FIVExFIVE
Part of WindSync’s Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival
Thursday, April 10, 7:30pm
MATCH
3400 Main Street, 77002
$35 general admission
$10 student tickets
About
Kinetic Ensemble returns as a festival guest artist for WindSync’s season finale, part of the ninth annual Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival. WindSync shows a new side of composers who have written for the group through their works for solo instruments and strings. Each member of WindSync will offer a performance highlighting the unique qualities of their instrument, from stark landscape-inspired miniatures by Viet Cuong, selected by oboist Noah Kay, to the danceable grooves of Marc Mellits, selected by clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson. Horn player Anni Hochhalter will share a new original work, and the five musicians will unite to perform a world premiere by 2025 composer-in-residence Akshaya Avril Tucker.
Program
Miguel del Aguila: Alegre from Sonata Flautisima for solo flute (2018)
Viet Cuong: Six Canadian Scenes for solo oboe (2009)
Anni Hochhalter: new work (2025 — Premiere)
Marc Mellits: Discrete Structures for clarinet and strings (2025 — Premiere)
Akshaya Avril Tucker: Variations on Care for bassoon and strings (2024)
Akshaya Avril Tucker: new work for wind quintet (2025 — Premiere)
This concert is presented as part of the ninth annual Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival, which connects the people and places of Houston through musical performances and educational activities. Supported in part by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Featured Artists
Versatile and vibrant, the musicians of WindSync “play many idioms authoritatively, elegantly, with adroit technique, and with great fun” (All About the Arts), showing off the uniquely wide-ranging sounds of the wind quintet. WindSync’s charismatic and personal performance style, combined with a three-pronged mission of artistry, education, and community-building, lends the group its reputation as “virtuosos who are also wonderful people, too" (Alison Young, Classical MPR).
Highlights of WindSync’s 2024-25 season include a weeklong residency at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall series, Chicago; a weeklong residency at Shelter Island Friends of Music, New York; performances at Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society with pianist Jon Kimura Parker; Harvard Musical Association, Cambridge, MA; Chamber Music Kelowna, British Columbia; and a return to Chamber Music Northwest and Emerald City Music, in Seattle and Portland. The group celebrated its 15th anniversary season in 2023-24.
WindSync has enjoyed an international touring career since winning the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
The group has regularly appeared on notable stages throughout the United States and abroad, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Ravinia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Rockport Music, and Emerald City Music. Building a new repertoire, WindSync’s recent premieres include works by Viet Cuong, Marc Mellits, Ivan Trevino, Mason Bynes, Nathalie Joachim, and Pulitzer finalist Michael Gilbertson.
WindSync has also served in residencies with the Grand Teton Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Lied Center, and they work with local partners to craft musical events for cities out of range of large arts organizations. Winner of the 2022 Fischoff Ann Divine Educator Award, the ensemble regularly coaches at training programs nationwide, collaborates with youth orchestras, and performs for thousands of young people each year.
On the heels of “All Worlds, All Times,” WindSync’s 2022 release that “will make you want to get up and dance” (The Whole Note), the quintet’s second commercial album, recorded with composer Miguel del Aguila at Abbey Road Studios, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart in 2024.