Experience an enchanting evening of music as Longwood Gardens Principal Organist Peter Richard Conte joins trumpeter, flugelhornist, and organist Andrew Ennis for a program spanning jazz, film, opera, and classical masterworks.
Beloved melodies La Vie en Rose, Begin the Beguine, and music from Chinatown take on new brilliance in arrangements for trumpet and organ, while the warm, expressive sound of the flugelhorn brings fresh beauty to Delibes’ Flower Duet from Lakmé. The program culminates with a thrilling organ duet suite from Stravinsky’s The Firebird, showcasing the remarkable artistry and power of these extraordinary instruments.
Conte and Ennis released their first CD, My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice, on the GOTHIC label, the first-ever commercial album to exclusively feature music for flugelhorn and organ. That album received a Critics’ Choice Award from the American Record Guide. As a duo organist, Ennis also arranges and performs with Conte large-scale transcriptions of symphonic works such as Respighi’s Pines of Rome, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Stravinsky’s Round Dance of the Princesses from The Firebird. Ennis and Conte now have a second album entitled Duo, released on the Raven label featuring additional music for flugel and organ, along with organ four hands.
Peter Richard Conte
Peter Richard Conte first performed on the Longwood Organ in 1990, when his close association with this fabled instrument began. He helped design the current console, styled to replicate the original Aeolian console from 1930. He was appointed Principal Organist of Longwood Gardens in 2011, in conjunction with the instrument’s rebirth after a comprehensive, ten-year restoration.
Conte is also the longtime John Wanamaker Grand Court Organist; appointed in 1989, he is the fourth person to hold that title since the organ first played in 1911. As titular organist, he has performed thousands of concerts on the largest fully functioning musical instrument in the world. Since 1991, he has served as Choirmaster and Organist of Saint Clement’s Church, Philadelphia, where he directs an 18-voice, professional choir in an extensive music program in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.
Conte is highly regarded as a skillful performer and arranger of organ transcriptions; his ear for tonal color and his innovative programming style have made him one of the most sought after “orchestral” organists of this era. He has been featured several times on National Public Radio and on ABC television's Good Morning America and World News Tonight. For 11 seasons, his monthly radio show The Wanamaker Organ Hour aired on Temple University Radio (WRTI).
Conte performs extensively throughout the United States and Canada under the management of Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists and has appeared as a featured artist at American Guild of Organists’ National and Regional Conventions. He has performed and recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra, including a historic recording of Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante in the Wanamaker Grand Court.
He has served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Organ at Rider University's Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, where he taught organ improvisation. He is the 2008 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indiana University School of Music, Bloomington. In 2013, the Philadelphia Music Alliance honored him with a bronze plaque on the Avenue of the Arts’ Walk of Fame. His numerous recordings appear on the GOTHIC, RAVEN, JAV, PROORGANO, DORIAN and DTR labels.
Andrew Ennis
Andrew Ennis has gained wide recognition throughout Philadelphia and the East Coast as a trumpeter, flugelhornist, organist, music educator, and church musician. He began his trumpet studies at age eight and is a graduate of Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in instrumental music education, specializing in trumpet. His teachers have included David Bilger (longtime principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Bryan Appleby-Wineberg (professor of trumpet at Rowan University). He has served as organist at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Camden, NJ since 2016 and had a career as a music educator for 12 years. He is now the owner of Tennis by Ennis, the only tennis pro shop in the southern New Jersey area.
Ennis appears in duo performances as both flugelhornist and duo organist with Peter Richard Conte throughout the country, including the Wanamaker Organ in Macy’s. Other duo performances include Shreveport, Hanover, Boston, Chicago, Longwood Gardens, Woolsey Hall at Yale University, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and the Spreckles Pavilion in San Diego.
Program
- A set of Jazz tunes, arranged for Trumpet & Organ:
- Chinatown (from the movie)
- Begin the Beguine
- La Vie en Rose
- Arranged for Flugelhorn & Organ:
- The Flower Duet from Lakmé (Delibes)
- A Suite from Firebird (Stravinsky), arranged for Organ Duet
