CONCERT INTERNATIONAL FLUTE ORCHESTRA - USA

Program:
Flourishes........... .................................K. Farmer
Toccata and Fugue in D minor........... .......J. S. Bach / arr. S. Ben-Meir
Innes Glas Mór ....................................L. LeMay
Lovely but Rugged
Kylemore Abbey
Gogarty's Pub
Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld ...................J. Offenbach / arr. S. Ben-Meir
Serenade..............................................A. Molnar-Suhajda
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2........................F. Liszt / arr. S. Ben-Meir
Seventeen Come Sunday........................R. Vaughan Williams
from 'Folk Song Suite' ................................arr. Al Hager
Spanish Dance from 'La vida breve' ....... Manuel de Falla / arr. S. Ben-Meir

The International Flute Orchestra was founded in 1996 by Nancy C. Clew, Music Director and John Bailey, Conductor. The goal was to spread goodwill and good music to countries around the world. Members are professional orchestral flutists and/or university professors.
Concerts are free to the public or can be used to raise donations for local projects and charities.
John Bailey is the Richard H. Larson Professor of Flute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and, since 1986, principal flutist of the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has performed as concert soloist on numerous occasions. He studied with James Pellerite at Indiana University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. with Walfrid Kujala at Northwestern University. From 1982 to 1996 he was a program annotator for the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria, where he was principal flute with the AIMS Festival Orchestra. He has performed in recital at universities and cities in the United States and abroad, including Prague, Potsdam, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, London, Manchester, Milan, and Chicago (Dame Myra Hess series). With the University of Nebraska's Moran Woodwind Quintet, he has recorded three CDs for the Crystal label and has toured throughout the Midwest. He recently recorded a solo CD of American masterworks on the Centaur label. He served as President of the National Flute Association in 2003-2004 and as Program Chair of the 2002 NFA National Convention in Washington, D.C. He has led the International Flute Orchestra on tours to Poland, Chile, Greece, China, Eastern Europe, Spain, Germany and Austria, Russia and the Baltic Republics.
The IFO has performed in Ireland, France, Germany/Austria, Italy, England, Spain, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, China, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, Chile, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Turkey and Croatia. The members of the orchestra may also give master classes or organize exchange meetings with flutists from the visited countries.
The music performed includes arrangements of classical orchestral music, opera and ballet, as well as folk songs and original music written for a flute orchestra.
The audience finds the sound of a flute orchestra comparable to that of a string orchestra, as the flute orchestra includes not only the famous C flute and piccolo, but also the alto, bass and contrabass flutes.