Kharis Chamber Players

KHARIS Chamber Players is a multi-faceted Chamber Music group performing a wide array of classical repertoire for Piano, Winds and Strings. The musicians joining together for this concert are active solo and chamber performers in the Boston area and beyond and have collaborated for several years, performing in various formations (quartets, trios, duos and occasional solos or quintets) in many different venues. The French repertoire for Piano and Winds includes some of the finest music ever written for wind instruments during the late 19th century - early 20th century and beyond. An “Aubade” (“Alborada” in Spanish) was a love poem meant to be sung at dawn by the “troubadours”, medieval poets of Southern France - as opposed to a “Serenade”, sung in the evening. French composers started using the term again for various musical compositions in the 19th and 20th century. Camille Saint-Saens' lively Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs, Op.79, for Piano and Winds, Olivier Messiaen’s Abîme des Oiseaux from the Quartet for the End of Time, Claude Debussy’s Syrinx for solo Flute, Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane Op.65, and the rarely heard Darius Milhaud’s Sonate Op. 47 for Piano and Winds are all stellar examples of that repertoire. 

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, flutist Meghan Jacoby has performed as a chamber and orchestral musician throughout the US, England, Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Cuba. Currently, she freelances throughout the greater Boston area and has performed with the Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Symphony by the Sea, and with the Portland, Indian Hill, Cape Cod, New Bedford, Atlantic, and Cape Ann Symphony Orchestras. Meghan has also performed with the Boston-area chamber groups Callithumpian Consort, Radius Ensemble, and the Vento Chiaro Woodwind Quintet. A new music enthusiast, Meghan has performed at the New Music Forum's Festival of Contemporary Music in Oakland, California, the Society of Composers, Inc. convention in New York, New Music Brandeis, Boston New Music Initiative, Center for New Music in San Francisco, and Brave New Works. She has also been a guest artist at the International Festival of Flutists in Lima, Peru. Meghan was a three-time finalist in Boston’s James Pappoutsakis Memorial Flute Competition and was named 2nd Prize Winner in the 2012 Kentucky Flute Society’s Piccolo Competition. Meghan served on the faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College’s Community Programs for seven years and currently is on faculty at Powers Music School, Winchester Community Music School, Phillips Academy Andover, Concord Academy, and the Cremona International Music Academy in Cremona, Italy. Her primary teachers include Linda Toote, Robert Willoughby, and Trevor Wye. Meghan holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from Boston University.

Ben Fox serves as Principal Oboist of the Marsh Chapel Collegium, whose Bach Cantata Series is broadcast on WBUR and online. He is an active freelancer, having made appearances with the Boston Philharmonic, Portland Symphony, Vermont Symphony, Plymouth Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, and many other orchestras around the country. Ben was invited to join the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra for their 2013-14 season, playing Associate Principal Oboe and English Horn. He is also Music Director of the Boston Zelenka Project, an ensemble devoted to performing the little-known chamber works of Jan Dismas Zelenka and his Baroque contemporaries. Ben has premiered pieces by Mary Montgomery Koppel and Vartan Aghababian and is a regular member of new-music group the Callithumpian Consort, with whom he has recorded on the Tzadik and Mode labels. Ben Fox holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Oboe Performance from Boston University, a Master of Music degree in Oboe Performance from New England Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Arts in both Oboe Performance and Applied Mathematics from Oberlin College in Ohio. His principal teachers include John Ferrillo and James Caldwell

Todd Brunel is an innovative, critically acclaimed clarinetist who leads a dual life as a cross-over classical and jazz musician. "Tremendous virtuosity and heart," the Boston Globe. He has played principal clarinet with Opera Ebony of Harlem, the Bulgarian Virtuosi, ALEA III, the Andover Chamber Players and many New York and Boston area orchestras. As a sought after advocate of contemporary musical styles, he has premiered works by composers including Rick Sowash, George Brunner, the Alta Voz composers Alliance, Vuk Kulenovic and Vache Sharyfyan. Brunel's numerous guest appearances include: Carnegie Hall, Harvard University, the Academy of Music Art and Dance (Bulgaria), the Manhattan School, CBGB's Gallery, The SEAMUS Festival, the National Black Arts Festival (with Lilli Lewis) and the Montreal Jazz Festival. Brunel produced the critically acclaimed 'Vortex Series for improvisational music, which was the jazz "Pick of the week" in the Boston Phoenix and Boston Globe. Brunel received a Bachelors of Music degree in clarinet performance from the Boston Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Atilio Poto and Pasquale Cardillo. He holds a Master of Music from the Brooklyn College Conservatory where he was a graduate assistant to Paul Shelden. 

​Natacha Rist is a Franco-American pianist born and raised in France. An active freelance soloist and collaborative pianist, Natacha performs solo and chamber music in the New England area and in France, and is a founding member of Kharis Chamber Players. She has performed in Boston at the French Library, First and Second Church, Kaji Aso Studio, U-Mass Boston; in France, at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Maison Henri Heine, Confluences and Eglise Americaine in Paris, Chateau de Ville-D'Avray, Chateau de Boffres, and in festivals at Magnat-L’Etrange, Lavaudieu, Issigeac, and Cordes, among other venues. As a professional instrumental, vocal and choral accompanist on piano, harpsichord and organ, she is employed in many venues and studios, both privately and in several Boston area music schools and churches. She currently serves as organist at Tabernacle Congregational Church in Salem. She also teaches Piano, Chamber music, and serves as staff accompanist at Powers Music School in Belmont, and teaches privately a variety of students, from age four to ninety nine, at her Jamaica Plain studio. She holds her Diploma in Piano Performance from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris (founded by renowned French pianist Alfred Cortot), and she holds a Master of Music degree in Vocal Accompanying from Boston University. Her teachers have included Marian Rybicki in Paris (Heinrich Neuhaus Russian School via Poland), Allen Rogers, Anthony DiBonaventura, Mark Kroll and Lois Shapiro in Boston.