Deirdre Brenner and Carmen Flores
Night SongsThe natural intimate world that awakens after dark resounds through the viola and piano strings, featuring Bach, Boulanger, Montgomery and Clarke.
From whispered lullabies to moonlit dreamscapes, Night Songs traces the contours of the night through music by JS Bach, Reena Esmail, Jessie Montgomery, Nadia Boulanger, Rebecca Clarke and Dobrinka Tabakova. The viola and piano become the voice of twilight, tenderness and imagination.
Brenner '01 and Flores '00 first played together as Dartmouth students right here at the Hop. Now, they reunite, bringing decades of artistry and friendship back to the same stage.
"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?" Dr. Seuss
photos by Andrej Grilc
Pianist Deirdre Brenner '01 believes in the power of storytelling through concert curation. Over the past two decades she has grown a multifaceted career which combines performance, teaching and artistic leadership.
Deirdre has performed chamber music and art song recitals throughout the USA, Europe and Asia in venues including the Wiener Musikverein, Wiener Konzerthaus, Wiener Volksoper (Vienna), The Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), Teatro Real (Madrid), Philharmonie Essen, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Stadthalle Bayreuth, the National Concert Hall (Dublin), and the Hollywell Music Room (Oxford). She has appeared at festivals including the Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music, Oxford Lieder Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Schubertíada Vilabertran, Gustav Mahler Festival Steinbach, Rhodes Chamber Music Festival and Portogruaro International Music Festival.
Deirdre has partnered with artists including Wolfgang Holzmair, Birgid Steinberger, Tara Erraught, Michael Spyres, John Chest, Layla Claire, Elena Copons, Dorrotya Láng, Sophie Junker, Christina Gansch, Margaret Plummer and Klemens Sander, and has performed as soloist with the New Hampshire Philharmonic, Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, and the Arnold Schoenberg Chor, among others. Recent collaborations have included projects with Madison Ballet. She has recorded for broadcasts on NPR, ORF, RTÉ and BR-Klassik. Further musical projects have taken her to Venezuela, Egypt, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Samoa and the Kingdom of Tonga.
After almost two decades living in Vienna, Austria Deirdre joined the piano faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2025. She taught previously at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz, the Joseph Haydn Conservatory in Eisenstadt, IES Abroad, and the Performing Center Austria in Vienna. She has given masterclasses internationally.
In 2013 Deirdre co-founded the Boyne Music Festival (BMF) in Drogheda, Ireland, an annual summer festival of chamber music, poetry and song. The BMF has been celebrated for its exciting programs in unique historic settings in the Boyne Valley. From 2013 until 2018 she also curated the concert series Mosaïque in Vienna which fused art song with other artistic forms in innovative thematic programs.
Born in Massachusetts, Deirdre earned a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College with a double major in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Master's degrees from both the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien (MUK) in Vienna.
Originally from San Diego, CA, violist Carmen Flores '00 has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Asia and Europe and has been featured on several BBC Radio and television broadcasts. She studied viola and chamber music at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with Yizhak Schotten, and with Steven Dann at the Glenn Gould School, Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Based in the UK, Carmen has performed as soloist and Guest Principal Viola with numerous British orchestras and ensembles including the English National Opera, Sinfonia VIVA, Opera North, the English Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the European Union Chamber Orchestra. From 2007–2019, Carmen was Principal Viola of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, performing with the orchestra across the UK and abroad.
She is a founding member of the acclaimed Villiers Quartet (VQ), which is Quartet-in-Residence at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at Oxford University. Hailed as one of the most "adventurous" string quartets in the UK (Strad Magazine) and "Champions of British Music" (Guardian), the VQ has made several acclaimed recordings on the Naxos, Somm, Lyrita and Resonus Classics labels.
A sought-after collaborator in chamber music, Carmen has participated in numerous festivals, including Les Jardins Musicaux Festival, Tanglewood, Boyne Music Festival, and Chamber Music on Valentia. She performed as part of Midori's International Community Engagement Programme (ICEP) in Japan and Indonesia. She has received awards from the US Fulbright Foundation, the Virtu Foundation, the British Council, and Arts Council England. An experienced educator, Carmen has given performance masterclasses and workshops, and she is Viola professor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire of Music.
She is Director of the Nottingham Chamber Music Festival (NCMF), which celebrates chamber music and the creative community at venues in her hometown of Nottingham, UK. She performs on a viola made by British luthier William Castle.
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