Join flutist Elise Blatchford and pianist Adrienne Park for a special performance titled TINY GIANTS for bass/alto flute, piccolo, piano, and toy piano. The program features works by John Cage, Sergei Prokofiev, Joan Tower, Stephen Montague, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and William Grant Still.
Tickets: $10 | $5 with student ID at the door
Doors at 7 pm | performance at 7:30 pm
The Spotlight Concert Series showcases members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in the intimate Green Room at Crosstown Arts. The series provides the Memphis community the opportunity to get to know and learn more about the talented musicians that make up the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Each month will feature a different musician or small chamber group as soloist or featured ensemble.
About the artists:
Praised by the Cleveland Plain Dealer for her “superb command of color and nuance,” Elise Blatchford is the Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Memphis Scheidt School of Music and interim Principal Flute of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.
A chamber musician, soloist, orchestral musician, and teacher, Ms. Blatchford is a flutist who embraces the independent, the experimental, and the DIY. She was selected by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) to be a 2017 fellow of their Ensemble Evolution program at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity.
As a founding member of the woodwind quintet The City of Tomorrow, Ms. Blatchford won the gold medal of the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition in 2011, and received a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning grant in 2014. The quintet has commissioned new works from composers Hannah Lash, Nat Evans, and John Aylward, among others.
As a recitalist, Ms. Blatchford frequently programs music of the 20th and 21st centuries, and has been an invited guest at venues across the U.S., including Indiana University, University of Oregon, and Yale University.
Also at home in the traditional orchestra world, Ms. Blatchford will serve as interim Principal Flute for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s 2018-19 season. She has performed with the Oregon Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the YOA Orchestra of the Americas. With YOA, she toured extensively throughout South America, the Caribbean, and mainland China; made an appearance at Carnegie Hall with Valery Gergiev; and recorded with Philip Glass.
A devoted and energetic pedagogue, Ms. Blatchford works to instill versatile musicianship in her students, so that they can create sustainable and varied careers. She has given master classes at New England Conservatory, Williams College, Longy School of Music, and Skidmore College, among many others. She holds degrees in flute performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory.
A Powell Artist, Ms. Blatchford performs on a 14K gold handmade Powell flute.
Adrienne Park is the Principal Pianist of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and has performed with IRIS Orchestra, the Memphis Chamber Music Society and with PRIZM Ensemble. As a collaborative pianist, she has performed recitals with violinist Joshua Bell, cellists Shauna Rolston and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, bassist Edgar Meyer, flutists Paul Edmond-Davies and Timothy Hutchins, the percussion group NEXUS and composer Steve Reich. In the fall of 2011, Adrienne was invited to appear as a soloist with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra performing Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos in d minor under the direction of Mei-Ann Chen with Steinway Artist Victor Santiago Asuncion. She has been on faculty at the University of Mississippi as a collaborative pianist for the instrumental department since 2011 and has been a faculty member of the Piano Discoveries Camp since its inception in 2007.
She enjoys playing a wide range of chamber music and contemporary music for the piano, celeste, harpsichord, synthesizer, toy piano and percussion. With percussionist David Carlisle, Adrienne co-founded DivaDi, a duo who performs eclectic and exciting repertoire that often draws from multiple styles of music. DivaDi was a guest artist at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis in 2009, performing Carlisle’s percussion duet “Mad Cow.”
She recently created a new chamber series at the University of Mississippi entitled Sonic Explorations. The inaugural concert in 2013 presented instrumental and vocal works by British composers Gerald Finzi and Rebecca Clarke and an arrangement of “Eleanor Rigby” by David Carlisle. The second installment featured instrumental chamber works by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. This season Sonic Explorations will be opening with two world premieres for piano and percussion intertwined with arrangements of suites by Bach for vibraphone, marimba and piano.
At the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, Adrienne was the faculty pianist for the fall and winter residencies from 1994 to 2000 and for various summer instrumental master classes. In 2007 at Banff, she gave the world première of a horn trio by Wolfgang Plagge with hornist Frøydis Ree Wekre and violinist Mark Fewer.
While living in Vancouver, British Columbia, she worked with Kokoro Dance Company and composer Robert Rosen for the productions of Sunyata, Truths of the Blood, Sade, Part II, Encounters with the Goddess and Dance of the Dead. She also worked with Joe Ink Dance as a member of a contemporary quintet and with John Korsrud’s Hard Rubber Orchestra, a contemporary big band.
Adrienne studied with Abbey Simon and Ruth Tomfohrde at the University of Houston, where she received a Bachelor of Music and graduated summa cum laude. She also studied with Robert Silverman at the University of British Columbia, where she received a Master of Music and graduated with first class standing. In addition, she was a frequent Resident Artist at the Banff Centre’s Music and Sound Program, directed by Isobel and Tom Rolston.
