Flute-organ duo among lineup for Tucson summer concert series

It’s not often you see a cello and organ team up in a chamber recital setting.

But on Aug. 5, St. Andrew’s Bach Society is hosting award-winning international cello soloist Tommy Mesa and organist Greg Zelek as part of the society’s summer concert series.

It will be the first cello-organ duo concert in the series’ 35 years and it also will take place on a Saturday; recitals usually are held on Sundays from June through August.

Tickets are on sale now for the series of four concerts, which runs June 11 through Aug. 27.

St. Andrew’s Bach Society Director Ben Nisbet said the Aug. 5 date was the only one Mesa had open this summer.

“To have the opportunity for the organ and cello to play a duo recital is really exciting for me,” said Nisbet, who is in his 12th year curating the concert series. “A lot of our audiences will probably be seeing this for the first time and they will be seeing the best version of this.”

Mesa is a big get for the series, which was launched in Armory Park’s St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in 1988. Mesa is the winner of the 2023 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Award to go with his fist place prize in the 2016 Sphinx Competition. The Cuban-American cellist also won the 2017 Astral Artists National Auditions.

Mesa is an in-demand soloist with major orchestras around the country when he is not performing chamber recitals, including a series with Russian pianist Ilya Yakushev and Greg Zelek, the principal organist for the Madison (Wisconsin) Symphony Orchestra. Zelek also has been a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, Florida Orchestra, New World Symphony, Ridgewood Symphony and Miami Symphony.

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“(Mesa) is not just playing with the major orchestras in the United States, but he’s also doing things like this,” Nisbet said.

St. Andrew’s Bach Society kicks off the series June 11 with “The String Quartet Playlist Re-Mixed,” which is the greatest hits of the string quartet literature with a twist: some of the pieces on the program will be for two or three instruments, or maybe even five or six, Nisbet said.

Last year, the series ended with a similar concert featuring Nisbet, who played violin years ago with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and three current TSO players: Concertmaster Lauren Roth, violist Sarah Bromberg and cellist Marybeth Brown-Plambeck. Nisbet tapped the same group for this year’s recital, whose format will be tweaked to possibly include additional musicians and instruments outside the string world “to make sure that we redeliver on the basic format but also make it new and different.”

TSO flutist Zach Warren joins Tucson pianist Michael Dauphinais for a recital July 16 of works by mostly under-the-radar female composers including Amy Beach, Lili Boulanger and Valerie Coleman, whose work will be featured in a TSO concert next year.

Nisbet said one of the highlights of that concert will be Warren’s transcription of Beach’s violin sonata for flute.

The series closes Aug. 27 with the return of the Phoenix ensemble Urban Nocturnes, a so-called modular chamber ensemble that plays around with its configuration, going from duos and trios to quartet and beyond. Their concert will include works by Mozart, Mendelssohn and others.

St. Andrew’s Bach Society concerts are held at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. near the University of Arizona. Tickets are $25 for reserved seats, $15 for general admission through standrewsbach.org.