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WindSync
Listen to NPR Interview with WindSync in
Advance of Lewes Concert
Over nearly two decades of performing throughout the United States and abroad, WindSync has proven itself “a major force in the American chamber music landscape” (Arts and Culture Texas), stretching the boundaries of what the wind quintet can be through fearless programming and a fresh stage presence. WindSync has appeared on some of the country’s most prestigious stages, including Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Library of Congress, at Chamber Music Northwest and the Ravinia, Moab, Orcas Island and Phoenix Chamber Music Festivals, and internationally in China, Taiwan, Panama, Mexico and Canada.
Building a new repertoire driven by purpose and growing from close collaboration, WindSync has commissioned new works from leading and rising American composers, including Viet Cuong, Nathalie Joachim, Shawn Okpebholo, Marc Mellits, Miguel del Aguila, Nicky Sohn, Akshaya Avril Tucker and Mason Bynes—many of which have become emerging standards of the wind quintet literature. The quintet’s 2024 album WindSync Plays Miguel del Aguila, recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, debuted at number one on the Billboard classical charts.
A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, WindSync presents a year-round concert series as well as the annual Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival in Houston, Texas. WindSync also maintains a year-round educational partnership with the Houston Youth Symphony Coda Music Program, and in 2022 was honored with the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association’s Ann Divine Educator Award.
Founded at Rice University in 2009, WindSync embarked on a robust touring career after winning the Concert Artists Guild’s 2012 Victor Elmaleh Competition and the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, continuing as prize winners at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. WindSync’s tri-coastal musicians—Garrett Hudson, Noah Kay, Graeme Steele Johnson, Anni Hochhalter and Kara LaMoure—make their homes in New York City, San Francisco and Houston.
Meet the Artists
Garrett Hudson, flute
Garrett Hudson is a founding member of WindSync. The Canadian flutist’s roots lie in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he made his solo debut with the Winnipeg Symphony at the age of 16. During his training, Hudson performed with the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Montreal, Quebec. He earned degrees from the University of British Columbia under Scottish flutist Lorna McGhee, and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he studied with renowned flute pedagogue Leone Buyse. A sensitive communicator both onstage and off, Hudson has coached woodwind students at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, University of Iowa, and University of Texas. He lives in Houston, Texas, where he maintains a teaching studio at the beginner through professional levels.
Noah Kay, oboe
Noted for his “expressive tone color and deft technique” (EarRelevant), oboist Noah Kay enjoys a varied career as an orchestral and chamber musician. Having previously served as principal oboe of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic and Symphony in C, Kay has performed, toured, and recorded in Japan, Europe and the United States with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has also performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Rochester Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony and ProMusica Columbus, and appeared as guest principal with the Princeton Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Festival appearances include Viva Bach Peterborough, the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival, Moab Music Festival, Cape May Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra and the Chautauqua Institution’s Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has served as second oboe since August 2023. Kay received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and his Master of Music degree from Yale, having studied with Richard Killmer and Stephen Taylor. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, studying with James Austin Smith. A native of New Jersey, he now resides in Queens.
Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet
Praised as “technically and interpretively impeccable and passionately communicative” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility. The clarinetist, curator and “musical detective” (New York Classical Review) recently garnered international attention for his rediscovery and reconstruction of a 125-year-old Octet by Charles Martin Loeffler, profiled in a full-page spread by The Washington Post. Released on his debut album Forgotten Sounds, Johnson’s world-premiere recording of the work was named one of The New York Times’ Best Classical Music Albums of 2024 and nominated for a Gramophone Classical Music Award. Johnson led the Octet’s first present-day performances at the Library of Congress, Morgan Library, Harvard Musical Association, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, Emerald City Music and Chamber Music Northwest. Other recent appearances include the Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Moab, Rockport and Orcas Island Chamber Music Festivals. Driven by his interest in shedding fresh perspective on familiar music, Johnson has appeared as a TEDx speaker comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, and authored chamber arrangements heard around the world. He earned degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, Yale School of Music and a doctorate from the CUNY Graduate Center. His principal teachers include David Shifrin, Charles Neidich, Nathan Williams and Ricardo Morales.
Kara LaMoure, bassoon
Kara LaMoure approaches the bassoon as a dynamic performer, educator and creative. Her interest in the creation and curation of music has led to premieres of works for solo bassoon by Akshaya Avril Tucker and Adeliia Faizullina, and she is a prolific arranger of chamber music for winds. LaMoure has performed as a chamber musician at Ravinia, Strathmore, Carnegie Hall and the Grand Teton and Moab Music Festivals, as a soloist with ROCO, Caroga Arts Collective and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and has coached youth orchestras in the United States, Switzerland, Honduras, Mexico and Brazil. She is also a founding member of the viral chamber-comedy group the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet, which has forged a special connection with thousands of young musicians and found broad appeal in venues from Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall to Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture and the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. LaMoure earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University, where she studied with John Hunt and Christopher Millard, and she is an alumna of Eastman’s cutting-edge Institute for Music Leadership. Between performances, she likes to explore her New York City neighborhood on foot and feed her interests in writing and visual art.
Anni Hochhalter, horn
A maverick French horn player, Anni Hochhalter is a founding member and Executive Director of WindSync. As an award-winning chamber musician, Hochhalter has set a new standard of virtuosic wind performance practice and built a new repertoire for the wind quintet in addition to her experimental craft in non-traditional performance styles and mediums. Hochhalter was the only musician selected for Stanford University’s Executive Program for Social Entrepreneurship in 2017 and has been a featured speaker at Chamber Music America’s National Conference and the MENSA World Gathering to share bold approaches to community building through chamber music. Outside of WindSync, she performs on vocals, electronics and horn with the band Late Aster, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “very cool collision of brass and electronics.” Recent appearances with Late Aster include University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cal Academy’s NightLife LIVE, KXSF 102.5 FM radio, and the Owl Music Parlor in Brooklyn. Hochhalter studied horn at the University of Southern California with leading studio musicians Rick Todd, James Thatcher and Kristy Morrell, with additional summer training at Chautauqua Music Festival with Roger Kaza. Based in San Francisco, she enjoys ultra running and backpacking in her spare time.
