Contact:
Zon Eastes, music director
Juno Orchestra
zoneastes@msn.com
802.380.9550

website: http://www.junoorchestra.org
press page: https://junoorchestra.org/about/press/

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Two Bachs Plus

Juno Orchestra is Vermont’s newest chamber orchestra. Following a successful inaugural season, Juno opens its 2018-2019 season with two concerts featuring works by two Bachs, father and son. The concerts will also present oboist and Vermonter Jennifer Slowik, who grew up in Williamsville and received her earliest musical training at the Brattleboro Music Center. Slowik will perform the spirited Concerto in A major for oboe d’amore and strings by Johann Sebastian Bach. (The oboe d’amore is a slightly larger, lower cousin to the oboe and was used extensively during the Baroque period.) This particular concerto, like many of his, was created from an earlier keyboard concerto.

“We are delighted that Jennifer will play the A major concerto with Juno,” said music director Zon Eastes. “One of Juno’s clearest goals is a commitment to featuring soloists at work in the musical world, but who grew up and received formative training in this area. Jennifer now lives and works in the Boston area, but some of us remember when she shone brilliantly as a budding oboist. Her performance will be wonderful.”

Slowik is principal oboe with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Odyssey Opera, Monadnock Music Festival, assistant principal with the Orchestra of Indian Hill, and a member of the weekly Bach cantata series at Emmanuel Music. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has appeared with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Collage New Music, ALEA III, and is a frequent recitalist on Trinity College’s Summer Chamber Music Series in Connecticut. (Extended bio below.)

The concerts will also present a highly charged sinfonia for strings by Bach’s second son, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. While living in Hamburg, C.P.E. Bach wrote six string works for string orchestra, a commission by Gottfried van Swieten. Unpublished during C.P.E. Bach’s lifetime, van Swieten kept them for his own personal use.

Also on the program will be another sinfonia for strings, this one written by a 13-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, eight short and stylistically quirky pieces by Paul Hindemith, and the Symphony No. 39 in G minor by Franz Joseph Haydn. Eastes noted, “Four horns. Very unusual among the middle Haydn symphonies. Wait till you hear. The piece, while typical of Haydn during his Strum und Drang period, is extremely colorful, and offers moments of mystery, tenderness, and real dramatic force.”

Concerts take place on Saturday, September 29, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, September 30, 3 p.m. at the Brattleboro Music Center, 72 Blanche Moyse Way, Brattleboro, Vermont. Tickets range in price from $10 to $40, and can be purchased by calling the BMC, 802.257.4523. This concert is part of Vermont Arts 2018, a project of the Vermont Arts Council.

For more information, visit www.junoorchestra.org or call 802.380.9550.

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Concerts
Saturday, September 29, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, September 30, 3 p.m.
Brattleboro Music Center, 72 Blanche Moyse Way, Brattleboro

Program
C.P.E. Bach, Sinfonia No. 2 in B-flat major, Wq. 182
J.S. Bach, Concerto for Oboe d’Amore in A major, BWV 1055r
Felix Mendelssohn, Sinfonia No. 10 in B minor
Paul Hindemith, Eight Pieces, Op. 44. No. 3
Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 39 in G minor

Tickets
$40, $20, $10. Available 802.257.4523 or online: https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?ticketing=bmcvt

Oboe Soloist

Jennifer Slowik is principal oboe with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Odyssey Opera, Monadnock Music Festival, assistant principal with the Orchestra of Indian Hill, and a member of the weekly Bach cantata series at Emmanuel Music, where she was the recipient of the 2009-10 Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson fellowship. Jennifer is a frequent performer with organizations all over New England and beyond, including the Boston Philharmonic, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Boston Midsummer Opera, the west coast and Canadian tour of “The Music of Star Wars”. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has appeared with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Collage New Music, ALEA III, and is a frequent recitalist on Trinity College’s Summer Chamber Music Series in Connecticut. Highlights in recent years include performances at the Library of Congress, the world and US premieres of Tod Machover’s multi-media opera Death and the Powers in Monte Carlo’s Sally Garnier Theatre and Chicago, and composer Livia Lin’s Honorable Mention in the 2011 International Music Prize competition for Ju for solo oboe, written especially for her. Ms. Slowik is featured on numerous recordings on the BMOP/sound label, most notably the 2016 Grammy nominated PLAY, by Andrew Norman, Lisa Bielawa’s Synopsis #10: for solo English Horn, and the recently released CD of Thomas Oboe Lee’s Persephone, for oboe and strings. Born in Livonia, Michigan, Jennifer moved to Vermont at the age of 6, growing up in South Newfane and Williamsville. Beginning on the recorder, she took lessons at the Brattleboro Music Center with Marion Lowe, before taking up both the oboe and the saxophone in the 7th grade. She attended Leland and Gray Union High School, during which time she participated in UMASS Amherst’s Youth Wind Ensemble. She holds bachelors and masters degrees from the New England Conservatory.