Emerald City Music Presents Violinist Jinjoo Cho in Two Immersive Multimedia Performances on April 19 and 20
Emerald City Music Presents Violinist Jinjoo Cho in Two Immersive Multimedia Performances on April 19 and 20
Jinjoo Cho, photo by Kyu-Tae Shim available in high resolution HERE.
Emerald City Music Presents Violinist Jinjoo Cho
in Two Immersive Multimedia Performances on April 19 and 20
Friday, April 19, 2024 at 8pm
415 on Westlake | 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA
Tickets (Seattle)
Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 7:30pm
The Minnaert Center for the Arts | 2011 Mottman Rd SW | Olympia, WA
Tickets (Olympia)
“[Emerald City Music is] creating a welcoming and more inclusive environment for intimate music-making”
– The Seattle Times
Seattle & Olympia, WA – Emerald City Music (ECM), deemed “the beacon for the casual-classical movement” by City Arts Magazine, presents two concerts featuring South Korean violinist Jinjoo Cho in immersive, multimedia performances on Friday, April 19, 2024 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 on Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N) and Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 7:30pm in Olympia at The Minnaert Center for the Arts (2011 Mottman Rd SW). A charismatic soloist, dynamic chamber musician, dedicated teacher, artistic director, and published writer, Jinjoo Cho is a versatile classical virtuoso of the 21st Century. Her program for Emerald City Music is anchored by artistic and historical contrast, featuring the music of Baroque masters Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Johann Sebastian Bach alongside a new work dedicated to Cho by Korean-American composer and pianist Juri Seo with projections created by visual artist Changyeob Ok
Emerald City Music is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Known for its casual environment combined with performances by award-winning musicians, ECM encourages attendees to enjoy its flagship “date-night experience” at 415 on Westlake, which features an open bar and a “wander-around” concert setting with no stage dividing the audience from the musicians. The Seattle Times calls ECM’s programming “very different,” praising its “nontraditional atmosphere” which allows for “artists [to] mingle with the audience during the intermission.” To reach audiences beyond its live presentations, all of ECM’s concerts are recorded and made available on Emerald TV, ECM’s subscription-based streaming platform for performances and additional video content.
“We are thrilled to welcome the dynamic and thrilling virtuoso violinist Jinjoo Cho to the ECM stage for the very first time! Not only is Jinjoo a mesmerizing violinist, but her creativity in sculpting innovative and eclectic programs is what makes her an outstanding artist,” says Emerald City Music Artistic Director Kristin Lee. “I am especially excited for her performance of Toy Store by composer Juri Seo which will be presented with multimedia visual art by artist Changyeob Ok. These will be one-of-a-kind evenings, which reinvent our venues at 415 on Westlake and the Minnaert Center as immersive multimedia experiences!”
The three vastly different works on this solo violin program create a “circle of life” narrative over the course of the evening. Beginning with the wandering mysteriousness of Biber’s Passacaglia for Solo Violin (1670) – one of the world’s oldest surviving solo violin works – the night gives way to Bach’s stately Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004 (1717-20), widely considered the apogee of violin repertoire. The centerpiece of Cho’s program is Juri Seo’s multimedia work Toy Store, a reflective journey through the various experiences of childhood that live on in our minds as adults. Drawing inspiration from punk jazz, John Adams, 19th century presto movements, and video game music, the first movement, Jack-in-the-Box, is a dramatic portrayal of surprise, humor, and obsession as experienced in a childlike mind. The second movement, Monster Truck, combines heavy metal and 18th century Chaconne to create a musical narrative that is at once violent and hilarious. Mobile, explores the feelings of comfort and fear associated with falling asleep, as one experiences a taste of death. In the penultimate movement, Roller Skates, resolution begins to take shape as the violin and prerecorded track participate in multi-part canonic unison. Finally in “Bubbles,” the ethereal soundscape of pizzicati, harmonics, and tremolo evokes lightness and release.
