WHAT: 2018 Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival

WHEN: October 14 & 20, 2018

WHERE: Trinity Episcopal Cathedral

121 West 12th Street in Davenport

(563) 323-9989

ADMISSION: Suggested donation: $15 or $20 or $25, 18 & under free.

WEBSITE: www.bhcmf.org/quadcities

The 2018 Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival presents two performances of music from the 18th and 19th centuries performed on period instruments, to take place at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral at 3121 West 12th Street in Davenport. The suggested donation (a free will offering) is $15 or $20 or $25. Everyone 18 years of age and under is free. For more information please call (563) 323-9989 or see www.bhcmf.org/quadcities. The concerts will be repeated in Iowa City, Dubuque and Galesburg, IL; please see www.bhcmf.org for more information.

1. SILVIUS LEOPOLD WEISS

~ In Silvius Leopold Weiss on Sunday afternoon, October 14 at 3:00 PM, lutenist Oleg Timofeyev and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan will perform newly reconstructed sonatas of Silvius Leopold Weiss.

Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750), the most prolific and highly esteemed lutenist of the baroque who is reported to have rivaled Johann Sebastian Bach in improvisational skill, worked for more than three decades at the court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden alongside French flute virtuoso Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin (1689-1768). Although he wrote much music for obbligato, or fully written out, baroque lute and the one-keyed flute of his time, the flute part has unfortunately been lost. This performance represents a new reconstruction by Jeffrey Cohan and Oleg Timofeyev.

2. GUITAR, FLUTE & VIOLA

~ In Guitar Flute & Viola on Saturday, October 20 at 7:00 PM, violist Christine Rutledge, flutist Jeffrey Cohan and guitarist Oleg Timofeyev perform early 19th-century trios on instruments from Beethoven’s time.

These early 19th-century trios for an unusual combination of instruments demonstrate the emerging romanticism of the early 19th century and the subsequent blossoming of chamber music with guitar by virtuosos on their evolving instruments. This golden age for the guitar-flute-viola trio was ushered into being in the early 1800's as the industrial revolution and a musically hungry new middle class brought forth expressive trends less affected by stylistic constraints of the past and significant changes in the tonal capabilities of musical instruments, prompting a dynamic new virtuoso interaction between instruments in chamber music.

Jeffrey Cohan will play an 8-keyed flute made in London in 1820 of cocuswood or Jamaican ebony with silver ornamental rings and keys, made in London in 1820 by George Rudall with assistance from George Willis. In 1821 Rudall joined with Rose to make Rudall & Rose flutes, which have found their way into the hands of some of today's most well-known flutists playing traditional Irish music.

The Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival, founded in 2000, strives to contribute to the breadth of Quad City classical music offerings through innovative interpretations of a broad range of repertoire which illuminate many unusual aspects of musical performance from the Renaissance through the present. Festival repertoire ranges from well known works to unpublished gems from past centuries performed on period instruments to cutting edge new chamber music written for the performers. Each program explores a unique musical palette and language of expressive nuance from different and all but forgotten musical arenas, sometimes performed on instruments almost never heard today, which bring this music to life as the composers intended. The festival brings together artists from the region and world-class musicians from around the country.

• • • THE PERFORMERS • • •

CHRISTINE RUTLEDGE

Violist Christine Rutledge is currently Professor of Viola at the University of Iowa. She has served on the executive board of the American Viola Society, and is president of the Iowa Viola Society. For six years she was Assistant Principal Viola of the Louisville Orchestra and violist of the Ceruti Chamber Players and the Kentucky Center Chamber Players. She has also been a member of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Festival appearances include Interlochen Center for the Arts, Bay View Music Festival, Roycroft Music Festival, Sewanee Summer Music Center, "Brunch with Bach" series at the Detroit Institute of Art, Manitou Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, and the Fontana Chamber Arts Festival. Rutledge currently serves as an artist/faculty member at the Bay View Music Festival.

She has commissioned, premiered, and recorded new music by many composers. In an effort to provide violists with a larger and historically accurate body of baroque repertoire, Rutledge founded Linnet Press Editions which features her transcriptions and editions as well as new editions of out-of-print music from the English Romantic period. Her technique book, The Violist’s Handbook, has sold hundreds of copies throughout the world.

Recent performances, master classes and presentations on baroque performance practices include those in Germany, Sweden, South Africa, and at universities around the United States.

Rutledge is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Karen Tuttle and Michael Tree, and the University of Iowa with William Preucil, Sr. She is also a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where she was honored as Valedictorian and recipient of a Young Artist Award. Among her many honors are Prizewinner in the Aspen Festival Viola Competition, an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist’s Fellowship, recipient of an Eli Lilly Foundation grant for undergraduate teaching development, as well as several awards from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame and the Arts and Humanities Initiative at the University of Iowa.

OLEG TIMOFEYEV

Oleg Timofeyev plays the renaissance, 10-course and baroque lutes and theorbo, 19th-century guitar, viola da gamba and recorder, and is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Russian seven-string guitar. Originally from Moscow, he took guitar lessons from Kamil Frauchi, the most influential guitar teacher in Moscow of the time. His interest in performing early music on lute and guitar brought him to the U.S. where he studied with Patrick 0'Brien, James Tyler, and Hopkinson Smith. Mr Timofeyev holds an M.A. in early music performance from the University of Southern California (1993), and a Ph.D. in performance practice from Duke University (1999). He was Artist in Residence for the School of Music at the University of Iowa, where has been Visiting Assistant Professor for the Department of Russian since 1999. He also has taught at Grinnell College and Cornell College. Mr. Timofeyev has received many fellowships, grants and awards, including two separate Fulbright grants for recent research into the Russian guitar in Moscow and for teaching early plucked instruments in Ukraine. His editions have been published by A-R Editions, and his articles have appeared in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in the Lute Society Quarterly among other periodicals. In Moscow he founded and directed the still active early music group Pratum Musicum for the Moscow Palace of Culture. He has been guest lecturer and performer with the annual Vanamuusika Päevad, an Estonian early music festival, and directs the annual International Russian Guitar Festival and the International Academy for Russian Music, Arts, and Culture, both in Iowa City, Iowa. He has made many solo recordings for Dorian Recordings.

JEFFREY COHAN

Artistic Director and flutist JEFFREY COHAN has performed as soloist in more than 25 countries, most recently in Mongolia and China, on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present, and has won the Erwin Bodky Award (Boston) and the top prize in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua (Brugge, Belgium), two of the most important prizes for period instrument performance in America and Europe. He has premiered many concerti and other works by Slovenian and American composers.

Born in Davenport, Jeffrey graduated from Rock Island High School and performed solo concerti with the Tri-City Youth Symphony under the direction of James Dixon, with the Clinton Symphony under William Henigbaum, and with the Rock Island High School Band under Donald Kruzan. He was Artist-in-Residence at Augustana College from 1983 to 1988, during which time he also taught flute at Indiana University in Bloomington and gave many performances in Ascension Chapel and yearly Candlelight Christmas Concerts. He has also taught at the University of Northern Iowa and at Grinnell College. His mentor while in the Quad Cities was and continues to be flutist Walter Haedrich of Moline, now living in Rock Island. Jeffrey lives with his wife and three children in Washington State’s Skagit Valley, where he also directs the Salish Sea Early Music Festival and the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC.

 

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