Staff report

International ensemble, Feste Fantini, will perform a concert at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in downtown Salisbury next month. The group includes Grammy-Award-winning trumpeter, Bruce Barrie; percussionist Genie Burkett; trumpeters Gary Malvern and Steven Trinkle; and organist Thomas Strauss.

Strauss performs regularly in Europe and worldwide as a conductor, soloist and chamber musician. Concert tours have taken Strauss to Brazil as pianist and organist with the Freiburg Chamber Choir in 2000, to New Zealand in 2002, to the south of France in 2008, and to South Africa as harpsichordist with the “Wolfgang Bauer Consort” in 2010.

He also performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician and, in addition to his engagements in Germany, has been invited to give organ and harpsichord concerts in France, Norway, Poland, Italy, Sardinia, Switzerland, Russia, Brazil, annually in the USA and Hawaii. In 2002, Shenandoah University of Wichester voted unanimously to award Thomas Strauss the “Conservatory Medal of Excellence.”

His oratorio “Johannes,” which he conceived with librettist Tilmann Krieg, premiered in 2022. Strauss has performed in numerous radio and television recordings as well as live broadcasts with SWR, HR and NDR, and has also recorded CDs with the Wolfgang Bauer Consort, the Datura Trombone Quartet, hr-brass, the brass section of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Wuerttemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and the recorder player Hans-Juergen Hufeisen.

The players of Feste Fantini have worked together since 1975 in brass quintets, symphony orchestras and many oratorio orchestras, most recently the B Minor Mass of J.S. Bach in Spartanburg, S.C. The group has performed for the “Festwoche klassischer Musik” in Oppenau and Offenburg, Germany, and for the American Guild of Organists in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Following their Salisbury concert, Feste Fantini are set to perform at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., on March 6.

The varied program will include baroque works by J.S. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, and also contemporary works by Harry Lockwood.

Feste Fantini performs Saturday, March 1, at 7 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 131 W. Council St. Salisbury. A donation of $10 per person is suggested. For more information, email communications@SLS.church or call the church office at 704-633-3221.