2015-2016 Season

40th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!

four programs from October 2015 to May 2016

 

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

8pm Saturday, October 17, 2015
Northmont United Presbyterian Church

8169 Perry Highway, North Hills

Founded in October 1975 as America was preparing for the Bicentennial, the Winds have made music of the United States a permanent repertoire emphasis.  One of the group’s most popular programs on tour, From Sea to Shining Sea Erberkprovides a panorama of the American musical landscape.  Featured are a rare unpublished work by symphonist Roy Harris, who was a resident of Pittsburgh for two years; a set of folk melodies beautifully set by William Grant Still, the dean of African-American composers; a transcription of the piano suite Water Scenes including the famous Narcissus by Ethelbert Nevin, a renowned Romantic composer who lived in Edgeworth; and R. James Whipple’s Fantasy on America the Beautiful, written in memory of Aaron Copland.

The Winds will be joined by pianist Erberk Eryılmaz.

This concert commemorates the founding of the Renaissance City Winds by oboist Eric Draper in October 1975

PROGRAM

William Grant Still: Miniatures, for flute, oboe, and piano
Roy Harris: Sextet
Arthur BergerQuartet in C Major
Wallingford Riegger: Concerto for Piano and Winds
Ethelbert Nevin: Water Scenes
R. James Whipple: Fantasy on America the Beautiful

 

GRAB YOUR PASSPORT
an international tour with the Winds

8pm Saturday, November 28, 2015
*** PARLOR CONCERT

Holmes Hall, 719 Brighton Road, Allegheny West

Grab your passport for this musical tour of different countries, each with their own distinctive musical accent.  This is our annual holiday concert, set in one of Pittsburgh’s most remarkable 19th-century mansions. Following the concert is a meet-the-artist reception and a tour of the world’s finest collection of pre-WWII “standard gauge” trains by Lionel, Ives, American Flyer, and other pioneering toy companies.
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PROGRAM

Andrejs Jansons: Suite of Old Lettish Dances (LATVIA)
Josef Foerster: Quintet in D Major, Op. 95 (CZECHOSLOVAKIA)
Eugène Bozza: Variations on a Free Theme (FRANCE)
Alexander Zemlinsky: Humoresque (AUSTRIA)
Efraín Amaya: Four Miniatures (VENEZUELA )

 

The winds warming up in Holmes Hall!

 

WOMEN OF NOTES
Luz_Manriquezwith Luz Manríquez, piano

8pm Saturday, March 12, 2016
20th Century Club, 4201 Bigelow Boulevard, Oakland

7:30 pm Monday, March 14, 2016
St. Agnes Center of Carlow University

3333 Fifth Avenue, Oakland

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music by women composers, largely ignored for two centuries, is finally being published so it can be heard and enjoyed! This concert celebrating Women’s History Month features two notable works from the past plus three from contemporary composers who have lived in Pittsburgh.  The Saturday concert, with an optional pre-concert dinner, is in the elegant ballroom of  the Twentieth Century Club, a private women’s club founded in 1894, with a Monday evening repeat performance at Carlow University.

Louise Farrenc: Piano Quintet in c minor (1851; PITTSBURGH PREMIERE)
Nancy Galbraith: Rhythms and Rituals (an RCW commission in 1995)
 . . . SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 200 MOST REPRESENTATIVE CHAMBER COMPOSITIONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY CHAMBER MUSIC MAGAZINE!
Mildred Gardner: Three Pieces for Woodwind Quartet (1947/1961)
Ellen Spondike: Four Seasons, for flute and piano (2003)
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Twentieth-Century Club in Oakland

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE

8:00 pm Saturday, May 14, 2016
St. Agnes Center of Carlow University

3333 Fifth Avenue, Oakland

‘Twas in 1988 that the Renaissance City Woodwind Quintet officially expanded into the Winds, so it could perform music for octet and double quintet, known as “harmoniemusic” in the eighteenth century.  This concert features Beethoven’s virtuoso octet for pairs of oboes, clarinets, horn, and bassoons, and R. James Whipple’s modern nod to Mozartian style, written for WQED-FM. Arthur Bird’s Suite in D, a Romantic masterpiece from 1882, and Nancy Galbraith’s Dos Danzas Latinas round out the program.

 

Renaissance City Winds nonet

photo by Larry Rippel

 

BeethovenOctet in E-flat Major
Arthur Bird: Suite in D
R. James Whipple: Lunch With Amadeus
Nancy Galbraith: Dos Danzas Latinas
William Byrd
: The Earl of Oxford’s March

St. Agnes Center at Carlow University

St. Agnes Center at Carlow University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We regret that the performance of Charles Griffes’ Three Tone-Pictures must be postposed to a future time.  When copies of the manuscript materials arrived, there were no parts and part of the score was missing.