The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) presents Oboe Bliss, a concert inspired by an Arthur Bliss quintet featuring the oboe and strings. The program includes the world premiere of a new work for Flute, Oboe and String Quartet by renowned Bay Area composer Elinor Armer, and new arrangements of Manuel De Falla’s Suite Populaire Espagnole for the same instruments by Left Coast composer Kurt Rohde, along with a string trio by Anthony Porter.
Oboe Bliss features Left Coast’s own Tom Nugent, currently principal oboe with the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, member of the Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet, and founding member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Nugent was attracted to the Bliss quintet for its idiosyncratic qualities, and describes the piece as a “lush quintet, with French impressionistic and English pastoral sonorities that combine as a counter point to 20th century outburst. It would seem that Bliss in this 1927 work is entering the 20th century kicking and screaming but always coming back to his tonal and stylistic roots.”
Award-winning composer and LCCE’s founding artistic director Kurt Rohde is making a new arrangement of Manuel De Falla’s 1926 Suite Populaire Espagnole for Flute, Oboe and String Quartet especially for this program, and internationally acclaimed Bay Area composer Elinor Armer uses the same combination of instruments for a new piece that will receive its world premiere. Finally, Anthony Porter’s Five, Six, Heaven for String Trio, a work commissioned by the LCCE Intersection Workshop will be revisited.
“This concert was initially driven by Tom Nugent’s interest in the Bliss piece and we are excited to feature his contributions to the ensemble in this program,” explains Anna Presler, LCCE artistic director. “I was delighted when Elly Armer agreed to write a new piece for us. One of the very first recordings of new music I ever made was of her Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts, when I was still in graduate school. Plus, she taught a great seminar on Bartok String Quartets in about 1993, and I have drawn on the work we did in there in rehearsals and performances of those pieces ever since.”
About the Contemporary Composers
Elinor Armer, acclaimed Bay Area composer was born in Oakland, raised in Davis, attended Mills College, received her MA in composition from San Francisco State University, and currently resides in Berkeley. Armer enjoys a world-renowned reputation for her work in music education. She is aligned with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, in which she founded the Composition Department in 1985. She studied composition with Darius Milhaud, Leon Kirchner and Roger Nixon, and piano with Alexander Libermann. Recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and commissions, Armer has performed and lectured throughout the country, and her works are performed regularly in the United States and abroad. Armer is one of the co-founders of Composers, Inc., and a member of ASCAP.
Anthony (Tones) Porter is a pianist and composer based in San Francisco, CA. He received his BA in Music and Education from UC Berkeley, and his MM in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying with Dan Becker. His music has been performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, Outside Lands Music Festival, the Jewish Community Center, and ODC in San Francisco; and The Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA. In addition to concert music, he has written for radio, film and dance. Porter is a long-time member of the Bay Area piano ensemble New Keys and an amateur accordionist.
Kurt Rohde is the founding Artistic Director of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. He has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and other important commissions and awards. Also a professional violist, he was a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra from 1993–2013 and co-founded the LCCE in 1992. He is Professor of Music Composition and Theory at University of California, Davis.
About Left Coast Chamber Ensemble
Left Coast is a versatile group of twelve musicians that performs in different combinations, presenting chamber music new and old. It is the mission of Left Coast Chamber Ensemble to forge connections through stirring presentations of chamber music across the Bay Area. The Ensemble strives to make connections between composer and performer, performer and audience, audience and music, and between music of all eras by staging a spectrum of imaginative programs that enchant and delight the listener, and give diverse audiences multiple entry points for engaging with the music.
Tickets are $15-$35. Contact www.leftcoastensemble.org or call 415/617-LCCE (5223)
