PROGRAM
James C. Scott flute
Nadia Soree harpsichord
Monday, February 26, 2024
7:30 p.m.
UTSA Recital Hall
Sonata in C Minor, No. 190 Friedrich II, King of Prussia
I. Recitativo (1712-1786)
II. Un poco andante
III. Andante e cantabile
Neuvieme Concert Royal (Ritratto del Amore) Francois Couperin
I. Le Charme (1668-1733)
II. L´enjoüement.
III. Les Graces
IV. Le je-ne-scay-quoy
V. La Vivacité
VI. La Noble Fierté
VII. La Douceur
VIII. L´et Coeter
Trio Sonata in G Major for Two Flutes and Continuo, BWV 1039 Johann Sebastian Bach
I. Adagio (1685-1750)
II. Allegro ma non presto
III. Adagio e piano
IV. Presto Rachel Woolf, flute
Sonata in B Minor for Flute and Obligato Harpsichord, BWV 1030 Johann Sebastian Bach
I. Andante
II. Largo e dolce
III. Presto
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
James Scott began his distinguished professional career while still a first-year student at Emory University, winning a position as flutist in the Atlanta Symphony at a time that made him one of the youngest musicians in the history of the orchestra.
After earning degrees in both flute and piano from the Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Conservatory, Scott served for many years as a faculty member and head of the music program at Rutgers University. During these years he gave recitals throughout the metropolitan New York area, in Canada, in the Far East, and throughout the United States. He also performed with the Woodwind Repertory Group of New York, the Schola Cantorum Orchestra, Princeton Pro Musica, Princeton Ballet Orchestra, Opera Theater of New Jersey, Metro Lyric Opera Orchestra, and the Camerata Chamber Orchestra. Scott later became associate dean for instruction and professor of flute at Indiana University, performing as principal flutist of the Indiana University Festival Orchestra with which he appeared as soloist in Lukas Foss’ Renaissance Concerto under the direction of the composer. He also served as Director of the School of Music at the University of Illinois before beginning his work in 2001 as Dean of the College of Music at the University of North Texas. After retiring from the deanship in 2016, he continued as Professor of Flute.
Scott’s major flute teachers include Robert Willoughby, Britton Johnson, Charles DeLaney, Marcel Moyse, and Geoffrey Gilbert.
Harpsichordist Nadia Bohachewsky Soree began her musical life as a pianist, graduating from The Juilliard School as a pupil of Martin Canin. While pursuing her Master of Music degree at Rutgers University, Soree fell in love with the harpsichord, studying with Charlotte Mattax Moersch. She also studied, either in master classes or privately, with Gustav Leonhardt, Kenneth Gilbert, and Davitt Moroney.
Soree was awarded an Honorable Mention at the “Musica Antiqua” Brugge competition, following this honor with the Jurow Award at the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society International Competition, as well as First Prize at the J.S. Bach International Harpsichord Competition in Montreal. Soree then embarked on a legal career, earning her law degree from Yale Law School, after which she practiced in the Office of the Legislative Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives before joining the faculty of St. Thomas University School of Law.
In 2018, Soree returned to the harpsichord, and recently earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of North Texas under the guidance of Bradley Bennight. Soon after returning to the harpsichord, Soree made her West Coast recital debut as part of the MusicSources concert series in Berkeley and appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival with the UNT Baroque Orchestra and at the Flint Collection as a participant in master classes with Catalina Vicens. Soree now calls San Antonio home, performing regularly as a solo recitalist and as a harpsichordist for Sonido Barroco San Antonio and Austin Baroque Orchestra.
Dr. Rachel Woolf serves as Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Texas at San Antonio School of Music. Accomplished as a multidimensional artist, Rachel is Principal Flute with the Victoria Bach Festival, flutist in Dallas based symphonic pop rock band, The Polyphonic Spree, regularly performs with the San Antonio Philharmonic, and has performed and recorded with the United States Air Force Band of the West. She has collaborated with diverse artists like Jośe González, Il Divo, Darren Criss, and Swans.
Rachel has performed at the National Flute Association Convention (NFA) eight times, and in the 2022 and 2023 conventions was a featured performer on the Friday Night Gala Concert. Additionally, she has been a featured Gala artist at the 2023 North American Saxophone Alliance Convention (NASA), as well as a performer at the 2023 International Clarinet Association, ClarinetFest and 2023 College Music Society’s National Conference.
