris (Oct 5th, 2023)

Charleston CIty Paper

2023 Spoleto
Review: Spoleto’s third chamber music program offers Hollywood delight

If anything makes it to your Spoleto Festival bucket list, let it be Program III from the Bank of America Chamber Music series, which has its last two performances May 30.

A walk inside the Dock Street Theatre signifies a good chance you're headed back in time to be struck by the virtuosic classical works of Haydn and Mozart, or moved by the Romantic masterpieces of Beethoven and Schubert. But Program III of this season's 11-part chamber series had something equally, if not more, exciting in store.

Showcasing music from early Hollywood, Program III had audiences roaring with laughter and applauding Charles Koechlin's Épitaphe de Jean Harlow and Stephen Prutsman's original scoring of Seven Chances, a 1925 silent comedy by Buster Keaton.

Saxophonist Steven Banks took the stage with flutist Tara Helen O'Connor and pianist Pedja Muzijevic to introduce Koechlin's dedication piece to American cinema's first "Blonde Bombshell."

"The composer had an obsession with Hollywood," Banks said. Just a few years prior to the epitaph, Koechlin composed The Seven Stars' Symphony, a token of his appreciation for Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings.

Banks, O'Connor and Muzijevic's playing, however, gave Harlow more star-power than those seven celebrities combined. Épitaphe de Jean Harlow is just barely four minutes long, but the ensemble had more than enough time to woo the crowd with their luscious harmonies and impressive chemistry.

The trio's ability to meld without overpowering one another is a necessity for chamber music, or any ensemble, for that matter. But when done well and done thoroughly, the performers take listeners from interested to starstruck.

After the appetizer of the Harlow epitaph came the main course—Seven Chances, accompanied by Prutsman's own score, played in real time while the movie was projected on a screen above the stage.

Keaton's silent film follows main character Jimmy on his hilarious search for a bride. Jimmy's set to inherit seven million dollars from his grandfather, but only if he's married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday. And of course, the film takes place that very day.

Before the houselights came down and the film began, violinist Owen Dalby asked the crowd, "Do you have any idea what you're in for today?" Judging by the collective giddiness, people were ready for the movie to begin.

Prutsman's musical sense of humor matched exceptionally well with the wackiness of the plot and acting. His intentional wrong notes and quotations from Chopin's "Funeral March" and the Monday Night Football theme proved that being silly is sometimes a more creative way of being smart.

On many occasions, Prutsman has called O'Connor "the best flute player on the planet." And he was right again for Program III. O'Connor battled bassist Anthony Manzo in vigorous solos during the film's notable chase scene. Meanwhile, violist Lesley Roberston and cellist Christopher Constanza held their ground, keeping the music full of life and momentum.

The quintet's playing fit so seamlessly alongside Seven Chances that it was easy to forget it was live.

When the Bank of America Chamber Music series last featured Prutsman's scoring of a Buster Keaton film (Sherlock, Jr.), it was chosen as the best performance of the 2007 Spoleto Festival. It would not be a surprise if Prutsman won yet again this season.

Program III is a must-see—and not just for the usual chamber music fans and movie buffs. Anyone who love to laugh can (and likely will) enjoy this special concert.

IF YOU PLAN TO GO: Chamber Music III will play at Dock Street Theatre again on Tuesday, May 30, at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tickets are $57.50 to $93.

Piper Starnes (May 30th, 2023)

Charleston City Paper

2023 Piccolo Spoleto
Review: Spoleto's new chamber music series channels Nuttall's spirit

A review | At the first performance of Spoleto Festival USA's 2023 Chamber Music series, the strongest presence in the room came from someone who wasn't really there — at least, not physically. Geoff Nuttall, the festival's former director of chamber music who died in October, was in the forefront of the minds of most at the Dock Street Theatre on Spoleto's opening day, May 26.

The afternoon program marked the first time without Nuttall at the series' helm since 2009. Various artists close to Nuttall, including his wife Livia Sohn, compiled selections they thought would be reflective of a Nuttall-curated program. The process was healing, cellist Paul Wiancko said from the stage at the Dock Street Theatre.

Nuttall's spirit was certainly present. Whenever there were sudden rests, deceptive cadences or the like, chuckles were freely exchanged between the audience and the stage. There was no sign of the dreaded stuffiness of stereotypical "classical" music.

The performers brought Nuttall's fluid energy to their body language, too, swaying and leaning in expressive bursts of movement. Nothing was static for a second of the program.

C.P.E. Bach's "Flute Concerto in A minor" was the most dynamic piece, as it jumped from highs to lows in pitch and volume. Tara Helen O'Connor's virtuosic flute playing occasionally took on a sonorous quality that evoked haunting melodies of the early Renaissance, long before the piece's Baroque origins.

The harpsichord, a plucked-keyboard instrument that can't be made louder or softer, was well-balanced amongst the ensemble, particularly in its blend with the double bass. Several recorded renditions of "Flute Concerto in A minor" handled the instrument far less gracefully, with a harpsichord part that was either dominant or absent.

Mozart's "Piano Quartet in E-flat Major" was a joyous romp throughout, largely due to violinist Owen Dalby's nigh over-the-top movements. Each performer made the most of the pieces' playful silences, stretching and teasing the spaces between sounds.

In the same piece, however, the mechanical action of the Dock Street Theatre's piano was sometimes distracting. The rise and fall of the hammers created an atonal rat-ta-ta-ta under the otherwise lovely playing of pianist Pedja Muzijevic.

Osvaldo Golijav, the Argentine composer and frequent Nuttall collaborator, was in-house for the performance of his "Tenebrae for String Quartet," which was originally commissioned by the chamber music series in 2000.

Taking the stage next to Sohn, who played first violin in the piece, Golijav described it as a prayer. "Tenebrae," the Latin term for darkness, is also the name of Good Friday services in several Christian traditions, when worshipers remember and mourn the death of Jesus.

While the program wasn't without its humor, it ended in tears for several of the onstage musicians, who were moved to outpourings of emotion at the conclusion of the third piece. A Friday night Spoleto tribute to Nuttall – "Celebrating Geoff Nuttall" – had only one performance, but it seems the entirety of this season's chamber music series will serve as a fitting tribute in its own right.

IF YOU WANT TO GO: Program I of the Spoleto Chamber Music series will play again at the Dock Street Theatre May 27 at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tickets can be purchased through the event website.

Desi Gillespie (May 27th, 2023)

Charleston City Paper

2023 Piccolo Spoleto
Spoleto’s Chamber Music series presents 37 works by 37 composers

The 2023 Spoleto Festival USA's Bank of America Chamber Music series is a little different this year. As with past seasons, it includes a wide array of interesting and evocative pieces for solo and small ensembles.

But this year, no composer is represented more than once, ensuring something fresh and new at each performance. Showcasing 37 works by 37 composers, the 11-program series carries on the legacy of Spoleto's late director of chamber music, Geoff Nuttall, and what Spoleto general director and CEO Mena Mark Hanna has described as Nuttall's "wild, electrifying curatorial style."

Each program will have two showtimes (11 a.m. or 1 p.m.) across two days.

Two programs to look out for this summer are Program III and Program X, each of which celebrate early Hollywood and music by women composers.

Program III (May 29 and 30) will feature pianist/composer Stephen Prutsman's original score for Buster Keaton's 1925 silent comedy Seven Chances, which Prutsman and five others will accompany in real time.

"I like doing good quality comedies because the action is so intoxicating and really accessible," Prutsman said. "I've done a few dramas and other great films, but they don't quite take off like the mayhem and nonstop laughter that Buster Keaton provides." He said he sprinkled plenty of musical jokes throughout the 56-minute piece and filled the exciting final chase scene with virtuosic flute and bass solos.

"Tara Helen O'Connor is the best flute player on the planet," he said. "I've worked with her so many times, and she plays the entire flute family, from bass to the piccolo. And then Tony Manzo, the bass player, is phenomenal. So I decided to write the hardest bass and piccolo solos possible. I have the best players, so why not?"

Prutsman said the Dock Street Theatre is the ideal place to enjoy Seven Chances and the rest of the chamber music series.

"There's just something magical about the intimate environment," he said. "We just feed off of each other's warmth, energy, love and, in this case, infectious laughter."

Also on Program III is Charles Koechlin's "Épitaphe de Jean Harlow," a piece dedicated to the original "Blonde Bombshell" of American cinema. O'Connor will perform with saxophonist Steven Banks and pianist Pedja Muzijevic.

Program X (June 9 and 10) features music written by women, including the classical music veteran Thea Musgrave and the emerging composer-environmentalist Gabriella Smith.

Musgrave's piece, "Niobe," takes after a Greek mythology character symbolizing grief. Oboist James Austin Smith performs the piece with an accompanying electronic recording that features slow tolling bells, a gong and haunting voices to represent Niobe's slain children.

When describing the lamenting piece, Musgrave said, "It starts way high up and has wonderful mourning lines going down against whirring sounds of the wind and ocean." Even in the melody's lowest moments, the oboe solidifies a strong presence with an edgy yet beautiful sound.

Musgrave, who is nearing her 95th birthday this month, offered the following advice to young composers like Smith: "Make friends with great performers and pick their brains mercilessly. Get to know them and write them things."

Smith, a composer from the San Francisco Bay Area on the program, is already headed in the right direction: Violinist Benjamin Beilman, a former Curtis Institute of Music classmate of hers, will perform her commissioned piece, Sanguineum, at Spoleto.

"When he asked me to write this piece, I was delighted because he's such an amazing player," she said. "I wrote all these virtuosic lines that I thought would be possibly too hard, but he totally nailed it."

"Sanguineum," which takes its title from the scientific name for the red flowering currant, is a musical gem that reflects the brilliant bursts of color like the plant's bright pink and red petals. After working on ecosystem restorations in Seattle, Smith has spent plenty of time with her hands in the soil and her mind on the natural world in between composing works like "Sanguineum" and Lost Coast, which is her 2021 album dedicated to the climate crisis.

"I think we need every tool that's available to us to address this issue," she said, "and music is a really powerful one to bring people together and get them excited about being part of the movement."

Other highlights for this year's chamber music series include "Tenebrae for String Quartet" by Osvaldo Golijov, who once described Nuttall as his "brother in life and in music" (May 26 and 27); a George Gershwin song set featuring countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (June 3 and 4); and György Ligeti's Pieces for Piano Four Hands performed by Muzijevic and Inon Barnatan (June 7 and 8).

Piper Starnes (May 26th, 2023)

Taos News

Weekly E Edition
Music from Angel Fire returns

Hundreds of irate would-be brides — thinking they've been duped — chase Buster Keaton's hapless Jimmie Shannon down the streets of an as-yet-to-be-developed Los Angeles. The chase, which culminates with Keaton being pursued by boulders as well as brides, is the climactic scene of his 1925 silent film "Seven Chances." Music from Angel Fire (MFAF), however, will give audiences just two chances to see this Keaton classic — featuring a new score by composer-in-residence Stephen Prutsman — performed live, as it would have been in the silent-film era.

