Musical Fantasy

Fantasy will take the form of chamber music when UC Santa Barbara flutist Jill Felber performs in concert with oboist Thomas Gallant and pianist Dianne Frazer. The trio will present works by Madeleine Dring, Benjamin Britten, Gaetano Donizetti and Jacques Ibert, among others, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb.  9, in the campus’s Karl Geiringer Hall.

Felber reunites with musical colleagues Gallant and Frazer, with whom she began collaborating in the 1980s. As a duo, Felber and Frazer have given hundreds of performances nationally and internationally and have recorded numerous albums together.

"This will be a fun reunion,” Felber said. “Tom and I haven't played together in over 30 years. Dianne, Tom and I will be performing in a concert series in Port Angeles, WA, just after our UC Santa Barbara recital. I wanted our community to hear some charming woodwind chamber music."

The Feb. 9 concert, “Fantasy: Music for Flute, Oboe, and Piano,” will feature works that highlight the virtuosic nature of each instrument. The program will open with Dring’s “Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano.” A British composer, singer, stage actress and artist, Dring studied at the Royal College of Music with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob. She was most well known for her pieces for solo piano, piano duets, songs with piano and chamber music.

Following the trio, Gallant will present selections from Britten’s “Metamorphoses after Ovid” for solo oboe, program music written in 1951 that characterizes six figures from Roman mythology. Felber and Frazer will then perform Jacob Gade’s “Tango Fantasia,” a dramatic piece reminiscent of an old Hollywood musical, and Donizetti’s 1819 Sonata in C Major, A 503 for flute and piano.

Also on the program are Ibert’s “Deux Interludes,” arranged for flute, oboe and piano, and one of Felber and Frazer’s popular “Fusion” works. “Fusion II” is a lyrical combination of Richard Strauss’ “Morgen” and Ian Clarke’s piece for flute and piano, “Orange Dawn.”

Finally, Gallant and Frazer will present Henri Brod’s "Fantasy on the Mad Scene" from Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” followed by another of Felber and Frazer’s “Fusion” works, “Fusion VI,” a combination of Stanley Myers’ “Cavatina” and Harold Arlen’s classic “Over the Rainbow.” The concert will close with Russian composer, oboist and conductor Andrey Rubtsov’s single-movement work, “Marbella Fantasy,” for flute, oboe and piano. 

Tickets are $10 general, $5 for non-UC Santa Barbara students. More information about the performers is available at the Department of Music.