Exciting Winsor Music Young Artist Concert: Baritone Elliott Hines, plus Pearson, Harbison, Diaz, Popper-Keizer, Colton, Beattie and more

Artistic Director and Oboist Peggy Pearson will perform with Elliott Hines, a prize-winning baritone, and nine other musicians. Elliott was a participant in the 2011 Bach Institute at Emmanuel Church in Boston, and is currently studying for a Masters degree at the Juilliard School. A native of Houston, Texas, he began his vocal studies with Dr. Timothy Jones and pursued his undergraduate degree at Oberlin Conservatory of Music under Mr. Salvatore Champagne. He is an avid ensemble singer, and has performed with the Early Music America Festival Ensemble and Oberlin Baroque Ensemble at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival Chorus, and currently sings with the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus. Elliott loves to sing Bach; while the music can be difficult, with “strange lines and super-jumpy leaps, the fun part is realizing it’s not flashy, it’s not about the singer. The music just becomes a part of you.”

Hines credits soprano Kendra Colton --  with whom he will perform in the Coffee Cantata -- as “the reason I sing Bach” because she persuaded him to participate in the Bach Institute. After working with Kendra Colton and Peggy Pearson in 2011, Elliott was inspired to direct a performance of the Coffee Cantata at an Oberlin coffee shop with other students from the Bach Institute. He eagerly anticipates working with Pearson again, citing her “many great musical ideas, and her deep spiritual knowledge of Bach.”

Oboist Peggy Pearson has performed solo, chamber, and orchestral music throughout the United States and abroad. She is solo oboist with the Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, and a member of the Bach Aria Group She has toured internationally and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music from Marlboro.

An exciting and eclectic program is in store for concertgoers on November 24th, beginning with the Coffee Cantata of J. S. Bach, which will be performed in English. This humorous secular cantata is a kind of Baroque marketing piece for the coffee industry, in which a clever daughter finds a way to indulge her love of coffee, despite the disapproval of her stern father. Kendra Colton, soprano, Frank Kelley, tenor and Elliott Hines will be the soloists. The casting of the cantata’s father and daughter roles is ironic – Kendra Colton will be reprimanded by her former student!          

Grammy-winning composer Joan Tower’s Tocanta for oboe and harpsichord will follow (the revised 1999 version). Tocanta is an interactive conversation modeled on a Baroque form and will be performed by Peggy Pearson and Michael Beattie, harpsichord. Concluding the program will be three tangos of Boston’s own star composer John Harbison, as well as Thanks, Victor, his musical tribute to songwriter Victor Young (“When I Fall in Love”). One of the tangos is from Mr. Harbison’s opera The Great Gatsby (1999), and two of the pieces are first performances of arrangements for chamber ensemble and accordion. John Harbison says, “I am glad Peggy is programming my collected Tangos with Winsor Music. I was very happy many years ago when the Argentine conductor Dante Anzolini pronounced my Tango from Ground Level ‘the best gringo tango.’ Let the Winsor audience decide if he was hallucinating.” In Peggy Pearson’s view, “This concert is as close as Winsor Music will ever get to an evening of pops!” 

Completing the chamber ensemble will be Gabriela Diaz and Katherine Winterstein, violins; Jenny Stirling, viola; Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello; Susan Hagen, bass; and Roberto Cassan, accordion. The concert begins at 8:00 pm on Saturday, November 24th, 2012. Tickets will be available at the door, or online at winsormusic.org/order.cfm. The Follen Church is at 755 Mass. Ave. in Lexington, with parking available behind the church and across the street. For more information, please call 781-863-2861 or email info@winsormusic.org.