Concert Features Music for Oboe, Flute and Piano

On Wednesday, March 17 at 12:10 p.m., the Free Admission Glendale Noon Concerts program will be streamed.

Oboist Paul Sherman, flutist Asuncion Ojeda (top), and pianist Traci Esslinger will perform works by Chinary Ung, Alan Hovhaness and Madeleine Dring on a Facebook stream and YouTube.

The program includes Chinary Ung “Neak Pean” for flute and English horn, Alan Hovhaness “Visionary Landscapes, Op.214” and Madeleine Dring “Trio For Flute, Oboe and Piano.”

Dr. Paul J. Sherman enjoys a varied career as a conductor, oboist and musicologist. He performs on both modern and baroque period instruments and enjoys a career with many different musical branches. These include jazz, classical and early music. His doctorate from USC is in oboe performance, conducting, early music and music history. While studying at USC he was honored as the university’s top wind graduate. Dr. Sherman is an assistant professor of music history at Glendale College and has been on the faculty of USC as instructor of early music, at Chapman University as director of the wind symphony and coordinator of winds and brass, and at College of the Canyons as director of the Symphony of the Canyons. 

As a performer, he has appeared with the LA Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Master Chorale, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Southwest Chamber Music, Santa Fe Pro Musica and Music Angelica among many others.

Flutist Asuncion Ojeda has been active with various Southern California ensembles including Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, the Filipino American Symphony Orchestra (FASO), and Nimbus Ensemble. She is also a student/performer with the World Kulintang Institute ensemble, an organization devoted to the ancient gong and drum traditions from the southern Philippines. As an elementary music teacher with the LAUSD Arts Education Branch, Ojeda gets to share her love for music with students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Pianist Traci Esslinger is a Los Angeles native committed to the exploration of contemporary as well as traditional repertoire. She has performed with the California EAR Unit, Inauthentica, Nimbus Ensemble and CalArts New Century Players and in festivals such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic “Minimalist Jukebox” (“Rajikaru!”) “Experimentations in Japanese Art” at The Getty, at REDCAT as part of the Synaesthesia Festival, the Banff Chamber Music Festival, UCSB’s “Made in California,” and “Kaffee und Kultur: LA’s Emigre Life of the 1940s and 1950s” at the Skirball, among others. She has worked with leading contemporary composers such as James Newton, James Tenney, Ulrich Krieger, Anne LeBaron, David Rosenboom, Roger Reynolds, Sean Heim and John M. Kennedy and is featured on David Rosenboom’s “Naked Curvature: Four Memories of the Daimon” on the Tzadik label.

Esslinger is a founding member of the Arroyo Ensemble and holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree in piano performance from California Institute of the Arts as well as a Masters of Music in composition and a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from California State University, Los Angeles. When not performing or teaching in her Altadena-based studio, Esslinger can usually be found in the mountains, hiking and backpacking with her partner Sean Heim and her Blue Heelers, Matilda and Angus.

Glendale Noon Concerts is celebrating its 13th year of presenting free admission, and now streamed, concerts every first and third Wednesday of the month.