Our 2026-2027 concert season began with a question:

Which works first made chamber music meaningful to us?

As we exchanged answers, the conversation quickly reached beyond repertoire. Each choice led to a family gathering, a private practice session, an influential teacher, an important trip, or a discovery that changed how one of us understood collaboration. From these stories, we created Memories, a project about the experiences that remain attached to the pieces we carry throughout our lives.

“These pieces kept me playing the flute in my first years”

For our flutist, Ivo de Souza, the Brazilian choros Brasileirinho and Tico-Tico no Fubá kept him playing during his first years on the instrument. At that time, he was still a cellist at family gigs and disliked always taking the bass role. Because his father did not initially support the transition, he practiced whenever the house was empty and learned these melodies by ear.

“I understood chamber music through this piece”

Our bassoonist, André Januário, selected Lorenzo Fernandez’s Wind Quintet, the first piece he studied seriously with a coach in pre-college conservatory. Until then, his understanding of chamber performance had been limited. Preparing the work taught him to listen beyond his own part, respond to the other instruments, and recognize listening as a central responsibility within a group.

“It got stuck in my head on the way back home in Japan because it was just so beautiful”

Asako Furuoya, our oboist, chose Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. During a visit from Japan to Boston, she heard it performed by the musician who would become her undergraduate teacher alongside colleagues from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was invited to observe their dress rehearsal. The beauty of the piece stayed with her throughout the trip home.

“An iconic piece for Wind Quintet that defined my desire to perform chamber music”

For our clarinetist, Ethan Hicks, Jeff Scott’s Startin’ Sumthin’ offered a different model of what chamber performance could be. The composer’s writing expanded his sense of what a wind quintet could express beyond the familiar boundaries of standard classical and contemporary repertoire. Its distinctive musical language helped turn Ethan’s interest in this kind of collaboration into an artistic direction.

Our hornist, Annie Chapman Brewer, selected Amy Beach’s Pastorale for Wind Quintet.

Taken together, the works move across different periods, countries, and traditions. Their unity comes from the place every choice holds in one of our lives rather than from a single historical theme or stylistic category.