Musical Origins and the Stone Age Evolution of Flutes

Join Cotuit Library in welcoming musician and biologist Jelle Atema, and composer Julian Lampert as they discuss the history and sounds of prehistoric flutes on the eve of their performance at the Cotuit Center for the Arts with the Borromeo String Quartet: Borromeo and the Ancient Flute. Composed by Lampert, this commission for strings and flute will feature Atema using an ancient flute – discovered in recent excavations – that he reconstructed using the flute’s original material, deer bone.  In this talk Atema and Lampert will touch upon the origins of music and the Stone Age evolution of flutes.

Julian Lampert was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States in Boston with his family in the 1990’s.  There, he studied piano, harmony, and counterpoint with his mother, Professor Lena Miremonde, of the Moscow Conservatory, and late studied harmony for a semester at Amherst College with composer Lewis Spratlan.  He gave his first performance at the age of 8, and since then has played at many recitals and music festivals, including the Woods Hole Music Festival.  His skills as composer and orchestrator span nearly 500 years of musical styles.

Jelle Atema was born in the Netherlands where he studied biology and music; in France he studied with Jean-Pierre Rampal. He performed in Europe, China and the US. including the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival with Sam Sanders and Ransom Wilson and the Cape Cod Symphony performing Mozart’s flute concerto. He commissioned works for flute and string quartet by Ezra Laderman: “Single Voice” (premiered in 1991 with the Colorado Quartet) and “The MBL-Suite” (for the 1988 MBL Centennial, premiered in Woods Hole with Rampal and the Colorado Quartet and in New York with Samuel Baron and the Manhattan Quartet). In his biological research he and his students explore the underwater sensory worlds of lobsters, sharks and reef fishes.

This program is free but please register at cotuitlibrary.org/events or contact the Library.