A Night At The Opera Featuring Gina Cuffari & Frank Morelli

Gina's passion for chamber music has led her to collaborate with many amazing musicians and ensembles over the years. She is currently a member of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and Sylvan Winds, and a founding member of Trio Cabrini, a clarinet, bassoon/voice, piano ensemble. She performs throughout New England with the Boston-based Walden Chamber Players and has had recent engagements with the Exponential Ensemble, Tertulia Ensemble, and Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, California.

Gina has always had a keen interest in new music and has endeavored to support composers throughout her career. She has been a longtime collaborator with Alarm Will Sound – performing as a bassoonist, vocalist, and keyboardist – and has worked with many composers over the years, premiering a plethora of new works with the group. In NYC she has performed with Argento New Music Project and ACME, and has commissioned and premiered several new works with her ensembles Sylvan Winds, Quintet of the Americas, Trio Cabrini, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In an ongoing personal project, Gina has commissioned and premiered works that combine her two passions – singing and playing the bassoon – into one performing experience. Composers writing for her include Sunny Knable, Gregg August, Jenni Brandon, and more.

As an educator, Gina currently holds positions at NYU and Western CT State University where she teaches bassoon, coaches chamber music, and teaches a variety of other classes. She is a frequent guest clinician at Bard College for The Orchestra Now and has taught master classes at universities such as Yale, Auburn, and Louisiana State. She spends her summers performing and teaching at several summer festivals including the NYU Summer Woodwind Institute, Orpheus@Mannes, and the Mostly Modern Festival at Skidmore College.

A prolific chamber musician, Frank Morelli appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on numerous occasions, including at the Whitehouse for the final State Dinner of the Clinton Presidency. He has participated in many major music festivals, including the Norfolk and Sarasota Chamber Music Festivals, Marlboro, Banff, Angel Fire, Casals Festival (France) and Music@Menlo. He is a member of Festival Chamber Music and the woodwind quintet, Windscape, in residence at the Manhattan School of Music with whom he has recorded two recent CDs, one featuring the music of Antonin Dvorak and the other music of Maurice Ravel (which includes his transcriptions of “Mother Goose” and “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales” both published by TrevCo).

Chosen to succeed his teacher, Stephen Maxym, Mr. Morelli serves on
the faculties of the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music and
the Yale School of Music, SUNY Stony Brook, and is Distinguished Lecturer in Woodwinds at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, CUNY. Morelli’s students are active in major orchestras and on important faculties throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico, the Far East, and Europe. He iseditor of Stravinsky: Difficult Passages for Bassoon, a landmark excerpt book for bassoon and contra bassoon published by Boosey & Hawkes,and has several transcriptions for bassoon, woodwind quintet and other ensembles to his credit, published by Trevco Music. His unprecedented edition, The First Complete Weissenborn Bassoon Method and Studies Op. 8 Vols. 1&2 and Ludwig Milde’s Scale and Chord Studies Op. 24, is now available worldwide, published by Carl Fischer. Mr. Morelli performs exclusively on the Leitzinger Bassoon Model 1.