Flutist O’Connor Tara Helen O’Connor will be the featured performer at Goucher College’s 2015 Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency Concert on Thursday, October 15, at 8 p.m. in Merrick Lecture Hall. O’Connor will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Charles-Marie Widor, Eric Moe, Belinda Reynolds, John Halle, Randall Woolf, and others.
The concert is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved by logging onto http://www.goucher.edu/tickets or by calling 410-337-6333.
On Wednesday, October 14, O’Connor also will present a lecture/demonstration at 7 p.m. and a master class at 7:45 p.m. The public is invited to observe both events, which are free and will be held in Merrick Lecture Hall.
O’Connor is a charismatic performer noted for her artistic depth, brilliant technique, and colorful tone. She is a 2001 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and received two Grammy nominations in 2003 for Osvaldo Golijov’s recording titled “Yiddishbbuk.” O’Connor was the first wind player chosen to participate in the Society Two program for emerging artists, sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where she now performs regularly.
O’Connor is also a regular participant in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto Festival USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Mainly Mozart Festival, Music from Angel Fire, the Banff Centre, the Great Mountains Music Festival, Chesapeake Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
A sought-after chamber musician and soloist, she has premiered hundreds of new works and has frequently collaborated with the Orion String Quartet, St. Lawrence Quartet, the Emerson Quartet, Jaime Laredo, Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk, Jeremy Denk, Ida Kavafian, Peter Serkin, and David Shifrin.
O’Connor is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble and a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and the legendary Bach Aria Group. A passionate advocate of new music, she is a member of the Talea Ensemble and Cygnus Ensemble. O’Connor has appeared on A&E’s “Breakfast for the Arts” and “Live from Lincoln Center.”
She has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Bridge Records. Her solo CD of American flute works titled The Way Things Go will be released this fall on Bridge Records with pianist Margaret Kampmeier.
O’Connor holds a doctorate from SUNY Stony Brook. She is associate professor of flute, area head of the Wind Department at Purchase College School of the Arts Conservatory of Music and is the coordinator of classical music studies. O’Connor is also on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory and the contemporary program at Manhattan School of Music.