Margaret Clair, Mezzo-soprano

Red Cedar Chamber Music:
Home Sweet Home

Red Cedar Chamber Music:
Vienna by Starlight!

Chamber Music Society Fairfield
2009 Concert Season
Enjoy!

C’est Beau, La Vie!

Margaret Clair, Mezzo-soprano

Dr. Joel Brown, Piano

Dr. jason Edwards, Flute

French Art Songs & Opera Arias

Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8:00 p.m.

Sondheim Center

200 N Main, Fairfield, Iowa

Tickets $18 for general audiences, $14 for students, children over age 12, IA Course participants & seniors 60+. Children age 12 and under: free. Tickets available by calling the Sondheim Center box office at 641-472-2787. www.sondheimcenter.com

It’s been 9 years since Margaret Clair happily transplanted to Iowa. After singing professionally in the San Francisco Bay Area and Europe for many years, SouthEastern Iowa has provided many opportunities to keep her busy on stage, television, radio, and film. She is a founding member of Way Off Broadway Musical Theater, and splits her performance time between musical theater, opera, and recital. She is a frequent guest symphony soloist and is adjunct voice professor at Iowa Wesleyan College.

She trained in San Francisco with Blanche Thebom, who was the leading Mezzo Soprano at the Metropolitan Opera for twenty-five years.

French by ancestry, the French language and culture has always felt very attractive and comfortable to Margaret. Although the program is all in French, you may feel as if you are on an exotic expedition as you hear the musical strains of Spain, the playful sheperds from the ancient Auvernge region of France, the mournful lonely flute from Persia and the quiet calm of a cloister. This program of French arias and songs features 20th Century compositions including the exotic Sheherazade by Maurice Ravel, and the exquisite and sweeping Chants D’Auvergne of Joseph Canteloube, along with relatively unknown American composer, H. David Hogan and his profound and spiritual song cycle Cinque Meditations. The program will also include some familiar art songs of Fauré and Debussy and of course no French program would be complete without the arias of Massenet and Bizet’s Carmen.

Dr. Joel Brown, Professor of Piano at Iowa Wesleyan College where in addition to teaching both private and class piano he also teaches the junior music major course History of Western Music.

He is the accompanist for the Mt. Pleasant Chorale and has toured in Europe and to the west coast with the Iowa Wesleyan College Choir.

In addition to frequent solo recitals, Dr. Brown and Heidi Riepe regularly perform recitals of piano duet and piano duo literature. He has been a solo performer with orchestras in Ohio, Georgia and Iowa. Since its inception, Dr. Brown has been a faculty member for the adult piano camp, The Well-Campered Clavier, in Burlington. Dr. Brown has been organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, the Swedesburg Lutheran Church and is currently organist at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church.

Professor Brown is known in southeast Iowa as a piano teacher and performer of exceptional ability. One of his adult students recently observed, “He hears more music in music than most people do and has a way of drawing that beautiful music from the instrument.” Robert McConnell, conductor of the Southeast Iowa Symphony and himself a performer said, "Joel Brown is a true artist. He possesses a sensitivity of expression that few soloists ever achieve in their performances."

Dr. Jason Edwards

Associate Professor Jason Edwards teaches woodwind instrument lessons, music theory, sight singing/ear training, and woodwind techniques at Iowa Wesleyan College. An active and experienced performer, Dr. Edwards regularly performs on all five woodwind instruments—flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon—in a variety of contexts and styles that have included solo recital, chamber music, symphony orchestra, opera and ballet orchestra, musical pit orchestra, concert band, jazz band/combo, and rock/blues bands, among others. He is currently principal bassoon of the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra, principal oboe of the Southeast Iowa Band, and he frequently performs in a jazz duo with his IWC music colleague Dr. David Johnson on guitar. Some of Dr. Edwards’ solo and chamber music performances have been featured on public radio broadcasts, including the Nebraska Public Radio Network program “Nebraska Concerts.” In addition to his many performance activities throughout the region, Dr. Edwards is also in demand as a teacher, maintaining a private woodwind studio as well as working with groups on and off campus. His other professional activities have included adjudicating woodwind solos and ensembles—high school through collegiate level—at district and state festivals, and several of Dr. Edwards’ reviews and articles have been published in the National Association of College Wind & Percussion Instructors Journal and the Double Reed. His biographical sketch has been included in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who among American Teachers and Educators. He received the Doctor of Music degree in multiple (5) woodwind instruments from Indiana University, the Master of Arts from Truman State University, and the Bachelor of Science in Education in instrumental music from Missouri Western State University. Prior to joining the IWC music department in 2005, Dr. Edwards taught at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Minnesota Duluth, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Northern Michigan University.