. . . continues to earn the highest critical acclaim
Excerpts from press reviews
Seattle Weekly, February 11, 1999
Winds of Change: Rainier Chamber Winds blows up a storm
Rainier Chamber Winds continues to bring us music for wind ensembles that we are unlikely to hear anywhere else, except in music schools. While wind quarters are regularly extracted from orchestras to perform for schools and other outreach programs....anything written for a large complement of winds alone tends to get neglected in the professional arena. Every concert Rainier Chamber Winds plays is full of interest, and not least because conductor Kathleen Macferran does careful research and comes up with excellent, widely varied programs. As part of the group's 10th anniversary season, Sunday's performance at the Seattle Art Museum included the premiere of a piece it commissioned. Jeux was composed by Charles Berry, a recent import from California to Bainbridge Island. While Macferran is always a conductor meticulous to every detail.....where Macferran shone was in the first work on the program, Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Partita in E-flat for Four pairs of Winds. Brisk, light, very clean, and in well-articulated baroque style, the performance showed Macferran and her players at their best. It was a delight. The Rainier Chamber Winds has just come out with a CD of musical tales in the style of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, commissioned from two local composers and performed at its children's concerts. The recording is a generous 76 minutes long, well produced, and is suitable for ages 3 and up (even adults).
Seattle Times, February 23, 1998
A weekend of musical riches...
"Masterpieces of Color" was the title chosen for yesterday's Rainier Chamber Winds concert - a rare example of truth in advertising. This ensemble of about 11 wind musicians (in varying configurations) under the baton of founder Kathleen Macferran worked its way through a program of French (and French-influenced) music be Pierné, Goossens, Enesco, Françaix and Pascal with a near-infinite variety of combinations and colorations, all the more enjoyable for being so seldom heard. This music isn't being done elsewhere in the region, certainly not at this level of proficiency. The Rainer Chamber Winds includes some of the region's best freelancers and regulars with such ensembles as the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra and Cornish College's Sonora. The resulting musical palette is broad indeed. From the delicay of Pierné's "Pastorale Varieé" to Goossen's more orchestral "Fantasy," to the witty "Sept Danses" of Françaix, the RCW followed Macferran's adroit and subtle lead in performances of elegance and distinction.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 18, 1997
Rainier Chamber Winds reaches its usual heights
The Rainier Chamber Winds has been bringing little-known music to Seattle with incisive talent and programming flair for seven years. Sunday's concert at the Seattle Art Museum was typical: a fascinating review of mostly 19th-century French music played with keen ensemble and period flavor.
. . . Macferran knows precisely how to extract the maximum juice from any work, without appearing to do much of anything. Her conducting is quiet and undemonstrative, yet its accomplishments are obvious. The ensemble, based on the woodwind quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, varies in size depending on the music performed. On Sunday it was uniformly deeply involved in the music at hand. Whether the group had to spin long, lovely lines of melody or quip like a jokester, it had the flexibility to do so. Its reading of Pierne's "Preludio e Fughetta," which opened the concert, was bright, energetic, focused, but had no difficulty bending itself to the different demands of D'Indy's "Chansons et danses" or Gouvy's "Petite suite gauloise." The Rainier Chamber Winds has never sounded more assured or finished. This collection of musicians, ably led by Macferran, is both forthright in its aims and excellent in execution.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 7, 1995
Wind orchestra fills a void with richness
Any group that brings music well-played and rarely heard to an audience is valuable to the community. The 5-year-old Rainier Chamber Winds is doubly so: wind groups of chamber music size are unusual and the music for them almost always new to the listener. And conductor Kathleen Macferran searches out music of sophistication and interest, often difficult to play, and presents it with considerable success. . . . [Ciro Scotto's "Tetralogy" is] descriptive music, full of storm and strife, in a 20th-century idiom that also owes much to 19th-century romantic ideas of the wild elements. It could only work, as it did, with performers secure in what they were doing. Macferran is an understated conductor, but she knows her scores inside out and her beat is clear, no matter how rhythmically complicated the music. . . . She's at her best in music like this . . . .
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 27, 1994
Wind ensemble an unheralded treasure
Too few people know about and support the Rainier Chamber Winds, an excellent small ensemble that began its sixth season Sunday at the Seattle Art Museum. Headed by its young conductor, Kathleen Macferran, the Winds performs a variety of music written specifically for that group of instruments. . . . Eröd's "Capriccio for 10 Wind Instruments" . . . was the best performance of the concert. . . . Rudolf Novácek's "Sinfonietta" was the other work of particular interest. . . . In a sympathetic performance of this charming work, full of vigor and melody, the musicians brought out its typical mixture of brooding and sunshine. . . . It was a pleasure to hear so much of the bassoons . . . . Judy Stoffel-Loewen's playing shone with impeccable phrasing, lovely tone and fine tempo.
Seattle Weekly, April 28, 1993
Chamber Music: Rainier Mounts a Premiere
If concertgoers at the Rainier Chamber Winds on April 16 expected an evening of difficult music, they were disappointed. Granted, a concert of works by George Enesco and Jean Françaix with a world premiere by Seattle composer Ken Benshoof does sound heavy-duty on the face of it, but the performance turned out to be one of lighthearted musical charm, excellently played. Formed in 1990, the group is one of fine professional-area performers joined together under their young founder and conductor, Kathleen Macferran, to play wind-ensemble music they rarely get to perform and we rarely get to hear. It has already built a firm following, and for the first time for this concert, it commissioned a work. Benshoof's "Out and Back Again" is 14 minutes of delightful Americana, a tone painting with thoughts of Charles Ives in the number of ideas he weaves in, but with more a feeling of Copland in its harmonies and a definite flavor of the American West. . . .
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 16, 1992
Rainier Chamber Winds off to an impressive start
Starting a new music group is a risky enterprise, yet young, talented musicians spurred on by their talent do so every day. Kathleen Macferran is one of them. A product of Washington colleges on both sides of the Cascades, the young conductor is the founder and music director of the Rainier Chamber Winds. . . . . The promise of the ensemble is readily apparent. So too is its conviction, energy and ability. The Rainier Chamber Winds is off to an impressive start. . . . .[Macferran] is also committed to exploring unfamiliar regions of the wind chamber repertory . . . . Goossen's "Fantasy," scored for nine wind instruments is a fascinating piece of goods, exactly the sort of thing Macferran is trying to revive. Its ability to play with various timbres yet hold together as a coherent work is remarkable. Its proponents never once slighted the music. . . .
Rainier Chamber Winds
PO Box 10009
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-0009
Phone: (206) 780-1021 or 1-800-956-WIND (Western WA only)
email: rcwinds@aol.com