Musicians
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About WindSync
The wind quintet WindSync embraces the classics and the growing contemporary repertoire with a fresh sensibility. Versatile and vibrant, the group plays “many idioms authoritatively, elegantly, with adroit technique, and with great fun” (All About the Arts). In the span of one performance, they can cover vast musical ground from revitalized standards to freshly inked works to folk and songbook, the common thread telling a compelling story about music history and our human selves. WindSync frequently eliminates the “fourth wall” between musicians and audience by performing from memory, creating an extraordinary connection. That personal performance style, combined with the ensemble’s three-pronged mission of artistry, education, and community-building, lends WindSync its reputation as “a group of virtuosos who are also wonderful people, too” (Alison Young, Classical MPR). Highlights of WindSync’s 2024-25 season include a weeklong residency at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall series, Chicago; a weeklong residency at Shelter Island Friends of Music, New York; performances at Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society with pianist Jon Kimura Parker; Harvard Musical Association, Cambridge, MA; the University of Vermont Lane Series, Burlington; Chamber Music Kelowna, British Columbia; Chamber Music Raleigh, NC; and a return to Chamber Music Northwest and Emerald City Music, in Seattle and Portland, for community residencies. The group celebrated its 15th anniversary season in 2023-24, with performances in New York City (Chelsea Music Festival), Houston, Miami, Portland, Phoenix, Charleston, Rochester, Syracuse, and Santa Rosa, among other cities. WindSync has enjoyed an international touring career since winning the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They continued as prize winners at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. In its 16-year history, the group has regularly appeared on notable stages throughout the United States and abroad, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Ravinia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Rockport Music, and Emerald City Music. The quintet has also shared the stage with such distinguished artists as David Shifrin, Jon Kimura Parker and Alessio Bax, among many others. Building a new repertoire that is driven by purpose and growing from close collaboration, WindSync’s recent projects include Rise by Shawn Okpebholo, commissioned by a consortium of prominent American orchestras and wind quintets, Stumble, Fall, Fly by Nathalie Joachim, commissioned by Emerald City Music and Schneider Concerts, and A Night at Birdland by Nicky Sohn, commissioned with support from the Chelsea Music Festival. Other premieres include a concerto for wind quintet and orchestra by Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Gilbertson, a Paul Lansky commission premiered at the Library of Congress with support from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and works by Ivan Trevino, Marc Mellits, and Viet Cuong. WindSync regularly coaches at universities and conservatories, including New World Symphony, Eastman School of Music, Frost School of Music, and the University of Texas. Winner of the 2022 Fischoff Ann Divine Educator Award, WindSync collaborates with youth orchestras, coaches at pre-college music programs, and performs for thousands of young people each year. The group has performed educational programs presented by the Seattle Symphony and by pianist Orli Shaham. Also in demand for its ability to embed in communities, WindSync has served in residencies with the Grand Teton Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Lied Center. WindSync is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, presenting programming in its artistic hometown of Houston, Texas. WindSync’s Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival has been connecting Houston’s people and places through music since its inception in 2017. Festival partners include the Houston Youth Symphony and the Center for Performing Arts Medicine. On the heels of “All Worlds, All Times,” WindSync’s 2022 release that “will make you want to get up and dance” (The Whole Note), the quintet released its second commercial album, featuring the works of Miguel Del Aguila and recorded in Studio Two at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, to a number 1 debut on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart in 2024. |