Faculty Tuesdays (2020)

Program notes

Flutist Christina Jennings and violist Matthew Dane share music created and arranged during the pandemic. While home in Boulder this summer, they began Friday evening porch concerts for their Frasier Meadows neighbors and found the experience one of their most hopeful and energizing activities.

Tonight’s program draws from the heart of this music including their own transcriptions of masterworks by Mozart and J.S. Bach; arrangements of Celtic traditional and new tunes; and premieres by young composers. "Entanglement" by Jonah Sirota culminates in a mesmerizing groove, while "Wind Whisper" by Dianna Link features eerie harmonics and spacious ethereal writing. Both pieces are written for flute and the 14-stringed baroque instrument viola d’amore, and this evening will be the official premiere for each.

A second piece by CU composition student Dianna Link was written earlier this summer for a service of reconciliation at St. John’s Episcopal in Boulder honoring the memory of George Floyd. Overall, much of this program’s music is mournful and slow, exploring the darker spaces many of us find ourselves during these times. But in every piece there is also tremendous hope and purely sublime moments; this music sings to us the songs of this time, a sense of our collective possibility and yearning and also the isolation and sadness in the atmosphere.

Jennings and Dane have been playing music together for over twenty years. At Bowdoin Music Festival they founded the Harpswell Trio with harpist June Han, and in Colorado played extensively with guitarist Jonathan Leathwood in the Lefthand Canyon Trio. They have premiered works written for them by Daniel Kellogg, Geoffrey Hudson and Ricardo Iznaola.