In Thursday’s (2/18) Wall Street Journal, Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes, “ ‘I’d watched my colleagues celebrate their 25th- and 30th-anniversary seasons,’ says the renowned flutist Carol Wincenc, currently in the midst of her own 40th-anniversary season. ‘But it was the accident that made me realize how much I had to celebrate—my life and my son’s life, and, of course, my music.’ On Christmas Eve 2007, Ms. Wincenc and her son, Nicola, had just arrived in Italy and were driving from Rome’s airport to Spoleto. A few miles from Spoleto, a reckless driver crashed headlong into their car. … Ms. Wincenc suffered four vertebral fractures, a broken sternum, liver contusion, and most seriously for an instrumentalist, a broken hand. … By April Ms. Wincenc was able to play again. ‘That month in Spoleto was an epiphany. I said, “I’m alive and I’m going to celebrate.” My 60th birthday was approaching and there was so much I wanted to affirm.’ … On Feb. 22, at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, Ms. Wincenc joins forces with her close friends, harpist Nancy Allen and violist Cynthia Phelps, both principal players of the New York Philharmonic, as the new trio Les Amies. And on the bill are Ms. Musgrave’s ‘Sunrise’ and Ms. Clearfield’s ‘…and low to the lake falls home…,’ inspired by the lines ‘In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam / Flutes and low to the lake falls home,’ in the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem ‘Inversnaid.’ On March 31, at the Juilliard School’s Sharp Auditorium, she is collaborating with pianist Stephen Gosling and the Juilliard String Quartet, among other artists, in world premieres of Ms. Tower’s new score for flute and string quartet and Ms. Chen’s chamber concerto, ‘Becoming.’ ”
Posted February 19, 2010
