Ring in the holiday season with the Oakwood Chamber Players with a festive winter concert! Each year, the OCP chooses a cornerstone work to perform for this concert, which they pair with miscellaneous holiday favorites that are sure to leave audiences singing as they leave the concert hall. This year, the OCP will be giving audiences the gift of Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, a gorgeous work for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet. The work was composed as part of an honest-to-goodness harp duel: In 1904, the Pleyel company had just released its new chromatic harp and commissioned Claude Debussy to compose a work (Danses sacrée et profane for harp and orchestra) to showcase its capabilities. A rival company, the Érard company, had also recently come out with a new harp model – the double-action pedal harp. Upon getting wind of the Pleyel company’s commission, they reached out to Maurice Ravel and asked him to compose a work to highlight their new harp’s expressive range, which he managed to finish in “a week of frantic work and 3 sleepless nights” so that he could attend a boating vacation with friends.

Friday December 9  7:00 PM Oakwood Prairie Ridge (5565 Tancho Drive)
Saturday December 10  7:00 PM Oakwood University Woods (6205 Mineral Point Road)
Sunday December 11  2:00 PM Arts + Literature Laboratory (111 S. Livingston Street