Historical Programs on Period Instruments
Barbara Hopkins, flute; Judy Handler, guitar
Rosewood Chamber Ensemble is in its tenth season of entertaining audiences with their programs based on the music and people of the early United States. The Greater Boston Flute Association wrote about their Boston concert, “The pieces were played with great style and joy, resulting in a captivating performance.” An appealing element of every concert is the background stories they tell about the periods, historical figures, music, and instruments they use. Barbara plays these concerts on historical flutes, including wooden Asa Hopkins flutes, made in Litchfield, CT circa 1830. Judy enjoys performing on her nineteenth century Martin parlor guitar as well as a reproduction of a Panormo guitar from the 1830s.
Barbara and Judy have taken their unique blend of musicality, humor, and scholarship to many notable venues including the Adams National Historical Park, Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, Litchfield Historical Society, and the National Flute Association Conventions in New York and Washington D.C. The high quality of their programs has earned them seven grants from the Evelyn Preston Memorial Trust Fund to present concerts and a grant from the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts in 2013 to support their recording project, Songs & Dances of Early America. Their repertoire ranges from familiar Stephen Foster songs and lively dances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the classical European music enjoyed in the U.S. in the 1800s.
Rosewood Chamber Ensemble is a consortium member of Blackledge Music Inc., a non profit organization dedicated to performing interesting and unusual chamber music.
Barbara Hopkins, award winning flutist, is a cousin of the early American woodwind maker Asa Hopkins, who lived and worked in Litchfield, Connecticut. She moved to Hartford in 1990 to play in the Hartford Symphony, having no idea that Asa Hopkins existed, or that her ancestors were from Hartford. She has “come home” in a way she never dreamed of. Barbara received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Samuel Baron. She earned her Master of Music from The Mannes College of Music under Thomas Nyfenger, and her Bachelor of Music at The Hartt School with John Wion. She currently serves as Assistant Principal Flute with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and teaches at The Hartt School Community Division of the University of Hartford and Manchester Community College. She has released three CDs including Telemann Methodical Sonatas, Vol. 1, Short Concert Pieces for Flute and Piano and Andersen Etudes, opus 15. Flute Talk magazine recommends her Andersen CD, writing, “Hopkins plays these virtuoso etudes with taste and a technical ease that many students work for years to never achieve.” The Flute Network praised her Telemann recording as, “full, rich, and highly musical,” and the best selling Short Concert Pieces disc was partly funded by a grant from The Hartt School Community Division. Barbara has been a top prize winner in the National Flute Association Competition and the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition, and was awarded a fellowship to Tanglewood Music Center, where she had the honor of playing principal flute under Leonard Bernstein.
Judy Handler, guitarist, has presented concerts and workshops at numerous venues throughout the United States including the University of Arizona, Commons Theater in Chicago, the Boston Classical Guitar Society and the Guitar Salon in New York. As co-founder of the Connecticut Classical Guitar Society, Judy developed one of the largest groups of its kind in the United States. She performs nationally with her husband, guitarist/mandolinist Mark Levesque. They have received critical acclaim for their CDs, Passion, Two Guitars Live! and Acoustic Blend and are also featured on five CDs produced by the Connecticut Classical Guitar Society. Judy is a founding member of the New American Mandolin Ensemble (NAME) that performed in England in 2018, Portugal and Spain in 2016 and Germany & the Netherlands in 2014. They have been presenting concerts in the U.S. since 2014 and released their first CD in 2017. Judy studied under internationally renowned performer and teacher Oscar Ghiglia at The Hartt School, where she received her Master of Music degree, and at the Aspen Music Festival. Her B.M. degree is from the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. She has also studied abroad, earning a Certificate from the Vila-Seca Salou Conservatory in Spain with José Tomás, Segovia’s teaching assistant and a Diploma of Merit from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Italy with Ghiglia. Judy teaches classical guitar and leads performance workshops at a private studio in Vernon, CT.