For Immediate Release:
Contact: Milina Barry PR, Tel: 212-420-0200
MUSIC@MENLO’S 2011/12 WINTER SERIES CONTINUES WITH “WINDS OF FRANCE” ON FEBRUARY 12
Featuring
Alessio Bax (piano), Tara Helen O’Connor (flute), Stephen Taylor (oboe),
David Shifrin (clarinet), Peter Kolkay (bassoon), and William Purvis (horn)
Sunday, February 12, 2012, at 4:00 p.m.
Music@Menlo’s 2011/2012 Winter Series continues on February 12 at 4:00 p.m. at the Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton with a sonically ravishing concert of wind chamber music gems. The program showcases selections for various combinations of wind instruments and piano and culminates in the entire ensemble performing Francis Poulenc’s iconic Sextet for Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn. Music@Menlo favorites, including pianist Alessio Bax, clarinetist David Shifrin, and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, join forces with an elite ensemble of wind players from the Chamber Music Society, including Stephen Taylor (oboe), Peter Kolkay (bassoon), and William Purvis (horn), for this timbrally colorful program of works by some of France’s most compelling musical voices.
Tickets are available; details are listed below.
Complementing the world-class chamber music programming that distinguishes Music@Menlo’s internationally acclaimed summer festival, Music@Menlo’s Winter Series offers an exciting opportunity to further explore the vast richness of the chamber music literature, interpreted by some of classical music’s most commanding performers.
MUSIC@MENLO WINTER SERIES TICKETS & INFO
Winds of France
February 12, 2012
4:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Tickets: $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 student
Program
Maurice Emmanuel: Sonata for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano, op. 11 (1907)
Yan Maresz: Circumambulation for Flute (1993, rev. 1996)
Jean Françaix: Wind Quintet (1948)
Jacques Ibert: Trois pièces brèves for Wind Quintet (1930)
Francis Poulenc: Sextet for Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn (1932–1939)
Artists
Alessio Bax, piano; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Stephen Taylor, oboe; David Shifrin, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; William Purvis, horn
Tickets
Limited tickets are available: $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 student
Online: www.musicatmenlo.org
Phone: 650-331-0202
Fax: 650-330-2016
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Since taking First Prize at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition and the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan, pianist Alessio Bax has won audiences across the globe. Highlights of his 2011–2012 season include appearances with the Dallas Symphony under Jaap van Zweden; recitals in Iceland, Cyprus, Rome, Taipei, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, France, and Spain; and a tour of Canada with his wife, pianist Lucille Chung. A new solo album, Rachmaninov: Preludes and Melodies, was released by Signum Classics in June. He is now on the teaching faculty at Southern Methodist University and is a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two.
Peter Kolkay
was the first bassoonist to win First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition (2002), the first bassoonist to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2004), and the first on his instrument to become a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two (2006–2009). His upcoming season features collaborations with the St. Petersburg and Tessera Quartets, a tour with the Chamber Music Society, and a solo recital at Merkin Hall. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Rochester, Westchester, and South Carolina Philharmonics, as well as the Green Bay and Flint Symphonies. As a solo recitalist, he has appeared at Weill Recital Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Teatro Nacional in Panama City. He currently serves as Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina and is a 2011–2012 Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble and a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, teaches at the Bard College Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, is a professor of flute and Head of the Wind Department at Purchase College Conservatory of Music, and holds a summer flute master class at the Banff Centre in Canada. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, she was the first wind player to participate in the CMS Two program and is now an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Hornist William Purvis
pursues a multifaceted career in the United States and abroad as horn soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and educator. He has participated in numerous premieres, including horn concertos by Peter Lieberson and Bayan Northcott and trios by Poul Ruders and Paul Lansky. Other highlights include the U.S. premiere of the revised version of the Ligeti Horn Concerto and the world premiere of Richard Wernick’s Quintet for Horn and String Quartet with the Juilliard Quartet. He is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Yale Brass Trio, and the Triton Horn Trio. A graduate of Haverford College with a B.A. in philosophy, William Purvis is a faculty member of the Yale School of Music, the Juilliard School, and SUNY Stony Brook.
A Yale University faculty member since 1987, clarinetist David Shifrin is Artistic Director of Yale’s Chamber Music Society series and Yale in New York, a concert series at Carnegie Hall. This season he celebrates his twenty-second anniversary as an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and, from 1992 to 2004, he served as its Artistic Director, inaugurating the CMS Two program and the annual Brandenburg Concerto concerts. Currently in his thirty-first season as Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, he has collaborated with the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson String Quartets and is a member of the Kavafian-Schub-Shifrin Trio.
Stephen Taylor, one of the most sought-after oboists in the country, holds the Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III Solo Oboe Chair at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a solo oboist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble (for which he has served as Codirector of Chamber Music), the American Composers Orchestra, the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae and is Coprincipal Oboist of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His regular festival appearances include Spoleto, Aldeburgh, Caramoor, Bravo! Vail Valley, Music from Angel Fire, Norfolk, Santa Fe, Aspen, and Chamber Music Northwest.
ABOUT MUSIC@MENLO
Music@Menlo, an internationally acclaimed chamber music festival and institute under the artistic direction of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, was founded in 2003. Based in Atherton, California, and an important part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s dynamic cultural fabric, Music@Menlo is noted for its world-class chamber music performances, extensive audience engagement programs, intensive training for preprofessional musicians through its Chamber Music Institute, and efforts to enrich and expand the global chamber music community.
THE CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS AT MENLO-ATHERTON
Completed in 2009, the Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton offers an intimate and acoustically superior environment for chamber music. Designed by Hodgetts+Fung Design and Architecture of Culver City, California, the 492-seat hall is located in close proximity to downtown Menlo Park on the campus of Menlo-Atherton High School at 555 Middlefield Road in Atherton.
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
Don’t miss the final performance in the 2011/12 Music@Menlo Winter Series:
April 29: Jupiter String Quartet
The Jupiter String Quartet, one of America’s most exciting young chamber ensembles, returns to Music@Menlo for this special afternoon of masterworks from the string quartet repertoire.
Press Inquiries:
Milina Barry PR / 212-420-0200 / milina@milinabarrypr.com
