FREE CONCERT BY THE DA CAPO CHAMBER PLAYERS AT BARD COLLEGE ON OCTOBER 11 Program features works by three contemporary composers: Chinary Ung, Philippe Bodin, and Chandler Carter

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Da Capo Chamber Players perform works by three contemporary composers—Philippe Bodin, Chandler Carter, and Grawemeyer Award–winning composer Chinary Ung—in a concert at Bard College on Wednesday, October 11. Presented by The Bard Center, the program is free and open to the public, beginning at 8:00 p.m. in Olin Hall. “The Da Capo Chamber Players have been exploring and helping [to] create the modern repertory for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano for the last 30 years,” writes Allan Kozinn in the New York Times. The concert at Bard exemplifies this, as Da Capo performs Chinary Ung’s “Child Song,” “Spiral VI,” and “Luminous Spirals,” as well as two works written for the group, Philippe Bodin’s “Peal” and Chandler Carter’s “Conversation Piece.” Da Capo is widely acclaimed for its virtuosity, stimulating programs, and openness to a wide spectrum of styles in new music. Its dedication to working with composers is matched by a commitment to rehearsing each piece as a living, moving, breathing entity, rather than as a fixed blueprint. Winner of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1973, Da Capo has been a leader in building a strong heritage of present-day American chamber music and can point with pride to more than 90 chamber music works written especially for the ensemble by Joan Tower, Philip Glass, Harvey Sollberger, and Philippe Bodin, among many others. In April 2003, Da Capo performed at the Moscow Forum International Festival of Contemporary Music. Da Capo’s CD of work by Judith Shatin has been released on the Innova label; a forthcoming recording includes chamber works by Alla Borzova. The Da Capo Chamber Players are flutist Patricia Spencer, clarinetist Meighan Stoops, violinist David Bowlin, cellist André Emelianoff, and pianist Blair McMillen. The Bard Center Concerts continue in Olin Hall on the Capital Trio performs a concert for children, “What’s Your Era? A ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ to Western Music” on Sunday, October 29, at 3:00 p.m., presented in cooperation with the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle. The fall season concludes with a program by the Colorado Quartet on Sunday, November 5, at 3:00 p.m. All programs are free and open to the public. This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Endowment at Bard College. For further information about the program, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425. ABOUT DA CAPO Violinist David Bowlin appointed to the Da Capo Chamber Players in 2003, is enjoying an active musical life as both a soloist and chamber musician. He is the 2003 first-prize winner of the Washington International Competition for Strings, and was awarded a debut recital at Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection. As a chamber musician, He has performed extensively in New York at such venues as Weill Recital Hall, Bargemusic, 92nd Street Y, Miller Theatre, and Merkin Concert Hall. An active performer of new music, he is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), which performs in Chicago and New York. His recent solo performances include recitals at The Stone, New York, and concerto performances with the Dennison (Ohio) Symphony and ICE. As a 2005 participant in the Marlboro Music Festival, he performed with Richard Goode, Kim Kashkashian, Hiroko Yajima, Samuel Rhodes, and David Soyer. In addition to his performing activities, Bowlin served as Ronald Copes’s teaching assistant at Juilliard from 2002–2005. His principal instructors have included Roland and Almita Vamos, Ronald Copes, and Stephen and Kimberly Sims. He received his B.Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2000, and his M.Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2002. He is currently a doctoral student of Pamela Frank, Ani Kavafian, and Phil Setzer at Stony Brook University. André Emelianoff has toured North America, Japan, Russia, Austria, and England, and given recitals throughout central Asia and the Mediterranean as an American Ambassador for the Arts, sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency. Cellist with Da Capo Chamber Players since 1976, he is also a member of the Aeolian Chamber Players and has been involved with the Music Today Ensemble. Winner of a 1985 National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Award, he has commissioned works by Aaron Kernis, Joan Tower, George Perle, Richard Wernick, Shulamit Ran, Stephen Jaffe, and Gerald Levinson. He has appeared as a guest artist with Da Camera of Houston, the New Jersey Chamber Society, and Lincoln Center Chamber Society; as a participant in the Marlboro, Chamber Music West, and Piccolo Spoleto festivals; and as a soloist with the Albany Symphony. He is on the faculty at The Juilliard School, as well as the Round Top (Texas) Festival and the Perlman Program. Emelianoff has