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Compared to string or brass groups, one could say that a wind ensemble is made up of nonconformists — and that its variety of instruments just might be its superpower.
Music@Menlo highlights the unique qualities of the wind ensemble with its “Winds of Change” concert taking place July 26. The performance is part of the summer chamber music festival’s 2025 theme highlighting ensembles, from duos to quintets and beyond.
Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and oboeist James Austin Smith, who are among the musicians performing on the program, discussed their instruments and the upcoming concert in an interview with this publication. They are both regular performers with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which shares co-artistic directors David Finckel and Wu Han with Music@Menlo. Local audiences may also know Smith as artistic advisor to another Peninsula-based chamber music organization, Coast Live Music.
These musicians have acclaimed careers — among their numerous accolades and appointments, Smith has been a Fulbright Scholar and O’Connor is a two-time Grammy Award nominee — but as children, both Smith and O’Connor each came to their instruments in slightly roundabout ways.
Smith’s parents were musicians and he began by playing the piano. When it came to choosing a band instrument in grade school, it sounds almost as if the oboe chose him.
“It’s not that I really wanted to play the oboe, it’s just I didn’t want to play any of the other instruments. I was left with this sort of (feeling) like ‘I guess I’ll give it a try,'” he said.
Like Smith, O’Connor also began on piano, but she felt an early affinity for the flute.
“My parents had gotten me this toy electric organ and I was about three or four, and I was composing on it, and they were like, ‘this kid’s really weird.’ And then they thought, ‘maybe she needs piano lessons.’ So they gave me piano lessons and when I got to third grade, (the school) really wanted me to play the viola, but I was kind of feeling the flute, because my neighbor played it all the time, and I really liked the sound of it,” O’Connor recalled.
Despite encouragement at school to take up the viola, she persisted and began studying flute. “I think the reason why I play the flute is because my parents wanted me to play the piano and and so I just had to do something different,” she said with a laugh.
If flute was kind of a rebellious musical choice, that fits, in a way, with the unique profile of the wind group. For a chamber group, a wind ensemble is unusual in featuring instruments of widely varying design.
“Unlike string instruments, which share a form, but come in different sizes, if you take a wind quintet, for example, which is what people will be hearing Saturday, you have five completely different instruments, completely different ways of making sound. … Our challenge is to figure out how to blend with each other when we want to do that and when the music asks for it, and then also know when to be our sort of true best selves as our instruments, whether the composer wants an incredible flute solo, or whatever it might be,” Smith said.
When played together, in some cases, these instruments can also unite in a whole new sound, O’Connor noted.
“What the winds offer that is really unique, actually, from brass and strings, is how different we sound, how colorful we are, how brilliant the sound can be, and also how blended. It can sound like an organ; sometimes it can sound like an aviary. It has the full range of expression and color and that is a beautiful thing,” O’Connor said. “With the five of us, we can create a much more interesting and diverse sound.”
The “Winds of Change” program features five compositions that highlight these unique aspects of the wind ensemble. That said, the program doesn’t exclusively devote itself to winds — there’s also piano and viola in the mix, though winds are the focus.
“The program title, ‘Winds of Change,’ really reflects the kinds of things that were being invented for our ensemble, or the combinations that we’re playing with. They’re rethought in a very different way, bringing new brilliance and color to the repertoire, and also just fabulous to listen to, and groundbreaking as well,” O’Connor said.
One piece on the program even allows the instruments to “sing,” in a way: Arias for Woodwind Quintet (arr. Schottstädt and Manz) features instrumental reworkings of two opera arias.
“We will be playing a set of Mozart arias arranged for wind quintet by Sebastian Manz, who is also playing on the program. We teach our students that ‘you need to sing through your instrument.’ And we get this opportunity now to sing these arias through our instruments. It is so, so fun. We have a beautiful aria from ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ and then we’re going to do the ‘Queen of the Night,’ which is going to be so fun to pretend that we are superstar sopranos, “Smith said.
The program also offers a chance to hear Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, op. 16, a Beethoven piece that’s heavily influenced by Mozart’s sprightliness.
“We tend to think of Beethoven as, like, the Fifth Symphony — really intense — and actually, this is an early work of Beethoven’s, and it’s so joyful, and, it’s sort of regal, and tuneful,” Smith said. “I think our instruments invite composers to think — think melodically, think in song, think in voice. And so you really see that inspiration in the Beethoven and also in the Thuille, that inspiration to write kind of melodies that we excel at, I think, as wind players,” Smith said.
Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille’s Sextet in B-flat major for Piano and Winds, op. 6 closes out the “Winds of Change” program on a soaring, impressive note.
“The Thuille is a really wonderful piece. What is really cool about this piece is that the winds were kind of neglected — I mean, Mozart and Beethoven had written for piano winds, leaving the flute out. (Of course, we don’t really want to talk about that – as a flutist I’m jealous),” O’Connor joked.
“So Thuille seized the opportunity and wrote this incredible piece for piano and all of the winds with horn. That’s going to be a delight to play. It feels very symphonic to me, it’s huge,” she said.
“Tara and I have played that piece many times together before, and you get this feeling like you have a real main course,” Smith said.
The “Winds of Change” program also includes Concert Piece no. 1 in F minor for Clarinet, Bassoon, and Piano, op. 113 by Felix Mendelssohn and Charles Martin Loeffler’s Rhapsody no. 1 for Oboe, Viola, and Piano, L’étang.
In addition to O’Connor and Smith, the lineup features Manz on clarinet; bassoonist Jake Thonis, Kevin Rivard on horn, James Thompson on viola and pianists Michael Stephen Brown, Sahun Sam Hong and Hyeyeon Park.
Audiences can also catch O’Connor in several other Music@Menlo performances: “Let’s Add Voices,” featuring ensembles with vocals on Aug. 3, and a “Gilbert Kalish at 90: A Celebration,” on Aug. 6.
July 26, 7 p.m., at Spieker Center for the Arts, Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso Ave., Atherton. The performance will also be livestreamed. $25-$97 in person/$25 livestream. musicatmenlo.org.
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