US Recorder Ensemble Competes in the ORDA 2023 Competition
Written by Sarah Cantor
Five of Sarah Cantor’s students competed in the Open Recorder Days Amsterdam (ORDA) competition 2023. The group is called The Green Leaves Ensemble, whose members are Lydia Brosnahan, Edward Cipullo, Melika Fitzhugh, Michael Lauer, and Brian Warnock.
I had conflicting feelings about subjecting my students to the ORDA competition. Will a competition ruin the enjoyment of playing and the meaningfulness of music making? Will the result determine their self-worth as musicians and how they view themselves as an ensemble?
The Green Leaves Ensemble is one of the performance ensembles that I coach at Cantornote Studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The experience of preparing for concerts, gigs, and events like the ARS Recorder Relay, provides focus to the coachings and motivation for students to improve individually and as an ensemble. Once we decided to enter the ORDA competition, the focus jumped to a whole new level. We had been focusing on ensemble skills and leading and following each other. Now accuracy took center stage as we worked more on tuning, articulation, and memorization.
We narrowed our focus further by putting our baroque instruments away and working only with a Renaissance consort made by Tom Prescott. Our program was all Renaissance music except for a contemporary piece “A Written Biography is an Elegy” written by our very own Melika Fitzhugh (composer of ARS Play-the-Recorder Month piece "Transparent Letters Across the Sky").
Traveling overseas with the Renaissance contrabass was a concern. I reached out to Anna Stegmann, who is one of several recorder players in the Royal Wind Music that organizes ORDA. Anna found us a contrabass made by Ture Bergstrøm that was owned by the recorder ensemble Seldom Sene.
There was a certain excitement about the warm welcome from two renowned recorder ensembles in the Netherlands. Upon arriving in Amsterdam, Brian and Ed went on an adventure to Almere where they took a 45-minute train ride to recorder player Stephanie Brandt’s house to pick up the instrument. But what about playing on an unknown instrument? Brian had one day to get to know the instrument before the competition. We fought jet lag and rehearsed in the hotel lobby. We were deep in concentration and did not notice the hotel guests that had gathered to listen and cheered us on.
The festival was buzzing with the excitement of an international recorder community coming together to celebrate. In addition to the competition there were workshops, playing sessions, master classes, extraordinary professional concerts, fringe concerts and a recorder teachers conference. Two large rooms were filled with recorder makers exhibiting and the delightful cacophony of recorder players trying instruments. I was thrilled to run into classmates from my Conservatory days in Holland. The festival was run by members of the Royal Wind Music who welcomed people as they registered, introduced the concerts, escorted competitors to warmup rooms and answered questions.
Even though there were over 200 competitors from 13 countries ages 7-63, the atmosphere was supportive and professional. The Green Leaves performed to a full house with no available seats. I stood in the back near the judges’ table. I was beaming with pride as they entered the room and began playing the Silver Swan by heart. The audience became still, and I felt they were listening with more enjoyment than judgment.
The judges took the time to give individual feedback to each ensemble that would not play in the second round. We were among those that benefited from the insightful feedback. I had the feeling that the judges were inviting us to join them in exploring what the recorder has to offer and what we can bring to the instrument.
The Green Leaves experience inspired another of my performance ensembles, Baroque and Beyond, to join them in competing in ORDA 2025
To see the Green Leaves Ensemble competition performance, click the video link.
To find out more about ORDA, click here:
https://www.openrecorderdays.com
To learn more about Sarah Cantor’s performances and virtual and live classes click here:
www.cantornote.com
Photos: the Green Leaves Ensemble with guest coach Erik Bosgraaf; by a canal in Amsterdam; "the Sarahs" (Cantor and Jeffery); and the group preparing to perform at the competition. 
