Entertainment : Red Cedar Chamber Music Performs

Red Cedar Chamber Music brings a concert titled au naturel to Wesley United Methodist Church, 516 2nd Ave, Vinton, IA on Friday, April 26that 7 p.m. The concert is sponsored by the Benton County Historical Society as their annual fundraiser. This unique program offers listeners seldom-heard duos and trios from the 19th century scored for flute, guitar and natural horn. Flutist Jan Boland and guitarist John Dowdall are joined by New York natural horn specialist Douglas Lundeen. Tickets are $10 and include a reception following the concert. Please call 319-472-4352. Boland plays a rare antique wooden flute dating circa 1830. Dowdall performs on a gut-strung French-style guitar from the same period. Douglas Lundeen is one of the few horn players in this country to perform on a “hand horn” which has no valves – pitches are achieved by repositioning the hand in the bell of the horn. This is the kind of horn was used in the early 19th-century. The trios and duos are by rarely heard composers from the period, Dickhut, Giuliani, Sor and Corret. Some of this music is not available in modern edition. Boland and Dowdall found the Dickhut trio in a library in Copenhagen. Audiences will enjoy the mellow sounds of these early instruments. The duos and trios dance, sing and shimmer with the enchanting blend of brass, woodwind and gut strings. From Spanish seguidillas to soulful serenades, this concert is designed to delight the listener. The musicians pepper the performance with lively commentary to entertain and educate audience members about these rare instruments and seldom-heard works. Jan Boland and John Dowdall have been performing 19th-c. music on period instruments, an 1830 wooden flute and an 1830 gut-strung guitar, in for nearly 30 years. In 1997 they formed Red Cedar Chamber Music to explore chamber music for flute, guitar and other instruments. They have recorded 13 commercial CD’s. One reviewer defined their approach saying, "Chamber music should be just like this—intimate, bonding, and conversational." Flutist Jan Boland, the Executive Director of Red Cedar Chamber Music, holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Iowa. Guitarist John Dowdall, the Artistic Director of Red Cedar Chamber Music, holds a Master’s degree in musicology from the University of Iowa. They have each been awarded a Solo Recitalist Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts and together have appeared in concert at festivals in Europe, Canada and the U.S. Their concerts and ten recordings on the Fleur de Son Classics label feature musical interpretation on both modern and historic 19th-century flutes. Douglas Lundeen is from New Jersey and joins Red Cedar on the April 25th concert. Equally at home as a soloist, chamber player and orchestral musician on the modern horn, Doug is also one of the leading players in North America on the valveless natural horn. Since winning first prize for solo natural horn in the 1987 American Horn Competition, he has played principal horn in period instrument orchestras in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Montréal, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and has recordings on the Sony, Koch, Titanic, Hyperion, and Musical Heritage Society Labels. Douglas Lundeen began his musical training as a singer in opera in Manhattan, coaching with Metropolitan Opera assistant conductor Frank Basilice. It was maestro Basilice who encouraged Doug to pursue a horn-playing career while he waited for his voice to mature. Red Cedar Chamber Music’s newest compact disc featuring chamber music written by Iowa composer Harvey Sollberger for Red Cedar Chamber Music, was released in October 2012 on the Fleur de Son Classics label and is distributed worldwide by Naxos of America. For more information about all Red Cedar Chamber Music performances visit www.redcedar.org or www.culturalcorridor.org or call 319-472-4352. Photo credit: Forrest Tomes Photo: Jan Boland (left) John Dowdall (right)