CONTACT: PETER ALEXANDER
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e-mail: peter-alexander@uiowa.edu

Release: March 12, 1999

Iowa Woodwind Quintet returns to UI School of Music concert schedule March 27

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- The Iowa Woodwind Quintet will mark its return to the University of Iowa School of Music concert schedule with a concert celebrating the season of summer at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27 in Clapp Recital Hall.

The quintet has not performed recently since retirements changed the faculty lineup in the School of Music. With many key positions now filled, the Woodwind Quintet is set to return with two new members -- brothers Tadeu Coelho, flute, and Benjamin Coelho, bassoon -- who have joined the UI faculty in the past two years. Other members of the current group are Mark Weiger, oboe, Maurita Murphy Mead, clarinet, and Kristin Thelander, horn.

For what the quintet is calling their "revival concert," the group will perform four works, opening with the piece most clearly related to the theme, Samuel Barber's "Summer Music," op. 31. Other works before intermission will be Irving Fine's Partita for Wind Quintet and "Aries Tropicales" by Paquito D'Rivera. The second half of the program will consist solely of Miguel Del Aguila's Quintet No. 2.

Barber's "Summer Music" is about summers the composer spent in Spoleto, Italy, home of the world-renowned Spoleto Festival. Written in 1956, it was drawn from sketches from a chamber orchestra work written nearly 10 years before. Commissioned by the Detroit Chamber Music Society, the one-movement work received its premiere in 1956 and has since come to be considered among the finest American chamber works today.

Fine's "Partita for Wind Quintet," written in 1948, is an example of the composer's ability to retain a Neoclassic aesthetic while exploring the order and control of the 12-tone technique. The term partita, used widely in the Baroque and Classical periods, essentially means a set of variations. The score opens with an "Introduction and Theme," followed by a several variation movements.

A Cuban working in the United States, D'Rivera has taken the role of cross-cultural ambassador, creating and promoting multi-national styles. He has served as co-director of the United Nations Orchestra, a post formerly held by jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. His "Aries Tropicales" includes movements reflecting various Latin American styles: an Alborada, a kind of Latin "morning music"; a lively Venezuelan waltz; "Afro," an energetic dance with an African ostinato; and Contradanza, an upbeat Cuban dance.

Born in Uruguay, Del Aguila spent 10 years of study in Vienna before settling in California to teach and compose. Chosen as "resident music man of the year" by the Los Angeles Times and as the "top of the list of our Top 10 people to watch" by The Star, he has also earned a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for his Second Quintet and an American Composers Alliance Award. This work received its premiere in 1995, was published in 1996, and was subsequently recorded on CD in 1998.

The Iowa Woodwind Quintet has been in existence at the UI School of Music since about 1932. Prior to its recent pause, the quintet has frequently toured throughout Iowa and the Midwest.

Tadeu Coelho joined the UI music faculty in 1997. He has appeared as soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe and the Americas. He has performed as first solo flutist with the Santa Fe Symphony, the Hofer Symphoniker in Germany and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in Italy. His CD recording of the music of Brazilian composers was released on Tempo Primo in 1995, and he also recorded works by Thomas Delio on 3D Classics. A new CD of 20th-century Mexican flute music will be released shortly.

Weiger has performed in 38 states, Canada, England, France and Austria and presented two recitals in Carnegie Hall in New York. Since coming to Iowa, he has been principal oboe with several orchestras. The first oboist to serve as an Artistic Ambassador through the U.S. Information Agency, Weiger performed recitals in Nepal, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan and Sri Lanka. He is a member of the New Hampshire Music Festival, the Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont, the Bear Lake Festival in Utah, and WIZARDS!, a double reed quartet. He has recorded for the CRS, Crystal, Chandos and Centaur CD labels.

Mead's many solo invitations have included International Clarinet Association conferences, the Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, the Southeastern Clarinet Workshop and the conference of the College Band Directors National Association. She has been principal clarinet of several Midwestern orchestras, including the Cedar Rapids Symphony. As a chamber musician she has appeared with the Cleveland Quartet and other ensembles. She recently recorded a CD of Brazilian choros with pianist Rafael Dos Santos, a UI alumnus.

Active as both soloist and chamber musician, Thelander is a member of the Iowa Brass Quintet. During the summer she performs with the Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Ore. Previously she was on the music faculty at the University of New Mexico, and she was a member of the New Mexico Brass Quintet, the Santa Fe Symphony, the New Mexico Symphony and the Four Corners Opera Festival in Durango, Colo. She has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, South Korea and the People's Republic of China.

Benjamin Coelho has worked extensively as performer and teacher of bassoon, in both the United States and his native Brazil. He was a founding member of the Manhattan Wind Quintet, with whom he played a sold-out concert in Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. He has played with the Orquestra Sinfonica do Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro and the Grupo de Musica Contemporanea of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He taught bassoon at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where he served as the elected vice-dean of the School of Music.

For information on UI arts events, visit http://www.uiowa.edu/~uiowacr on the World Wide Web. You may visit the UI School of Music web site at http://www.uiowa.edu/~music/.