Duo Orfeo Brings Innovative Guitar Music to Washington College Friday, November 11

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Innovative guitar pair Duo Orfeo will perform Friday, November 11 at 8 p.m. in Hotchkiss Recital Hall, Gibson Center for the Arts, as part of the 60th season of the Washington College Concert Series. Tickets are $15 for adults, $5 for youth 18 and under, or $50 for a season ticket that includes all four remaining concerts, and can be purchased at the door. Washington College students are admitted free with a valid ID.

Joseph Ricker and Jamie Balmer met in 2001 as students of guitarist Phillip de Fremery, a pupil of Andrés Segovia, and formed Duo Orfeo six years later. They use both classical and electric guitars to explore a diverse body of music, from traditional western compositions to their own bold arrangements. The pair has recorded two albums, The Grace Sessions, a 2005 recording that includes music of Bach, Brahms, Boccherini and Albéniz; and Duo Orfeo, featuring music of Federico Mompou, Eric Satie, Frédéric Chopin, Radamés Gnattali, and Francesco Da Milano.

In April of this year, Duo Orfeo participated in the critically acclaimed “Machines” project, a live performance art collaboration with pianist Oni Buchanan, trombone quartet The Guidonian Hand, and kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson. “Machines” featured the world premiere of Duo Orfeo’s arrangements of the music of Arvo Pärt for electric guitar duo. For more: http://www.duoorfeo.com/.

To purchase tickets in advance or for more information, please call 410-778-7839 or email concert series director Kate Bennett at kbennett2@washcoll.edu. Details on the remaining concerts in the series can be found at http://news.washcoll.edu/concertseries.php.

Naval Academy Brass to Perform Free Concert November 4 for 12@Hotchkiss Series

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Naval Academy Brass Quintet will provide a free lunchtime concert on Friday, Nov. 4, at noon in Hotchkiss Recital Hall, Gibson Center for the Arts at Washington College, as part of the Music Department’s “12@Hotchkiss” series.

The public is welcome at all “12@Hotchkiss” events, which host professional classical musicians from the greater Baltimore-Washington region. For more information, please visit the Performance Calendar page on the Music Department website: http://music.washcoll.edu/performances.php.

"Dirty Life" Author Recounts Move from City Girl to Sustainable Farmer in April 13 Talk

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College hosts author Kristin Kimball to discuss her new memoir, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love, on Wednesday, April 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Hotchkiss Recital Hall in the Gibson Center for the Arts. (This event was originally scheduled for February but was postponed by incluement weather.)

Kimball and her husband, Mark, farm 500 acres on Essex Farm, near Lake Champlain in northern New York. They met when she was a free-lance travel writer living in a studio apartment in New York and he was working on a farm in Pennsylvania. What began as an interview for an article on sustainable farming would soon take a romantic turn.

"Against all odds, I fell deeply for him, and for farming,” says the author, whose book was published in October of 2010 by Scribner. “At the end of the first growing season, we got married in the loft of our shabby red barn. We've farmed here for seven years now, and have become parents to two little girls."

The Kimballs raise almost everything they need for a year-round diet, including 50 kinds of vegetables, herbs, grains, and fruits, plus pigs, chickens, and dairy and beef cattle. They use no pesticides or herbicides, and most of the work is done with draft horses instead of tractors. The farm feeds 150 people, who come each week to pick up their share of our produce, flours, milk, meats, and eggs.

A graduate of Harvard University, Kristin Kimball grew up near Rome, NY, where she didn't even have a garden as a child. Prior to farming, she wrote, taught writing and worked for a literary agent. “Farming asks a lot of a person, physically, emotionally, and intellectually,” she comments. “It keeps you close to the dirt and humble. I've gained many skills on the farm that I couldn't have imagined needing in the city. But the best lesson farming has taught me is the deep pleasure of commitment—to Mark, to our farm, to a small town."

The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by The Center for Environment & Society, The Joseph H. McLain Program in Environmental Studies, The Sophie Kerr Committee, and Farm Dinners on the Shore. For more information, call 410-778-7295.

Violinist Lisa Shihoten and Pianist Wei-Yi Yang Close Concert Series Season at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Violinist Lisa Shihoten and pianist Wei-Yi Yang conclude the 2010-11 Washington College Concert series on Friday evening, April 15, at 8 p.m. in Hotchkiss Recital Hall. Tickets are available at the door at $15 per person, $5 for those age 18 and under. Washington College students are admitted free with a valid campus ID.

Lisa Shihoten made her New York solo debut at Avery Fisher Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra under the direction of Kurt Masur and today enjoys an active career as a chamber musician, recitalist, and teacher. She tours throughout Israel, Greece, Turkey and the United States, appearing frequently with the ensemble Concertante, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players or organist Ken Cowan. She has participated in the Caramoor, Ravinia, Verbier and Aspen Music Festivals. With a bachelor’s degree from the Juilliard School and a master’s degree from the Yale School of Music, she now teaches at Princeton University.

Pianist Wei-Yi Yang has performed on four continents and in prestigious venues such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Kumho Art Hall (Seoul), and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music (Glasgow). Winner of numerous prizes and fellowships, Mr. Yang in 2001 co-founded the award-winning Soyulla Ensemble, which released a CD on the Renegade Classics label. Born in Taiwan of Chinese and Japanese heritage, Yang studied with Russian pianist Arkady Aronov at New York City's Manhattan School of Music. He earned his doctorate in musical arts from Yale University, where he now teaches.

Hotchkiss Recital Hall is located in the Gibson Center for the Arts on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. For more information, call 410-778-7839, email kbennett2@washcoll.edu, or visit http://news.washcoll.edu/concertandfilmseries.php.

Jasper String Quartet Performs Saturday, Feb. 19

CHESTERTOWN—The acclaimed artists of the Jasper String Quartet will appear at Washington College on Sat., Feb. 19 as the third installment of the college’s 59^th Concert Series. The “Jaspers,” recently named quartet-in-residence at the Oberlin Conservatory, will perform Beethoven Op. 18, No.3; Conrad Tao’s Quartet No. 2 (a 2010 commission for the Jasper Quartet by the teen-aged composer); and Brahms Op. 51, No. 2. The concert begins at 8 p.m. in the Hotchkiss Recital Hall of the Gibson Center for the Arts.

Quartet members J. Freivogel, Sae Chonabayashi, Sam Quintal, and Rachel Henderson Freivogel formed the group as students at Oberlin College and have since performed worldwide. Called “an impressive young ensemble” by The New York Times, the quartet won the 2009 Horatio Parker Memorial Prize from the Yale School of Music, where they studied under the Tokyo String Quartet. In 2008 it won top prizes at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, the Coleman Competition, Chamber Music Yellow Springs, and the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. In addition, the four musicians served two years as the Ernst C. Stiefel String Quartet in Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts in Katonah.

Washington College students are admitted to the performance free with a valid ID. Tickets will be sold at the door at $5 for youth ages 18 and under and $15 for others. The Gibson Center for the Arts is located on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Ave., Chestertown.