Reeds Amis invited to Tokyo!
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I'm thrilled to announce that my trio, Reeds Amis, was selected to perform and present the unpublished works of Fernande Decruck at the International Double Society Convention in Tokyo this summer! It's a huge honor for us and we can't wait to share her music and her story with the world! (Or at the very least, lots of double reed players!) Visit our Indiegogo Campaign Page!
The Decruck Project started two years ago when a colleague of ours, Matthew Aubin approached us. (We are all members of The Chelsea Symphony and Matt is one of our fearless conductors.) He had just heard a live performance of a saxophone work by Decruck and was very taken by her music. While she is well known for her saxophone repertoire, after doing a little digging in the library, he found she had also been commissioned to write chamber music for the most famous musicians in France in the 1930s and 40s.
He then wondered, "Why can't I find any of her music?"
To learn more, he traveled to France to meet her family and soon discovered that the majority of her music was unpublished in manuscript form. He brought the music back to New York and called on our trio to bring the notes on the page to life.
After we first played her reed trios, we were astonished by their beauty. It was hard to understand why they had never been published. It turns out that Fernande’s husband, who ironically was a music publisher, had left her and their children. It was hard enough for a woman to get anything published back then, but once she was in the bad graces of a prominent publisher, it was all but impossible.
Now that we know her reed trios inside and out, we are ready to present her music to the world through performing, publishing and recording these masterpieces. Traveling to Tokyo this summer will be the first step on that journey but we need your help to get there! Please visit our Indiegogo Campaign Page to learn more. Your support-- be it sharing our campaign on Facebook and Twitter, telling your music-loving friends and family about our cause, or making a monetary donation-- helps us to share Fernande's music and story with the world and will establish her rightful place in history!