Ashley Rollins (oboe) and Ryan Morris (bassoon) will present a recital of piano trio works of living Cuban-American composer Paquito D’Rivera arranged for oboe, bassoon and piano. Many of these works have not been previously played with this instrumentation. This recital features Ladies in White, which was written to commemorate a group of women who, despite real danger to themselves, protested state violence against journalists, pacifists, and human rights activists in Cuba in 2003.

A recital for solo flute and oboe, Orations features works that explore rhetorical themes in chamber music. Each piece on the program displays theatrical dialogue between two voices with contrasting timbres. Fours Coliloquies, by Elaine Fine, plays on the soliloquies delivered by solo actors on stage. It explores the interaction between two voices as melodies weave between similar and contrasting motifs. Natalia Pispina’s Two Elegies call upon the genre of poetry dedicated to serious reflection and remembrance for the dead, through irregular rhythmic groupings and free movement between consonance and dissonance. The final piece, Impromptu by Thea Musgrave, begins with a simple idea at the beginning of the work, and throughout that idea is restated and expanded. Through this recital, E/221 hopes to inspire musicians to explore repertoire with this instrumentation, and work with composers to further expand the music available for the ensemble.

The Ovis Aries Reed Quintet presents a captivating program of works that explore the intersection of natural soundscapes and folk tunes from around the world. By drawing inspiration from the textures, rhythms, and patterns found in nature, the ensemble seeks to create immersive sonic experiences that transport audiences into landscapes both familiar and imagined.

In addition, the quintet highlights the enduring appeal of folk music, showcasing melodies and rhythms that reflect cultural traditions from across the globe. Through this program, the group emphasizes the connections between the natural world and human creativity, demonstrating how composers translate environmental and cultural influences into compelling chamber music.

We are students at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and are premiering three new works, two trios and one quartet, one of which will be performed in collaboration with our professor, Kathleen McLean. The first piece will be composed by Indiana University composition masters student, William Hawkins, the second piece will be composed by one of the performers, Jasper Wright, and the final work will be written by renowned Dutch composer Chiel Meijering. Through this project, we aim to highlight fresh and diverse voices in contemporary composition.

This multimedia chamber recital explores the relationship between artist and environment through the performance of three Canadian prairie artists. Erin Brophey (oboe/ English horn) and Stephanie Unverricht (bassoon) have collaborated with visual artist Jan Norris, whose projections illuminate prairie landscapes.
Creative expression in the Canadian prairies means daily confrontation with the land—frozen mornings that crack reeds, winds that chap lips, and vast horizons that inspire. This program invites audiences to reflect on their own relationship with the land through contemporary works for a double reed duo paired with Norris’ evocative imagery. The intimate blend of the double reed sound—earthy, resonant, often overlooked—mirrors the prairie itself: understated yet profoundly affecting.

Three composers—Ukrainian-Canadian, British, and American—offer distinct perspectives on land and place. Jenni Brandon celebrates the protected beauty of Glacier National Park, while Althea Talbot-Howard explores the meeting of water and shore at a UK tourist destination. Anna Pigdorna’s work confronts how war redefines borders and our relationship to land itself. Visual artist Jan Norris complements each composition with imagery drawn from her own encounters with landscape creating a multifaceted meditation on how we experience, protect, and sometimes lose the places we call home.

Leah Broad writes of the “obsession with firsts” of classical music, noting that “the way that pieces become popular is not by being so unusual that it’s always their first outing in some capacity. It’s through repeat performances, widespread recording, and advocacy by those who truly love this music. Without these, composers and their works cannot gain or keep a place in the repertoire.” (Songs of Sunrise)

With an eye to expanding double reed trio music in the repertoire, Mystery Cane (Ari Cohen Mann, Keith Sorrels, and Rachel Becker) presents two Canadian double reed trios by established composers under-represented in the oboe world: Christopher Nickel’s Suite for Two Oboes and English Horn (2017) and Elizabeth Raum’s Five Inventions (2021).

Woodwork, a band from Austin, Texas consisting of oboe, marimba, and asalato, presents a performance of works involving the oboe featured in an indie-band setting, bringing aspects of popular music, the oboe, and the contemporary percussion repretoire together within the concert hall.

These works aim to showcase the versatility of the oboe in genres beyond music written in the Western Art Music canon, especially within the unusual chamber setting combined with marimba and asalato (a shaker percussion instrument from West Africa).