More information:
Instagram: @windsync
Program
February 14, 2026, 2 p.m.
Performance Insights with Lani Spahr at 1 p.m. (Included in price of ticket)
Bethel United Methodist Church Hall
Lewes, DE
Program Subject to Change.
Program Notes
Nadia Boulanger: Three Pieces
A towering figure of twentieth century music, Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887 to a family of musicians and entered the Paris Conservatoire at the remarkable age of nine, where she and her sister Lili stood among Gabriel Fauré’s most promising students. Lili’s untimely death in 1918 caused Nadia to abandon composing in favor of teaching composition to the next generation of musicians. The career shift, while tragic in origin, ultimately earned Boulanger cult-like status. Composer Ned Rorem described her as the “greatest teacher since Socrates,” and her influence was particularly acute on American music, with the likes of Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Quincy Jones, and Philip Glass citing her as an important influence. While brief and self-critical, Boulanger’s compositional period yielded works that could serve as master classes in and of themselves for their rigor and harmonic interest.
Boulanger’s Trois Pièces were composed for organ over a number of years, but they are best known in a version for cello and piano published in 1914. Folk-like melodies and old-style counterpoint filter through modes and harmonies associated with French “Impressionist” composers like Fauré and Debussy. Rather than feature a single solo instrument, WindSync’s adaptation is scored for a more organ-like mixture of instrumental colors.
Elliott Carter: Woodwind Quintet
“In 1948 several woodwind players asked me to write a work for woodwind quintet. On looking over some earlier quintet works, I found the composers were in the habit of overlooking the fact that each of these instruments has a different sound. I, on the other hand, was particularly struck by this, and so decided to write a work that would emphasize the individuality of each instrument and that made a virtue of their inability to blend completely.”
--Elliott Carter
After studying English at Harvard, Elliott Carter shifted his focus to the language of music, studying for three years with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and embarking on a famously prolific career spanning 75 years. His music is filled with humor and clever structures that play with the relationships between performers. The dedication of the 1948 quintet, his first, reads “To Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger.”
Jean Françaix: Wind Quartet
Born in 1912 in Le Mans, France, Jean Françaix began studies at the Paris Conservatoire upon publishing his first work at age 10 and quickly rose to the top of Nadia Boulanger’s class there. This was merely the beginning of a maximally prolific career, during which Françaix composed almost without pause until his death at 85. His music is frequently described as deceptively easy, admired among performers for its craftsmanship and technical challenges while always maintaining lightness and wit.
The 1933 wind quartet was written for the woodwind tutors of the Le Mans conservatory, where Françaix’s father was director. Perhaps it was this longstanding family connection that afforded Françaix the boldness to joke that he had left the conservatory’s horn tutor out of the composition so as not to “rouse the volcano” of his unpredictable playing. Whereas Elliott Carter wished to emphasize the individuality of each wind instrument’s sound, Françaix took pains to find unity. “To bring these disparate elements together, the composer needs great diplomatic skill,” he wrote, “a fusion of Machiavelli and magic.” The mention of Machiavelli here presumably refers not to the politics of rehearsal but rather the work’s capriciously shifting mood, tempo, and timbre.
Philip Glass/arr. LaMoure: Etude no. 17
Philip Glass is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. His family’s record store influenced his early listening as much as did conservatory-style training at Peabody, the University of Chicago, and Juilliard. His career has similarly bridged several worlds, including the founding of the Philip Glass Ensemble, high-profile opera and film commissions, and jobs as a crane operator and a taxi driver.
From 1964-1966, Glass studied harmony and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, and in his autobiography he writes, “I have not written a note of music that wasn’t influenced by her.” Glass’s interest in composing etudes calls back to the intensive training he received, building musical skills from the ground up.
The 20 etudes for piano were composed between 1991 and 2012, all in characteristic style with repetitive structures. Glass composed the first ten etudes (Book 1) to explore varied tempi, textures, and piano techniques, and as a way to improve his own piano playing. Glass describes the following ten etudes (Book 2) as “a series of new adventures in harmony and structure.” Etude No. 17, taken from Book 2, was commissioned for the 25th Anniversary of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and premiered in 2012.
Etude #17 by Philip Glass 2012 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission.
W. A. Mozart: Serenade in C minor, K. 388
In a letter dated July 27, 1782, Mozart wrote to his father that he was composing a piece of Nacht musique (night music), a designation typically given to music for evening social events. While historians are unsure about the exact chronology of the Serenade in C minor, most likely it is the work mentioned in Mozart’s letter. The manuscript, however, shows that Mozart ultimately titled the work Parthia (partita) before changing his mind again and inscribing Serenada (serenade).
Mozart’s difficulty in classifying the Serenade in C minor speaks to its weight. Dramatic, profound, and at times even ominous, the piece proceeds more like a symphony than like party music. Particularly notable are the third movement, a clever canon, and the fourth movement, a virtuosic theme and variations.
The 1780s were the heyday of Harmoniemusik, small wind bands employed as entertainers by arts patrons like Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, Viennese noble Prince Schwarzenberg, and music connoisseur Prince Aloys Joseph Liechtenstein. The Serenade in C minor, scored for pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons, was likely written for one of these Harmoniemusik patrons. WindSync performs an arrangement by bassoonist and conductor Mordechai Rechtman, who used both the original score and Mozart’s own quintet arrangement for strings as references.