Name: Nordic Chamber Music: Iceland
Start: 2024-05-19T14:00:00-07:00
End: 2024-05-19T17:00:00-07:00
Location: Ballard First Lutheran Church

Bells and Pipes
About this Event
Bells and Pipes

Trumpet player Brian Kai Chin ("clearly a gifted musician with a nice rounded tone, excellent technique and a commitment to new literature." review) and internationally acclaimed award-winning organist Douglas Cleveland ( “CLEVELAND DAZZLES IN CONTEMPORARY WORKS ... Cleveland essayed the set with such aplomb that organ technique might need to be added as an Olympic event.” - The Vancouver Sun) will perform contemporary Iceland works, including a world premiere commissioned especially for this concert. The sanctuary will be filled with ringing from pipes and bells from the land of fire and ice.

Featuring:

Brian Kai Chin, trumpet
Douglas Cleveland, organ

On the program:

Contemporary works by Icelandic composers
World-premiere of a newly-commissioned work by an Icelandic composer

Season Tickets Available Here.

More info at nordicchambermusic.org

Artists Bio

Brian Kai Chin is a versatile musician on the international stage as a performer, composer, and producer. As a Yamaha Artist, Brian has commissioned and premiered many works as an international trumpet soloist and advocate for new music. Much of his artistic work is as a founding member of the composer collective and multi-arts collective TORCH. Originally trained as an improvising musician, he has spent the majority of his professional career performing in orchestras, chamber ensembles, early music ensembles on baroque trumpet, and in new music groups.

As a soloist, Brian has brought original and fresh American music for trumpet to six continents. Passionate about the process of generating new art and an advocate for composers, he has commissioned and premiered over forty new works for the trumpet, many recorded on two CDs for Origin Records Universal Language and Eventide.

As an orchestral musician, Brian performed fifteen seasons as Principal Trumpet for the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra - including solo appearances with Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in Eb and J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg no. 2. He has performed hundreds of concerts with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Pacific NW Ballet, and Seattle Opera and in 2007, played a season with the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile.

As a recording musician, Brian can be heard with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Modern Orchestra, and a wide variety of recordings ranging from big band and trad jazz, flamenco, and post-rock. Brian has also appeared on countless movie soundtracks, video-games, commercials, and TV programs including Ghost Rider, Community, Call of Duty, and Crimson Skies.

As a composer, Brian draws equally from his love of progressive jazz, the 20th-century masters, and Americana. Most of his works are for the genre-bending ensemble TORCH, including major portions of Elements (2015) and Passages (2019). In addition, Brian wrote The Obamatorio (2016) for Soprano and Scrape Orchestra (Strings, Electric Guitar, and Harp), a four-movement song cycle based on the words of Barack Obama.

Douglas Cleveland was born in Tacoma, Washington and was raised in Olympia. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, a master’s degree from Indiana University and a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Foundation at Oxford University. He has been on music faculty at St. Olaf College, Northwestern University and the University of Washington. He served as director of music at Plymouth Church in Seattle and is currently director of music at St. Thomas Medina Episcopal Church.

Doug won first prize in the American Guild of Organists National Young Artists Competition in Dallas. Since then he has performed in 49 of the United States and in venues throughout Europe and Asia. His performances with American symphony orchestras have included the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony and the National Symphony in Washington, DC. In Seattle, he has performed three times on the Seattle Symphony Organ Series at Benaroya Hall. He has performed with Seattle Pro Musica, Choral Arts Northwest, the Seattle Men’s Chorus, and Northwest Chamber Chorus. He has recorded several CD’s on the Gothic label, which have received critical acclaim—his most recent being “Douglas Cleveland Plays Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago”.