recorded for CRI, Opus One, New World Records, Nonesuch, GM Recordings, RCA, Bridge Records, and Pro Arte. Pianist Blair McMillen has established himself as one of the most versatile and sought-after young pianists today. The New York Times has described his playing as “brilliant,” “riveting,” and “prodigiously accomplished and exciting.” His recent engagements have included appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caramoor, Harvard University, Maverick Concerts, and Concerten Tot un Met (Amsterdam); and concerto performances with American Ballet Theater and Miller Theatre’s 15th-anniversary Piano Revolution series. Equally at home in both new and traditional repertoire, McMillen recently gave the U.S. premiere of Frederic Rzewski’s piano piece “Dust,” and he presented a critically-acclaimed recital at Columbia University featuring keyboard music from the late 14th-century Codex Faenza. A solo CD, Soundings, with music by Liszt, Scriabin, Copland, and Debussy, was released in late 2004. A member of Da Capo since 2003, McMillen also is pianist for the composer/performer collective counter)induction, as well as the downtown New York City-based Avian Orchestra. An active improviser and self-taught jazz pianist, he is currently on the piano faculty at Bard College. “Patricia Spencer’s presence was striking and her playing was extraordinary in its control over minutiae of dynamics, pitch, and timbre, particularly in relationship to the complex, fluid electronic environment that surrounded her. The performance was the tour de force of technique, emotion, and spirituality that the piece requires; it will stand as one of the highlights of the musical season,” wrote Richard Dyer in the Boston Globe. Recent high points in Spencer’s career, devoted to new music, include her 2002 recital in Moscow for the Alternativa Festival; her premiere of Shulamit Ran’s flute concerto, Voices, at the 2000 National Flute Association convention; and her premiere of solo flute works by Louis Karchin and Eugene Lee at the Sonic Boom Festival in the fall of 2001. An exciting repertoire of pieces has been written for her, including Thea Musgrave’s Narcissus and Judith Shatin’s Kairos, which was featured on her solo CD (Neuma Records). An earlier CD, with pianist Linda Hall, features Boulez’s Sonatine, plus works by Carter, Perle, Korde, Talma, Martirano, Kreiger, and Jaffe. Both CDs received rave reviews from Fanfare and the American Record Guide. Spencer has received awards for her solo recordings and commissioning projects from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. As a recitalist and Da Capo member, she has commissioned more than 80 solo, duo, and chamber works for flute. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she studied with Robert Willoughby, Spencer also has studied with Marcel Moyse, John Wummer, and Josef Marx. She teaches flute and chamber music at Bard College and Hofstra University. Clarinetist Meighan Stoops has distinguished herself in both in the classical and new-music realms as a solo, chamber and orchestral performer. In 2005, she performed with artists as diverse as Peter Schickele, Elvis Costello, and tabla virtuoso Pandit Samir Chatterjee. Allan Kozinn notes, in a New York Times review of a program of works by Joan Tower and George Crumb, that “Meighan Stoops…had a star turn in Ms. Tower’s Wings.” Another review said she “energized Shulamit Ran’s Private Game with real musical dash.” Stoops can be heard with other ensembles, such as Gotham Sinfonietta, American Modern Ensemble, Colorado Quartet, Sequitur, Music from Japan, International Society of Contemporary Music, John Eaton’s Pocket Opera Players, Ensemble Sospeso, Sylvan Winds and the Quintet of the Americas. With the Quintet, she had the great honor of performing at the September 11th Commemorative Ceremony at Ground Zero. She is principal clarinet in the Garden State Philharmonic and plays with several New York orchestras: Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Dicapo Opera. She has recorded for CRI, Naxos, Albany, and Chesky Records (Area 31, Grammy nominated). She can be heard on the soundtrack of Muhammed: Legacy of a Prophet, a PBS documentary with music by Martin Bresnick, and Solidarity, a short film directed by Nancy Kiang with music by Richard Carrick. Stoops is thrilled to be making her co-compositional and theatrical debut this year in Greed: A Musical Love $tory, a new musical written and directed by Robert Honeywell as part of the $ellout Festival at the Brick Theater. According to www.nytheatre.com, “. . . Stoops’ witty and tuneful score kept me laughing the entire time (days later, I’m also still humming the songs—a great sign).” Stoops holds degrees from Northwestern and Yale universities, where her teachers were Russell Dagon, Charlie Neidich and David Shifrin. She Stoops teaches clarinet, recorder, and piano and each summer she coaches young composers at the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire. # # # (9/14/06)

This event was last updated on 10-13-2006

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