May 19, 2024, 4 p.m.
Concert by Candlelight

Atlantic Reed Consort
Colleen Daly, soprano
Laura Strickling, soprano
in the 1889 Chapel

Cost: $25 per ticket

This concert shines a spotlight on reed instruments, with the Atlantic Reed Consort quintet performing a tapestry of German romantic and sacred music in the beautiful surroundings of St. Louis’ 1889 Chapel. Sopranos Colleen Daly and Laura Strickling share the stage. 

Since its founding in 2010, the Atlantic Reed Consort has brought chamber music to audiences worldwide in an unexpected format.  Embracing the experimental as well as adding new twists to classics, the quintet offers a cutting-edge sound and style that dazzles audiences, strengthening its reputation as one of the mid-Atlantic’s premier chamber music groups.  This exciting ensemble—comprising an oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet, and bassoon—is also committed to showcasing new music and growing the reed quintet canon, commissioning and premiering works by living composers who are advancing the art.

A luminary on St. Louis stages and in opera houses nationwide, Colleen Daly brings her soprano voice to roles that showcase her artistry and velvety tone.  Apart from opera roles, Ms. Daly has delivered compelling performances in major concert venues and with symphony orchestras, performing in oratorios and other sacred music works, musical theater roles, and interpreting art songs.  Ms. Daly is also an in-demand music educator and voice coach. In July 2020, Ms. Daly became the Concert Series’ third artistic director, developing programs that celebrate connection and community through music.

Two-time GRAMMY® award nominee for Best Classical Vocal Solo Album for 40@40 and Confessions, soprano Laura Strickling is recognized by The New York Times for her “flexible voice, crystalline diction, and warm presence.” She created the roles of Fanni Radnòti in the world premiere of Tom Cipullo’s opera The Parting with Music of Remembrance and the evil Dr. Slade in the serial television-style opera film, Everything for Dawn with Experiments in Opera. Celebrated for her work performing and promoting art song, with an emphasis on new additions to the canon, she was featured in the May 2021 issue of Classical Singer Magazine, curated The New Music Shelf Anthology of contemporary art songs for soprano, and has performed recitals and presented masterclasses and lectures with art song organizations, chamber series, and universities around the world. Her “powerful and expressive voice across a large range, her variety of timbre and character,” (Classical Scene), make her a welcome guest soloist for a range of opera, oratorio, concert, and chamber works – from Bach to Britten and beyond. A Chicago native, Ms. Strickling is an avid traveler, having lived in Morocco - where she studied classical Arabic at the Arabic Language Institute of Fez, Kabul (Afghanistan) - where her husband was the founding chair of the Department of Law at the American University of Afghanistan, and for the past nine years in St. Thomas (U.S. Virgin Islands). She recently relocated to Wisconsin where she has traded rum for beer and is learning to appreciate snow.