Baroque Oboist Geoffrey Burgess will be in residence at SUNY Fredonia in October to prepare music students for a unique event.
Burgess, of the American Bach Soloists, will be coaching a wide variety of students in authentic Baroque and classical performance practices, culminating in two informal concerts which are free and open to the public. These concerts will feature students from all areas of the School of Music including voice, keyboard, string, brass and wind. Concert dates are Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. in Rosch Recital Hall with a program of Bach arias and the Mozart Quintet K.388 with Geoffrey Burgess performing on Baroque oboe.
The second concert, on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. in Rosch Recital Hall, features selections from two wind octets: Johann Wendt's period arrangement of Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte and W.A. Mozart's own Serenade No. 11 in Eb, K.375.
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Burgess has played Baroque oboe around the globe for close to 30 years. After initial studies in his hometown Sydney, a Dutch Government Scholarship allowed him to study in The Hague with Ku Ebbinge. He worked over a 20-year period with the Paris-based opera company, Les Arts Florissants, an association that triggered a passion for French Baroque opera that culminated in a doctoral dissertation for Cornell University.
His book, The Oboe, written in collaboration with Bruce Haynes, won the 2007 Bessaraboff Prize from the American Musical Instrument Society. Geoffrey was a key figure in the early-instrument revival in Australia, and was a founding member of the Brandenburg Orchestra in Sydney. He has worked with baroque ensembles across North America, from Seattle to Boston and Los Angeles to Montreal and has appeared as soloist with the Washington Bach Consort, Dallas Bach Society and Philadelphia Bach Festival, and in recitals with prominent artists such as Julianne Baird and Elizabeth Futral.
In addition to some 25 orchestral and operatic recordings, Geoffrey recorded music of the Bach Family with Ann Morgan for Move Records, and Invocations and Incantations features new music written for Duo d'amore - Geoffrey with harpsichordist Elaine Funaro. Dr. Burgess has taught at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College, and on the musicology faculties of Stony Brook, Case Western, Duke and Columbia Universities.
He presently lives in Philadelphia, and is the Baroque oboe instructor at the Eastman School of Music.