Additionally, this presentation showcases works written only by living composers, supporting the creation of new work for or including oboe.

This concert aims to expand the performance concept of the oboe outside of the “classical” canon, and hopes to inspire the use of double reed instruments in more non-Western Art Music ensembles.

The Romantic piano trio evolved from the trio sonatas of the Baroque into a deeply complex and collaborative genre unto itself. Historically, the “piano trio” as an ensemble included a violin soprano voice and a cello tenor voice. In the spirit of the rich double reed history in trio sonatas, the transcription of piano trios for oboe, bassoon, and piano expands our repertoire for the double reed trio, as well. This recital presents three such transcriptions of piano trio movements by Romantic composers Emilie Mayer, Clara Schumann, and Mél Bonis.

“Where Voices Meet” explores the beauty of connection through contrasting yet complementary musical dialogues. The program features Pass in the Night (2025) by Whitney George, a new consortium work led by the Leittermoes Duo for oboe, trumpet, and piano. Inspired by the image of two ships passing in the night, the piece captures the delicate interplay between the instruments, sometimes distant, sometimes unified, always intertwined.

The program also includes Eric Ewazen’s An Elizabethan Songbook, originally for mezzo-soprano, tenor, and piano and later arranged for trumpet, trombone, and piano. With the composer’s approval, the Leittermoes Duo presents their own adaptation for trumpet, English horn, and piano. Each movement paints vivid scenes through Elizabethan poetry: the exhilaration of new love, playful infatuation, quiet sorrow, and exuberant joy. Together, these works trace a lineage of musical conversation, from Ewazen’s warm tonal lyricism to George’s richly colored, modern harmonic landscape.

Civitasolis Reed Quintet is dedicated to performing innovative repertoire for reed quintet, focusing on expanding the expressive range of double-reed chamber music and championing contemporary composers.

For our recital, we present two vibrant works that explore diverse emotional landscapes and stylistic approaches, offering a dynamic and engaging experience:

1. Pulmonary Suite — Roger Zare
   Pulmonary Suite explores breath and movement through a series of contrasting, rhythmically complex sections. Using the reed quintet’s full spectrum of timbral possibilities, Zare creates an immersive narrative about breath and internal rhythms, well-suited to the expressive capabilities of double-reed instruments.
2. Sorry I Have to Run — Luke Ellard
   A high-energy, rhythmically charged work that captures the urgency of modern life. Sorry I Have to Run features rapid exchanges and shifting grooves, offering a playful and spirited contrast to the more expansive textures of Pulmonary Suite. The piece highlights the ensemble’s agility and technical prowess.

Bear Lake Winds presents a vibrant program featuring two cornerstones of Cuban-inspired repertoire: Aires Tropicales by Paquito D’Rivera and Six Cuban Dances by Ignacio Cervantes. D’Rivera, a Grammy-winning clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer, originally wrote Aires Tropicales for clarinet ensemble before arranging it for wind quintet. The suite blends classical craft with Afro-Cuban rhythms, showcasing the wit, lyricism, and rhythmic vitality characteristic of his style. Cervantes, a foundational figure in nineteenth-century Cuban nationalism, composed his Danzas Cubanas for solo piano; their elegant melodic lines and stylized dance gestures have since inspired many chamber arrangements. Presenting these works together highlights the continuity of Cuban musical identity across generations: both composers draw on danza and habanera traditions, fuse classical and popular idioms, and celebrate Cuba’s rich rhythmic language. This program offers convention audiences a lively, culturally resonant exploration of Cuban artistry through the color and versatility of the wind quintet.

Noelia Escalzo has become one of the most prominent composers from Latin America to write extensively for bassoon. Her music is infused with authentic Argentinian folklore, which she beautifully captures in all her works. After interviewing Noelia earlier this year, I became even more fascinated by her bassoon compositions. That’s why I decided to submit this proposal, which includes several pieces that have not been widely performed in the bassoon world. However, I firmly believe that Noelia’s music offers a unique perspective on her cultural heritage in a truly delightful way.

Noelia mentioned in our interview that when composing, she not only considers the performers but also focuses on how to keep the audience engaged throughout her works. I truly appreciate this, as the connection between performers and the audience is crucial, and Noelia reminds us of this through her music. Lastly, all of her pieces are deeply influenced by authentic Argentinian musical styles. In her words, she strives to present these traditional styles in their truest form. The combination of these authentic elements and Noelia’s distinctive compositional voice creates a rich and immersive experience that unites performers and audiences on a delightful journey through Argentina.

