Music for Peace: Formosa Duo with Orlando Cela

Welcome to a new season of Music for Peace concerts!

For our first concert on Friday, November 3, Formosa Duo, with pianist Chi-Chen Wu and cellist Sam Ou, will present “Watercolors,” a sensual French program with music by Saint-Saens, Gaubert, and Franck. Joining them will be flutist and conductor, Orlando Cela.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 123 (1905)
Philippe Gaubert: Trois Aquarelles for Flute, Cello, & Piano (1921)
César Franck: Cello Sonata (1886, orig. for violin & piano)

The concert will be held at Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, near Harvard Law School, at 7:30 pm.

Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund.  $25 for Mass. Peace Action members, $35 for non-members,  $10 for students and low incomes.

To reserve, write a check to “Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund” or “MAPA EF” and mail to 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or call 617-354-2169 with credit card number.  Or reserve your tickets online.

Donations to support our work for peace are welcome in any amount.  Supporters donate $250 or more to Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund; they receive two tickets with preferred seating in the first 3 rows to each concert and recognition in the programs. Sponsors donate $500 and receive four tickets; Benefactors donate $1,000 and receive eight tickets.  All contributions above $35 per concert are tax-deductible.

The audience is invited to join the musicians and Peace Action members at a reception after the concert.  The venue is wheelchair accessible via a ramp to the left of the church.

Since earning their respective doctorate of musical arts degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), pianist Chi-Chen Wu and cellist Sam Ou have been collaborating as the Formosa Duo for nearly two decades.  While respectively maintaining music faculty positions at the University of Wyoming and NEC’s Preparatory School & School of Continuing Education, Ms. Wu and Mr. Ou have individually appeared as recitalists, chamber musicians, and concerto soloists in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Poland, and Bermuda. The diverse repertoire that they have performed encompasses a wide stylistic span, from the Classical and Romantic periods, through the 20^th century and into the present. Particularly, contemporary music is a passion for both musicians. As the Formosa Duo, Ms. Wu and Mr. Ou performed the world premiere of John Kramer’s Sonata for Piano and Cello.  They also performed Jessie Montgomery’s Peace transcribed for cello and piano.  During the pandemic, the Duo maintained fervent support of contemporary music and collaborated with student composers from the University of Florida, culminating in a final recording project of their compositions, all recorded and edited remotely.

Orlando Cela has premiered over 200 works, both as a flutist and as a conductor, to rave reviews from the media from the Boston Globe to the Oregon ArtsWatch. In concert, Mr. Cela regularly offers short lively introductions to selected works, providing audiences with entry points into unfamiliar works, so that listeners can easily connect the music with other life experiences. As a flutist, Mr. Cela has performed at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian and Catholic University (Washington DC), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), and at the Center for New Music and Technologies at UC Berkeley.He currently is assistant professor at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches conducting, and full professor at Middlesex Community College, where he teaches a variety of music courses and is the coordinator of the MCC Music Outreach Program.