“East Wind/West Wind” Recital on March 26 – Mansfield University

MANSFIELD, PA— Christine Fish Moulton, associate professor of Flute at Mansfield University, and guest artist Nora Nohraku Suggs will present “East Wind/West Wind” on Monday, March 26 at 8 p.m. in Steadman Theatre. The recital is free and open to the public.

The program will feature the traditional Japanese piece Shika no Tone (The Distant Call of the Deer), which mirrors the sound of two deer calling to each other in the forest. Originally played on two shakuhachi (Japanese end-blown flute), the piece is presented on shakuhachi and western flute, with the western flute in imitative style.

Suggs received her jun shihan shakuhachi license from the New York City Kyo-Shin-An dojo of Dai-Shihan James Nyoraku Schlefer. Moulton transcribed the imitative sounds and style for western flute.

The duo will also perform Robert Kyr’s Echoes of Memory, a duet for western flute and alto flute. It is an elegiac duo composed “in remembrance of all civilians killed during the second Gulf War on all sides of the conflict”. It was commissioned for a “Remembrance and Healing” concert for a National Flute Association convention.  The piece is performed with minimal choreography with one player starting at back of hall, one on stage. Through the course of the piece the players exchange places. The music has a similar expressive feel to music for the shakuhachi.

In addition to her faculty duties at MU, Christine Fish Moulton is a member of the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, is principal flute for the Savoy Company productions in Philadelphia and Philadelphia Boys Choir, and performs in the annual Finger Lakes Chamber Music Festival.

Her recent performances include the Liebermann Flute Concerto with the Mansfield University Symphony Orchestra and chamber music with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra at Symphony Space in New York City.

Allan Kozinn said in the review in the New York Times of Richard Auldon Clark’s Four Sketches for flute and string trio, “Christine Moulton gave its flute line a shapely, colorful reading…” She will be performing in the upcoming New York Flute Club Fair in Manhattan in March.

Moulton earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Boston Conservatory of Music, Masters of Music from Manhattan School of Music and DMA from Rutgers University. She serves as Secretary/Treasurer of the Marcel Moyse Society.

Nora Nohraku Suggs is a graduate of Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, with extensive private education in music and degrees in biology, English literature, medicine and surgery. She has played in England, Canada, Japan and throughout the U.S., and is now active as a teacher, recitalist and chamber musician in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

Suggs is the flutist and Artistic Director of the chamber music ensemble SATORI, and is on the music faculty at Bethlehem’s Moravian College Music Institute. She coaches flute ensembles and chamber music at the Community Music School of the Lehigh Valley and performs and records with Two Part Invention a classical guitar and flute duo.