Tara Helen O’Connor

Artistic Director

Tara Helen O’Connor is a charismatic performer noted for her artistic depth, brilliant technique and colorful tone spanning every musical era. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a two-time Grammy nominee and the first wind player chosen to participate in The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), she is now a Season Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, Tara regularly participates in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto Festival USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Mainly Mozart Festival, the Banff Centre, Rockport Music, the Great Mountains Music Festival, Chesapeake Music Festival and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Tara is a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, the legendary Bach Aria Group and is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble.  She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion String Quartet, St. Lawrence Quartet and Emerson Quartet. Tara has appeared on A&E’s Breakfast for the Arts, Live from Lincoln Center and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Bridge Records.  Professor of Flute, and Chair of Classical Music Studies at Purchase College Conservatory, Tara is also on the faculty of Bard Conservatory of Music and the CPP program at Manhattan School of Music. She lives with her husband, violinist Daniel Phillips and their two miniature dachshunds, Chloé and Ava on the upper west side of Manhattan.