Holiday Organ & Brass

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Dr. Carol Weitner, organ; Long Island Chamber Music Brass Quintet

About the Program:

Celebrate the holiday season with a festive evening of popular and classical favorites arranged for brass quintet and pipe organ. This terrific holiday program features The Long Island Chamber Music Brass led by French hornist Eric Huckins as well organist Carol Weitner, performing on St. John’s beautiful, 43-rank Casavant Frères pipe organ.

About the Artists:

Carol Weitner, concert organist

Dr. Weitner has been the organist at St. John’s Church in Cold Spring Harbor since 1994. In addition to her church work, she teaches piano and organ students of all ages and levels. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York where she earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Organ Performance, and was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate. Her other degrees are from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey (Master of Music) and The Mannes College of Music in New York City (Bachelor of Music).

In 1992, Dr. Weitner became an Associate of the American Guild of Organists, winning the S. Lewis Elmer Award for the highest average score of all candidates for the two advanced Guild exams. She served as Dean of the Suffolk Chapter of the American Guild of Organists from 1991-1993, and was a featured performer and workshop leader at the Chapter’s Regional Convention in 1999. She also served as Chair of the Suffolk Chapter’s Organ Scholarship program from 2004-2010.

As a recitalist, Dr. Weitner has performed extensively on Long Island, as well as in Chicago, St. Paul, Boston, and New York City. She has also presented recitals in France (at Chartres Cathedral and at La Madeleine in Paris), Germany (in Ulm, Lübeck, and Bremen), the Netherlands (at the University of Leiden) and the Czech Republic (in Prague and Karlovy Vary). Her debut CD, recorded at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, features works by Lemmens, Jongen, Schumann, Langlais, Guilmant, and Vierne.

Long Island Chamber Music

Long Island Chamber Music (LICM) is a collective of professional musicians that bring high-caliber classical music to Long Island communities through concerts and educational programs year-round. LICM was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife musicians Eric Huckins and Gergana Haralampieva alongside composer Nick DiBerardino with the belief that Long Island is deserving of year-round professional classical music.

Concerts take place at local venues across Long Island including concert halls, parks, libraries, churches, museums, and community centers. LICM works closely with its community partners to create concert programs that are relevant and compelling to audiences. Each concert showcases a variety of instrumentation and program selections. LICM is strongly committed to programming works and featuring musicians from historically underrepresented communities in the classical music field.

LICM provides a variety of highly interactive educational concerts and residencies in schools, libraries, and community centers that focus on fostering a love and understanding of classical music for all ages.

LICM musicians are all drawn from Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Astral Artists, and several other of the country’s most prominent musical institutions. In addition to being leaders in their artform, LICM musicians are teaching artists, entrepreneurs, and socially-minded advocates for classical music. https://www.lichambermusic.com/

Eric Huckins, French Horn

Eric Huckins is a New York-based horn player, educator, and arranger. Passionately striving to connect with audiences in creative musical mediums, he regularly incorporates commissioning, improvisation, and his own compositions into his various musical and social projects. As a new music enthusiast, Eric has commissioned and premiered over 50 works for solo horn and horn in chamber settings in the past two years alone. Eric was a founding member of several ensembles, including The Brass Project and Tangent Winds, which received the Bronze Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Eric has been featured as a chamber musician at such festivals as Music from Angel Fire and the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival. In 2015 and 2018, he held the Brass Quintet Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival. He has also appeared with the American Brass Quintet, the Philadelphia Orchestra, American Ballet Theater, and has performed as guest Principal Horn with the Netanya Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra. Eric holds a Bachelor’s degree from Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Jennifer Montone and Jeffrey Lang, and a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, under Julie Landsman. He has also studied historical performance extensively with R.J. Kelley.Eric Huckins is a New York based french horn player and brass educator dedicated to creatively sharing music through diverse musical styles. A winner of Astral Artist’s 2018 National Auditions, Eric is the first horn player to be a part of their roster. EricHuckins.com