The theme of this season, "Romance and the Silver Screen," demonstrates artistic director-flutist Tara Helen O'Connor and violinist Daniel Phillips commitment to injecting the unexpected into the chamber music festival repertoire. Every work is either by a Romantic composer or tells a story, some with audio or video accompaniment. Nestled among the titans of the period are lesser-known contemporaries Henryk Wieniawski, André Caplet and André Messager. And side-by-side the giants of movie music John Williams and Ennio Morricone are jazz fusion keyboardist, composer and cofounder of Weather Report Joe Zawinul, avant-garde Dutch composer JacobTV and, of course, Prutsman.

"Seven Chances" — commissioned by Cynthia Weglarz for the 2022 Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival — is not the first silent film that Prutsman has written new music for. He has written scores for Buster Keaton's film "Sherlock Jr.," the German Expressionist classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," and the iconic "Le Voyage dans la Lune."

Why write music for old films? Besides the fact that few original scores for silent films have survived, you get to collaborate, in a way, with Keaton, or F.W. Murnau, or Georges Méliès, or Charlie Chaplin, or Mary Pickford.

Stephen Prutsman is a musical shapeshifter, effortlessly morphing from classical to jazz to world music in a search for common ground in the music of all cultures and languages. He has performed the classical concerto repertoire as a pianist with many of the world's leading orchestras. As either a musician, arranger or composer, he has collaborated with the Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet, Tom Waits, Rokia Traore, Joshua Redman, Jon Anderson of YES, Sigur Rós and Asha Bhosle. And his works have been performed by Leon Fleisher, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Spoleto USA and the Silk Road Project. In 2010, Dawn Upshaw and Emanuel Ax premiered his song cycle "Piano Lessons" at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Disney Hall, and the Barbican Centre. And on August 27, "Tender Night," a new work for flute and string quartet, will have its world premiere at the Angel Fire Community Center.

Artistic director Tara O'Connor is also excited about another world premiere at MFAF. "Bombshell" for String Octet and Electronics is inspired by silver screen siren and inventor Hedy Lamarr and will feature soundbites from interviews with Lamarr. It is the work of the festival's Young Composer-in-Residence, Elise Arancio, and will be performed by the Young Artists from Julliard and Curtis Institute of Music.

Elise Arancio has packed in a lot of experience for someone who will be starting her final year at Curtis in the fall. In 2014, she made her debut as a composer with a work for string orchestra at Emory University. Since then, her orchestral and chamber works have been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of the USA, Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Opera Orchestra and Curtis Symphony Orchestra, among others. Her work has been featured as part of WHYY/PBS's series "On Stage at Curtis." She was a winner of the 2020 Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra's Call for Scores, 2019 NorCal Music Festival Orchestra Composition Competition, American Composer's Forum 2018 NextNotes Composition Awards and the 2016 and 2017 National Young Composers Challenge. She joined Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra as an apprentice composer in the summer of 2018.

Music from Angel Fire is offering three chances to learn about the music being performed and about the art of composing with two talks by Festival Education Lecturer Jonathan Coopersmith, Chair of Musical Studies at Curtis, and in a conversation with Stephen Prutsman and Elise Arancio moderated by last year's Composer-in-Residence Paul Wiancko.

After two years of being virtual MFAF's Music in Schools program will be live again. The Young Artists will give short concerts and mentor young musicians in K-12 schools in six northern New Mexico counties. Virtual educational materials will also be available to schools that are still using distance learning.

Music From Angel Fire runs from August 18 until September 3 with concerts in Angel Fire, Taos, Las Vegas and Raton. For a schedule of performances and to purchase tickets visit www.musicfromangelfire.org

If you are interested in bringing the Young Artists to your school or would like to receive virtual materials, please email education@musicfromangelfire.org.

Elizabeth Burns (Aug 8th, 2022)

BroadwayWorld.com

Summer Theater Guide
American Symphony Orchestra to Host Free Performances

The American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) continues its 60th anniversary season on Sunday, June 5 with American Masters, a free symphonic concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the world premiere of Roberto Sierra's newly commissioned Concerto for Electric Violin performed by acclaimed electric violinist Tracy Silverman. The program will also offer works by three Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Melinda Wagner, Richard Wernick, and Shulamit Ran.

Leon Botstein will provide musical context for the concert program in a lively, 30-minute Conductor's Notes Q&A session beginning one hour before the performance, also free to all ticketholders. The discussion is an animated learning opportunity for both new concertgoers and music connoisseurs alike.

From May 16 to June 9, the ASO offers free chamber music performances at Manhattan's Bryant Park and at Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Sounds at Sunset series. These five concerts have been curated by ASO musicians who will perform music ranging from French impressionist composers and Italian works spanning four centuries to Afro-Cuban Batá drumming, as well as a tribute to iconic American jazz composers. Featured artists include ASO percussionist, educator, and composer Javier Diaz, award-winning multi-instrumentalist Alexa Tarantino, accomplished trombonist Dion Tucker and Grammy-nominated Imani Winds' oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz. Music-lovers will find a limited number of first-come, first-served chairs set up near the Bryant Park Fountain Terrace in front of the stage and at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 3 Greenway Terrace to enjoy an after-work respite with live music. All chamber concerts last for one hour.

The ASO's next symphonic concert is presented in a special collaboration with the Bard Music Festival at Carnegie Hall on July 15 and features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev's final work, At the Reading of a Psalm. Conceived as a massive statement of Russian Orthodox faith at the onset of WWI, this large-scale cantata for full orchestra, double chorus, and vocal soloists showcases the dramatic effect of Taneyev's contrapuntal mastery. This concert, initially scheduled for January 28, was postponed due to the Omicron variant.

American Masters

Sunday, June 5, 2022, 8 pm

Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street

Conductor's Notes Q&A 7 pm

Tracy Silverman, violin

Matthew Lipman, viola

Tara Helen O'Connor, flute

Roberto Sierra: Ficciones, Concerto for Electric Violin and Orchestra (2022) World Premiere

Melinda Wagner: Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion (1999 Pulitzer Prize)

Richard Wernick: Viola Concerto ("Do Not Go Gentle...")

Shulamit Ran: Symphony (1991 Pulitzer Prize)

In line with the ASO's long history of championing American artists, this concert offers a trio of American Pulitzer Prize-winning living composers including Melinda Wagner and two of her mentors, Richard Wernick and Shulamit Ran. Philadelphia-born Melinda Wagner's Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion is distinguished for its well-crafted flute solo. Boston native Richard Wernick's Viola Concerto-written for violist Walter Trampler and Leon Botstein (who conducted the 1987 premiere)-alludes to the well-known Dylan Thomas poem "Do not go gentle into that good night." Shulamit Ran's Symphony, commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra, also won the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award the same year as her 1991 Pulitzer. Highlighting the program is the world premiere of Roberto Sierra's Concerto for Electric Violin, commissioned by the ASO, which presents a mixture of Sierra's Latin-influenced ideas and modern compositional techniques through the voice of the electric violin, performed by the renowned electric violinist Tracy Silverman.

Marissa Tomeo (Apr 30th, 2022)

Oregon Arts Watch

Music
CMNW: Kenji Bunch takes flight

The new "Vesper Flight" is inspired by the soar of Vaux swifts, who alight in Portland every year.

Reasons abound to feel at home with Kenji Bunch's high-flying new work, Vesper Flight for Flute and Piano, that premiered July 10 and July 11 to a rapt Chamber Music Northwest audience at Reed College's Kaul Auditorium. For one, Portlanders have a special relationship with Vaux swifts, the subject of the piece. The birds return every year without fail, even in 2020's smoke-filled skies, to roost at Chapman Elementary School before flying on. People swarm to see them.

More significant than local swift-fascination is the Portland music community's continuing appreciation of Bunch, the homegrown violist/composer who attended Wilson High School and returned to Portland in 2013 after graduating from Juilliard and working in New York for a couple of decades. Bunch continues to forge a reputation for writing compelling compositions that have been played by more than 60 orchestras and ensembles — as well as for producing an ample discography and movie music.

Though he's not quite 50 (he'll turn 48 at the end of July), Bunch continues to pursue a full-time music career aside from composing. He has served as the artistic director of the new-music group Fear No Music since 2014. He teaches at Reed College, Portland State University, and Portland Youth Philharmonic. He performs regularly, including at Chamber Music Northwest concerts, and occasionally with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, among many others.

Despite all that, alchemy is key to bringing a new piece into the world. An accomplished composer like Bunch and Vaux swifts came together thanks to a commission by CMNW flutist Tara Helen O'Connor. Then Bunch carved out a piano part played by Monica Ohuchi, who happens to be Bunch's wife and Fear No Music's managing director. And as Covid began to lift this spring, the 10-minute Vesper Flight for Flute and Piano was launched and landed, this summer, as a world premiere.

There's more to the equation of this beautifully honed and ecstatically received premiere. Those birds, for one. Their uncanny habits, such as sleeping while flying and soaring so high during the evening that no human eye can track them, stand as a metaphor for what we really don't know.

Vesper Flight was inspired by award-winning natural world essayist Helen Macdonald's 2020 New York Times Magazine piece, The Mysterious Life of Birds Who Never Come Down, which Bunch had read. Macdonald's newest book, Vesper Flights, which includes this essay, was coincidentally published this month. "Vespers are evening devotional prayers," MacDonald writes in the essay, "the last and most solemn of the day, and I have always thought 'vesper flights' the most beautiful phrase, an ever-falling blue."

Macdonald explains that "animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves." Bunch has translated such insights into his sweeping, soaring, undulating music in this ear-opening piece that takes the flute and piano on an unusual and colorful sonic journey. As Bunch told the CMNW audience on July 11, the swifts' nighttime flight when they cruise out of human sight is a kind of "parable for the process of grief and lightening the loads we all carry."

Collaborating, then and now


Though they live on opposite coasts, Bunch and O'Connor are musical colleagues. Six years ago O'Connor, who has played with CMNW for 21 years, fell for Bunch's piece Ralph's Old Records, another world premiere at CMNW. The piece told the story with flute, clarinet, viola/violin (which Bunch doubled on), cello and piano of Bunch learning about his father's life by listening to his father's record collection, replete with jazz and popular mid-century tunes. Ralph Bunch, a political science professor at Portland State University who died in July 2020, at 93 years old, "permanently loaned" his son his record player when he discovered he was working on "Ralph's Records."

"From the first note of it, I knew that it was incredibly special, wonderful and evocative," O'Connor said in July after playing Bunch's Vesper Flight. Theirs — Kenji and Ralph Bunch's — "was a beautiful relationship, the kind of relationship I had with my mom and dad."

O'Connor lost her parents, Thomas and Sara O'Connor, before the pandemic and within a few months of one another. She quickly decided that she wanted to have music commissioned in honor of them, "knowing this piece would be a great gift to the flute community and it would live long beyond my time on this planet," she said.

Bunch came quickly to mind, and she suggested a composition for flute and piano, similar to his often played Velocity that was commissioned by flutist Marya Martin in 2006 for an anthology of new flute music called Eight Visions. Flute and piano pieces are popular, as well. But she was hands-off other than her suggestion of instruments.

