Dorian Wind Quintet

World Premier of “Avenue of the Giants” by Jessica Meyer 

3 p.m., Sunday, April 16, 2023

2:40 p.m., Pre-concert talk with composer Jessica Meyer about her new work

Vanguard Legacy Concert

Recognized by critics, audiences, and colleagues alike for its polished and passionate performances, the Dorian Wind Quintet is known worldwide as one of chamber music’s preeminent and longest continuously-active ensembles. The Quintet has traveled around the world, concertizing in 48 of the 50 United States and Canada, touring Europe 18 times and playing throughout the Middle East, India, Africa and Asia. The Dorian made history in 1981, as the first wind quintet to appear at Carnegie Hall. Since its inception at Tanglewood in 1961, the Dorian has collaborated with many of the most transcendent and legendary artists in the world of classical music during the 20th and 21st centuries. The Quintet has appeared at numerous festivals, including the Stravinsky Festival at Lincoln Center, the International Festival in Warsaw, Caramoor International Music Festival, North Carolina New Music Initiative, Newberry Spring Festival (Great Britain), Ontario’s Stratford Festival, San Luis Obispo Festival, Chamber Music Festival of Aguascalientes, Mexico and the New American Music Festival in Sacramento. Additionally, the Quintet has served as the resident ensemble for the Mannes College of Music, Brooklyn College, Hunter College and the State University of New York. The group was in residence at Dartington Hall and Newberry (both in England), the Tanglewood Music Festival, and for over 10 years, at the Festival Institute at Round Top, Texas. To date, the Dorian is responsible for nearly 40 commissions of 20th and 21st century wind music from major composers. The group has recorded on the Vox, CRI, Serenus, New World, and Summit Records labels. The Dorian Quintet partners with the Pro Musicis foundation, expanding and restructuring its outreach efforts in New York City - bringing chamber music of the highest quality to residents of assisted living facilities, rehabilitation facilities, hospitals, schools, community centers, and retirement communities. Its goal is to provide access for audiences that are prevented from attending regular concert venues, spread joy and inspiration to people in difficult situations, and for the Quintet to continue enriching its beloved New York City community. 

Recent performance highlights for the Dorian Wind Quintet have included the NYC premiere and subsequent touring of Amanda Harberg’s wind quintet, commissioned for the group; a return to the Chamber Music Festival of Aguascalientes in Mexico, for a weeklong residency; a residency with University of Nevada Las Vegas, which included performance and outreach activities with local music programs; a tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania, including concerts with the Logan Series in Erie, PA, and Rocky River Chamber Music Society in Ohio; a return to Canada after a long absence, with performances at Mooredale Concerts in Toronto, as well as The Jeffery Concerts in London, Ontario. The Dorian Quintet has undertaken several recent recording projects as well, including a new all-Bach album, recorded at Princeton University’s Richardson Hall. The members of the Dorian Wind Quintet are each highly regarded performers, associated with other prominent performing ensembles, venues, and musical institutions, who have united out of a mutual passionate commitment to the advocacy and performance of the wind chamber music repertoire. 

Jessica Meyer 

With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica Meyer is a Grammy–nominated violist and composer whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Her first composer/performer portrait album in 2019 debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard traditional classical chart, where “knife-edge anticipation opens on to unexpected, often ecstatic musical realms, always with a personal touch and imaginatively written for the instruments” (Gramophone Magazine).

Meyer’s compositions viscerally explore the wide palette of emotionally expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Since embarking on her composition career eight years ago, premieres have included performances by acclaimed vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth and Vox Clamantis, the St. Lawrence String Quartet as the composer in residence at Spoleto Festival USA, the American Brass Quintet, PUBLIQuartet, cellist Amanda Gookin for her Forward Music Project, Sybarite 5, NOVUS N.Y. of Trinity Wall Street, a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Juilliard School for a project with the Historical Performance Program and by the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

Her first Symphonic Band piece was recently premiered by the President’s Own Marine Band (first at Strathmore then the N.Y. premiere in Carnegie Hall), and her orchestral works have been performed by the Phoenix, North Carolina, Charlotte, and Vermont Symphonies, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, at Tanglewood in Seiji Ozawa Hall, and all around the country as part of Carnegie Hall’s nationwide Link Up Program. She was the winner of the 2nd Annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer’s Award to write a piece for the Bangor Symphony, and a winner of Chamber Music America’s Commissioning Program Award to write for the Argus Quartet. Recent chamber/solo premieres included a work for CityMusic Cleveland, musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, and for the Five Borough Songbook.

This season brings the premiere of “GAEA”, a concerto for herself and orchestra, as well as works for the Dorian Wind Quintet, Hausmann Quartet, Hub New Music, the Portland Youth Philharmonic in collaboration with the female vocal ensemble In Mulieribus.