CALENDAR LISTING The Oberlin Chamber Orchestra Bridget-Michaele Reischl, conductor Alex Klein, oboe Michael Gandolfi, Impressions from ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation’ Richard Strauss, Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra in D-Major Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 Tuesday, April 18, 2006, 8 p.m. Severance Hall 11001 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio Box Office: 216-231-1111 or 800-686-1141 All seats general admission Tickets: $5 general public FREE for Oberlin College I.D. Further information: 440-775-8328 Alex Klein Photo by: Luiz Ceguinel Oberlin Chamber Orchestra Photo by: Roger Mastroianni

OBERLIN and CLEVELAND, OHIO (April 3, 2006) — Acclaimed soloist Alex Klein ’87, former principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, joins the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra for a concert at Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Tuesday, April 18, at 8 p.m. Music Director of the Oberlin Orchestras Bridget-Michaele Reischl makes her Severance Hall debut with this one-time-only performance, conducting the ensemble in Michael Gandolfi’s Impressions from ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation,’ Richard Strauss’s Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra in D-Major, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92. The performance will be broadcast live on 104.9 FM-WCLV, Cleveland’s classical station, and simulcast on www.wclv.com. Severance Hall is located at 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.

The concert is dedicated to the memory of the late James B. Caldwell, beloved professor of oboe at the Conservatory for nearly 35 years and a historical performance pioneer. With his wife, cellist and Cleveland Orchestra member Catharina Meints (also a member of the Oberlin faculty), Caldwell founded the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the first summer institute in the United States dedicated to the study and performance of music performed on period instruments. Caldwell, who died in February, trained many of the profession’s leading oboists, among them Alex Klein.

Alex Klein
Alex Klein studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Professor of Oboe James B. Caldwell, earning a bachelor of music degree in oboe performance in 1987 and an artist diploma in 1989. Klein began his musical studies in his native Brazil at the age of nine, and made his solo orchestral debut the following year. At age 11, he was invited to join the Camerata Antiqua, one of Brazil’s foremost chamber ensembles. During his teenage years, he toured and performed as a soloist, recitalist, and as a member of several professional orchestras in Brazil.

He has been awarded numerous international prizes, including first prize in the inaugural Lucarelli International Competition for Solo Oboe Players, which was held at Carnegie Hall, and first prize in the 1988 International Competition for Musical Performers in Geneva, Switzerland, in which he was the only oboist to win first prize since Heinz Holliger three decades earlier.

Klein was principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony from 1995 until 2004, when focal dystonia, a neurological disorder causing involuntary muscle contractions, forced him to retire from the rigors of an orchestral performance schedule. Klein, who has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Chicago Sinfonietta, now fills his days conducting, playing solo concertos, and directing the Officina de Musica Festival in Curitiba, Brazil, as well as other sociocultural music festivals around the world. His Teldec recording of the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and Daniel Barenboim won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra. Klein also has recorded for Boston Records, Newport Classics, Musical Heritage Society, and Cedille Records.

Bridget-Michaele Reischl
Since becoming the first American to win Italy’s Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition in 1995, Bridget-Michaele Reischl has been an active guest conductor throughout the United States and internationally. Some of her recent engagements include those with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and the Dayton Philharmonic as well as numerous orchestras throughout Italy and Greece. Besides being music director of the Oberlin Orchestras and a member of Oberlin’s conducting faculty (she recently conducted the Oberlin Orchestra during a whirlwind tour of China), Reischl is music director of the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a position she has held since 2001. From 1992 to 2004, she was music director of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra and associate professor of conducting at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. As a student of Robert Spano ’83, she continued her studies as a conducting fellow at both the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals, where she worked with Seiji Ozawa, Murray Sidlin, and David Zinman ’58. She is recorded on the Velut Luna, CRI, and Sea Breeze Record Company labels.