Bunch was thrilled, and although commissions more often come from grants, institutions and arts organizations, it's not uncommon for a single person to commission a piece in honor of some occasion, such as an anniversary, or to recognize or commemorate an event or person.

"I'm open for business for whomever is interested in my music," Bunch said in July. And though commissioning comes to him from a variety of sources after 30 years of writing music, he adds, "I will say that there's no greater honor, as a performing musician myself, than to have a fellow musician believe enough in my work to want to invest in something new."

Logistics: Bringing the piece to the people


To prepare the piece for a July CMNW concert, there were logistics to manage, even for quick-study professional musicians like O'Connor and pianist Ohuchi, who had Bunch in the next room to answer her Vesper questions. O'Connor worked with a pianist in New York before coming to Portland in early July. She texted Bunch about details and ideas. She landed July 4 in Portland and she and Ohuchi practiced for several days before the premiere. "Things locked in really quickly between the two of them," Bunch said. "They were just really simpatico musically and it felt as if they'd been playing together for years."

The most interesting sections of Vesper Flight fall where Bunch left the music "open" (or unscored) so performers could offer their ideas. "I've been doing this more and more in my work—adding elements of improvisation. The notion of some unique and unexpected happening with every performance of a piece of mine keeps me interested in writing these days."

O'Connor agrees that each performance differs from the last, and much of that is because she has a number of measures in which she combines sounds by using different kinds of syllables with air over the flute, which resemble an elegant form of spitting. She cannot reproduce the same sounds each time she performs.

As well, the "bird calls" between the flute and piano are not written out. "So we imitate each other as we play live in concert," O'Connor said. "It makes you listen very differently."

With each performance slightly varying from the previous, O'Connor says she feels a part of the creative process. The last feat that she performs in the piece are "very, very high-pitch whistle tones. These tones are so magical and so high that they seem to mimic that final vesper flight each evening when the swifts fly out of sight."

Premieres – second nature to CMNW


Bunch's composition is one of five world premieres this summer at Chamber Music Northwest, and usually the festival programs more, CMNW executive director Peter Bilotta said.

Five premieres "is unusual – in that it is actually fewer than we normally do!" Bilotta said in July. "New music and contemporary works have always been a major part of our festival, with about 30 to 40 percent of a typical summer focusing on music of the 20th and 21st centuries. CMNW regularly commissions or co-commissions five to eight new works every year, and we will often premiere other new works commissioned by others, including some by our artists. In addition to mainstage concerts, the summer festival normally includes a full weekly series of five New@Noon / New@Night concerts featuring only new works by living composers written in the last year or two."

At least 100 works were commissioned during David Shifrin's 40 years as CMNW artistic director, from which he retired in 2020, said Soovin Kim, CMNW's new artistic co-director with his wife, Gloria Chen.

On July 10 and 11, Vesper Flight preceded David Ludwig's Les Adieux, a chamber concerto for clarinet played by clarinetist Shifrin and 14 other musicians, plus conductor Earl Lee. It was also a world premiere. Bunch referred to Ludwig's farewell "gift" to Shifrin as the program's centerpiece.

Many listeners, myself included, disagreed: For us, Vesper Flight was the main event.

***

Kenji Bunch's Vesper Flight was premiered live July 10 and 11 in Reed College's Kaul Auditorium by Chamber Music Northwest as part of a program that also included Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Mozart's Viola Quintet in C Major K. 515, and the premiere of David Ludwig's Les Adieux. A videotaped version of the concert will be available to stream July 24-Aug. 31 via CMNW's AT-HOME Summer Festival for $20 single or as part of a $150 season pass.

Angela Allen (Jul 20th, 2021)

Charleston Paper - Concert & Choral

Spoleto 2019
Chamber Music delights: A midday nibble of classical non-pretense is a perennial favorite, and for good reason

Ducking out of the midday heat into the enchanted air-conditioned balm of the Dock Street Theatre is true decadence. The space itself — a small jewel box of Old World gleam — is delightfully intimate and inviting, a space somehow imbued with an ambiance of expectation, regardless of what type of performance I attend there. This seems especially true when it's a Spoleto Festival USA chamber music program. Even for someone like me whose classical repertoire is lean at best.

Attending a Spoleto chamber music offering is akin to venturing into a small gallery of thoughtfully curated art. Or sitting down to the tasting menu at a choice restaurant like Zero Restaurant + Bar, where flavors and presentation are exquisitely layered and expertly executed, and you just sit back and let the culinary maestro do his thing. Following this analogy, Geoff Nuttall is the Vinson Petrillo of classical music, an artist at the height of his game, a musician whose indisputable gift is making his otherworldly talent accessible to normal humans who don't know a bass note from a clef. a_2_.jpg

In short, Nutall dishes up complex compositions and balanced flavors that are boldly adventuresome yet approachable. And delicious. The brilliance of the chamber music programs is that they are bite-sized nuggets. You leave feeling delightfully well fed but never overstuffed.

Case in point, program five of this year's 11-program menu. Nuttall bounds onto the stage with boyish exuberance. With vamping flair, he announces that he's sporting a brand new three-piece suit in honor of this particular program, so excited is he about the music and musicians.

Nuttall's enthusiasm is like a jaunty tune you can't help but hum along to. First up was a cello quartet featuring composer-in-residence Paul Wiancko, Joshua Roman, Christopher Costanza, and Nina Lee playing the heck out of Wiancko's "When the Night"—a number full of tonal variation and sounds I've never heard from a cello before, including percussive bow beats.

Next was a Bach Sonata rendered with precision and passion by chamber music series veterans Tara Helen O'Connor on flute and Steven Prutsman on keyboard. Their interplay was exquisite — a bit like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and the romantic concerto a perfect vehicle for their talents.

Stephanie Hunt (Jun 4th, 2019)

The Post and Currier

Arts
Spoleto chamber music series has perennial appeal, thanks to variety

Spoleto Festival's chamber music variety show at the Dock Street Theatre mostly packs in patrons of a certain demographic: financially secure people, age 50-80, who can trace their ancestry to Europe and who grew up with the idea that classical music is an important art form.

What they get inside the theater is unpretentious confirmation. Host Geoff Nuttall describes classical music, in its myriad forms, as something not at all sacred or grandiose but, rather, perfectly comprehensible and accessible to any willing listener, even in its contemporary guises.

The chamber music programming is a big mix of styles and eras, and every recital includes appealing works that provoke an enthusiastic audience response. Sometimes these programs strike me as a series of bonbons, without enough meat and potatoes, and I long for something big and bold and — dare I say it? — traditional, such as a Brahms piano quintet or an old-fashioned Beethoven string quartet.

Sometimes I am delighted to discover that a new work, such as composer-in-residence Paul Wiancko's stunning "When the Night" for Cello Quartet, satisfies that desire. It might not be a work that's yet part of the canon, but it has the heft and grace that the canon calls for.

Wiancko, a Brooklyn-based California native, is as adept with his cello and bow as he is with his manuscript paper and composer's pen, and he often performs in chamber music settings. He was one of the four cellists who played "When the Night," joining Joshua Roman, Christopher Costanza and Nina Lee for the work based loosely on the opening phrase of "Stand by Me."

It easily could have become sugar-coated or deferential to the pop song. Instead, Wiancko created mere musical allusions that never disrupted the flow of appealing phrases and gestures, warm tonality and swings between meditative passages and energetic flurries of sound.

And what would a good cello quartet be without a pizzicato section? It came at the end of "When the Night" and was contagious. Wiancko even threw in an al legno passage, where the players strike the strings with the wood of the bows, to create a percussive quality.

It was a refreshing reminder that great classical music indeed remains an important art form. It came as a kind of relief.

The cello quartet opened Program 5, which also featured pianist Stephen Prutsman (in his last appearance this year) and flutist Tara Helen O'Connor performing a Bach sonata, plus a Vivaldi concerto for two solo cellos and continuo (which included theorbo, a large lute-like instrument), and violinist Karen Gomyo (making her Spoleto Festival chamber music series debut) blowing the roof off the Dock Street Theatre with her rendition of Pablo de Sarasate's "Carmen Fantasy."

The interplay between O'Connor and Prutsman — the expressive dynamics, careful phrasing and intricate dialogue they achieved — was riveting.

Adam Parker (Jun 2nd, 2019)

Oregon Arts Watch - Oregon Art's and Culture News


Andy Akiho: systems within systems

Composer and steely pan virtuoso brings the heat at Chamber Music Northwest, and tells ArtsWatch where the fire comes from

In the midst of a five-week music festival, a weird mid-week show starring composer-performer Andy Akiho felt like a village gathering. Akiho's music, after all, is geared towards pretty specific tastes: challengingly colorful modern classical music, complex rhythmic grooviness and modern sonorities, rooted in jazz and pop and rock and hip hop, all played on steelpan and other percussions together with flute and strings. Everyone in the mostly full Alberta Rose Theater audience that Wednesday was either already an Akiho fan or about to become one.

CMNW executive director Peter Bilotta introduced the concert by jokingly insinuating that Akiho may have been indirectly responsible for last winter's notorious CMNW office fire. "I picked up eleven copies of his new CD in January when it came out, and there they sat, on my desk in our office, where they burned up. We don't know what caused the fire: maybe it was mechanical, maybe it was arson, or maybe the CD is just that hot!"

Cool Duos

Akiho himself lurked quietly off-stage, quivering with athletic energy like a young Robert DeNiro, as the show opened with flute goddess Tara Helen O'Connor and Akiho champion Ian Rosenbaum premiering a new arrangement of -intuition) (Expectation, originally composed in 2012 for trumpet and marimba. O'Connor excels at this stuff, and it was wonderful to hear her amplified: flutter-tongued polymetric riffage, breathy backbeats, and crazy wide-registered arpeggiations popped out around the theater, sizzling about over Rosenbaum's quick quintuplets.

Matthew Andrews (Sep 17th, 2018)

The Free Press


Bay Chamber Offers “Enlightenment” via Flute and Strings

Bay Chamber Concerts continues its 58th Summer Concert Series on Thursday, July 26, at 7:30 p.m. at Rockport Opera House with "Enlightenment," featuring works by Mozart, Purcell and Haydn, as well as Andrew Norman's "Light Screens," inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass window designs.

Virtuoso flutist Tara Helen O'Connor, a two-time Grammy nominee and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, will be joined by Bay Chamber favorites Geoff Nuttall and Livia Sohn, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; and Christopher Costanza, cello. Performing on piano will be Manuel Bagorro, artistic director of Bay Chamber Concerts.

Before the concert, Bowdoin College music professor Anthony Antolini will give a free talk from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Recital Hall of nearby Bay Chamber Music School. His pre-concert talks this summer will cover the repertoire to be presented at each Thursday-night concert in Rockport Opera House.

On Friday, July 27, at 8:30 p.m. at Union Hall in Rockport, Bay Chamber presents its Café Nights Series in a program entitled "Flute and Strings." The musicians from Thursday's concert will return for a one-hour program of classical pieces including works by Haydn and Beethoven and a contemporary solo flute work by Ian Clarke called "Zoom Tube."

