Calefax Reed Quintet

Friday, January 30, 2015 at 8:00pm
Crowell Concert Hall

$22 general public; $19 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

“Calefax—five extremely gifted Dutch gents who almost made the reed quintet seem the best musical format on the planet.”
—The Times (London)

There will be a lecture/demonstration by the Calefax Reed Quintet at 4:15pm in Crowell Concert Hall.

Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm by John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce.

Based in Amsterdam, the Calefax Reed Quintet breathes new life into classical chamber music, arranging, recomposing, and interpreting music from eight centuries to suit their unique constellation of oboe, clarinet, sax, bass clarinet, and bassoon. From early music to classical and jazz to world music, it all sounds fresh and new.

At Wesleyan, the group will perform the program "The Fugue through the Ages," featuring Johann Sebastian Bach's "Prelude & Fugue No. 7 in E-flat Major" from The Well-Tempered Clavier; César Franck's "Prelude, Fugue et Variation;" a brief introduction to the fugue (with spoken explanation), featuring a number of composers and works, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Arvo Pärt's Arbos, the Dutch traditional song Brand in Mokum, George Frideric Händel's "Cappriccio in g minor, HWV 483," and Gijsbrecht Roijé's Canon; Conlon Nancarrow's "Studies No. 2, 15, & 3c;" and Dmitri Shostakovich's "Preludes & Fugues Op. 87."

The ensemble—Oliver Boekhoorn (oboe), Ivar Berix (clarinet), Raaf Hekkema (saxophone), Jelte Althuis (bass clarinet), and Alban Wesly (bassoon)—has won a number of prestigious prizes and can be heard frequently throughout Europe and further afield in Russia, China, India, Turkey, Japan, South Africa, and the United States.

A Crowell Concert Series event presented by the Music Department and the Center for the Arts.

This event is also part of the Performing Arts Series.