Windscape
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Randall Ellis, oboe
Alan R. Kay, clarinet
Frank Morelli, bassoon
David Jolley, horn
East Meets West:
A Floating World—Japan and the Impressionists
“For many, the names of the players who make up the woodwind quintet Windscape will have a certain aura—that of the fabulously skilled, much sought-after, and usually footloose New York musician who can tackle anything—repeat, anything,” insists a Boston Globe writer. Created in 1994 by eminent woodwind soloists, Windscape has earned a prominent place for itself as a vibrant, ever-evolving group of musical individualists. The players, who are artists-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music, even like to call themselves an “unquintet.” The group delights audiences across North America with its novel programs and accompanying presentations, each devised to take listeners on a musical and historical tour evoking cultural landscapes of distant times and places.
In its Penn State premiere, Windscape performs a program titled East Meets West: A Floating World—Japan and the Impressionists. The program features works by composers familiar to Western ears—Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Olivier Messiaen—paired with music by Japanese composers Michio Miyagi and Toru Takemitsu. The musicians perform before projected images of paintings and prints by artists from Europe and Japan. Works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, and others are juxtaposed—often thematically—with pieces by Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Ando Hiroshige, Kitao Shigemasa, Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, Mizuno Toshikata, and others.
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sponsors
Gay D. Dunne and James H. Dunne
media sponsor
WPSU