Calefax Reed Quintet

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 8:00pm
Crowell Concert Hall

Free and open to the public.

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

Based in Amsterdam, the Calefax Reed Quintet returns to Wesleyan for the first time in a decade to perform a program featuring the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (Fantasy and Fugue in g minor), George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue), and Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans (Quartet). To celebrate Black History Month, the quintet will also perform selected movements from Suite No. 1 for Organ by the great African American composer Florence Price.

The group will also participate in residency events with the Wesleyan Music Department on Tuesday, February 11 and Thursday, February 13, 2025. From 5pm to 6pm before the concert on Wednesday, February 12, the quintet will discuss their work and demonstrate excerpts for the Wesleyan University Orchestra. This demonstration is free and open to the public. Their U.S. tour this month includes stops in Washington, D.C. and California.

The quintet breathes new life into classical chamber music with a pop mentality, 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.

The ensemble—Oliver Boekhoorn (oboe), Bart de Kater (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, Brazil, and the United States.

The Calefax Reed Quintet previously performed at Wesleyan in Crowell Concert Hall in January 2015.