Tickets for Thursday's performance are $60 for adults and Friday's are $35. Tickets for those under age 25 are $10 for either show. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.baychamberconcerts.org or call 236-2823.

(Jul 26th, 2018)

Village Soup • Knox

Courier Publications
Bay Chamber: world-class flute, enlightening music

ROCKPORT — Bay Chamber Concerts continues its 58th Summer Concert Series Thursday, July 26, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rockport Opera House, 6 Central St. The Enlightenment program affords an opportunity to hear one of the country's greatest flute players, Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and two-time Grammy nominee Tara Helen O'Connor.

Joining O'Connor are Bay Chamber favorites Geoff Nuttall and Livia Sohn, violin; Nathan Schram, viola; Christopher Costanza, cello; and, on piano, Artistic Director Manuel Bagorro. The program has works by Mozart, Purcell and Haydn plus Andrew Norman's "Light Screens," inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass window designs. In advance of the Thursday evening concert, Bowdoin College music professor Anthony Antolini will present a free pre-concert talk from 6 to 7 p.m. in the nearby Recital Hall of the Bay Chamber Music School.

On Friday, July 27, Bay Chamber will present as Café Nights Series program titled Flute and Strings at 8:30 p.m. in Union Hall, 24 Central St. The prestigious musicians return for this one-hour program of classical delights including works by Haydn and Beethoven; and "Zoom Tube," a virtuosic solo flute contemporary work by Ian Clarke.

Tickets for Thursday's concert are $60, $10 for those younger than 25; for Friday's, $35/$10. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit baychamberconcerts.org or call the Box Office at 236-2823.

Courier Publications' A&E Editor Dagney C. Ernest can be reached at (207) 594-4401, ext. 115; or dernest@courierpublicationsllc.com.

Dagney C. Ernest (Jul 20th, 2018)

Oberon's Grove

Permalink
Flute Affair @ Chamber Music Society

In a well-conceived program of works composed in four different centuries, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented two of today's foremost flautists - Tara Helen O'Connor and Ransom Wilson - joined by an ensemble of top-flight artists. The ink's probably not totally dry yet on John Luther Adams' newest score, a CMS co-commission having its New York premiere this evening.

Music of Bach opened the concert: his Trio Sonata in G-major for two flutes and continuo was given an elegant performance by Ms. O'Connor and Mr. Wilson, with cellist Timothy Eddy and Juho Pohjonen at the harpsichord providing a gracious continuo. The sound of blending flutes has an enchantment that few other instruments playing in duo can evoke. The sonata's Adagio e piano has an air of sweet melancholy, and in the propulsive rhythmic figures of the two Allegro sections, Mr. Eddy made music that went beyond keeping time.

For Mozart's C-major flute quartet, K 285b, Ms. O'Connor was joined by violinist Kristin Lee, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Timothy Eddy. In this two-movement work, the composer keeps the flute prominent but doesn't neglect the other instruments. Rising from the gentle flow of the opening Allegro, Ms. O'Connor's quicksilver fluting sends a melodic line over to Ms. Lee's violin. The strings provide a rich yet cultivated blend. We then head into the second movement: a theme-and-variations setting. The theme feels like a courtly dance; in the first variation the flute sings over gently rocking strings. Ms. Lee shines in the second variation and Mr. Eddy in the third, where the Neubauer viola injects an insinuating little phrase that's so delicious. The fourth variation takes a minor-key turn, with a sighing quality. Flute-song is the attractive essence of the fifth variation: Ms. O'Connor's playing is soft and sweet. The sprightly closing variation is in spirit of the country dance known as the Ländler. It's a short dance, but full of charm.

The new Adams was up next: 'there is no one, not even the wind' proved to be both intriguing and a bit problematic. The stage had been set for the work's large ensemble, which includes our two flautists - Ms.O'Connor now playing alto flute - two percussionists (the excellent Ayano Kataoka and Ian David Rosenbaum, with a marimba for each...and a bass drum as well), piano (Mr. Pohjonen), violin (Ms. Lee), viola (Mr. Neubauer), cello (Mr. Eddy), and bass Anthony Manzo.

The music begins delicately with the striking of individual bell tones. Ms. Lee's violin enters on high; slowly, the other voices of the ensemble are mixed in: we seem to be floating thru space and time. Piercing flute notes from Mr. Wilson seem like signals from distant worlds; meanwhile Ms. O'Connor's alto flute evokes ancient realms on Earth. Notes struck on the marimbas linger on the air, enveloping us in mystery.The bass drum sounds like distant thunder, with deep piano tones adding to an ominous feeling. The flutes resume; the music transcends reality as sound-clouds move across the horizon of the mind.

The music is marvelously crafted and - needless to say - magically played. But there's simply too much of it: even the most poetic dream can outlast itself. An annoying cougher infringed on the atmosphere, and a sense of restlessness began to intrude. Much as I loved the sounds I was hearing, I began to wonder if we had been adrift too long. And yet, I could definitely listen to this work again - preferably at home, where the imagination could be allowed full play.

During the interval, there was considerable buzz about the Adams work: from what I could gather, people around us found it essentially fascinating but too extended.

Henri Dutilleux passed away in 2013 at the age of 97. His Sonatine for flute and piano was commissioned by the Paris Conservatory as a test piece for the graduating flautists of 1942; tonight, Ransom Wilson and Juho Pohjonen turned it into ten minutes of magic.

The Sonatine begins mysteriously, the piano soon entwined with the flute. The music is very "French" with lingerings in the upper range and twisty rising scales. A bird-song cadenza shows off Mr. Wilson's fluency of technique; this leads to a lyrical developmental section. There's a full stop, and then rippling figurations from the piano draw us into music that's light, bright, and subtly ironic. The piano writing turns grand before another cadenza - this one heading downhill - carries us on to a witty speed-up to the end. The audience gave the players - and the piece - a warm reception. I'm going to tell some of my choreographer-friends about it.

We bounced back to the second decade of the 19th century for the evening's final work: the Septet in D-minor by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Dating from 1816, this septet sounds rather ahead of its time, thanks to the composer's ideas about instrumentation, harmony, and modulation. It's a piece that brings the listener a sense of elation in both its musical freshness and its inspired instrumentation: Hummel calls for a trio of strings and a trio of winds, and he sets them off brilliantly against writing for the piano that calls for great virtuosity and sensitivity.

Within moments of the start of the Hummel, the audience could grasp the fact that the man at the Steinway, Juho Pohjonen (above), was playing with extraordinary dexterity, feeling, and commitment. He wasn't just playing the notes, but investing them with colour and nuance - one could often sense a full dynamic range within a single passage; and how fine were Mr. Pohjonen's taperings of the many scale phrases to keep us under his spell. When the septet ended, his colleagues urged the pianist to step forward where he was greeted by a barrage of bravos. Called back to the stage, the players sent Mr. Pohjonen out first, then they all held back so that he had a solo bow. It was one of my favorite moments from among the many evenings I've spent at Alice Tully Hall.

The Hummel is simply bursting with great opportunities for each of the seven players to show what they can do. After a full-bodied start, hesitations creep in. Mr. Manzo's bass makes the first of numerous incursions with rich, rhythmic sound. Mr. Neubauer's viola pulses as the three wind players comment. Meanwhile, the piano writing is a joy to hear as Mr. Pohjonen veers from extroverted to delicate in the twinkling of an eye. He can be pensive at one moment and wryly light-hearted the next. Before the first movement ends, Mr. Eddy's cello has its say.

"It's a piano thing!", I wrote as the second movement commenced: it's cleverly marked Menuetto o scherzo by the composer, and the bass gets us involved before the piano again draws our attention. Cello and viola meld with smooth sounds from Eric Reed's horn; Mr. Reed repeatedly sustains notes which lead into melodic motifs.

In the Andante cantabile, a melody gets passed about with variations. Mr. Pohjonen dazzles us yet again, later adopting a 'toy piano' sound for some fanciful coloratura. A slow-rising tutti sends the piano swirling; the bass lures us to a fun finish.

The forward impetus of the concluding Vivace brings us to a conversation between the Neubauer viola and James Austin Smith's congenial oboe; Mr. Eddy has a heartfelt cello passage with piano, and then Ms. O'Connor's flute blends beautifully with the oboe and horn as Mr. Pohjonen's playing is honed down to a thread. Cascades of notes from the keyboard underscore the final measures of this fantastic piece.

Oberon (Nov 19th, 2017)

New York Classical Review

Posted in Performances
Chamber Music Society closes season with simple homegrown pleasures

What is America, exactly?

That was the question asked Sunday afternoon by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in their season ending concert, "America!" As CMS co-artistic director Wu Han pointed out during her introduction, the program was put together two years ago, and the title came afterword.

Still, it's a question worth thinking about even if it's insoluble, and the concert went some distance in exploring it through positive and negative examples. This was all music from American composers, though not all the music was "all-American."

Truly American art music, national in values if not necessarily sound, began with Charles Ives, and all this music came after him: Samuel Barber's Souvenirs, the Red Violin Caprices by John Corigliano, John Harbison's Songs America Loves to Sing, William Bolcom's string quartet arrangements of three of his rags, and the chamber version of Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite.

Appalachian Spring, coming last, is a certified classic and one of the most significant works of American musical art—so much so that the very sound of it has been intrinsic to creating a clearly nationalist music.

Copland choose to create a kind of Americana. One of the beneficial paradoxes of being an American artist, though, is that one is free of the constraints of blood and language and thus free to pick and choose from any and all traditions— as, in their own ways, did Lou Harrison (music from the Pacific) and Harry Partch (ancient Greece).

Barber's choice was American, but of a particular time and class. In general he looked over the Atlantic, back to Europe, something like the Henry James of composers. The piano four-hands Souvenirs looks back in time to an America before the advent of mass popular culture; it's made of dance tunes like the "Two Step" and the "Galop."

This is probably Barber's most light-hearted and charming piece, made with typical impeccable craft. Pianists Gilles Vonsattel and Michael Brown played superbly, the opening mark in a concert in which all the performances were at the highest level. There was plenty of energy, which should come easily in parts like the "Scottische," but the grace of the "Pas du deux" was marvelous.

Bella Hristova played the Red Violin Caprices, from the score for the film The Red Violin–music that has nothing to do with America other than Corigliano's citizenship. Made to emulate historical European music, the Caprices are technically dazzling and glib, offering all the instrumental challenges of Bach and Paganini with none of the content. Violinist relish the way they get to use the instrument, but even virtuosic performances like Hristova's can't invent what's not there.

Beginning with Harbison's chamber arrangement of folk songs and hymns, the concert settled satisfyingly into the roots of the best of America. Songs America Loves to Sing is an admirable re-composing and re-contextualizing that keeps the vernacular vocabulary of the originals and puts it into more abstract and objective grammar and syntax, like the dialogue in Deadwood.

Harbison's imagination illuminates alternate and expanded dimensions of meaning in these songs; turning "We Shall Overcome" into a dignified march, and the "Anniversary Song" into something simultaneously dolorous and determined to step into the future. This was a beautiful performance from the musicians, especially Tara Helen O'Connor's shining flute and clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester's mellow chalumeau register, though all clearly cherished the music.

