Happy Birthday, Aaron Copland!
A Celebration of American Music
Victoria Gau, conductor
Join us for our next concert at 8PM on Saturday, November 14 - Copland's birthday!
Two of the Washington area’s finest musicians, Chris Gekker (trumpet) and Mark Hill (oboe, English horn), join the ensemble to celebrate the birthday of one of America’s greatest composers, Aaron Copland.
The concert features Copland’s Quiet City, as well as the beloved “Hoe-down” fromRodeo. Gekker and Hill solo in works by other American composers with the same immediate appeal: Eric Ewazen and Tison Street. The ensemble concludes the evening with a repeat of Charlie Barnett’s wildly popular and engaging Three Completely Workable Perpetual Motion Devices, composed for the Takoma Ensemble and premiered last spring.
Saturday, November 14 at 8:00PM,
Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 633 Sligo Ave, Silver Spring, MD
Tickets available at http://takomaensemble.org. Discounts available.
16 and under FREE.
Chris Gekker is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Maryland, School of Music. He has been featured as soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In the Washington DC area, Chris serves as principal trumpet of the National Philharmonic at Strathmore, is a member of the Washington Symphonic Brass, Post Classical Ensemble and performs regularly at Wolf Trap. During the summer he is principal trumpet of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC.
For more information, visit chrisgekkertrumpet.com
Mark Hill has earned a wide reputation as an oboe and English horn soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, recording artist and teacher. In the symphonic world he has been invited to perform with the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, the Orchestra of the Academy of St.-Martins-in-the-Fields, Orpheus, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. He was a member of the New York Chamber Symphony for fifteen years. Currently he is Principal Oboe of the National Philharmonic and Professor of Oboe at the University of Maryland School of Music.
About the Takoma Ensemble
The Takoma Ensemble was created by Victoria Gau and Susanna Kemp who recognized the need for a new kind of chamber orchestra in the area. Members are freelance musicians. As a free-range, organic ensemble, the ensemble has a commitment to present concerts which are fresh and appealing mission of the ensemble is to expand the local audience for orchestral music and broaden the notion of what the genre can be through accessible, affordable performances of music that ranges freely across time and type. For more information, visit www.takomaensemble.org.