Michael Gandolfi
Composer Michael Gandolfi is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the Fromm, Guggenheim, and Koussevitzky Music foundations and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among the leading ensembles to perform his works are the Boston, San Francisco, and BBC symphony orchestras, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and the Orpheus, Saint Paul, and Los Angeles chamber orchestras. The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, conducted by Robert Spano ’83, premiered Impressions from ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation’ in August 2005 and was subsequently performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of another Oberlin graduate, David Zinman ’58.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Orchestra
This, the Oberlin ensemble’s third annual performance in Severance Hall, is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Cleveland Orchestra and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music that builds upon a core element of Oberlin’s mission: professional training and contact with one of the world’s great orchestras is seminal to a formal music education.

“The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is pleased to provide this concert for the people of Cleveland and Northern Ohio, continuing our relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra, and giving our students the opportunity to perform in one of the world’s great music halls,” says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull. “We are honored to dedicate this performance to the late James B. Caldwell, a beloved professor of oboe at Oberlin for 35 years, and a respected and admired pioneer in the performance and study of early music.”

On the collaboration between the two institutions, Cleveland Orchestra Executive Director Gary Hanson says: “We are pleased to share our Severance Hall stage with the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, and we welcome these talented young people to Cleveland. The Cleveland Orchestra has long enjoyed an association with Oberlin College and because of Franz Welser-Möst’s commitment to education, our relationship with this fine conservatory has been invigorated.”

Welser-Möst, music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, has involved Oberlin students in many performance and rehearsal opportunities, beginning in 2003, when he took the Oberlin Orchestra through a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture. Since then, many students and recent graduates of the Conservatory’s vocal studies program have performed with the Cleveland Orchestra. In May 2005, five Conservatory students sang with the orchestra under the baton of Pierre Boulez; one of them, bass Dashon Burton ’05, was chosen to replace an indisposed professional singer in the role of the Chamberlain in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol. Baritone Todd Boyce performed in Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, Welser-Möst conducting, in September 2005, and, in January, Natasha Uspensky ’05 and mezzo soprano Katherine Leemhuis ’05 sang in the concert version of Goethe’s Faust, also under the baton of Welser-Möst.

These collaborations are the latest entries in the long history shared by Oberlin and the Cleveland Orchestra. The first dates back to 1919, when the fledgling ensemble (among whose founders was John Long Severance, an 1885 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music) first performed at Oberlin as part of the College’s Artist Recital Series. The orchestra has been a part of the subscription series every year since; its Finney Chapel performance on April 30 will be its 204th.

Ten years after the Cleveland Orchestra’s founding, Severance, president of the Cleveland Musical Arts Association, gave the city of Cleveland $1.5 million to build a concert hall for the orchestra, a gift he increased to $2.5 million in 1930 in memory of his wife Elizabeth, who died the year before.

Broadcast and Ticket Information
Media sponsorship for this concert is provided by 104.9 FM – WCLV, Cleveland’s classical music radio station. The live WCLV broadcast is made possible by the sponsorship of the Riverside Company, a leading private equity firm specializing in premier companies.

Tickets are $5 for the general public and free for those with an Oberlin College I.D. (students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents). Seating is general admission. To order, please call the Severance Hall Box Office at 216-231-1111 or 800-686-1141. Severance Hall is located at 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. For additional information please visit www.oberlin.edu.

The Conservatory dean’s office is making available free bus transportation, on a first-come, first-serve basis, for members of the Oberlin community who wish to attend the concert. Those wishing to ride the bus to Severance Hall should do the following:

1. Call the Severance Hall Box Office (216-231-1111 or 800-686-1141)
to reserve a ticket for the concert;

2. Reserve bus seats in advance by calling or e-mailing James Kalyn at
440-775-8914 or james.kalyn@oberlin.edu; and

3. Report to the Oberlin College Main Library at the Mudd Center parking lot
on East College Street no later than 6:15 p.m. Buses will depart promptly at 6:30 p.m.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated within the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Called “a national treasure” by the Washington Post, Oberlin is renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber, and its alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world. Numerous Oberlin alumni have attained stature as solo performers, composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Lisa Saffer, George Walker, Christopher Rouse, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All of the members of the contemporary music ensembles eighth blackbird and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) are Oberlin graduates, and members of the Miró, Pacifica, Juilliard, and Fry Street quartets, among others, include Oberlin alumni, who can also be found in major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.

For more information about Oberlin, please visit www.oberlin.edu.