This recital presents three recent contributions (two world premieres) to the oboe repertoire that engage directly with jazz, blues, and electronic sound worlds. Jane Kozhevnikova’s Celestial Steps for Oboe and Piano explores lyricism and rhythmic elasticity within a jazz-inflected harmonic language, foregrounding the oboe’s expressive capacity in dialogue with the piano, and encouraging improvisation in a natural, organic dialogue. Dawson Hull’s Poplar Avenue: A Blues for Oboe and Piano serves as a stylistic and structural bridge, situating the oboe within an idiom more commonly associated with voice or brass and highlighting its adaptability in a distinctly American tradition, rooted in the culture of the composer’s city of Memphis, TN. Nathan Hall’s Twilight and You for oboe, piano, and electronics extends this exploration into new sonic terrain, using pre-recorded electronics to merge acoustic and digital timbres in an immersive, genre-defying soundscape, also encouraging and utilizing improvisation alongside traditional notation.

Together, these works illuminate the oboe’s evolving role in contemporary music, demonstrating its capacity to transcend traditional boundaries and thrive at the intersections of style, technology, and cultural expression.

Arkansan composers, Dr. Robert Mueller and Dr. Karen Griebling offer a variety of colors for oboe, viola, saxophone and piano. “Floating” for Oboe/English Horn, Alto Saxophone/Soprano Saxophone and Piano by Robert Mueller was commissioned by Lorraine Duso Kitts in 2021. The variety of exchanges between the double reeds and saxophones offers so many colors. His mission statement portrays the meaning of Floating. He states, “I strive through my music to communicate the essence of human expression, from the breathings of my own heart to those of the listener.” Dr. Mueller passed away in May 2025 before Floating was premiered. We are fortunate to be able to play this piece in honor of Dr. Mueller and his wife, oboist Dr. Theresa Delaplain.

Facets for oboe, viola and piano by Karen Griebling was composed in 2021 at the request of Lorraine Duso Kitts. The same theme appears and is developed in different ways in each of its five movements. The first movement presents the theme as a majestic march. The basis for the virtuoso second movement is the theme’s head motif, a dotted rhythm. The dotted rhythm is abandoned in the third movement while the melodic contour is retained to form an expressive rondo subject. The fourth movement is an isorhythmic canon based on the theme. The canon is played over a ground formed from the word, FACETS. The final movement is a stretto fugue in which the theme appears as the fifth of five subjects that are recapped from earlier movements

The Electrofagot Ensemble is a research and performance project initiated in 2019 by Fernando Zúñiga-Chanto at the Universidad de Costa Rica. Currently housed at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Arte (IIARTE) of the same university, the ensemble’s mission is to study the integration of pedalboard technology with the bassoon and to encourage students to develop new works that expand the instrument’s expressive range through real-time processing and effects.

A recital of Reena Esmail’s works for oboe and piano, “Jhula Jhule” and “Pranayam,” infusing the performance with our shared cultural identity as Indian Americans. Reena’s music speaks deeply to me, as she captures some of the experience of the Indian diaspora in the United States. “Jhula Jhule” incorporates Indian folk songs and her connection to her grandparents. “Pranayam” is inspired by breath practices used in yoga. I would love to share these works that are infused with Indian music and culture with the IDRS audience!

Andrew Marlin’s Summer Bassoon Workshop is a program that exposes young bassoonists to the world and wonders of classical music. Mr. Marlin does this by having his students learn about and perform his own bassoon ensemble arrangements of orchestral classics, opera scenes, film scores, and more. Most recently, Mr. Marlin has begun commissioning original works by living composers, which will be an ongoing tradition of the program. The first piece commissioned for the bassoon workshop was Resonating Forest by Stephanie Ann Boyd and was first performed at the workshop’s concert in July 2025.

The bassoon workshop has had proven success teaching students musicianship, ensemble skills, and bassoon technique more thoroughly because of the program’s structure and focused environment. All of which helps the students perform better in any other collaborative setting they may be a part of and directly support the directors they work with. Most importantly, the workshop creates and promotes a deep love for music that translates into everyone’s playing, performance, and overall enjoyment that will clearly last long after they’ve graduated from the program.

The recital presents new arrangements combining reed trio with a jazz vocalist.