April 1, 2015

Whidbey Island welcomes Danielle Reutter-Harrah & Kyle Sampson in a featured concert,  “Romance & Reverie” at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 11 at Langley United Methodist Church.

Sponsored by local musician and Island Consort Artistic Director Sheila Weidendorf, Reutter-Harrah and Sampson have been performing together since they met while studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Although their repertoire has included works varying from Caccini to Stravinsky, the duo now seeks to expand their historically informed performance to include the romantic repertoire.

Recent performance highlights include an early romantic guitar concert on Whidbey Island, as well as last year’s commencement concert for the Harris Guitar Foundation at Meyer Sound Studios in Berkeley, California. Both duo members bring their experience with early music to the stage to celebrate all that the romantic repertoire has to offer.

Kyle Sampson is a versatile player of plucked string instruments and performs on an eight-string Viennese style romantic guitar built by Scot Tremblay. He is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he obtained a Bachelor’s in Music in classical guitar performance with an emphasis in early music, studying continuo on theorbo, baroque guitar and romantic guitar. He currently teaches music theory, musicianship and guitar at KIPP SF Bay Academy and regularly appears as a soloist and chamber musician.

Danielle Reutter-Harrah is an avid performer of baroque, classical and contemporary music. In the coming season she will perform in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ullise in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Boston Early Music Festival, and will sing the title role in Handel’s Ariodante with Black Box Baroque. She is a founding member of the duo Jarring Sounds and the baroque chamber ensemble Liaison. Reutter-Harrah earned her Bachelor’s in Music at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, and her Master’s in Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She currently resides in San Francisco.

The duo performed with Island Consort in their February “If Music Be the Food of Love: Renaissance & Romance” concert and are happy to be back on Whidbey Island with this concert of Romantic era music.

For further information, contact Sheila Weidendorf at 360-321-5294 or email sweidendorf@whidbey.com.