The Antara Winds, the resident wind ensemble of the Hochstein School of Music and Dance, will appear in concert at The College at Brockport on Friday, February 16. Founded in 1982, the Antara Winds, comprised of all women who are educators and professional musicians, have appeared regularly on “Live from Hochstein” and have performed extensively throughout the greater Rochester area. In addition to presenting traditional repertoire for woodwind quintet, the Antara Winds delight in bringing audiences the music of contemporary composers. The members of the ensemble are Diane Smith, flute; Judith Ricker, oboe; Margaret Quackenbush, clarinet; Nikolette LaBonte, horn; and Blaire Koerner, bassoon.
According to Quackenbush, their program, “Across the Americas,” is designed to “whisk the concertgoer around the globe, hearing music influenced by the composers’ homelands or, in Antonin Dvorák’s case, his temporary home.”
Dvorák spent three years in the United States as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York; it was during a vacation in rural Iowa that the beloved “String Quartet No. 12 in F major,” Op. 96, was written. Also known as the “American” String Quartet, it has been transcribed for a variety of musical ensembles and is, along with the “New World” Symphony and perhaps a handful of the Slavonic Dances, the only Dvorák music that many music-lovers have ever learned to recognize.
Arguably the most renowned tango musician in the world, one of Argentine-born Astor Piazzolla’s most popular works, “Libertango,” has been arranged for various instruments and combinations, including wind ensemble.
In the composer’s own words, “‘Libertango’ stands for the freedom which I allow for my musicians. Their limits are defined solely by the extent of their own capabilities and not through any exterior pressure.”
The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Tower Fine Arts Center Mainstage, 180 Holley Street, on the Brockport campus. Tickets are $17/general, $12/seniors, alumni, faculty and staff, and $9/students. They are available online at fineartstix.brockport.edu, by phone at 395-2787, or at the Tower Fine Arts Center box office.
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