The Volanti Flute Quartet to Perform in Princeton on Sunday

Nassau at Four will open its winter 2012 series with the Volanti Flute Quartet performing works by composers ranging from Fauré and Mendelssohn to contemporaries Daniel Dorff and Gary Schocker at Nassau Presbyterian Church on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 4pm.   

The church is located at 61 Nassau Street, across from Palmer Square. 

Nassau at Four is always free and open to the public. A free-will offering will be collected, and the concert will be followed by a reception. 

Founded in Princeton the Volanti Flute Quartet was conceived during the summer of 2002 as flutists Jill Crawford, Katherine McClure, Elizabeth Stewart, and Barbara Highton Williams traveled together to attend the National Flute Association’s convention in Washington, D.C. After Stewart’s departure from the Princeton area, Ellen Fisher Deerberg joined the quartet in 2006.

The quartet’s first performance took place in the fall of 2002 at Bristol Chapel at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, where the four women were colleagues on the faculty at Westminster Conservatory of Music. Since then the group has appeared frequently in the greater Princeton area, in various concert series at Bristol Chapel, Miller Chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Gallery at Rider University and Niles Chapel at Nassau Presbyterian Church. 

The group specializes in music composed for flute ensembles from the period of the development of the “modern” flute (mid-19th century) to the present. The quartet’s name was inspired by “Aure volanti,” an aria from an early opera by Francesca Caccini. It involves multiple flutes and evokes wandering breezes, warbling songbirds, and waving meadows. The aria is sung by nymphs, describing the pleasures of their island to a shipwrecked sailor in the hope of detaining him there. Volanti is Italian for “flying.”

Volanti Flute Quartet Members

Jill Crawford performs on modern and baroque flutes and is a member of the chamber music groups Trillium and Col Legno. Jill has been a soloist with New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra and the Westminster Bach Festival. As a faculty member of Westminster Conservatory over the past two decades, she has collaborated with colleagues in many concerts at Bristol Chapel and Rider University.

Ellen Fisher Deerberg performs frequently in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey area with a wide variety of ensembles. She recently was a featured soloist with the Green Hill Flute Festival Orchestra in March 2008, and she is a collaborative artist on the CD The Colors Fall, featuring flute duos by Hoover, Hindemith, and DeMars. Ellen is on the faculty of the Westminster Conservatory of Music and the Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music.

Katherine McClure is principal flutist of the Edison Symphony and an active chamber and orchestral player in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. She is on the faculties of The Lawrenceville School and Westminster Conservatory of Music.

Barbara Highton Williams  has performed in the U.S. and France. She is principal flutist of the Bravura Philharmonic and  Barbara frequently plays in chamber music programs around Princeton. Since 1998 she has taught flute and chamber music at Westminster Conservatory of Music.