ESSEX–Tara Helen O’Connor has joined Essex Winter Series as its newest artistic director for the 2026 season following Mihae Lee’s retirement from the role.
The organization in a recent press release said Lee held the leadership position for 15 years.
The group described Lee’s successor as an “exceptional musician who wishes to maintain the reputation, quality, and community commitment that her predecessor achieved.”
O’Connor, a flutist, is a charismatic performer noted for her “artistic depth, brilliant technique and colorful tone spanning every musical era,” according to the group.
A recipient of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and two-time Grammy nominee, she was the first wind player invited to participate in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program. She is a recurring featured artist with the Chamber Music Society.
O’Connor is a regular participant in numerous chamber music festivals across the country. Along with her husband Daniel Phillips, she is the newly appointed co-artistic director of the Music From Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico.
She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion String Quartet, St. Lawrence Quartet, Emerson String Quartet, Jaime Laredo, Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk, Jeremy Denk, Ida Kavafian, Peter Serkin and David Shifrin. 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. An advocate of new music, she is a member of the Talea and Cygnus Ensembles.
O’Connor has appeared on A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts and PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Bridge Records. She has just released a solo CD of American flute works entitled The Way Things Go on Bridge Records with pianist Margaret Kampmeier.
She holds a doctor of musical arts degree from Stony Brook University in New York. At the Purchase College School of the Arts Conservatory of Music, she is an associate professor of flute, head of the woodwinds department and the coordinator of classical music studies. She also serves on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory of Music, the Contemporary Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music and is a visiting artist, teacher and coach at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Mihae Lee Legacy Concert
Lee, who became Artistic Director of Essex Winter Series in 2011 when president Fenton Brown stepped down, has been recognized by the Essex Winter Series Board of Trustees through the creation of the annual Mihae Lee Legacy Concert starting in the upcoming season.
The group credited Lee with bringing in accomplished musicians and expanding community outreach to schools, senior communities and libraries.
“With at least four concerts each winter and five days of outreach every year in Middlesex and New London Counties, reaching thousands, her success is clear,” the group said.