SONOSYNTHESIS: Magnus Mozart
SONOSYNTHESIS: Magnus Mozart
Transcendent chamber music for flute and strings
Cari Shipp, flute | Audrey Gray, violin | Danielle Wiebe Burke, viola | Schuyler Slack, cello
benefitting Growth for Generations, a PHA project
$35 in advance | $40 at the door
Music by:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Valerie Coleman
Reena Esmail
Eric Ewazen
Tickets and more information here!
Join Cari Shipp, founder of SONOSYNTHESIS, with members of the Richmond and Williamsburg symphonies as they explore the transcendent repertoire of chamber music for flute and strings. Mozart's flute quartets are much beloved, but they are just the beginning. Explore the music of three living composers from three different cultures and experience the expansive nature of classical chamber music.
Program:
Mozart - Flute Quartet in C Major
Esmail - Nadiya
Ewazen - Bridgehampton Suite
Coleman - Maombi Asante!
Mozart - Flute Quartet in D Major
Another name for this program could be "a Mozart sandwich." Like a sandwich, chamber music is an opportunity to expand and explore the possibilities of instruments and their players. In Mozart's Quartet in C, we'll hear a theme with often lovely, sometimes cheeky variations. Reena Esmail's Nadiya ('river' in Hindi) is described by the composer as "[two different streams] pushing and pulling against one another, tripping over each other, flowing into each other to create mellifluous, cascading melodies." Ewazen's Bridgehampton Suite is a direct result of the Mozart quartets, so you'll hear a coastal, sometimes sentimental rendition of the classic quartet. Coleman's Maombi Asante! means "a prayer of thanks," and is joyful, rhythmic exclamation of gratitude. We'll close with Mozart's Quartet in D Major, the most famous and a personal favorite and a must-know for any chamber music lover. You'll hear some of the same back-and-forth of the Quaret in C but instead of theme and variations, we have a unique second movement played by the strings entirely in pizzacatto, and a rousing peasant's romp to close us out.
THE BENEFITTING ORGANIZATION:
Growth for Generations is a project of Piedmont Housing Alliance in order to build affordable housing on the property of Park Street Christian Church. "Through our fundraising campaign, we will transform our existing preschool, build a new and more sustainable preschool, and support the building of affordable housing. Together these two projects align with our church’s mission of responding to the needs of our local intergenerational community."
THE VENUE:
This warm, welcoming, moderately sized venue is close to downtown but has ample dedicated parking. This concert will be held in a church but there will be no proselytizing of any kind. Park Street Christian Church frequently and happily opens their doors to the community. When operating as a house of worship they welcome and value inclusiveness and acceptance of all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, political preference, socio-economic status, country of origin, language, or intellectual or physical ability, and at all levels (membership, service, marriage, leadership).
THE CONCERT SERIES:
SONOSYNTHESIS is a benefit concert series in Charlottesville, Virginia founded and produced by Cari Shipp. Photosynthesis is turning light into energy, and SONOSYNTHESIS is turning sound into connection. At the center of each concert is connection - between musicians and audience, between community and benefitting organization - with music as the catalyst, creatively programmed and presented. This is the nineteenth concert in the series since its inception in 2017, and the opening of its 9th season.
THE MUSICIANS
Cari Shipp has enjoyed time on the orchestral, chamber, and solo stage for over two decades. She has appeared as principal flutist with orchestras such as the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Charlottesville Symphony, Charlottesville Opera Chamber Orchestra, and Lynchburg Symphony and served as principal flutist with the Hunt Valley Symphony Orchestra for three years. As a soloist she has been featured in concerts throughout Central Virginia, Washington DC, and Baltimore including the Charlottesville Salon Series, Music on Park Street, and the Westchester Club Library Series. She has been the featured orchestral soloist on Mozart’s Concerto in G Major and J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor and Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.
In 2017 she started her own benefit concert series, SONOSYNTHESIS, through which she has produced and performed fourteen solo concerts benefitting local organizations. Through this series she has been honored to collaborate with elite musicians such as Jeremy Thompson, Colin Davin, and Shelby Sender. SONOSYNTHESIS concerts feature the gems of the flute canon as well as exploring the works of living and underperformed composers.
After graduating from the Interlochen Arts Academy, she completed her Bachelors of Music in flute performance from the University of North Texas under the tutelage of Dr. Mary Karen Clardy and her Masters of Music in flute performance from the Peabody Conservatory under Laurie Sokoloff. She has been featured in master classes with Jeanne Baxtresser, Marina Piccinini, Jim Walker, Trudy Kane, Mark Sparks, Mathieu Dufour, Paul Edmund-Davies, and more.
