RANGELEY — The Rangeley Friends of the Arts will sponsor a performance by the Woodland Chamber Ensemble at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 10, at the Church of the Good Shepherd. The ensemble will perform a varied program of concert music for flute, oboe, English horn, guitar, voice and piano, with music that has been chosen for its audience appeal.  

Ensemble members include Sue Downes-Borko, Victor Borko, Gail Russ and Barbara Ulman. Compositions by Telemann, Faure, Villa-Lobos, Vaughan Williams and many others, including ensemble member Ulman, will be presented. Music for Hugh Ogden’s poem “Fir on the Oquossoc Shore, Singing,” for voice, English horn and piano, was composed by Ulman specifically for members of this ensemble.

Downes-Borko has been a high school music teacher in Alaska, a staff accompanist for the College of New Jersey and a member of several flute quartets. She is the director of the Rangeley Community Chorus and has participated in many local music productions. Currently, she operates a private lesson studio and is the Minister of Music for the Rangeley Congregational Church.

Borko was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. He studied classical/jazz guitar and music education at the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts and then moved to Alaska, where he was a music educator. He has played guitar in many professional productions and has also played for celebrities including Bobby Rydell, Don Rickles and Bob Hope. He now resides with his wife, Sue, in Rangeley, where they run Gull Pond Music Studio. He plays guitar and keyboard at St. Luke’s and Our Lady of the Lakes churches and enjoys composing and performing sacred music and hymns on the classical guitar.

Russ teaches instrumental music in SAD 58, which includes Phillips, Kingfield, Strong, Stratton and Salem. Since moving to Maine in 2005, she has played oboe, clarinet and English horn for the Camden Pro Musica Orchestra, Monmouth Theater, Lewiston-Auburn Community Theater, the Bangor Symphony and other bands and orchestras in the area. She said, “I have the best ‘job’ ever: children and music; I have been blessed.”

Ulman began piano lessons at age 7, and has continued an active musical life ever since. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard/Radcliffe, while also studying piano chamber music at the nearby Longy School of Music. She has spent summers on Rangeley Lake since birth and now lives in the foothills near Yosemite National Park the rest of the year. In 1989 she completed a second Bachelor of Arts, in music theory and composition, at California State University, Fresno. She plays chamber music for fun and for public performance and also composes art songs and music for small ensembles and for chorus.

Tickets, for $15, can be purchased at the Chamber of Commerce and also at the door. For further information, call Barbara at 864-3629.

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