YOUR AD HERE »

Young artists draw on music for inspiration

Aspen Times Staff
Woodwind quintet Arundo Winds will perform in a free family concert on April 14 at Harris Concert Hall. (Courtesy Aspen Music Festival and School)
ALL |

Local schoolchildren drew on music as the inspiration for an exhibit that will serve as the accompaniment to an Aspen performance by woodwind quintet Arundo Winds on Friday, April 14.

The art exhibit is paired with the quintet’s performance at Harris Concert Hall ” a free family concert sponsored by the Aspen Music Festival and School.

The 6:30 p.m. concert is the culmination of two week-long Musical Odysseys Reaching Everyone (MORE) residencies that explored music’s relationship with the visual arts, emphasizing “the union between musical timbre and visual color,” according to the program’s organizer.



“We’re asking the audience to take a look at what the students ‘saw’ while listening to music, then to let the concert inspire colorful masterpieces of their own mind’s creation,” explained Deborah Barnekow, the festival’s director of educational outreach, in a press release. “Many children see color while listening to music and using this other sense helps to deepen the experience.”

Composed of five players from three different countries, the Arundo Winds ” flutist Gina Vega, oboist Sarah Mellander, clarinetist Jerome Fleg, French horn player Megan Garrison and bassoonist Kaori Uno ” worked with valley middle and high school bands, as well as elementary students, in January and again this month.




The music festival has offered enrichment programs in classical music to valley schools for 13 years under the auspices of the MORE program.

The Arundo Winds is a graduate wind quintet in residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In addition to a busy performing schedule, the quintet is actively involved in educational outreach programs throughout Colorado.

The final free family concert of the winter season will take place April 28, when composer-in-residence Gabriela Lena Frank presents original compositions incorporating South American mythology, art, poetry and folk music into Western classical forms. Local valley students will join Gabriela in presenting their own compositions.

For more information about the series, visit aspenmusicfestival.com or call the Harris Hall Box Office at 925-9042.