Madera Wind Quintet

Five at Play on SoundNotion

admin — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:40:41 +0000

The Madera Wind Quintet’s own Rachel Yoder was a guest on SoundNotion, the “weekly podcast for new music and music news,” on February 3 to talk about our new album Five at Play. Also joining the conversation was Sarah Summar who composed the piece Tó Neinilii’s Mischief in collaboration with us, along with hosts David MacDonald, Nate Bliton, and Patrick Gullo. Watch the program to hear us discuss the problems of writing for wind quintet, why horn players are such “weirdos” and which chamber ensemble has the most… um… testosterone.

Five at Play CD Released November 15

admin — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:54:56 +0000

Well, today’s the day… Our debut album, Five at Play, is now available for purchase either as a CD or digital download from Crescent Phase Records. It is also available on Amazon and iTunes.

Enjoy!

Five at Play CD Release Extravaganza Nov.2

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:15:12 +0000

The Five at Play album is finally done, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. We worked closely with recording engineer/producer Greg Dixon of Dixon Sound Services for many, many hours to get everything sounding just right. Then it went to Blair Liikala, head of recording services at the University of North Texas, for mastering. We can’t wait for everyone to hear this recording!

The album will be released digitally and on CD on Nov. 15. If you were one of our awesome Kickstarter backers, you should be receiving it around that time also!

If you live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we’d love to see you at our CD release event next Friday, Nov. 2 at 7:30 pm in Denton! Celebrate our new album with a short MW performance and food and drink on us! See the Facebook event page for more details.

One last thing…
We’re excited to announce that we have a new oboist! We welcome to Madera Wind Quintet Andrew Gresham from California, who just began his masters degree in oboe at the University of North Texas. Best of luck to our lovely oboist for the last two years Natalie Lorch, who has moved to New York to begin a doctorate at Stony Brook.

MWQ Newsletter

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 21:33:27 +0000

Kickstarter Update

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 21:12:20 +0000

We’re just a few days away from our July 1 deadline, and the Kickstarter is progressing nicely! We are thrilled with the number of supporters and their generosity. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to visit our Facebook Page and “Like” us or sign up for our e-mail newsletter to keep up with the latest goings-on of the Madera Wind Quintet!

We have a TON of people to thank for watching the video above and pledging to support the Five at Play recording project:

Phil Pierick
Michael
Tom & Molly Lorch
Sean Murphy
Meg Owens
Vivian Neff
David Summar
Dana & Glenn
Laura Pillman
Beth Yoder
Maniacal 4
Garrett Hudson
Kellie Lignitz
Henry Winter
Eduardo Martinez
Staci
David MacDonald
Russell Szczepaniec
Heather Karlsson
Kimi Sturgeon
Carl Schimmel
Ryan
Roy Magnuson
Rebecca Mindock
KickingCello
Darcy Neal
Dan Phillips
Robert McClure
Harlan Wilk
Phillip Johnson
Theresa Schimmel
Henry Winter
Renea Leathers
Ken Wilhelm
Lorinda Sliger
Janice Bibgy
Kori Tyler
Matt H.
William Nichols
Daniel Nass
Ricky Hinton

THANK YOU!

Five at Play: Denton Edition

admin — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:41:29 +0000

We’ve finally wrapped up our long week of recording sessions, and are now looking ahead to our Denton concert on Sunday. We endured a malfunctioning microphone, a 150-hz hum in the hall, bird noises, UNT bells ringing every hour and half hour, and a monstrous thunderstorm that cut our last day of recording short.

Angela, Natalie, Janelle Ott (our production assistant), Jorge, and Katrina cowering from the extremely loud thunderstorm

Luckily, we were able to get back in the hall today to finish up! We are really looking forward to leaving all the pickiness and detail work behind and getting to just PLAY on Sunday. Because, well, that’s what we do! We’re Five at Play!
(You can find the Facebook event here with more details.)

Also, we have reached 26% of our Kickstarter goal, with still 23 days to go. That puts us well on our way, thanks to:
Nataliya Sukhina
Betty Winter
Alison Hathaway
Virginia Haak
Liz Rothrock
Phil Pierick
Michael
Tom & Molly Lorch
Sean Murphy

Thanks so much guys, and we hope to see lots of you there on Sunday!

Thanks to our first backers!

admin — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 01:43:03 +0000

A big thank-you goes out from the Madera Wind Quintet to the first few backers of our Kickstarter campaign:

Phillip Johnson
Ann MacMillan
Tammy Lim
Sean Friar
Barbara Underwood
Kate Pritchett
William Winter
Chris Buckley
Andrew Balettie

We appreciate your support. It means a lot to us as we push through two more days of recording sessions!

Five at Play Recording Project and Kickstarter

admin — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 02:17:57 +0000

Whew! It has been a busy few weeks with the Madera Wind Quintet! After premiering Lansing McCloskey’s Hardwood at the International Horn Society conference on May 18, we got right back to work on preparing our Five at Play program for recording.

We are currently in the midst of a six-day recording session at the University of North Texas’ Voertman Hall, and everything is on schedule and sounding good. We have also been hard at work on our Kickstarter campaign to help with the production costs of the album Five at Play, which features the five winning compositions from our 2012 Call for Scores (by Sean Friar, Daniel Nass, Peter Nickol, Carl Schimmel, and Philip Wharton) and Sarah Summar’s piece To Neinilli’s Mischief, which was written for us last year.

To learn more about this project, and to donate or pre-order a CD, visit our Kickstarter page!

MWQ to perform at International Horn Society and IDRS

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:22:20 +0000

We are excited to announce that this summer, the Madera Wind Quintet will be premiering Lansing McLoskey’s Hardwood at the 2012 conferences of the International Horn Society and the International Double Reed Society! As the winner of the Joint Wind Quintet Project’s commission competition, McCloskey wrote Hardwood to be premiered at the 2012 gatherings of the International Horn Society, the International Clarinet Association, the International Double Reed Society, and the National Flute Association. We are honored to have the opportunity to participate in this historic collaboration and continue our commitment to performing new, exciting works for wind quintet!

The performances are as follows:

International Horn Society Conference: May 18, University of North Texas, Denton, TX

International Double Reed Society Conference: July 11, Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH

2012 Call for Scores – Winners Announced

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:02:03 +0000

The Madera Wind Quintet is very excited to announce the results of our 2012 Call for Scores. After sifting through 130 submissions, we narrowed it down to twelve finalists and then selected five works for performance on our spring concert program and for an upcoming recording project.

Those five pieces are:

Sean Friar – Short Winds

Daniel Nass – Scherzophrenia

Peter Nickol – Ultramarine

Carl Schimmel – Towns of Wind and Wood

Philip Wharton – Quintet

The other seven finalists were:

Ken Davies – Veiled Places

Matt Frey – Sums of Parts

Nick Omiccioli – Flourishes

Yiwen Shen – Walpurgisnacht

Phillip Sink – Two Poems for Wind Quintet

Anthony Suter – while in gardens of sleet and stone

Chen Yao – Sfumato

We were surprised at the number of submissions received, but extremely happy with the quality of the works we had to choose from. Thanks to all the composers who took the time to send us their work and made this decision a very difficult one, indeed.

We will be performing the five winning scores in concert on March 11 as part of the Dolce Chamber Music Players 2012 Concert Series, and we are currently working to schedule more performances of the program this spring. More details soon!