Elegia Duo

Meng Yuan, piano

M. Isaac Ripple, oboe

This recital presents three recent contributions (two world premieres) to the oboe repertoire that engage directly with jazz, blues, and electronic sound worlds. Jane Kozhevnikova’s Celestial Steps for Oboe and Piano explores lyricism and rhythmic elasticity within a jazz-inflected harmonic language, foregrounding the oboe’s expressive capacity in dialogue with the piano, and encouraging improvisation in a natural, organic dialogue. Dawson Hull’s Poplar Avenue: A Blues for Oboe and Piano serves as a stylistic and structural bridge, situating the oboe within an idiom more commonly associated with voice or brass and highlighting its adaptability in a distinctly American tradition, rooted in the culture of the composer's city of Memphis, TN. Nathan Hall’s Twilight and You for oboe, piano, and electronics extends this exploration into new sonic terrain, using pre-recorded electronics to merge acoustic and digital timbres in an immersive, genre-defying soundscape, also encouraging and utilizing improvisation alongside traditional notation.

Together, these works illuminate the oboe’s evolving role in contemporary music, demonstrating its capacity to transcend traditional boundaries and thrive at the intersections of style, technology, and cultural expression.