2012 Festival Events

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REED 5 represents a bold new direction in wind chamber music, featuring daring instrumentation, diverse and engaging performances, and a repertoire rich in traditional as well as contemporary music. The group is comprised of some of the Western Hemisphere’s most promising young wind players from as far away as Colombia and Costa Rica, and they have come together to forge a unique musical presence in American chamber music.

Almost a year ago, chance friendships and musical experiences brought Merideth, Benito, Doug, Adrian, and Harrison together against unlikely odds. Overcoming distances of over 1000 miles and navigating very busy schedules, they met for the first time in a Julliard School of Music rehearsal room to give the “reed quintet” experiment a try. The challenges were daunting: what repertoire do we play for sax, oboe or english horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, and bassoon? How do we balance an oboe against an alto saxophone? How do we get a bass clarinet to articulate as crisply as a bassoon? What, actually, is a good reed quintet sound? And of course, how do we get five driven, type-A personalities to agree on anything?!

What followed was a period of inspiring bonding and productivity, culminating in a spontaneously developed performance in Cambridge, Maryland during June 2011. Meeting in Easton, Maryland for a “rehearsal summit” to address the challenges above, Reed 5 discovered its personal sound and developed its first concert repertoire. In fact, the vast majority of Reed 5′s repertoire is arranged or composed for the ensemble by its own members.

Reed 5 is excited to present a concert experience that represents the fruition of this innovative chamber music experiment. The mission of the ensemble includes outreach education, expansion of a dedicated repertoire for reed quintet, and elevation of the genre to new levels of awareness and execution. The individual musicians of Reed 5 have performed extensively around the world, have won some of the most prestigious competitions in their fields, and have contributed uniquely to the status of their individual instruments. Now, their talent and energy combine in an exciting new chamber genre, presented with a personal touch.