Just as sincere but less successful was the Escher Quartet's playing of Bolcom's arrangements, which included his exquisite Graceful Ghost Rag. The Escher is an excellent quartet and one is used to their superlative performances, but here the approach to the music was too classical, full of arch rhythms and stiff phrases, with no expressive use of tempos. Still their new green instruments, made by a French string maker and painted by a French artist, sounded rich.

Appalachian Spring was gorgeous, deeply captivating from the very first moments. The musicians played sans conductor, and the crisp rhythms were obviously impressive. More so was the unanimity of purpose, the sense of warmth, community, and joy in, yes, simple things. Copland marks the opening of the piece "With simple expression," and never has that absolute clarity and simplicity held such substance and weight of expression and beauty.

George Grella (May 22nd, 2017)

Oberon's Grove


Opening Night Review

The program commenced with a charming performance of Haydn's 'Surprise' symphony, and if the element of surprise in this very familiar work has long since evaporated, there was still a murmur of delight which passed thru the packed house when that 'wake up!' chord sounded. The symphony, a veritable fountain of melodic and rhythmic delights, was played by an ensemble of top-notch musicians: the kind of artists that maintain the Society's impeccable standards.

With Michael Brown's wonderfully attentive and polished playing of the Steinway setting the pace, we could relish the divine piping of Tara Helen O'Connor's flute and a most pleasing mixture of swiftness and sweetness from Erin Keefe's violin. Danbi Um, in a pretty forest-green frock, stood out in a brief mingling of voices with Ms. O'Connor flute - Danbi would have more expansive opportunities in the Palestrina/Mendelssohn combination after the interval. Of the lower voices, Richard O'Neill's dusky viola sound and his deep involvement in the music are always most welcome; and though music stands blocked our view of Mihai Marica, his cello spoke clearly. This assemblage of musicians were as pleasing to watch as to hear, and they set the tone for the evening with their virtuosity and grace.

Lisette Oropesa (Oct 18th, 2016)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Arts
Concert review: Flutist Tara O'Connor steals the spotlight with members of the Orion String Quartet

Monday was the 14th time that the Orion String Quartet has performed in the Chamber Music Pittsburgh series. What has led the presenting organization to engage the group so often?

One reason is the group's violinists, Daniel and Todd Phillips, brothers whose late father performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for nearly 40 years until he retired in 1987. The quartet also has a strong national reputation and has been booked by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival. The group has also appeared on National Public Radio's "Performance Today."

Their recent Pittsburgh appearance — the second concert of Chamber Music Pittsburgh's annual series at Carnegie Music Hall — included music by Mozart with Grammy-nominated flutist Tara O'Connor, Dvorak and Leon Kirchner. 

The evening began with Ms. O'Connor performing Mozart's Flute Quartet No. 3 in C major, in which the flute replaces the first violin of a standard quartet. Her sound had the perfect balance of warmth and elegance, and she was a delight to listen to, breathing life into the music from the first phrases.

Jeremy Reynolds (Oct 3rd, 2016)

AUDIOPHILE AUDITION


Simple Gifts – Chamber pieces of GOTTSCHALK, DVORAK, BARBER, O’CONNOR, COPLAND & FOSTER – The Social Orch. for Ensemble – CMS Live

Simple Gifts – The Chamber Music of Lincoln Center at Shaker Village = GOTTSCHALK: The Union – Concert Paraphrase on National Airs for Piano, Op. 48; DVORAK: Sonatina in G Major for V. and P., Op. 100; BARBER: Souvenirs for Piano Four Hands, Op. 28; O'CONNOR: F.C.'s Jig for Violin and Viola; COPLAND: Appalachian Spring for Ensemble; FOSTER: Sel. from The Social Orch. for Ensemble – Gilles Vonsattel, p. / Arnaud Sussmann, violin/ Wu Han, p. / Paul Neubauer, viola/ David Shifrin, clarinet/ Brook Speltz and David Finckel, cellos/ Kristen Lee, violin/ Peter Kolkay, bassoon/ Tara Helen O'Connor, flute – CMS Live, 75:00 [Distr. by Naxos] (9/16/16) ****:

The series of concerts and collaborations on this disc were assembled (May 2015) at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, for PBS broadcast for "Live from Lincoln Center" production. David Finckel and Wu Han, artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society, also coordinate the Music@Menlo series in Palo Alto, CA, where many of the featured musicians have been wont to appear. The Shaker melody "Simple Gifts" appears in Copland's 1944 ballet Appalachian Spring, so it seems appropriate that the 13 musicians who perform – in fact, debut – the chamber version of the ballet score at the Shaker Village enshrine a moment in history as the music returns to its place of origin.

Gilles Vonsattel raises the patriotic temperature with Louis Moreau Gottschalk's 1862 jingoistic The Union, a truly exhibitionist piece for virtuoso piano, taking off from "The Star Spangled Banner" and then proceeding to become its own fife and drum corps. "Yankee Doodle," a tune that attracted Henri Vieuxtemps as well, assumes Lisztian proportions, utilizing massive block chords. Many us recall that Ivan Davis used to exploit these figures, and Vonsattel has the folks cheering.

Arnaud Sussmann joins Wu Han for the lyric 1893 Sonatina of Antonin Dvorak, well imbibing in us the memory that Dvorak spent time in Spillville, Iowa. The last of Dvorak's chamber works composed during his American sojourn, the piece meant to supply technical and melodic instruction for the composer's children. The Longfellow poem "The Song of Hiawatha" presumably influenced the writing of the lovely Larghetto movement. Simplicity and charm dominate this rendition, and why not? Dvorak liked to think of this work as a "conversation," and its easy fluency of expression guarantees its being quoted long into the future.

Samuel Barber conceived his dance-suite for piano four hands, Souvenirs, 1951-1952. Like Leonard Bernstein's Anniversaries, the Souvenirs tend to light reminiscence character sketches of dance impulses in six movements. The influence of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley remains close. A divertissement modeled after the Palm Court (Hotel Plaza) experience Barber shared affectionately with Charles Turner, the music echoes the sound of pre-Fitzgerald America, c. 1914. Gilles Vonsattel and Wu Han do the honors, solidly punctuating the opening Waltz that soon transforms into easy, brightly-lit sentiment. Some of its swagger suggests Poulenc. The Schottische will remind many of those same "national" efforts by Chopin and Beethoven, except this one ends with fireworks. The Pas de deux seems to harbor balletic aspirations. A lively Two-Step invokes Fred Astaire and Dmitry Shostakovich at the same time. The Hesitation Tango introduces an erotic element into the mix, touched by a color or two from Albeniz. Brassy percussion opens the finale, a Galop much in the French – Poulenc, Chabrier, or Bizet will do – taste. Audience whoops follow the last chord.

A spicy duo follows – Arnaud Sussmann and Paul Neubauer do the honors – Mark O'Connor's F.C.'s Jig for Violin and Viola (1993), based on O'Connor's own Fiddle Concerto. This rousing duet provides the kind of electric ensemble that Mozart and his sister Nannerl would have enjoyed. If Appalachia, the movie Deliverance, and Mozart could join hands, it would look – sound – like this.

The two large-ensemble works – calling for respectively 13 and 14 players – begin with the chamber orchestra version of Copland's Ballet for Martha, essentially a rural celebration of community in the form of a new-barn raising and blessing. Martha Graham chose the title "Appalachian Spring" from a line in Hart Crane. The sheer array and piercing clarity of Copland's musical effects – rhythmic variation, open intervals, modal harmonies, and plastic instrumental timbres – culminates in the 1848 "Simple Gifts" by composer Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr., first introduced this evening by clarinet David Shifrin. Helen O'Connor's flute consistently maintains a striking ambiance in this nuanced, often blissfully intimate rendition. The concert ends with a brief homage to Stephen Foster (1826-1864) in the form of the three festive dances: Village Quadrille No. 1, Jeannie's Own Schottisch, and Village Quadrille No. 4, selections from Foster's The Social Orchestra of 1854. A cross of home-entertainment and village-gala music, they capture Foster's natural affinity for "the people's music." Foster received a flat fee of $150 for his arrangement of 73 melodies – popular, operatic, and symphonic – but these renditions suggest he deserved more.

Gary Lemco (Sep 28th, 2016)

Gramophone.co.uk

Sounds of America
The Way Things Go

What is most striking about Tara Helen O'Connor's affectionate assemblage of music for flute and piano, written with one exception after the turn of the new century, is how close the flute and piano parts work to establish character, carry the narrative and share the most brilliant parts. Five of the seven works were composed for her and pianist Margaret Kampmeier, and they inhabit the music as if the interactive nature of their musical partnership were their paramount concern and pleasure. Among the seven, which all seem eager to make very pleasant sounds at the very least, Steven Mackey's Crystal Shadows, John Halle's Gaze and Belinda Reynolds Share stand out, while Eric Moe's All Sensation is Already Memory deserves a nod for its fluent virtuosity.

Mackey's duet uses effects like slap-key notes on the flute and stopped tones on the piano as plot devices in a series of fragmented, race-course turns in which the flute and piano chase each other at times like squirrels; Mackey wrote it to play with his wife, and the close intimacy of its inspiration shows in the opportunities it gives O'Connor and Kampmeier to blend and shade their emotional states.

The star of Halle's Gaze is an inebriated 'Rag: Raucous', which uses Beethovenian chunks of sound to introduce a goofy dance; the 'Slow tango/Habanera' second movement gives both players equal kinds of intense emotional displays. Modeled after Stravinsky's Les cinq doigts, Reynold's Share for alto flute displays O'Connor's ability to create impossibly long, slow phrases across many bar-lines.

Laurence Vittes (Aug 1st, 2016)

Oberon's Grove

http://oberon481.typepad.com/
CMS Summer Evenings 2016 #3

Wednesday July 13th, 2016 - Time flies when you're having fun; I guess that's why Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's second season of Summer Evenings went by so quickly. For three nights, music-lovers have packed Alice Tully Hall to hear some of the most wonderful music ever written played by musicians who are the cream of the classical music crop. That the players were enjoying themselves immensely was evident throughout the series, and joy-filled standing ovations marked the end of each concert.

A toast to Sally and Stephen Clement for 'hosting' the festive wine receptions after each performance, and to Millbrook Vineyards and Winery of the Hudson River Valley for their reds and whites. It seemed that the entire audience stayed after to meet the artists.

While THE MAGIC FLUTE looms large among the vast catalog of Mozart masterworks, it seems the composer was not overly fond of writing for the eponymous instrument. The young maestro had met a wealthy amateur Dutch flautist named Ferdinand De Jean while in Mannheim in late 1777. De Jean commissioned from Mozart a set of concertos and quartets featuring his instrument, but the composer only completed part of the commission and received only a partial fee.

