CT's Own: Unexpected Treasures

Please join us for a wonderful afternoon of music with the Wilton Chamber Players.  For this event, Ralph Kirmser and Kyong Hee Cho will be joined by Bärli Nugent and Jeff Jones for pieces by Madeleine Dring, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Shostakovich and Liu Zhuang.  

Ralph Kirmser, oboe, has been oboist for the Madera Wind Quintet, the Prevailing Winds of Connecticut and the Morningside Wind Quintet of New York City.  In 2000, he was oboist for Orvieto Musica, Orvieto, Italy.  He is a regular participant at the Chamber Music Conference of the East and has served on their Board of Trustees.  While in college, Dr. Kirmser was principal oboist for the Vermont Symphony.  Dr. Kirmser is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale School of Medicine.  He is a resident of Wilton and has lived there with his wife, Sally, and their three children for 46 years.

Kyong Hee Cho began her piano career in Korea at the age of four. She gave her first concert piano performance with the Seoul Symphony at the age of eleven. She attended the Manhattan School of Music as a merit scholar where she earned a BA and MA degree in piano performance. Kyong Hee has performed numerous solo concerts to benefit international medical and disaster relief. She teaches piano at her studio in Wilton, CT, and provides leadership to her students in the planning and performance of benefit concerts.

Bärli Nugent is an alumna, former dean and faculty member of the Juilliard School.  A member of the Artist-Faculty of the Aspen Music Festival for 30 years, she was principal flute of Marin Alsop’s Concordia Orchestra for 18 years. As the founding flutist of the Naumburg Award-winning Aspen Wind Quintet, she performed 1,000 concerts all over the world. A favorite commission for that group, Crescent City Suite, was written by Wilton’s Chris Brubeck. Moving to Wilton at age 4, she was introduced to the flute in Wilton’s 4th-grade music program, and later became a wildly enthusiastic member of the WHS marching band and Norwalk Youth Symphony. She was also a devoted teacher to many local young flutists at New Canaan’s Merit Music School. Previously heard on Candlelight Concerts, she is now back living in her childhood home and is a volunteer with numerous wonderful local organizations. She owes endless thanks to the local teachers – Donald Bender, Al Burbank, Ralph Forsman and Jean Whiton – who opened her eyes to the beauty of the flute and playing with others.

Jeff Jones, violinist, never got to play for the Queen, but he did perform for three U.S. Presidents several times--John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson at the White House and Richard Nixon upon the occasion of his state visit to Ottawa in 1972.  After serious study with Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Jeff won auditions for and secured positions with the Utah, Indianapolis and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada--where he was invited to perform with the Julliard Quartet--and the Buffalo Philharmonic.  Along the way, he performed for three summers as the Associate Principal 2nd Violin with the Aspen Festival Orchestra.  Jeff's grandmother was born in 1877 in Bethel, CT, where, coincidentally, the Joneses now reside.

Registration strongly suggested.