Actively engaged with programming new and diverse works, her flute and marimba duo, Duo 彩 Aya, has commissioned four new works for flute and marimba for performances across the United States and Japan in the 2023-2024 season. Rachel has been a founding member of multiple new music groups in Ann Arbor and Los Angeles and has premiered numerous new works for flute and piccolo, including Paul Schoenfield’s Psychobird (A Sonatina for Piccolo and Piano) with Paul Schoenfield on piano. She can be heard premiering works by William Bolcom and Jennifer Higdon on the widely released Classical Structures with the University of Michigan Symphony Band on Equilibrium Records. Additionally, she can be heard playing principal and bass flute on the GIA Windworks label, Canvases and Offerings, with the UNT Wind Symphony.
Rachel has given masterclasses, recitals, and clinics at The University of Michigan, The University of Alabama, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of North Texas, University of North Carolina Greensboro, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Bowling Green State University, Texas Christian University, University of Oregon, SUNY Potsdam, Baylor University, Oklahoma State University, Austin Flute Society’s Festival, Texas Flute Society’s Festival, Texas Summer Flute Symposium, and Floot Fire camps. and others. She has been a Guest Artist Teacher at Texas A&M Commerce. She has also been on judging panels for the NFA Junior Soloist Competition, Texas Music Education’s Association (TMEA) All-State Convention, NFA Collegiate Flute Choir Competition, Myrna Brown Competition (Texas Flute Society), and VOCE Competition (San Diego).
Beyond her performances across the United States, she has performed in Sweden, Finland, Russia, Italy, Luxembourg, Germany, France, England, and Canada. She received her Bachelor of Music at the University of Michigan, obtained her Master of Music at Bowling Green State University, where she was the flute Teaching Assistant, and completed her Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of North Texas as a Teaching Fellow with a related field in Ethnomusicology. She has studied under the tutelage of Amy Porter, Dr. Conor Nelson, Terri Sundberg, Dr. James Scott, Marianne Gedigian, and Karen Reynolds.
PROGRAM NOTES
I am honored to be invited by Prof. Rachel Woolf to give a master class and recital at UTSA. Since she was once my student at UNT, I decided that the program provided an opportunity to connect several other elements of my career, both as performer and teacher/ administrator in the academic world. First, I would mention harpsichordist Nadia Soree, whom I knew as an undergraduate and master’s student at Rutgers University when I was head of the music program there. She was a fine pianist and became an outstanding harpsichordist, recognized as a laureate in some of the world’s most prestigious harpsichord competitions. Despite a flourishing early career, she decided to go into law, making a distinguished career there, culminating in a professorship of law at a Florida university. She then decided to go back into music full-time and after reaching out to me for recommendations, recently earned her doctorate in harpsichord at UNT under Dr. Brad Bennight. She worked with another doctoral student of mine, Ieng Wai (Wesley) Wong for his final lecture recital, which featured the Couperin Concert Royal that we will play in this recital. Wesley engaged in a thorough study of French Baroque performance practice and made a performance edition that is both practical and scholarly. Since his lecture recital was during the pandemic, it had to be given from Chile, where he holds the flute professorship, via Zoom, playing live with a recording of the harpsichord part played by Nadia here in Texas. The technological aspects of assembling all this were handled by Prof. Woolf, using her extensive skills. Since Nadia now lives in the San Antonio area and there was the opportunity to work with her, I decided on an all-Baroque program, featuring this relatively unknown Couperin work and an even less known sonata by King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who probably preferred his court life as a flutist and host of some of Europe’s most distinguished musicians to his notoriety as a warrior king.
One of King Frederick’s most important guests was Johann Sebastian Bach, whose son Karl Phillip Emanuel, was harpsichordist for the king! The remainder of the program will be music by the older Bach, including a trio sonata, adding Prof. Woolf for the other flute part, ending with the grandest and most complex of Bach’s flute sonatas, the one in B Minor, a favorite key for Bach for some of his most profound works.
In the early part of my career, harpsichords were rare, and the one-key Baroque flute lived almost exclusively in museums and among collectors, virtually never heard in professional concerts. As the harpsichord emerged as a much more appropriate instrument for Baroque music than the piano, it became more common to use the modern flute with harpsichords based on 18th century models. Today, of course, there are many excellent exponents of Baroque wind and string instruments, so a “period match” of instruments is often chosen now. For someone like me, who performs publicly only on the modern flute, every recital is something of a new truce between the nature of the old instrument and those of today, adopting as much style and character of the period as possible while remaining true to the nature of the modern instrument.
- James C. Scott, D.M.A
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