Volanti Flute Quartet to Perform at Rider March 30

Editor's Note: The following is a news release issued by .

Westminster Conservatory will present the second recital of the year in its Gallery Concerts series on Friday, March 30, at 12:15 p.m. in the Rider University Art Gallery. 

The Volanti Flute Quartet, a Westminster Conservatory faculty ensemble consisting of flutists Jill Crawford, Ellen Fisher Deerberg, Katherine McClure, and Barbara Highton Williams, will perform a varied program of arrangements and original music for four flutes.  Admission is free.

The program will include Eight Folk Song for Four Flutes by Cecilia McDowall, Arcadie by Marc Berthomieu, The Year of the Rabbit by Daniel Dorff, Nymphs by Gary Schocker and arrangements of Stravinsky's Pastorale, Mendelssohn's “Scherzo” from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Tico Tico by Zequinha de Abreu.

Jill Crawford is active as a performer on both modern and baroque flutes.  She is a member of the chamber ensembles, Trillium, Col Legno, and the Volanti Flute Quartet.  She has performed with area orchestras in a variety of settings, and was a participant in the International Baroque Institute at Longy.  She can be heard on "Music Together" recordings playing many types of flutes.  She is a graduate of New England Conservatory and received a Master of Music from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.

Ellen Deerberg received her bachelor's degree in music performance from Temple University where she studied with the late Murray Panitz, principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Ms. Deerberg has performed principal flute with the Kennett Symphony Orchestra, Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, Delaware Children's Opera and has performed in numerous solo recitals and concerts in the Delaware Valley.  She is currently also on the faculty of the Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music and is a former faculty member of the Wilmington Music School and the Darlington Fine Arts Center.

Katherine McClure earned a Bachelor of Arts in music from Skidmore College and a Master of Music in flute performance from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. In addition to teaching flute at Westminster Conservatory, she is on the faculty of the Lawrenceville School, where she is music director and conductor of the wind ensemble at the Lawrenceville School.  An active chamber and orchestral player in the greater New York and Philadelphia metropolitan area, Ms. McClure is the principal flutist of the Edison Symphony and is a tenured member of Riverside Symphonia, Delaware Valley Philharmonic, the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra, and the American Repertory Ballet Orchestra.

Barbara Highton Williams received a Bachelor of Arts in music from Principia College.  She has concertized on both coasts of the United States, as well as in France.  A former member of the San Jose Wind Symphony, she now enjoys free-lance work throughout New Jersey.  Ms. Williams can be heard frequently in chamber music programs in the Princeton area.  She is a member of the Volanti Flute Quartet and has collaborated in recital with pianists Alfred Clark, James Goldsworthy and Marianne Lauffer.  A member of the flute faculty at Westminster Conservatory since 1998, she also maintains a private teaching studio in Princeton.

The Rider University Art Gallery is located on the second floor of the Bart Luedeke Center of Rider University, 2083 Lawrence Rd. in Lawrence Township. 

The current gallery show, Harry I. Naar:  The Outside from Within – Envisioning Forest and Sea, runs from March 8 to April 15.

For more information call the box office at 609- 921-2663.  For updates go to www.rider.edu/arts.