Performances

Burnt Reeds Performance - February 4, 2024

Hear local artists perform “Homegrown Melodies” including “From the Mountains to the Sea”, by Amber Ferenz, in Charlotte on February 4th, 2024

Kachina Premiere

Be there for the first performance of “Kachina” by the composer, May 16th, 2024.

Tales From the Grove Premiere

Be there for the first performance of “Tales from the Grove”, August 12th, 2022.

Music by Women Festival - 2022

Concert on March 4, 2022 with performance of These Four Directions.

MTSU Bassoons Performance - 2022

Amber Ferenz Concert Program on January 22, 2022 at Middle Tennessee State University.

Festival!

Performance by the MTSU Double Reed Day Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Dennis A. Hawkins, Jr.

The COVID pandemic taught me that us musicians are hungry for opportunities to play together again, and I wanted a celebratory piece everyone could play that would be a fun way to wrap up the day’s events. We premiered it with around 35 folks as the final piece on the program, to the delight of us all.

These Four Directions

Performance by Elektra Winds

This piece is about the directions that you love, directions you can almost not stand to face, and directions you never thought you’d go.

Tall Tales

Performance by Dana Brink

It occurred to me that the bassoon is still a tree. It’s tall. It’s often brown, and most often made of wood. The tree gives its life and becomes a bassoon, and bassoonists are able to make music because of that priceless generous sacrifice.

Yellow Poplar With Birdsong

Performance by Zach Millwood, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra

“Yellow Poplar With Birdsong” for solo bassoon, composed by Amber Ferenz

Love Medicine

Katherine Aydelott and Andrew Pahos, bassoons; Richard Blumenthal, piano

Each of us carries inside our hearts our own special form of medicine, an inexplicable uniqueness which makes up a portion of our interior world. To illustrate, there is snake medicine, fire medicine, plant medicine, and most certainly, bassoon medicine…just about anything you can conceive of can become medicine when it is cultivated and nurtured within you, and then shared with others by being and/or doing. Medicine is paradoxically participatory and also IS, without the need for any activity on the part of the bearer.

Unfinished Conversations

Performance by Staci Spring, bassoon with Nancy Johnston, piano

“Unfinished Conversations” is dedicated to bassoonist and dear friend Eric Van der Veer Varner (1974-2019). Eric and I met at Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp in 2001 and immediately became friends.