Cari performs on a handmade 14k Powell flute. She maintains a full private lesson studio in Charlottesville, VA where she lives with her husband, dog, and two cats. When not teaching or performing she enjoys long hikes and longer books.
Violinist Audrey Gray enjoys a varied career performing both chamber and orchestral music. She joined the Richmond Symphony as a full time violinist in their 23/24 season. Before this, she held core positions with the Grand Rapids Symphony and Knoxville Symphony, and was also a contracted violinist in the Dayton Philharmonic. Audrey has also performed with such orchestras as the Nashville, New World and Utah Symphonies,the Louisville Orchestra, and the Williamsburg (VA) Symphony. Recent summer musical activities include the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, the Wintergreen Music Festival, the Torrey Chamber Music Festival (Torrey, UT), and Appalachian Chamber Music Festival (Harpers Ferry, WV).
Audrey attended Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and received her bachelor’s degree in violin performance studying with Mark Kaplan. She completed her master’s degree with fellowship at Northwestern University, studying with Blair Milton, and at the same time, was a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Additional studies include the Aspen Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Maestro Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Music Festival, and the National Repertory Orchestra.
An advocate of making music study accessible to wider communities, Audrey taught violin in the Dayton Philharmonic’s daily after-school El Sistema program for several years. A fan particularly of fiddle music, Audrey is always excited at the opportunity to explore and perform music that bridges the gap between traditional western classical music and other musical genres.
An artist whose playing has been hailed as “highly idiomatic, richly varied,” Mexican-Canadian violist Danielle Wiebe Burke’s work as a performer and educator has been recognized since she made her debut with the Calgary Civic Symphony at the age of sixteen.
She was a prizewinning finalist at the 15th Annual Sphinx Competition and, recently, a quarter-finalist in the Primrose International Viola Competition. Her recordings have garnered international attention, with Gramophone’s review of her premier of Hannah Lash’s “Requiem” (Naxos) describing her playing as emerging “as beautifully as the singers sing.”
As soloist, Danielle has performed in halls throughout Europe and the United States, including Zipper Hall (Colburn), Warner Music Hall (Oberlin), Woolsey Hall (Yale), and Severance Hall in Detroit. She may be heard regularly in the Belvedere Series, Staunton Music Festival, Appalachian Chamber Music Festival, and Wintergreen Music Festival. An accomplished orchestral musician, she has appeared in Boston’s Phoenix Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Williamsburg Symphony, where she holds the John C. Jamison Principal Viola Chair.
An avid explorer of new musical forms and of the interstates that link the classical tradition to popular idioms, Danielle has premiered the work of contemporary composers such as Michael Gilbertson, Ethan Braun, and Polina Nazaykinskaya. In other contexts, she has performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk with Faye Webster and on World Café with regular collaborators, the minimalist folk duo Lowland Hum.
A student of Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservator and Ettore Causa at Yale University, where she received her doctorate, Danielle enjoys bringing music to young artists. She has performed Bach in the botanical gardens at Cornell, toured the “lost” composer Gaspar Cassadó’s string quartets to Oberlin, Ohio State, and Yale, and, with theorist Craig Wright, assembled an introduction to music that is now available to students across the world through Yale Open Courses. She presently teaches violin and viola at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Danielle plays a 2009 Stefan Greiner viola commissioned by violinist Kyung Wha Chung. She lives on a historic farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Cellist Schuyler Slack has performed in orchestral, chamber music, and recital settings across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. The Alexandria, VA native was appointed to the Richmond Symphony’s Kenneth and Bettie Christopher Perry Foundation Cello Chair in 2016. Previously he held the joint position of Artist in Residence at the University of Evansville and Principal Cellist of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also a member of the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra, Williamsburg Symphony, and is on the music faculty at Randolph-Macon College. He performs frequently in the cello sections of major orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra and the Baltimore and National Symphonies. His primary teachers were Cleveland Orchestra principal cellists Mark Kosower and Stephen Geber at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
A devoted chamber musician and lover of string quartets, Schuyler has studied with and performed alongside members of the Tokyo, Orford, Cleveland, Brentano, Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets, Alban Gerhardt, Nadia Sirota, and Donald and Vivian Weilerstein. He has performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, including Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall; as well as given recitals at some of the countries top music schools, such as the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan.
Equally committed to the music of living composers and crossover musical endeavors, Schuyler has commissioned new compositions for the cello by composers Douglas Boyce, Steven Snowden, and Heather Stebbins. He was praised by the Washington Post for his “excellent” contribution – noted for his “pluck and scrape effects!” – to a new music-theatre adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis that was taken to the Prague Fringe Festival in 2015.
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Ticket purchase supports the performers as well as Growth for Generations