It's therefore rather remarkable that the Flute Quartet in D, K. 285, one of the De Jean commissions, is such a thorough delight. In tonight's performance, the purity and free-flowing grace of Tara Helen O'Connor's playing was lovingly supported by a trio of deluxe string players: Benjamin Beilman (violin), Richard O'Neill (viola), and Keith Robinson (cello). An up-and-down demi-scale motif gave the music a lilting feel, while the elegantly delicate plucking of the strings graciously underscored the flautist's lyricism in the poignant Adagio. Some wonderfully subtle playing from Ben Beilman was a treat, and Ms. O'Connor's brilliance in the Rondo finale had the audience hanging on her every note. I couldn't help thinking that if Mozart could have heard Ms. O'Connor, his attitude towards the flute would have been very, very different.

For Beethoven's Serenade in D major, Op 25, an airy meshing of flute, violin and viola, Ms. O'Connor was joined by Daniel Phillips (violin) and Mr. O'Neill on viola. A charming flute fanfare sets the opening Allegro on its way; a sense of merriment and jaunty give-and-take between the three players made them as much fun to watch as to hear.

The lovely blend of the three voices shone in the Menuet, in which violin and viola converse; the string players then take up a mandolin-like accompaniment figure while Ms. O'Connor's wafts limpid virtuoso passages into the hall. A mini-turbulence springs up for the Allegro molto, where Mr. O'Neill's very nuanced playing drew us in; the rapport of the three players here was endearing to behold.

A hymn-like theme opens the Andante, where a set of variations gives prominence to each player in turn: first flute, then violin, and finally viola. There's a 'surprise' ending here, which was so subtly delivered by our trio of artists that you could hear the audience smiling in appreciation. After a light-hearted Scherzo, a pensive song is heard briefly and then everything bursts into high gear for a chase to the finish. Mr. O'Neill's lithe figure seemed to dance thru the music, and the three musicians shared embraces at the end as the audience showered them with applause and bravos.

Following the interval, a sterling performance of Antonín Dvořák's Quintet in A-major, op 81 was the crowning glory of the festival: played with boundless generosity by Jon Kimura Parker (piano) and Mssrs. Beilman, Phillips, O'Neill, and Robinson, this music got the audience so revved up that an explosive ovation at the end was the only possible outcome.

It's been a while since Jon Kimura Parker's name was on my radar; how welcome was his playing tonight: plush and opulent. He and cellist Keith Robinson opened the quintet with the heart-filling theme which seems to epitomize the Romantic spirit. Bravo, gentlemen! The music wends on its way - Ben Beilman's high, sweet playing tearing at the heart strings - and as passion builds, the illusion of hearing a much larger ensemble envelops us: huge, sweeping waves of gorgeousness flow over us. Then suddenly everything hones down to the violin - Ben Beilman at his most inspired - and then re-builds to a thrilling finale.

Just when you think you've heard the best, things magically get even better. The Andante con moto found all the players surpassing themselves in terms of both beauty of tone and depth of expression: they simply played their hearts out. Richard O'Neill's viola theme, drenched in melancholy, was a particular marvel.

"I love this pianist!", I scrawled across my Playbill, too mesmerized by his playing to write anything more specific. "Cello!" "Viola!!"...passage after passage of inspired playing. And then the music goes off on a romp. The pianist restores order, and the viola is king as the Andante moves to its conclusion.

It's all been almost too much to take in, and so as the dancing Scherzo starts, a lapse in concentration might be expected. But these guys are too good; never for a moment do they let the level falter - not even for a split second - and so again we are thoroughly engaged. Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Phillips trade phrases with immaculate grace, and then an idyllic interlude provides an unexpected change of pace...and there's a solo cello passage which Mr. Robinson delivered with soulful tenderness. And then the dancing resumes.

After only a momentary pause, the finale is launched: an Allegro with passing lulls along the way. While savoring opportunities for dynamic nuance as they spring up, the players go in for richness of sound and urgency of feeling, carrying us along. A constellation of stars I sketched around Mr. Parker's name on my Playbill smiled back at me when the music ended and the audience burst into applause; everyone stood up and cheered.

Out in the lobby, my friend Claudia Schreier and I had to wait as Richard O'Neill's fans pressed around the amiable violist - looking so dapper in a white dinner jacket - to shake his hand and be photographed with him. It reminded me of the old days at the 'New' Met where we waited for Tebaldi and Corelli to sign, just enjoying being in the presence of their greatness. All of tonight's musicians were being lionized, and it was all so well-deserved.

Now is a good time to express a hope that these CMS Summer Evenings might add a fourth performance next season. The audience is clearly there for them, the music's to die for, and the playing is simply beyond belief.

Philip Gardner (Jul 14th, 2016)

The Unmututal Blogspot

Finding Beauty in Ephemera: Views and reviews of over-looked and under-appreciated culture and creativity
The Way Things Go for O'Connor and Kampmeier

For flutist Tara Helen O'Connor, "The Way Things Go" is a labor of love. As she explains in the liner notes, she and pianist Margaret Kampmeier have taken several years to record the selections on this release.

Five of the works were commissioned by O'Connor,the rest were compositions by the duo's favorite composers. Perhaps because of its origins, "The Way Things Go" is an extraordinary release.

The works vary greatly in style, reflecting the many different directions contemporary music is taking. The oldest work on the disc, "Crystal Shadows" by Steven Mackay dates from 1985. While the duo gives the work an assured, authoritative performance, the disjointed nature of the music sound a little dated to me. I'd describe it as a variety of academic atonality.

Much more interesting are the composers who've incorporated popular idioms into their music. Randall Woolf's "Righteous Babe" from 2000 just flat out rocks, and makes a terrific opening for the program. "Gaze" (an O'Connor commission) by John Halle has some jazz-infused gestures and a great modern rag that O'Connor delivers with a smokey, sinuous sound.

Other standouts on the release include "Share" by Belinda Reynolds, whose subtly-crafted themes develop over a repeating ground. I also enjoyed the title track, "The Way Things Go" by Richard Festinger, another O'Connor commission. This ultra-chromatic modernist work has a series of dramatic starts and stops, yet always moves inexorably towards its climaxes. The piece is a technical challenge for both performers, and O'Connor and Kampmeier own it.

To my ears, the most technically challenging work is the one that ends the program: Laura Kaminsky's "Duo for Flute and Piano." The work is somewhat conservative in structure, but don't be fooled. "Duo" was commissioned by and dedicated to the duo, and the music seems to fit them like a glove.

I was surprised to read that album took years to record. The sound and the playing is so consistent I would have guess sessions spanning a few days rather than years. O'Connor and Kampmeier make a great team, and their long association gives these works a dynamic and chemistry that just makes them all the more effective musically.

The Way Things Go
Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Margaret Kampmeier, piano
Righteous Babe: Randall Woolf; Crystal Shadows: Steven Mackey; Gaze: John Halle; All Sensation is Already Memory: Eric Moe; Share: Belinda Reynolds; The Way things Go: Richard Festinger; Duo for Flute and Piano: Laura Kaminsky
Bridge Records 9467

Ralph Graves (Jul 14th, 2016)

Art Mag


Spoleto 2016 Review

Nuttall recruits the top talent in chamber music to play the Spoleto series and unabashedly surrounds himself with musicians he claims are much more talented than he–although we're inclined to believe that he is one of the very best violinists around. So often, these virtuosos will be made up of husband and wife duos, like Nuttall and his own wife, violinist Livia Sohn, who is as masterful as she is beguiling. Tara Helen O'Connor is an superior flutist whose husband Daniel Phillips "bats both ways," as Nuttall joked–meaning only that he plays both the violin and viola with extraordinary skill.

Program VII opened with the "Gypsy Sonata" by George Phillipp Telemann (1681-1767), whose legacy has not been well remembered, for no good reason at all Nuttall muses. Telemann's contemporaries and close friends Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel seem to get all the attention, while one could "select any of Telemann's compositions at random and it would be pretty good."The "Gypsy Sonata" most closely follows my definition of chamber music, due in large part to the presence of the harpsichord, brilliantly played by Pedja Muzijevic. Christopher Costanza fills out the bass line on cello, adding a richness to the sound that creates vibrant colors where it would have been a little pale otherwise. Phillips is soulful and profound on the violin, but it is Tara Helen O'Connor who shines with shimmering, lilting notes, and an enchanting sound. O'Connor has incredible breath control that never once compromises the integrity of the piece and shows what an excellent musician she is. She so embodies perfection on the flute that you'll forget she is human and therefore obliged to breathe at regular intervals for survival. It was very difficult not to stand and clap with gusto for her playing after the second movement came to a close.

Stacy Huggins (Jun 7th, 2016)

New York Classical Review

Posted in Performances
Chamber Music Society opens Baroque month with a feast of solo Bach

One could go to fifty concerts at Alice Tully Hall without ever knowing that the main auditorium houses a full organ. For the vast majority of performances, the back wall of the stage is kept closed, barely hinting that it hides anything that would be of interest to an audience.

Just to walk into the room on Sunday evening for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Solo Bach" concert was startling– seeing the majestic instrument looming behind the stage made an almost operatic coup de théâtre. Playing the Prelude and Fugue in D major on Sunday was Paul Jacobs, who re-inaugurated the organ back in 2010 after its restoration.

The instrument doesn't ring quite as much as one might expect in a live hall like Alice Tully, but it has a firm, assertive voice, on the cool side, but never piercing. Jacobs let the organ roar in the Prelude, bellowing forth a mass of color. The fugue that followed was clearly voiced and crisply articulated, enlivened here and there by playful humor—nowhere more than when Jacobs shamelessly sold the false cadences near the end of the prelude. It is always a joy to hear Bach on Bach's instrument.

The program opened with a lovely performance by Tara Helen O'Connor of the Partita in A minor for solo flute. O'Connor played with both clarity and warmth, spinning natural, breathing phrases. She showed delicate but marked metrical freedom, adding gentle tugs on the front of terraced phrases. Long, sequences of rippling scales are difficult to accomplish on a wind instrument, but her approach, finding the natural breaths in the music, made it sound entirely free. O'Connor was right at home in the music's idiom, inhabiting the essence of the light, skipping bounce of the closing Bourrée Anglaise.

Eric C. Simpson (Dec 6th, 2015)

The Post and Courier

SpoletoToday
Chamber Duo wows audience

... For Godard's "Suite de Trois Morceaux" he was joined on stage (Charles Wadsworth) by flautist Tara O'Connor. And what a combination it was! With Wadsworth at the piano and O'Connor on the flute it was bound to be a winning combination. O'Connor's range of expression and dexterity are extraordinary and the piece was a stunner. The suite is actually three pieces played with ease by both performers. In contrast to it, the second piece was a lyric symphony of sound full of O'Connor's rich voice on the flute. The final section had so many fast notes for the flute that Wadsworth hinted that it gave him a headache. O'Connor whipped all those notes out with great ease and made the whole thing seem like a piece of cake. This was definitely easy-listening music. The audience loved it, calling both performers back for several curtain calls.

Mary Solomon (Jun 8th, 2015)

The Post and Courier

SpoletoToday
Concert features sounds you are fortunate to hear live

Mozart at 21 was writing music at a slightly different level. His D major flute quartet (K. 285) saying and sort through three movements with Tara Helen O'Connor's glorious instrument leading the string trio, producing sounds you can hardly believe you are fortunate enough to be hearing live. Bright tunes follow the slow, smooth flute solo over pizzicato strings that can bring smiles and tears in the same moment.

