Red Cedar Chamber Music

Jan Boland & John Dowdall have concertized together as the Boland-Dowdall Flute & Guitar Duo since 1979. They are the founders of the 501(c)3 organization – Red Cedar Chamber Music .

They hooked up while both doing graduate work at the University of Iowa. Both had an avid interest in music history and early music performance practices. Eventually their researches and interests led them to a specialization of early 19th-century music on period instruments. Today, their music gives listeners equal doses of the antique and the avant garde; they annually commission and premiere new works by leading composers.

John Dowdall is a professional chamber musician and musicologist who specializes in performance on early nineteenth-century guitars. In 1992 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a Solo Recitalist Fellowship for performances of nineteenth-century chamber music.

He performs with the Boland-Dowdall Duo, winners of the l987 Professional Chamber Music Competition sponsored by the National Flute Association, touring throughout the United States and Europe. He has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival and played the first dedicatory recital at the newly renovated Shrine to Music Museum in Vermillion South Dakota, one of the world's leading instrument museums. He was featured with the Boland-Dowdall Duo at the fifth Tage Alter Musik festival in Regensburg Germany in May l989 and in a series of five concerts in and around Boston under the sponsorship of The Cambridge Society for Early Music in January of 1992. In August of 1993 he performed in Magnano, Italy for the Festival Musica Antica a Magnano, and in 1994 he performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York using instruments from the museum's collection. In 1999 the Duo appeared at the Kennedy Center on the Millennium Stage Series.

He has performed at the National Convention of the Music Teachers National Association and has given lecture/recitals on Nineteenth CenturyFlute and Guitar Duets at a Symposium of the Guitar Division of the American String Teachers Association and at a joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the American Musical Instrument Society. He has also appeared as a guest performer at National Flute Association conventions on numerous occasions.

His compact discs titled Giuliani, Hummel et al. A Potpourri of l9th-Century Salon Music on Period Instruments (1988), and Rossini, Mozart et al. Serenades for the l9th-Century Salon (1992) were each named Recording of the Month by Alte Musik Aktuell of Regensberg, Germany. These recordings include a unique collection of original editions of 19th-century salon music which Dowdall presented in his MA thesis, Early l9th-century Duets for Flute and Guitar in the Library of Congress. Both discs are on the Titanic label and feature Dowdall on l9th-century, gut-strung guitar and his partner Jan Boland on keyed, wooden flutes. His later compact discs totaling 8 are on the Fleur de Son Classics label.

Also active as a composer/arranger, his Christmas Medley of l9th-century Carols for Flute and Guitar and The Foster Collection: Music of Stephen Foster arranged for flute and guitar are published by ALRY. He studied at the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna and holds degrees in guitar performance, music theory and musicology (MA, University of Iowa, 1982). He studied with Jeffrey Van and Karl Scheit.

Jan Boland has appeared as a flute soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, the Philippines, China, and Canada. The National Endowment for the Arts in Washington D.C. awarded Jan Boland the highly coveted Solo Recitalist Fellowship for 1993-96: the award is given to "the nation's most promising solo instrumentalists to hone their musical virtuosity, and to enable these exceptional musicians to showcase their talents before a wide array of American audiences."

Boland and Dowdall have been featured performers at the Tage Alter Musik early music festival in Regensburg Germany, Festival Musica Antica in Magnano Italy, California Summer Arts, and the Boston Early Music Festival. In 1995 & 1999, the Duo gave concerts at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, performing on rare instruments from the Museum's collection. Boland's six compact disc recordings are on the Fleur De Son Classics, Titanic, Koch, and Centaur record labels. Two discs were named best disc of the month by the German early music publication Alte Musik Actuell.

The Duo performed on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 1999 as representatives of the State of Iowa. The Boland-Dowdall Duo was named the 1987 winner of the National Chamber Music Competition sponsored by the National Flute Association.

Jan has been a featured performer at eight national conventions of the National Flute Association, including those in Washington D.C. and New York. She was named winner of the 1979 baroque flute competition of the NFA.

Boland was selected to a 26-member delegation from the National Flute Association to participate in a cultural exchange in the Peoples Republic of China. Boland has served on the Board of Directors of the National Flute Association and for five years chaired its Grants and Development Committee. In her capacities as an adjudicator, Jan served as a judge for competitions of the National Flute Association, including the International Young Artist Competition, the Baroque Flute Competition, and the Chamber Music Competition. She also served for three years as coordinator of the Young Artist Competition.

Dr. Boland is in demand as a teacher at summer festivals throughout the United States; in recent summers she has been on the faculty of the Boxwood Flute Symposium, California Summer Arts Festival, North Carolina's Wildacres Flute Symposium, and most recently at Red Cedar Chamber Music Festival (which she founded with John Dowdall). Boland is an adjunct faculty member at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

A respected scholar, her Method for One-Keyed Flute is published by the University of California Press/ Berkeley & London. The Method was named a winner of the National Flute Association's Newly Published Music Competition in 2000. Boland's editions of 19th-century flute music are published by Indiana University Press, ALRY and Southern Music. She has self-published the Historical Flute Tutor Series, a collection of 19th-centuryflute method books. In 1996, her edition of Stephen Foster's Parlor Music was named a winner of the Newly Published Music competition of the National Flute Association.

She is an Artist/Teacher at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Boland holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts in Flute Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa. She studied with Betty Bang Mather and Jerrold Pritchard and in master classes with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Peter Lloyd, Michel DeBost, Stephen Preston, Robert Dick and Chris Norman.

Chamber Music Society Fairfield appearances:

06-08-2008 Hallelujah! I’m a Bum.  Flute & Guitar

09-06-2008 Klezmer to Classical.  Flute Guitar Violin Viola Cello

03-01-2009 Home Sweet Home.  Flute Guitar Cello

06-07-2009 Vienna by Starlight.  Flute Guitar String Quartet

04-09-2010 A Dvorák Sighting.  Flute Guitar String Quartet

06-03-2010 Chamber Music by Gaspard Kummer

09-25-2010 Music by Jewish Composers