April 30, 2012
Music professor featured at Woodwind Festival in Haiti
Nora Lewis, an assistant professor of music, was in residence April 14-22 at L'École de Musique Sainte Trinité in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for its first ever Woodwind Festival, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the school's symphony orchestra.
During her visit, Lewis worked with beginning through advanced oboists, coached chamber music, worked with Haitian music teachers in a pedagogy workshop, and performed a chamber music recital.
The festival concluded with an orchestra concert that featured Lewis as a soloist in Mozart's Symphony Concertante as well as in collaboration with Haitian musicians in a Thad Jones arrangement of "Haitian Folk Tale" by Lina Mathon Blanchet. Rehearsals and classes took place in outdoor temporary facilities on the site of Cathédral de Sainte Trinité, which was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. Plans for redevelopment are under way. The concert took place in a nearby auditorium at Ste. Rose de Lima.
While in Haiti, Lewis spent one day in Jacmel, where she worked with students at L'École de Musique Dessaix-Baptiste, performed a chamber music recital and gave the school new woodwind instruments purchased with support from a Yale University alumni award.