Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor is an in-demand artist around the world—including here in Santa Fe!
O’Connor made her Festival debut in 1993, and she’s returned every season since. Last year, she appeared in the documentary Vibrations in the Air, which the Festival commissioned in honor of its 50th anniversary, and she talked about why she’s been drawn to the City Different for the past 30 years.
“[In Santa Fe,]” she said, “you have this enormity of space above you, but [there’s also] this beautiful earth and there’s the smell of juniper in the air. Then you put a chamber music festival in this beautiful place with world-class chamber music musicians playing together [and] you get incredible creativity.”
That incredible creativity has been a defining feature of O’Connor’s own artistry. She’s a virtuoso performer of music from every era—including the present one, having premiered hundreds of new works—and she’s a founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning New Millennium Ensemble and, along with her husband, violinist Daniel Phillips, the co-artistic director of the Music from Angel Fire festival. She’s also an esteemed educator who serves as a visiting associate professor at the Yale School of Music and as a faculty member at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and Manhattan School of Music.
O’Connor’s charismatic performances have earned her numerous honors and awards, including two Grammy nominations and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She’s also a longtime Wm. S. Haynes Flute Artist and a season artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The New York Classical Review praised O’Connor for performing with “clarity and warmth” and “spinning natural, breathing phrases,” and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette hailed her for playing with the “perfect balance of warmth and elegance” and “breathing life into the music from the first phrase,” adding that she was “a delight to listen to.”
Listen to O’Connor yourself when she plays works by Rameau and Lully on July 20, Prokofiev on July 21 & 22, and Mahler on August 4 & 5. Plus, on August 6, hear her give the world-premiere performance of Xinyang Wang’s Festival-commissioned sextet Plodding into a Starlit Dream.