Carol Furtwangler (May 28th, 2009)

Tryon Daily Bulletin


O’Connor and Denk - Playing with fire

When my brother was four or five, I found him sitting calmly on the lawn staring intently into a small paper cup that was inches from his face. As I got closer, I noticed that heat was creating a wavy lens distorting the scene around him. Joining him, I begin watching the peculiar low flame that was consuming the liquid in the cup. It was gasoline! I was transfixed. The wax cup was by them very hot, yet it did not burn until the fuel was almost gone. (do not try this. It's a miracle we still have eyebrows.) 

So there you have it. Tara Helen O'Connor, flutist, and Jeremy Denk, pianist, contain and fuel each other. The fuel almost never runs out. She plays an instrument that is her voice. He plays an instrument that is his voice. They sing as one. And that is all you need to know about chamber music. Tryon concert association presented these amazing performers at Tryon Fine Arts Center on St. Valentine's Day, a good day for passion of any kind.

I'm not wild about flute in spite of having played one for many years. The flute is an unforgiving instrument that must be played by a Disciplined Daredevil. If you are not a D. D., there can be no music, only an embarrassing struggle with high b-flats strung together with lengthly pointillistic arcs of notes sporting so many flags and beams that you're sure the composer is an idiot (or Georges Seurat's brother).

O'Connor, a Disciplined Daredevil for sure, chose a program that kept everyone in the hall alertly tuned in. The stunning "Sonata 'Undine' in E minor," op. 167 from the several hundred works of German born composer Carl Reinecke, took us underwater. The mermaid Undine did indeed unite with a mortal man (and presumably obtained her immortal soul) and then had a stormy Life on Land with the mortal man. He died. She grieved. She returned to the sea in grieved some more . The musical description of these roller coasters within roller coasters require a spectacular piano playing and unflagging concentration. O'Connor and Denk flawlessly dovetailed their beautifully shaped lines. It was a romantic tour de force using all manner of romantic hyperbole.

The performance of J.S. Bach's "Sonata in B minor" (BWV 1030) was joyful from start to finish. The compositional intricacies were thoroughly relished and cleanly revealed. Having locked Elaine Shaffer's tempi in my brain when I was 11 years old, I never adjusted to O'Connor's breathtakingly fast Andante. Doubting my memory of this led to a two-day dig through of my brothers old rock and roll albums where I found the recording that confirmed the 42 intervening years hadn't altered my internal database. It also confirmed that I much prefer the tempi O'Connor and Denk chose for the remaining two movements.

Schuberts "Introduction and Variations on Trockne Blumen" (from his own song cycle "Die Schone Mullerin") gives flutists a major work from the almost fluteless 19th century. The Introduction was, for me, the most beautiful passage of the evening. It was the first chance I'd had to concentrate on O'Connor's actual sound. Long notes began so gently and swelled so fully and so tastefully that I wouldn't have traded any part of it for a vocalist's rendition. Denk rushed the opening tempo soon after the statement of the theme began, but nothing either of them did interfered with synchronization of speed and mood. It was a difficult piece admirably performed.

Lowell Liebermann was born in 1961. His "Sonata for Flute and Piano" ( Op. 23) was commissioned by the Spoleto Festival USA was 26 years old. O'Connor and Denk brought this two-movement work to life as if it were the story of their own lives. They loved the quirks and moved through the Lento as if they were twins with a secret. Their fascination with both the piece and the composer was also apparent in their spoken remarks. More amazing than the speed of their fingers (and the fact that O'Connor never seemed to breathe) was the speed of their brains. (We could use some minds like that in Washington.)

That enough energy remained for an encore proved that both O'Connor and Denk are Discipline Daredevils. A Piazzolla dance ended the program in true blaze. The paper cup finally burned. We almost lost our eyebrows.

P. S. Please do not call my mother. She was certain the key to the tool room, where the lawnmower and gas can were stored, was well out of reach. We don't know where he got the matches.

Rita Landrum (Mar 4th, 2009)

The Oregonian

Music review
A furious flute lifts Schubert variations to ironic heights

Tara Helen O'Connor sparks the Chamber Music Northwest concert.

You'd think that flute players would be temperate, unruffled souls, playing the sweet-natured instrument way up there on the high melodic line.

You'd be wrong.

Tara Helen O'Connor is as bold as a boxer. She attacks the music, jabbing it, squeezing it, holding it up by the scruff of its neck. She flits up the scale and ends with a double-arm flourish, her flute raised high overhead. Can you see why she's been so much fun to watch at Chamber Music Northwest for the past decade?

On an all-Schubert program Monday, O'Connor unleashed the equivalent of flute fury on the composer's Introduction and Variations in E minor, a bit of wizardry that winds itself tighter and faster as it goes along. Ostensibly, the piece is based on Schubert's simple, aching song "Trockne Blumen" (Withered-Flowers). The song comes near the end of the great cycle "Die Schone Mullerin", when the once-happy Miller tells his flowers – flowers his former lover gave him – that they must lie in his grave.

In truth, the flute variations blaze with such virtuosic leaps and scales, they bury the original song.

...Then came O'Connor, and we were off the races. I liked her sassiness and ironic smile as the piece grew ever more ridiculous in its convolutions. She earned an ovation at the end.

David Stabler (Jul 2nd, 2008)

The Post and Courier

Review
Chamber program offers varied sounds

At the elegant Memminger auditorium, the eighth Bank of America Spoleto Chamber Music program featured a Vivaldi "Piccolo Concerto," providing a cheery tour de force for flutist Tara Helen O'Connor.

Each of the three movements of VIvaldi's concerto showed off different facets of virtuosa piccolo playing, making the piece a triumph for O'Connor. The first movement featured the highest notes of the piccolo and showcased its ability to do strikingly dramatic bird calls. O'Connor played long dancing phrases over a variety of instruments of combinations. Movement two was a beautiful lyrical section demonstrating the emotional power of the piccolo while the third section featured military melodies done in the best quick march tempo. O'Connor received a standing ovation.

Jeff Johnson (Jun 4th, 2008)

The Post and Courier

Review
Octet by Shubert a mature piece

There was time at the beginning of the program to reassess a work commissioned by Spoleto Festival some 20 years ago, Lowell Liebermann's "Sonata for Flute and Piano."

Veteran festival flutist Tara Helen O'Connor and newcomer pianist Pedja Muzijevic made a strong case for Liebermann's composition.

In this blatantly neo-Romantic work there is a dreamy first movement interrupted by a passionate outburst, followed by a demonic second movement, tarantella-like in its unremitting rhythms.

O'Connor and Muzijevic dished up the whole thing with energy and style.

William D. Gudger (Jun 1st, 2008)

The Oregonian

Music Review
Flutist O’Connor shows hastiness of Mozart gibe

Top-notch show  The musician, featured in all nine pieces, displays both talent and stamina.

Mozart famously disparaged the flute as "an instrument I cannot bear". But had he been able to hear Tara Helen O'Connor on Monday night at Kaul Auditorium, he likely have reconsidered. When it comes time in early January to review the past year's performances, this one will be unquestionably remembered as among the very best.

In her eighth season with Chamber Music Northwest, O'Connor is a flutist of exceptional abilities, chameleonlike character and uncommon stamina; The last of these was evident just from a glance at the two hour program, which featured her in everyone of the nine pieces. Rarely do even professional wind players have such a workout before an audience, and most people attempting that kind of exertion would be left gasping, if not passed out on the stage, by intermission.

The evening included Mozart's four flute quartets - part of a commission that occasioned his famous complaints about the instrument - interspersed with five mostly shorter work from the past 80 years. Toru Takemitsu's "Air," a captivating solo display redolent of Japanese shakuhachi music, was a fine introduction to O'Connor's talent. Her control was breathtaking (so to speak) as her tone alternated between bright and shadowy, and her always-subtle vibrato changed constantly and almost imperceptibly. Her tone was pure and her intonation spot-on even as she faded to nearly whispering dynamics.

In the Mozart for which she was joined by violinist Daniel Phillips, violist Todd Phillips and cellist Sophie Shao, O'Connor was clear and sparkling, with nimble fingers, liquid legatos, cantabile lyricism and a sense of irrepressible forward motion throughout. The players made no attempt to add undue weight to the pieces, which apart from the concertolike qualities of the D Major Quartet are light and small in scale, but with attentiveness and fine ensemble, they bought gracious life to these fine examples of the rococo.

Clarinetist David Shifrin joined her for three pieces, including a movement from a work in progress by Joan Tower (to be premiered by CMNW in 2008) "Esprit rude/ Esprit doux II" by Elliott Carter and "Chôros 2" by Heitor Villa-Lobos (percussionist Niel DePonte joined them on marimba in the Carter). In three very different ways, each explored the felicitous contrast of timbers between flute and clarinet; the Tower elicited delighted reaction from the audience as the two were fused in perfect unison at the end.

Pei-Yao Wang, an incisive pianist, joined O'Connor for the closer, Olivier Messiaen's "Le Merle Noir" ("The Blackbird"). It was airy, aphoristic and mesmerizing, and O'Connor was as fresh and unflagging as she'd been two hours before.



James McQuillen (Jul 12th, 2006)

The Post and Courier

Spoleto & 2005 Piccolo
‘Quartet’ captivating, magical

The visionary French composer Olivier Messiaen uses flute and piano to evoke impressionistic images of bird songs ("La Merle Noir" – The Blackbird), but only when played virtuosic musicians.

Flautist Tara Helen O'Connor filled the bill very nicely.

Her breath control is almost unbelievable, double-stopping in trills that seemed as fast as the extremely fast tempi at which birds sing.

Carol Furtwangler (Jun 4th, 2005)

The New York Times

The Arts
Wolpe at 100, Still Full of Ideas and Anger

...Wolpe liked extremes, but he could also settle for less extreme extremes, as in the taut byplay of "Piece in Two Parts" for flute and piano, which was elegantly performed by Tara O'Connor and Mr. Gosling ...

...and Ms. O'Connor, playing with recorded images of herself, quietly and beautifully put us in the presence of Morton Feldman's "Trio for Flutes", a sequence of organlike chords where the real (live) and the imaginary (taped) are inextricably interwoven, music with nothing to prove, and haunting.

Paul Griffiths (Oct 15th, 2002)

The Star-Ledger

Classical
Chamber program is mostly super

A performance by guest flutist Tara Helen O'Connor was the highlight of Sunday's Mostly Music concert

...Bach's trio sonata in C major (BWV 1037), which featured (Tara Helen) O'Connor, (Carter) Brey and (Daniel) Phillips.... The musicians had to breathe together and feel an emphatic connection of tempo, decorative instinct, and phrasing in their minds. It worked, though, with O'Connor and her exquisite, silvery phrasing the virtuoso highlight...

...Phillips, when his part intertwined with O'Connor, seemed to shrink his tone to a similary, airy band...

...So much can go wrong with Bach, one uninspired soloist able to derail the entire train; that this performance felt so liquid is a testament to the intelligence and acumen of these players.

