Mesa Community College Music Department present Desert Echoes Flute Project Concert: For the Birds

March 1, 2024

MCC Performing Arts Center

Join the flutists of Desert Echoes Flute Project in a fun and exciting concert as they celebrate birds. From the opening piccolo duo, Mimic, by Nicole Chamberlain to the humorous closing piece, The Bird Song, by Michael Davis featuring vocalist Stephanie Sadownik lamenting “I wonder why the flutist always has to be the bird”, this concert is for the birds.

Composers have been inspired by birds and imitated bird song for centuries. Perhaps one of the best-known examples is the Goldfinch Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi. There are a flock of other pieces on the program: the happy songbirds heralding spring with all its festiveness in the first movement of Vivaldi’s La Primavera featuring flute soloist Alan J. Tomasetti, The Turtledove in the flashy piccolo solo by Eugène Damaré with soloist Linda Bailey, the lovely Blue Bird from Three Korean Folk Songs arranged by Kelly Via, the delightful and elegant Dance of the Swans from the famous Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake, the trills and grace notes of canary chicks enclosed in shells in Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, and L’Oiseau des Bois by Franz Doppler featuring Amber Walker as the bird (flute) soloist. The DEF Chamber Choir flutists depict an aviary with Bird House by Efraín Amaya and the flutists of DEFproject are Birds of a Feather in Eva Young’s lyrical, aggressive, and rhythmic piece for flute choir. The program wouldn’t be complete without a tribute by the Community Flute Choir to the unofficial mascot of the DEF Project with the playful Tufted Puffin depicted in a movement from Songs of the Ocean by Ryohei Hirose.