OSU sets Wind Day Festival

OSU sets Wind Day Festival

Oklahoma State University’s department of music will host its annual Wind Day Festival on Feb. 20-21.

The two-day event will feature internationally recognized woodwind guest artists from across the country as well as OSU’s own woodwind faculty members.

Guest artists for Wind Day 2009 are Linda Chesis, flute; Kevin Schempf, clarinet; Barbara Bishop, oboe; and Idit Shner, saxophone. Organizational help is provided by OSU faculty clarinetist Babette Belter, flutist Conor Nelson, oboist Celeste Johnson and saxophonist Ann Bradfield.

The performance in Ponca City is on Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the Ponca Theater. The program will feature the artists mentioned above as soloists and in duets with literature ranging from the baroque era to the modern era, including contemporary works that use extended instrumental techniques. Admission is free.

The Wind Day festivities will continue Feb. 21 in Stillwater at the Seretean Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Oklahoma State University.

Master classes and clinics for junior high and high school instrumentalists will begin at 9:30 a.m. and conclude at 4 p.m. These tuition-free events allow junior and senior high flute, clarinet, oboe and saxophone players of all ability levels to work with guest artists and OSU woodwind faculty members to develop and polish their instrumental performance skills. Registration information is available at osuwinddayfestival.org.

The day will conclude with a performance by all guest artists and faculty at 4 p.m. in the Seretean Center Concert Hall. It is free and open to the public.

The guest artists for the OSU Wind Day Festival are traveling to Oklahoma from far and wide.

Chesis has been professor of flute and chamber music at Manhattan School of Music since 1986 and has served as chairman of its woodwind department since 1988. She also serves on the faculties of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and New York University. She has performed and offered master classes across the globe.

Schempf, professor of clarinet at Bowling Green State University, has degrees from the Eastman School of Music and is a former member of the Coast Guard Band, the Syracuse Symphony and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. He performs with the Toledo Symphony, CrossSound (Alaska), TILT (Hawaii), fEARnoMUSIC (Portland) and Brave New Works.

An active performer of both jazz and classical music, Shner has played in various distinguished venues in the United States and abroad, including The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Lincoln Center in New York. As an avid classical saxophonist, she has commissioned and recorded new music and performed solo recitals in the United States and Israel, and she currently plays her own jazz compositions with her quartet in Eugene and Portland, Ore.

In 2006, Shner joined the faculty of University of Oregon as instructor of saxophone and jazz studies.

Bishop plays associate principal oboe with the Kansas City Symphony and is the adjunct assistant professor of oboe at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She spends her summers playing with the Grand Teton Music Festival and regularly performs with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.