Music Mountain Family Concert 2024
June 9, Sunday at 2:00 PM
Free Family Concert for music lovers of all ages. Discover how four string players get to form a dream team and how they bring a clarinet into the mix in Anna Weesner's Eight Lost Songs of Orlando Underground. Featuring the Balourdet Quartet and Music Mountain Artistic Director Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet. Duration: 45 minutes. Rain or Shine. All Participants Get A Free Ice Cream!
REGISTER HERE TODAY
DEADLINE: JUNE 8
FREE - REGISTRATION REQUIRED
We always plan for a few extra participants, if you decide to attend in the last minute. However, it is most helpful to have everyone interested register in advance.
LOCATION: Gordon Hall, 225 Music Mountain Rd, Falls Village, CT (Directions)
SCHEDULE & EVENT DETAILS
1:45 pm: Check-In at the Box Office, enjoy the sculpture garden, come into Gordon Hall and take a front seat to enjoy the show to the fullest.
2:00 pm: The Balourdet Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz share their passion for music and introduce their instruments. The quartet will talk about what brought them together as a professional string quartet and how they communicate on and off the stage to form a dream team (this year the Balourdet Quartet has won the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award). The quartet will include performances as examples, and will take questions from the audience. Oskar Espina Ruiz will briefly introduce a new work by Anna Weesner for clarinet and string quartet and describe the process they followed to put it together. The clarinet quintet will include performances as examples, and will take questions from the audience.
2:45 pm: Wrap Up - All Participants Get A Free Ice Cream.
After a 15-minute break, all participants are welcome to attend the season concert at 3:00 PM featuring the Balourdet Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet. The 3:00 PM concert is a ticketed event (free for ages 18 and under, multiple discounts apply). Please, inquire in advance about the 3:00 PM concert, for tickets and event details, as Music Mountain season concerts quickly sell out.
All questions are welcome at info@musicmountain.org and (860) 824-7126.
Supported in part by the Housatonic Youth Service Bureau.
Balourdet Quartet
Balourdet Quartet
Angela Bae, Violin
Justin DeFilippis, Violin
Benjamin Zannoni, Viola
Russell Houston, Cello
The celebrated Balourdet Quartet produces both emotionally intense and intimate moments on international stages. Its unique closeness and willingness to take creative risks earned it the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, recent highlights include the Balourdet’s debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand and Paul Novak through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023). They are currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and are recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program.
For the 2023-24 season, the Balourdet has a full year of concerts, residencies, and exciting projects scheduled. They will return to the La Jolla Music Society, Montgomery Chamber Music, Nevada Chamber Music Festival, and Schneider Concert Series and will make debuts in Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, and San Antonio. Collaborations include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Stewart Goodyear, and violist Jordan Bak. During this season, they also begin their position as String Quartet in Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in North Carolina.
Oskar Espina Ruiz
Oskar Espina Ruiz, Clarinet
Oskar Espina Ruiz is associate professor of clarinet at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he teaches students ranging from high school through post-graduate degrees. Born in Bilbao, Spain, his first musical training came at an early age, performing on Basque folk instruments. He later pursued the traditional conservatory training as a clarinetist and appeared with the Bilbao Symphony as its youngest member from age sixteen. He came to New York City to further his studies in clarinet at Mannes School of Music, and later won the top clarinet prizes at the Artists International and Olga Koussevitzky International Competitions. He holds an MFA from Purchase College and a DMA from Stony Brook University, where his major teachers were Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima. Oskar Espina Ruiz is Music Mountain’s artistic director since 2016.
Music Mountain's Region One Third Graders Concert, Spring 2022