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Mead Witter School of Music Faculty Artist Series

Conor Nelson, flute
Lindsay Flowers, oboe
Christopher Taylor, piano

World premieres by Marilyn Shrude, Laura Schwendinger, Mikel Kuehn, and UW–Madison alumna Mengmeng Wang

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Praised for his “long-breathed phrases and luscious tone” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Canadian flutist Conor Nelson is established as a leading flutist and pedagogue of his generation. Since his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, he has frequently appeared as soloist and recitalist throughout the United States and abroad.

Solo engagements include concerti with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Flint Symphony, and numerous other orchestras.  In addition to being the only wind player to win the Grand Prize at the WAMSO Young Artist Competition, he won first prize at the William C. Byrd Young Artist Competition.  He also received top prizes at the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition, the Haynes International Flute Competition as well as the Fischoff,  Coleman, and Yellow Springs chamber music competitions.

With percussionist Ayano Kataoka he performed at Merkin Concert Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Hall, and Izumi Hall.  A recital at the Tokyo Opera City Hall that received numerous broadcasts on NHK Television. Their CD entitled, Breaking Training was released on New Focus Recordings (NYC).  His second CD, Nataraja with pianist Thomas Rosenkranz is also available on New Focus.  He has collaborated with Claude Frank on the Schneider concert series in NYC and appeared at numerous chamber music festivals across the country including the OK Mozart, Bennington, Skaneateles, Yellow Barn, Cooperstown, Salt Bay, Look and Listen (NYC), Norfolk (Yale), Green Mountain, Chesapeake, and the Chamber Music Quad Cities series.

A respected pedagogue, Dr. Nelson has given master classes at over one hundred colleges, universities, and conservatories.  Prior to his appointment at UW-Madison, he served as the flute professor at Bowling Green State University for nine years and as the Assistant Professor of Flute at Oklahoma State University from 2007-2011. His recent residencies include Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, China, the Conservatoriode Música de Puerto Rico, and the Associação Brasileira de Flautistas in São Paulo.

He is also a regular guest of the Texas Summer Flute Symposium and has been the featured guest artist for eleven flute associations across the country.

He received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and Stony Brook University where he was the winner of the schoolwide concerto competitions at all three institutions.  He is also a recipient of the Thomas Nyfenger Prize, the Samuel Baron Prize, and the Presser Award.  His principal teachers include Carol Wincenc, Ransom Wilson, Linda Chesis, Susan Hoeppner, and Amy Hamilton. Conor is a Powell Flutes artist and is the Associate Professor of Flute at UW-Madison where he performs with the Wingra Wind Quintet.

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Dr. Lindsay Flowers is the Assistant Professor of Oboe at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Mead Witter School of Music where she is a member of the Wingra Wind Quintet and guides student-generated community engagement projects. She received a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music under the tutelage of Linda Strommen and Roger Roe. Her background in athletics distinguishes her pedagogical approach in her emphasis on performance visualization, disciplined commitment, and supportive teamwork.

Lindsay is currently an Oboist and English Hornist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. She previously was the Principal Oboist of the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, and a member of the New Mexico Philharmonic, Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, and Civic Orchestra of Chicago where she served as a Civic Fellow under the mentorship of Yo-Yo Ma, who she appeared with as a chamber musician on WFMT radio and in venues across the city. Lindsay has also performed with the Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Utah, and Nashville Symphony Orchestras, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and during summers with the Santa Fe Opera, Grant Park, Midsummer’s, Lakes Area, Apollo, Bach Dancing and Dynamite, Lake George, Castleton, Aspen, and Banff Music Festivals. She has performed under conductors including Riccardo Muti, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Edo de Waart, Sir Andrew Davis, Carlos Kalmar, Jaap van Zweden, Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, Marin Alsop, Jane Glover, Nicholas McGegan, Nicholas Kreamer, Rafael Payare, Ken-David Masur, Michael Stern, James Gaffigan, Karina Canellakis, Andrey Boreyko, and Giancarlo Guerrero.

Lindsay was a founding member of the Arundo Donax Reed Quintet, Bronze Medal Winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. With the Wingra Wind Quintet, she has co-commissioned works by George Lewis and Hong-Da Chin, and she was heard on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Sunday Afternoon Live” at the Chazen Art Museum with Lori Skelton, who also hosted her concerts with JJ Koh and Garret Ross at Midsummer’s Autumn Music Fest. Lindsay gave the American premiere of “Interconexiones: New Quartets for Oboe and Strings,” which included works by John Richard Durant, Althea Talbot-Howard, Maricarmen Asenjo-Marrodán, Pilar Miralles, and Luke Styles in collaboration with Sarah Roper and Cuarteto Emispherio. As a duo partner with Andrew Parker, she released an album, “From the Sea to the Stars” under PARMA Recording’s Navona Records. She has also performed duo oboe works by Morris with James Button, by Rathbun with YounJoo Lee, and by Albinoni, Handel, and Zelenka with Margaret Butler. Lindsay has performed the Bach Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin with David Perry, and she has appeared as a soloist on concertos by Cimarosa, Hidas, Marcello, Martinu, Strauss, Ticheli, and Vaughan Williams.

In addition to performing and teaching, Lindsay is recognized for her maintenance and repair of oboe and English horn gouging machines, particularly those designed by Ferrillo, Graf, Kunibert, and Gilbert. Lindsay presented on this topic at the International Double Reed Conference and at Midwest Musical Imports, and she hosts annual gouger clinics for students and professionals to learn this specialized skill. She can be heard in interviews on the podcasts “Double Reed Dish” and “Reed Talk” and has presented at the Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes Conference in Medellín, Colombia, the Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel Castillo in Seville, Spain, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, and the Wisconsin Idea Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Lindsay is also the Treasurer of the International Double Reed Society’s Midnorth Regional Chapter and a F. Lorée Musician.

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Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.  He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti, and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Mr. Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.

Mr. Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Carribean. At home in the U.S. he has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,  Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony.  As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues. In chamber settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets. His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen, and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. Throughout his career Mr. Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects.  Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt;  performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.  He has actively promoted the rediscovery and refurbishment of the latter instrument; in recent years he has also been building a reinvented and modernized version of it, a project that relies on his computer and engineering skills and was unveiled in a demonstration recital in 2016.

Numerous awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.

Mr. Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco Aybar, and Julie Bees. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in 1992); philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook); computing; linguistics; and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Mr. Taylor lives in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters. Christopher Taylor is a Steinway artist.