chamber music
Saturday, October 25, 2025 • 2:00 p.m.
The Unitarian Church at 6556 35th Avenue NE
Andres Moran, horn • Gustavo Camacho, horn
Mary Moran, viola • Alex Fang, piano
Leah Anderson, violin • Ellyn Liu, violin
Colleen Chlastawa, viola • Liam Frye-Mason, cello
Program
Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979)
Three Pieces
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Sextet in E♭ major, Op. 81b
William C. White (*1983)
Trio for Viola, Horn and Piano, Op. 32
About the Concert
This special performance presents four guest artists joining Harmonia musicians in a wide-ranging program featuring the viola and the horn, instruments that too rarely receive the spotlight.
Guest Artists
Violist Mary Moran teaches viola and violin at the Aber Suzuki Center at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, performs regularly with ensembles in the Central Wisconsin area, and is principal violist of the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. She has previously been a member of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra, Shreveport Symphony Orchestra and Evansville Philharmonic, and has performed with the National Repertory Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Round Top Festival Institute and the Castleton Festival. Ms. Moran earned Master of Music degrees in Viola Performance and in Music History and Literature from Southern Methodist University, where she studied with Ellen Rose.
French horn player Andres Moran has served as principal horn of the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra and performed with the Fox Valley Symphony, El Paso Symphony, Las Cruces Symphony, Brevard Music Center Orchestra and the Sarasota Music Festival. His horn instructors include Nancy Joy, Gregory Hustis and Myron Bloom. He holds a Doctorate of Music in Instrumental Conducting from Indiana University, and a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting and Horn Performance from Southern Methodist University. Dr. Moran is currently music director of the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra, as well as Director of Orchestras and Artist/Teacher of Horn at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point.
French horn player Gustavo Camacho is Associate Professor of Horn and Brass Area Coordinator at Western Washington University. He previously served as an instructor at the Interlochen Arts Academy and Summer Arts Camp, and performed as principal horn of Phoenix Opera for three years while playing regularly with the Phoenix Symphony and serving on the brass faculty at the Arizona School for the Arts. He has been a featured concerto soloist with the Skagit Symphony, Traverse Symphony Orchestra, Whatcom Wind Ensemble, Interlochen Arts Academy Band and WWU Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Camacho holds music education and performance degrees from New Mexico State University and Arizona State University. He is a Yamaha Performing Artist and performs exclusively on a custom Yamaha 871D.
Pianist Alex Fang is currently pursuing a doctorate degree under the guidance of Craig Sheppard at the University of Washington, where he is also a teaching assistant for the Modern Music Ensemble, directed by Cristina Valdés. He received his master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied under Sharon Mann and Yoshikazu Nagai, and his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, where he also completed a combined bachelor’s/master’s in computer science. Notable performances include Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra in 2022, chamber performances alongside faculty members at the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival in Leavenworth, and the 2023 world premiere Robert Kechley’s Hard Times: Antiphonal Conversations (for two harpsichords and chamber orchestra) with Harmonia.
Program Notes
At the age of nine, Nadia Boulanger enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire, where she would study composition with Gabriel Fauré. She produced most of her music between 1904 and 1918, but lived another six decades, during which she championed the music of her younger sister Lili (1893–1918), conducted orchestras in Europe and the United States, and, most notably, became one of the world’s foremost teachers of composition. Her pupils included Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Roy Harris, David Diamond, Burt Bacharach and Quincy Jones — just to name a few of the famous Americans. Nadia Boulanger originally composed her Trois pièces for organ in 1911, transcribing them for cello and piano three years later.
Although Ludwig van Beethoven’s sextet for two horns and string quartet received a fairly high opus number (81b, with 81a being the completely unrelated “Les Adieux” piano sonata), it is an early work, most likely dating from 1795. Very little is known about its composition and premiere, but when Beethoven finally published it in 1810, he offered it to Nicolaus Simrock, whom the composer had befriended in 1789 when they were employed in the Bonn electoral orchestra, with Simrock playing second horn and Beethoven a member of the viola section. It is therefore possible that the piece was composed for Simrock himself. “The music is charmingly simple and direct,” writes Leonard Burkat. A central slow movement (which John Henken likens to “an operatic love duet”) is surrounded by an opening Allegro and a closing rondo that exploits the “hunting horn” aspects of the two featured instruments.
Harmonia music director William White met Andy and Mary Moran 20 years ago at the Pierre Monteux School and “was delighted when they suggested I compose something for them” in 2017, he says. “Initially, the Morans asked for a single-movement work, but when I had finished that piece (now the first movement of the trio) I knew that it was only the beginning. Three movements later, the work had become among my largest, most ambitious compositions in any genre. The trio follows a traditional four-movement structure and also features what is known as ‘cyclical form,’ in which themes reappear throughout all the movements of a work, binding the overall piece together.
“The music of the trio is influenced by many composers, but it is mainly an homage to Johannes Brahms. This is in large part due to the fact that Brahms wrote a trio for a very similar group of instruments, his Op. 40 for violin, horn and piano. My trio nods to Brahms in a number of ways: its predilection for dark colors and moods, its use of the deep piano register, its rigorous rhythmic counterpoint, and in its oblique references to Hungarian (or what once would have been called ‘Gypsy’) music. Neither the horn nor the viola often get a star turn in chamber music, and it was a delight to write this trio as a showcase of the intrinsic beauty and capabilities of these instruments. As I knew Andy and Mary both to be phenomenal musicians, I put very few limitations on myself writing for them, and the result is a work that demands virtuoso playing, energetic execution, and deep emotional conviction.”