The Community Concerts at First music series celebrates amazing artists from Vermont and New England and brings our community together. Community Concerts at First is an opportunity to hear great music and raise funds for FCCEJ and our community partners.
Vermont’s Addison County group Va-et-vient (‘Come & Go’) celebrates the many colors found in music from several French cultures. These musiciennes will take you through the centuries from France to Québec and New Orleans with lively dance numbers, touching love songs, kickin’ Cajun and Créole tunes, and rollicking Québecois favorites. From our neighbors to the north, they bring back traditional tunes learned from Québecois elders (and youngsters!), reweave them into their own arrangements, and have been spreading them throughout New England and Québec since 2001. The group includes Carol Reed from Leicester (voice, guitar, & mandolin), Suzanne Germain from Lincoln (voice and percussion), and Lausanne Allen from South Starksboro (voice, fiddles, flute, penny whistles, harmonica, & mandolins).
Learn more about the trio at https://www.vaetvient.net/
Flutist Laurel Ann Maurer has been lauded by The New York Times as “a secure technician and an assured communicative interpreter.” According to Fanfare Magazine, she is “superb in every way.” Two of her commercially released CD’s “More American Flute Works” and the Jeff Mannokian “Flute Concerto” were nominated for a Grammy Award. Ms. Maurer has performed and given master classes throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, and Khachaturian Hall in Yerevan, Armenia. She was principal flutist of the Salt Lake Symphony and has more recently performed with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, and as principal flutist at the Vermont Philharmonic. She is also founder and artistic director of the celebrated chamber music series Vermont Virtuosi as well as a founding member of both the Vermont Virtuosi Flute Ensemble and PipeDreams, Vermont’s premiere flute quartet.
Holding degrees in piano performance including the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Illinois and the Diplôme de Concert from Paris’ Schola Cantorum, Michael Sitton has performed as a solo pianist, chamber musician, and collaborative artist. As winner of the Leschetizky Prize, he performed at Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Hall) in New York, and played at the Embassy of France in Washington as a prizewinner of the French Piano Institute; many other performances as a solo recitalist, chamber music player, and orchestral musician have marked his career. His playing in a spring 2023 with Vermont Virtuosi was praised by the Times-Argus for its “compelling piano artistry,” with Sitton described as a “particularly fine new pianist” in the area. A board member of the Vermont Music Teachers’ Association, he teaches piano as a member of the faculty of Montpelier’s Monteverdi Music School, and is also active as a composer.
HairPeace features real acoustic music. Guitar and vocal pop rock duo.
Learn more about them at https://hairpeace.net
Alicia Chapman is principal oboist with the Asheville Symphony (NC), the Symphony of the Mountains (TN), and plays Baroque oboe with the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. She has toured Europe, the former DDR, and Southeast Asia as a chamber musician, has performed with the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, and has recorded with New York Philomusica, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and New York Kammermusiker. She has participated in early music programs at Oberlin, Indiana University, and Cambridge (UK).
Alicia is Associate Professor of Oboe at Appalachian State University’s Hayes School of Music, where she is director of the Collegium Musicum, an early music class and performance ensemble, coordinator of the woodwind chamber music program, and is the founding member of Harmonia Baroque, the School of Music’s resident period instrument ensemble. A native Vermonter, Alicia Chapman began studies of the oboe with Neil Boyer at the University of Vermont, and earned both Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from the Mannes College of Music, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the City University of New York.
Alicia is an accomplished equestrian and pet parent to her dog, three cats, and outstanding Mediterranean miniature donkey.