Oboedacious

Friday, March 28, 2025 at 8:00pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown

Free and open to the public

Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on WesNest, but reservations are not required.

The ensemble Oboedacious—featuring Wesleyan Oboe Instructor Libby Van Cleve, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce on piano, and Kirsten Lipkens on oboe and English horn—will perform their adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat Major, K. 364 plus other works from their unique repertoire of chamber music works drawn from the 17th century to the present.

Profiles

Described as “expert” by The Washington Post, "dazzling" by the San Francisco Chronicle, and “absolutely exquisite” by Paris Transatlantic magazine, Libby Van Cleve’s most extreme moniker was from The Hartford Courant which dubbed her “the double reed queen of the new music world.”  Van Cleve is recognized as one of the foremost interpreters of chamber and contemporary music for the oboe. She is the author of Oboe Unbound, a book on contemporary oboe techniques published by Rowman and Littlefield, and co-author of the award-winning book/CD publication, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale University Press). She is also the editor of Six Suites, oboe performance editions of Bach’s cello suites, published by T.D. Ellis Music Publishing.  

For over 30 years, oboist Kirsten Lipkens has performed, taught, and created educational programs to inspire audiences of all ages to appreciate and explore the art of music. She studied oboe performance at Eastman School of Music and Yale School of Music. Her teachers include Alicia Chapman, Neil Boyer, Richard Killmer, Ronald Roseman, and Peggy Pearson. Lipkens has performed in Japan, Europe, and the United States, with several appearances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. She has played with symphony orchestras in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia; West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Springfield Massachusetts; Glens Falls and Albany, New York; and Rhode Island. An avid chamber music artist, she founded a chamber music festival in the 1990s. As a member of the Battell Woodwind Quintet, Lipkens participated in a residency in Dodge City, Kansas sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and was a finalist in the Fischoff Competition. Most recently, as a member of the Deerfield Quintet, Lipkens enjoyed performing throughout Western Massachusetts. Lipkens has taught at the University of Virginia, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, UMass Amherst, and Western New England University. She is currently teaching at Springfield College and Amherst College, and is the principal oboe of the New England Repertory Orchestra.

Neely Bruce is a composer, performer, and scholar of American music. American Record Guide writes “Neely Bruce’s importance in contemporary American music has never been sufficiently recognized. Bruce’s art ranges from the most difficult and virtuosic contemporary writing to simple tonality, and moves from one idiom to the other effortlessly and convincingly--something hardly anyone can do without sounding forced. Bruce seems equally at home in every style he uses.” As a pianist, Bruce has specialized in the music of American composers. Important premieres include The Time Curve Preludes of William Duckworth, and HPSCHD by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller. Bruce is the only pianist to have played all of accompaniments of the solo vocal music of Charles Ives. Bruce loves the oboe, the English horn, and all other double reed instruments.