Willa J. Conrad (Jan 30th, 2001)

The Post and Courier

SpoletoToday
Fooling Around with the flute

The next-to-last Chamber Music program began on Friday with a famous popular, tumultuous and sparkling workout for the flute-friendly musicians' assistants as can be collected. The work glowing behind all those adjectives is Johan Sebastian Bach's second Orchestral Suite (BWV 1067)... that has been a showpiece for flutists since flute players were around. On Friday, the flutist was the wonderful Tara Helen O'Connor, who played the piece to a standstill, and her co-workers were violinists Daniel Phillips and Chee-Yun, cellist Andres Diaz, violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama and Charles Barr (Double Bass)...

Robert Jones (Jun 11th, 2000)

The State

Arts & Entertainment
Spoleto 2000: Hits, misses and no-shows: Thoughts on the 24th festival

Hits: Dock Street Theater Chamber Music concerts: ... Outstanding performances include Budd in Schubert's: "Die Hurt auf dem Felsen", flutist Tara Helen O'Connor in George Crumb's "Voice of the Whale" and everybody in the Mendelssohn "Octet."

William Starr (Jun 11th, 2000)

The Post and Courier

SpoletoToday
Musicians deliver superb Chamber Music concert

(B-minor suite BWV 1067 by J.S. Bach)...opened in a good-natured reading which was stitched closely together with exacting phrasing, firmly tempered precision in articulation and occasional ensemble moments that only could be called sublime.

Slow, double-dotted rhythms in the first-movement Grave soon gave away to a brisk fugato, with soloist Tara Helen O'Connor leading the way authoritatively...

A Rondo and a slow Saraband balanced unison flute-violin passages against middle string gestures and a roc- solid basso continuo foundation. The catchy Bourree and stately theme-and-variations interest of the Polonaisse preceded a deftly-turned Minuet. But O'Connor fairly exploded into the two-fisted technical challenges of the final Allegro, taken at a blistering tempo with brief solo material distributed all around. The movement as a whole certainly served to the center audience interest for the remaining two-thirds of the program.

Jack Dressler (Jun 10th, 2000)

The Post and Courier

SpoletoToday
Flutist plays fifth time at Spoleto

As a young girl of 11 or 12, Tara Helen O'Connor was among the hundreds of students at her school who took a test for band. O'Connor had spent hours playing in her Long island back yard, listening to the sound of a neighbor playing flute. So she gave it a try.

"I loved it right away", said O'Connor, a veteran flutist who has become a figure in Spoleto's Chamber Music Series at the Dock Street Theatre.

Yet, when she turned 17 and faced decisions about college, O'Connor wasn't sure what to do. She applied to the traditional colleges with thoughts of perhaps pursuing a law degree.

Then one day, she heard the Long Island Philharmonic rehearse at her school. Internationally known flutist Paula Robinson gave a master class and O'Connor had the chance to play for her.

Robinson urged the teen to dedicate herself to the flute. She said: "Well, you have to do this". O'Connor said: "In the end, she was right. I couldn't imagine doing anything else".

It was too late to apply to a music school. But in time, O'Connor earned a doctorate from SUNY Stony Brook and studied under the late flutist Sam Baron through three degrees.

Although, she had limited contact with Robinson, a long time Spoleto USA player, O'Connor calls her "one of my heroes".

O'Connor a Manhattan resident, has become a Spoleto veteran herself now in her fifth year.

She is single-minded about who gets credit for her appearances at the festival: Spoleto pillar Charles Wadsworth, artistic director for chamber music and host of the series.
"He is the mastermind. He's the main reason people come".

"He's opened so many doors for me" she said. "I am grateful every minute for him".

Next year, she plans to do a tour Wadsworth is organizing.

But O'Connor, said there are few places she would rather perform for three weeks than Charleston.

"It's such an amazing place to be", she said. "I love Charleston. There's so much music and art in one concentrate area".

She said she feels energized to be in one place working intensely for three weeks without the distractions of being at home or traveling every couple of days.

"You're in one place working very hard – you can be very concentrated", she said.

The Chamber Music Series spans 33 performances of 11 programs. The musicians often have just a couple of days to rehearse major pieces.

O'Connor will play in five of the series concerts. She already performed twice in Concert I, playing in Saint-Saens "Caprice on Danish Russian Air" and "Arnes's The Morning Cantata".

But she has plenty more ahead, including her third performance of Bach's" Brandenburg Concerto number 4" today.

At the Bach's performances, she will play with husband Daniel Phillips, the violin soloist in the Brandenburg performance today.

She said the first time they played together she was 22.

"We were totally, completely sync" she said.

But they were dating other people and moved on. Nearly a decade would pass before they went on their first date. Today they live hectic lives and build sky-high cellphone bills.

"We don't even have a dog" she laughed.

O'Connor recently received a permanent, part-time teaching position at Purchase College.

Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase, where she had been an adjunct professor. She will have nine students to follow and develop while still having enough time to perform.

"It's excellent to be performing and teaching" she said. "By teaching, you learn a lot about your own playing".

But teaching won't curtail her traveling to perform, especially since many of her favorites are summer festivals.

Along with Spoleto, her regular stops included Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus, Barge Music, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Music from Angel Fire. She made her concert to debut last summer at the Mostly Mozart Festival.

O'Connor is a founding member of the 1995 Naumburg Award winning New Millennium ensemble and is flute soloist of the Bach Aria Group. She was the first wind player chosen to take part in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two program for young artists.

"I can't believe how lucky I am. I love what I do", she said.

Jennifer Berry Hawes (Jun 1st, 2000)

The Boston Phoenix

Arts
Strings attached

If PHOENIX RISING is Musgrave's "Russian" piece, the weekend before, Susan Davenny Wyner, flute virtuosa Tara Helen O'Connor and the New England String Ensemble gave a glowing performance with Musgrave in attendance, of a more "French" piece, the mythic narrative Orfeo II, and "improvisation on a theme". Behind the diaphanous orchestration are not-so-buried echoes of the great lament ("Che faro senz'Euridice ") and the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" Musgrave admitted to the audience beforehand that she had "pinched" from Gluck.

In Phoenix Rising, Musgrave – who's best known as an opera composer- actually stages the action: the horn begins off stage then enters; the percussion begins on stage and finally leaves. In Orfeo II, the flute player also makes dramatic gestures. O'Connor suddenly dropped her head, for example, at the loss of Eurydice Musgrave was obviously delighted with both Wyner and Andrew Davis for bringing her music so vividly to life.

Lloyd Schwartz (Dec 16th, 1999)

The Boston Globe

Music review
Wyner draws beauty, passion from NE String Ensemble

... the piece (Orfeo II, an improvisation on a theme for flute and strings) provides plenty of virtuoso opportunities for the solo flutist who impersonates Orfeo. Tara Helen O'Connor negotiated the dizzying scales passages, multiplicity of at lacks and dramatic demands with panache, but also showed herself a committed ensemble partner.

Ellen Pfeifer (Nov 23rd, 1999)

The Oregonian

Music Review
Flutist makes a noteworthy debut

Who is Tara Helen O'Connor, and where has she been hiding all this time?

O'Connor made her flute debut at Chamber Music Northwest on Thursday, and knocked the shoes and socks off André Jolivet's "Chant de Linos."

The caliber and camaraderie of musicians at Chamber Music Northwest can intimidate newcomers, but O'Connor proved her worth the minute she put mouth to metal.

With a tone as big as Utah, she whipped through the scales and vertiginous leaps of Jolivet's earthy, resourceful music. Her footing was sure, her rhythmic command bold.

A supporting cast of Cho-Liang Lin, violin, Paul Neubauer, viola, Hamilton Cheifetz, cello and Nancy Allen, harp, supported this fine addition to the festival's family.

It turns out that O'Connor teaches at Purchase College Conservatory of Music in New York State, and has performed at Spoleto U.S.A., Barge Music and Santa Fe festivals.

She plays just once more, on July 19 (repeating July 20) in Arnold Schoenberg's moonstruck monodrama "Pierrot Lunaire." Go.

David Stabler (Sep 12th, 1999)

The Morning Call

Concert Review
Soloists delineate Bach cantatas for the Chamber Music Society

... Tenor David Britton had the misfortune to be overmatched with the dazzling flute of Tara Helen O'Connor in his Aria from Cantata 113, but came into his own later on."

W.J. Fenza (Oct 17th, 1998)

The New York Times

Music review
Stravinsky and Schoenberg: A Gulf

The voices of the five instruments were also virtuoso and full of character, contributing to a performance of richness and power. (...). The Violinist Ida Kavafian and the cellist Peter Willey were particularly good in conveying the glistening harmonics, and their contrapuntal interplays with the flutist Tara Helen O'Connor and the clarinetist David Shifrin went like mad clockwork.

... Ms. O'Connor gave a marvelous performance of Debussy's solo flute piece "Syrinx", bending the odd note aptly and bringing out the final allusion to "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune".

Paul Griffiths (Jan 16th, 1998)

The Ithaca Times

Music
Baton Waiver

...while O'Connor's flute tone is plush and very cushiony. It was O'Connor's tone which usually dominated in the first movement. They both (violin: Linda Case and Tara O'Connor) proved themselves to be very sensitive listeners in the second movement, where their use of ornamentations was perfectly coordinated.

O'Connor returned after intermission as soloist in the "Flute Concerto in D minor" by C.P.E Bach. This fascinating work is like encapsulated history of mid-18th Century music, the first movement picking up late-baroque trends of the 1740's, the second movement the emerging rococo of the 1750's, and the finale lashing out with typical 1760's Sturm und Drang.

Tara Helen O'Connor was the only one of Saturday's soloists who played a visibly active role in conducting the orchestra. O'Connor found that a flute does not make as handy a baton as a violin bow, and chose instead to make rough hand and arm motions to the orchestra when not playing, all the while facing the audience. In this she resembled the go-go dancers from two centuries after the piece was written, but the visual stimulus had its effects.

Her flute playing has an intensity of its own. One doesn't think of the flute as a powerful instrument, but it was powerful here, as if the "cushion" of overtones one heard in her sound was translated into muscle, not flab. The cascades of tongued 16th notes in the final were stunningly executed.

Mark G. Simon (Sep 25th, 1997)

The Ithaca Journal

Arts & Entertainment
CCO breathes life into Baroque war horses

...Tara Helen O'Connor was a strong presence from the start, making the phrases into living entities with clear beginnings and endings, varying lengths, and the emphases and cadences of speech. Her sound was pure but hard character, and she used vibrato as an intensifier, not an annoying constant presence. The three soloists, O'Connor on flute, Linda Case on violin and Alan Giambattista on harpsichord played together with wonderful agreement and sympathy...

... Flute soloist O'Connor certainly made as vivid a case for this piece as could possibly be made (in reference to the concerto for flute and orchestra by C.P.E Bach). At first, her tempo in the first movement seemed unduly hasty, always pushing the orchestra and hurtling on the next phrase, but it grew on one. I am not sure the piece could have sustained a more deliberate, measured approach. She was never perfunctory or merely virtuosic (though the last movement was a jaw dropping tour de force of virtuosity). Her playing had shape and flexibility and radiated delight.

Wendy Maraniss (Sep 22nd, 1997)



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