Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts | Festival & Indoor Music

DECEMBER 5 HOLIDAY CHAMBER CONCERT WITH ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE'S
Sunday, 4:00pm ~ The Rosen House Music Room
Tickets $40.00   order online   subscription discount

Orchestra of St. Luke's
Chamber Music at Caramoor

Mozart   Divertimento No. 12 for 2 oboes, 2 bassoons and 2 horns in E-flat major,
               K. 252 (K. 240a)
Mozart   Divertimento No. 14 for 2 oboes, 2 horns and 2 bassoons in B flat major, K. 270
Mozart   Serenade No. 10 for winds in B flat major, K. 361/370a (Gran Partita)

Celebrate the holidays in Mozartian style with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Caramoor's Moz(art) series concludes with a scintillating program of Mozart's works for large wind ensembles, featuring the Gran Partita, his unparalleled masterpiece of the genre. Bach's Brandenburgs are a traditional holiday hit but these Mozart wind works find joy on every page of the scores.

The 2010-2011 season marks the 36th year of America's foremost chamber orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, which was formed at the Caramoor International Music Festival in 1979 from the existing St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble (founded in 1974). This unique musical organization began as a chamber ensemble in the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in New York's Greenwich Village and comprises the Orchestra of St. Luke's, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and St. Luke's Arts Education Program. St. Luke's currently performs approximately 100 orchestral, chamber, and educational concerts throughout New York each year, all showcasing the hallmark collaborative spirit that has garnered consistent critical acclaim for vibrant music-making of the highest order. Last summer marked its 31st consecutive year as orchestra-in-residence at Caramoor.

"St. Luke's started as a chamber ensemble with the impossible dream that it could do everything from Baroque to contemporary and chamber ensemble to chamber orchestra - this was our vision from the very first day," said OSL President and Executive Director, and Co-Founder, Marianne Lockwood. "That it has grown to embrace all of that and more, with a list of pre-eminent collaborating artists, presenters, and venues, is the fruition of that dream."

"There is one orchestra very few people seem to disagree about," said Anne Midgette in The New York Times. "In the last couple of years, everyone I know, it seems, has come back from hearing the Orchestra of St. Luke's with great excitement about the quality of the playing and the experience. And each time it has been a different concert. It's hard to ignore the example of an orchestra capable of making vivid music in a wide range of settings, and sustaining that model economically. It's vitally important - more so than the musical establishment may think."

In addition to being presented by Carnegie Hall in an annual series in the Isaac Stern Auditorium, the Orchestra of St. Luke's continues a 20-year collaborative relationship with Carnegie Hall that currently includes participation in such Carnegie events as the Choral Workshop, Family Concerts, concert presentations of musical theater, including the recent presentation, recording, and telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, and others. The Orchestra is also engaged throughout the year in a number of artistic collaborations, including the U.S. premiere of Paul McCartney's Ecce Cor Meum at Carnegie Hall.

In chamber music, St. Luke's performs three concert series annually: a series at Gilder Lehrman Hall in the newly-renovated Morgan Library & Museum; a four-concert series at the Brooklyn Museum; and a four-concert series at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York. St. Luke's Arts Education Program comprises free education performances and year-long in-school residencies supported by professional development for teachers and standards-based curriculum materials. Fifteen thousand New York City school children and their teachers are served by the program annually.

The Orchestra released two critically-acclaimed recordings on its own label, St. Luke's Collection: Mozart's Symphonies 39 and 41 under the direction of Donald Runnicles and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, performed by the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. The Collection also includes Morning, Noon and Evening, featuring Haydn's Symphonies 6, 7, and 8; With Valour Abounding, music by Handel inspired by the Old Testament; and a recording of J.S. Bach's complete wedding cantatas entitled Wedding Gifts. These are the most recent additions to an already stellar and extensive discography, numbering more than 70 recordings, that includes three Grammy Award-winning discs.