Four of the finest wind players in Vermont will set up in a historic meetinghouse on Windsor's Main Street and take an audience on a tour of Europe and back. The concert, titled "Winds in Motion," is presented by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and features the orchestra's principal woodwind players in a program that ranges from Charles Gounod to George Gershwin. It takes place at the Old South Church, 146 Main St.
The premise is simple and appealing: players drawn from the front chairs of a professional orchestra, playing chamber music in a room built for voices. The program's arc — from a 19th-century French composer to a 20th-century American one — is the kind of sweep that chamber players use to show off the range of what wind instruments can do. Gounod, best known for the opera "Faust" and the ubiquitous "Ave Maria," represents the European tradition; Gershwin, who fused classical form with jazz and Tin Pan Alley, represents the return home. In between, the ensemble has room to move through the repertoire that makes woodwinds such a distinctive chamber combination.
The setting matters as much as the music. The Old South Congregational Church is one of the most architecturally significant buildings in Windsor, and it is one of the few surviving structures in the region designed by Asher Benjamin, the architect and pattern-book author whose handbooks shaped the look of New England towns for generations. Benjamin was born in Hartland, Connecticut, in 1773 and spent the first three decades of his life working in the Connecticut River Valley, designing buildings from Suffield, Connecticut, to Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Windsor, Vermont. He moved to Windsor around 1798, the year he built the Old South Church. The New England Historical Society notes that the church is one of four buildings in Windsor designed by Benjamin, and that the other three have since been demolished — making the church the last Benjamin building standing in the town.
Benjamin was only in his mid-twenties when he wrote "The Country Builder's Assistant," published in 1797, a book born of frustration with the large, expensive English handbooks that most American builders relied on. His pattern books popularized what is now known as the Federal style, and builders copied his plans not only across New England but into the Midwest and the South. The Old South Church is a direct product of that influence. According to SAH Archipedia, the building has been altered over the centuries — in 1818 a town clock was inserted in place of the semicircular windows at the base of the tower, and neither the interior nor the facade today closely matches the meetinghouse plate in Benjamin's book. But the bones of the design remain, and the church has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
For concertgoers, the practical upshot is a room with the kind of acoustics that suit unamplified chamber music. The church has become a regular stop for classical performers in the Upper Valley; the chamber series Classicopia, for instance, has described Old South as its "wonderful home in Windsor," citing the stained glass windows and the "nice acoustics" of what it calls a fantastic venue. A woodwind ensemble — one that depends on clarity and blend rather than volume — is well matched to that space.
The Vermont Symphony Orchestra itself has a history worth knowing. Founded in 1934, it describes itself as one of the nation's oldest state-assisted orchestras. Its first artistic director was Alan Carter, followed by Efrain Guigui, Peter Brown, and Kate Tamarkin; the current music director is Andrew Crust. The orchestra's model — a professional ensemble that tours the state rather than anchoring a single hall — is what makes a quartet concert in a Windsor church possible in the first place.
The "Winds in Motion" program is part of that touring tradition. The same players are scheduled to perform the program in Brattleboro the following evening, October 17, at the Brattleboro Music Center, where tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. For anyone in the Windsor area, it is an unusual opportunity: principal players from a statewide professional orchestra, playing chamber repertoire in a landmark Federal-era church.
The concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on October 16 at Old South Church, 146 Main St., Windsor. More information is available through the Vermont Symphony Orchestra's website.