Hailed by The Australian as possessing a “rare gift as a melodist” and by Limelight as expressing “both exquisite delicacy and tremendous power”, Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth writes orchestral, chamber, vocal, and experimental music. His vivid musical language is coloured by three years spent in Japan where his immersion in the study of the shakuhachi bamboo flute inevitably became a part of his muse. Winning the prestigious Paul Lowin Prize for orchestral composition in 2016 established Skipworth’s reputation, and led to a string of major commissions and a stint as composer-in-residence with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances by Diana Doherty, Genevieve Lacey, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Australian String Quartet, the Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Skipworth’s recordings continue to gather critical acclaim, including a five-star review for his debut album and an ARIA nomination for his second, as well as frequent radio play across Australia.

Sara Fraker is the Associate Professor of Oboe at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music and a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. She spends her summers in residence as a faculty artist at the Bay View Music Festival in northern Michigan. Sara is principal oboist of True Concord Voices & Orchestra and a featured soloist on their two recent album releases, one of which garnered two Grammy nominations.

Sara is currently engaged in a diverse array of creative projects. In 2021, she commissioned Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth to create Pine Chant, a piece for reed trio and electronics, inspired by tree-ring data and the climate crisis. The piece was premiered in December 2021 at the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, the largest facility of its kind. Sara also recently produced a world-premiere recording of the woodwind music of ultramodernist composer Johanna M. Beyer (1888-1944) for New World Records, with new print editions for Frog Peak Music. In March 2022, Sara premiered an exciting new commission for oboe and piano by composer S. Maggie Polk Olivo, entitled White Sand & Gray Sand.

Thrilled to recently join Buffet Crampon's roster of artists, Sara plays a Légende oboe.

Sara is the recipient of a 2017 Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for a solo commissioning and recording project, in collaboration with composer Asha Srinivasan and plant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The resulting piece, Braiding, was featured on CBC Radio in 2020. An advocate for interdisciplinary creative work, she recently joined the affiliated faculty of UArizona’s Institutes for Resilience: Solutions for the Environment and Society (AIR).

With pianist Casey Robards, Sara released the album BOTANICA on MSR Classics in 2019. She has also recorded for Summit Records, Toccata Classics, Analekta, and Reference Recordings. She has presented recitals at six recent conferences of the International Double Reed Society, including Tokyo, Boulder, and New York City. Sara is oboist of the Arizona Wind Quintet, which enjoyed a residency at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City and has toured extensively through the Southwest. She has given masterclasses at universities and performing arts schools across the US and in Australia. Sara performed the Mozart Oboe Concerto with the Sierra Vista Symphony and Jennifer Higdon's Oboe Concerto with the UA Wind Ensemble.

Sara held the Gillet Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center and was a participant in the Tanglewood Bach Seminar. She has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Chautauqua, Spoleto Festival USA, and the prestigious Schleswig-Holstein Orchester Akademie in Germany. Sara has played with numerous orchestras, including the Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Opera, Broadway in Tucson, St. Andrews Bach Society, Tucson Pops, Illinois Symphony, Champaign-Urbana Symphony, Brockton Symphony, Newton Symphony, New Bedford Symphony, Gardner Chamber Orchestra, and Sinfonia da Camera.

Raised in New Haven, Connecticut, Sara is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (DMA), New England Conservatory (MM), and Swarthmore College (BA). She was a National Merit Scholar and recipient of the Garrigues Scholarship, Peter Gram Swing Prize, and Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship. Her principal teachers include Robert Botti, John Dee, Mark McEwen, Jonathan Blumenfeld, Sandra Gerster Lisicki, and John de Lancie. Her doctoral thesis, The Oboe Works of Isang Yun, explores twenty solo and chamber pieces by the Korean composer, with a focus on tonal language and relationships to East Asian philosophy.

Hailed for her “robust playing and virtuosic performance” (San Diego Tribune) and “beautiful and clear tone” (The Clarinet Magazine), Jackie Glazier is an active soloist, chamber musician, orchestral clarinetist, pedagogue, and advocate of new music. As Assistant Professor of clarinet at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, Glazier is a committed pedagogue and mentor to future generations of clarinetists, and a member of the Arizona Wind Quintet. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed throughout the United States and in China, Mexico, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Croatia, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

As a soloist and a founding member of the saxophone/clarinet ensemble Duo Entre-Nous, Glazier is active in commissioning and performing new music. She has commissioned and premiered over 20 pieces with composers from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Argentina, China, and Australia. Duo Entre-Nous has performed internationally and is featured on the album, “Lights and Shadows, Waves and Time,” which was recently released on Parma Records. They are currently working on their debut album, featuring works they have commissioned, set to release on Equilibrium Label in Spring 2021.

