2019-2020 Chamber Music Series with the Cascade Quartet and Chinook Winds

The Great Falls Symphony presents the 2019-2020 Chamber Music Series featuring its Core Ensembles, the Chinook Winds and the Cascade Quartet. The ensembles will present seven new and unique concerts throughout the season, culminating with a special chamber orchestra program in May. Concert dates, information, and tickets are available at chambermusicseries.org.

The Chinook Winds will kick off the 19-20 season with a spicy season opener, featuring guest guitarist Sungmin Shin. ¡Ole! Works for Winds & Guitar concerts will be on Friday, September 27 (7PM), and Sunday, September 29 (2PM). The integration of wind quintet sounds juxtaposed against plucked strings will be premiered in a commissioned work by Shin and a new transcription of Luigi Boccherini’s Fandango will evoke the blood and sensuality of old Spain. Mario Tedesco’s Eclogue, a trio for flute, English horn, and guitar, and Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion, a melancholy tango for horn, bassoon, and guitar, add even more Latin flavor and flair to this exciting program.

The Cascade Quartet’s first concert of the season features Montana’s own Phil Aaberg as a special guest artist on the program. Together they will present Aaberg’s gorgeous Piano Quintet No. 1. Commissioned in 2007 for the Quartet, this work is a musical depiction of life on the high plains and the Hi Line. This soundscape includes a railroad train and the big open spaces of northern Montana. Audiences can see performances of Phil Aaberg in Concert with the Cascade Quartet on Friday, November 1 (7PM), and Sunday, November 3 (2PM).

The Chinook Winds will present Kammermusic Konzert on Friday, November 22 (7PM), and Sunday, November 24 (2PM). This program features traditional wind quintets by German composers. Hanns Eisler immigrated to the U.S. in the 1930s and, though he missed his native soil, the bitterness he felt is not reflected in his music. His Divertimento is a tasteful example of modernist chamber music. Theodor Blumer, another composer on the program, puts the horn at center stage in one of the four wind quintets he produced while a successful composer and conductor in Dresden.

The Cascade Quartet will give their audience respite from the winter cold with Cozy Classics on Friday, January 24 (7PM), and Sunday, January 26 (2PM). Concert attendees are invited to wear their cuddliest sweaters and fuzziest socks and settle in with a blanket of warm and lush harmonies of a Brahms string quartet. The quartet will also take a musical journey through Danish folk tunes, beautifully arranged by the Danish String Quartet. It is playful music spanning the emotional spectrum– emotional, joyful and heartfelt.

The Chinook Winds celebrate Women’s History Month with a stellar program featuring talented all-female composers. Independent Spirits concerts will be held on Friday, March 13 (7PM), and Sunday, March 15 (2PM). Composer Amy Beach was a prodigy, playing piano and composing at age four. Pastoral for wind quintet reflects her love of nature. The Suite for Wind Quintet by Ruth Seeger is lively, buoyant, conversational music. Joan Tower’s Island Prelude was inspired by an oboist’s exceptionally lyrical playing and it is a rare example of a woodwind quintet that features one instrument as the soloist throughout the piece. Valerie Coleman is the resident composer and founder of Imani Winds. The quintet will perform her Tzigane, an imaginative blend of gypsy jazz and indie classical with intricately shifting voices for the entire ensemble. In an homage to Samuel Barber, Jennifer Higdon’s Autumn Music will portray the colors of the season.

The Cascade Quartet will share three works by indigenous composers in their Native Views performances on Friday, April 17 (7PM), Sunday, April 19 (2PM). Raven Chacon, a Diné (Navajo) composer, created The Journey of the Horizontal People for the Kronos Quartet. You’ll want to get up and dance! Another Kronos-commissioned work invokes a similar impulse. South African composer Kevin Volans says of his own work, “The title White Man Sleeps comes from a moment in nyanga panpipe music where the performers leave off playing their loud pipes ... and dance only to the sound of their ankle rattles, to let the white landowner sleep – for a minute or two.” Michael Foumai’s Flare Up is a breathlessly energetic work inspired by Samoan fire knife dancing. It’s a five-minute musical inferno!

The Chinook Winds and Cascade Quartet will close the 19-20 season with a new concert experience for the Chamber Music Series audience. Synthesis will be the series’ first chamber orchestra collaboration featuring the members of both the Cascade Quartet and Chinook Winds, plus additional guest musicians. This special mix of musicians will present works by Stravinsky and Beethoven in this unique program. Synthesis concerts take place on Friday, May 15 (7PM), and Sunday, May 17 (2PM).

The Great Falls Symphony’s Chamber Music Series has several season ticket and single ticket options for patrons. Single admission is $15 for adults and $5 for students. Family passes are $15 and include admission for one student and one adult. Bring-a-friend packages are available online only at chambermusicseries.org and include two adult admissions for $25. Four-concert season passes are available for $45 (adults) and $16 (students). Seven-concert passes grant seven admissions and may be purchased for $75 (adults) and $25 (students). All tickets, packages, and season passes are available to purchase online at chambermusicseries.org or at the door. For more information, contact the Symphony office at 406-453-4102 or visit chambermusicseries.org.

2019-2020 Chamber Music Series

Concert venues will be announced at a later date.

¡Ole! Works for Winds & Guitar with the Chinook Winds