As a soloist and chamber musician, Glazier has recorded for Naxos, Toccata Classics, Mark Records, and Navona Records. Her debut solo album, “Magic Forest Scenes” was released in the summer of 2020 on Centaur Records, and contains the music of William Alwyn, Arnold Bax, Eugene Bozza, Paul Richards, Alexander Rosenblatt, and Piotr Szewczyk.

Glazier performed regularly with the Orlando Philharmonic as principal, second, and e-flat clarinet from 2011-2016. She also served as principal clarinet of the Ocala Symphony, where she served from 2012-2016. Currently, she performs with the Tucson Symphony and is the principal clarinet of the Grammy Award-nominated True Concord Voices Orchestra. Orchestral collaborations include many internationally renowned artists such as Renée Fleming, Joshua Bell, and Yefim Bronfman. Jackie was the first-prize winner of the International Clarinet Association Orchestral Competition at ClarinetFest 2014.

An active clinician and educator, Jackie has presented guest master classes at major universities throughout the United States. She has earned degrees from Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of Florida, and Florida State University. Jackie was named one of the University of Florida’s Outstanding Young Alumni in 2018. She is an artist with Buffet-Crampon and Vandoren, and performs exclusively on Buffet-Crampon clarinets and Vandoren reeds.

Dr. Marissa Olegario is Assistant Professor of Bassoon at The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music. Known for her compelling and personality-driven performances, she enjoys an active and diverse performance schedule as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. Marissa has appeared in concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center under conductors such as James Conlon, John Adams, Peter Oundjin, Rafael Payere and Leonard Slatkin. Interested in interdisciplinary work, Marissa has collaborated with the Martha Graham Dance Company, commissioned lighting designs for performances, and partnered with Dance for Parkinson's to provide live music for people suffering from Parkinson's disease. Constantly seeking new artistic possibilities, Marissa has premiered works by Jay Vosk, Szilárd Mezei, and Shuying Li and has commissioned new works by Shuying Li, Sarah Gibson, Yuanyuan (Kay) He, and John Steinmetz.

Marissa was a semi-finalist for the 2016 Matthew Ruggiero International Woodwind Competition and was recognized as a recipient of the Yale School of Music Alumni Prize. An active chamber musician, she has appeared at the Phoenix Chamber Society Winter Series, the Norfolk Chamber Festival, and the clasclas festival in Spain where she performed with former concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker Guy Braunstein. She actively subs with the acclaimed Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet and is a member of the Arizona Wind Quintet, resident faculty quintet at the Fred Fox School of Music. She can be heard on two Naxos produced albums: Beethoven: Music for Winds featuring David Shifrin, Stephen Taylor, Frank Morelli, and William Purvis and A Vision of Time and Eternity: Songs and Chamber Music, featuring unrecorded works by Welsh composer William Mathias.

As the 2017-2018 Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Performance Fellows, Marissa participated in the organization’s program which provided mentorship and professional development for emerging artists from underrepresented backgrounds. Marissa acknowledges the systemic inequity in the classical music industry and recognizes her essential responsibility as an educator to actively work towards enacting change. She programs, commissions, and premiers works by female, BIPOC, and historically underrepresented composers and works to elevate the ideals and perspectives of the diverse groups of people who contribute to the industry.

A graduate of SUNY Stony Brook (DMA), the Yale School of Music (MM) and Northwestern University (BM), Marissa’s major teachers are Christopher Millard, Lewis Kirk, and Frank Morelli. She is available to present master classes and performances at universities and performing arts schools around the United States.

Scored for reed trio and electronics, Pine Chant draws music from the rhythms of annual tree growth, based on a set of data shared with me by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The work also reflects my own lived experience amidst the current climate uncertainty, as heard in the deep sadness pervading the work’s underlying harmonic cycles. Lachlan Skipworth. See:
https://www.sarafraker.com/pinechant