About Jinjoo Choo: Jinjoo Cho is the First Prize Winner of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and Concours Musical International de Montréal in addition to the Buenos Aires, Schoenfeld, and Stulberg Competitions. She has toured the world since the age of 11 and continues to perform at distinguished concert halls and festivals including the Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Aspen Music Festival, Gilmore Festival, La Jolla Music Society’s Summerfest, Banff Centre, Festival de Lanaudière, La Seine Musicale, Aigues-Vives Music Festival, Kronberg Academy, Schwetzingen Festspiele, Herkulessaal, Teatro Colón, Seoul Arts Center, and more. Cho has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Deutsche Radio Philharmonic, Orquesta Clásica Santa Cecilia de Madrid, Ensemble Appassionato, Seoul Philharmonic, and the North Carolina, Phoenix, and Charlotte symphonies. She is the founding Artistic Director of the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute and an Assistant Professor of Violin at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. She previously served as faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Oberlin Conservatory. Jinjoo is deeply passionate about sharing her love of music, in whatever form that it takes. Her creative explorations range from commissioning new works by composers Juri Seo and Andrew Rindfleisch to collaborating with artists of other disciplines including choreographer Jinyeob Cha. A consummate recording artist, Jinjoo Cho has recorded four albums on the Azica, Naïve Classique, Analekta, and Sony Classical labels. In 2021, her first book, Would I Shine Someday, was listed as a bestseller on major book platforms in Korea. For more information, visit www.jinjoocho.com.
About Kristin Lee, ECM Artistic Director: Emerald City Music’s founding Artistic Director Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.” As a soloist, Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee became a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center after winning The Bowers Program audition and completing the program's three-year residency. In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is a devoted educator. She is on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin. Kristin Lee’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant and top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions. Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley. For more information, visit www.violinistkristinlee.com.
About ECM
Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Deemed "the beacon for the casual-classical movement" (CityArts), ECM hosts world-renowned musicians in unique concert experiences. Founded in 2015, Emerald City Music produces and tours seven productions annually, with each tour visiting Seattle’s South Lake Union (415 Westlake, a chic contemporary venue with an open bar), Olympia’s Minnaert Center (a 495 seat modern concert hall), a once annual concert at the Bellingham Music Festival, and an annual concert in New York City.
ECM has gained recognition regionally and nationally as a major player in the chamber music scene. Emerald City Music made a name for itself beginning in its second season with a national collaborative commission with Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams, and has continued to press the boundary of chamber music with accolades like a tour of Steve Reich’s iconic and rare Music for 18 Musicians, a pitch-black performance of Georg Haas’s “In the Dark” quartet, and the West Coast debut of the Danish folk group The Dreamers’ Circus.
ECM values real, authentic connection and holds the belief that music possesses the innate power to connect people, inclusive of varying backgrounds and perspectives. Over eight years, artists from every corner of the globe have visited Emerald City Music to prove just that: there exists a special connection between artist and listener that only music can facilitate.
Follow ECM on Social Media
Facebook: www.facebook.com/emeraldcitymusic
Instagram: www.instagram.com/emeraldcitymusic
Newport Classical Music Festival Presents 27 Concerts from July 4-21 in Newport's Historic Mansions and Venues
Announcing the 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival - 27 Concerts from July 4-21 - Celebrating 55th Anniversary
Photos available in high resolution here.
2024 Newport Classical Music Festival Presents
27 Concerts from July 4-21, 2024
Celebrating its 55th Anniversary
Performances by Anne Akiko Meyers, Laura Benanti, Lara Downes, Joyce Yang, Chanticleer, Canadian Brass, Handel and Haydn Society, A Far Cry,
Sphinx Virtuosi, PUBLIQuartet, Isidore String Quartet, Sō Percussion with Caroline Shaw, and many more
Opera Night at The Breakers featuring La tragédie de Carmen
World Premiere of a New Work by Clarice Assad
Commissioned by Newport Classical
Historic Venues include The Breakers, The Elms, Castle Hill Inn, Chinese Tea House, and more
Tickets on Sale: www.newportclassical.org/music-festival
Newport, RI – The 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival will present 27 concerts this summer between July 4-21, 2024, bringing timeless music for today to Newport’s stunning historic mansions and venues including The Breakers, Blithewold Mansion in Bristol, The Elms, Castle Hill Inn, Chinese Tea House, King Park, Newport Art Museum, Norman Bird Sanctuary, Redwood Library & Athenæum, and more.
The Newport Classical Music Festival celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2024. For 55 years, Newport Classical has been a beacon for artistry, drawing in countless concertgoers to revel in exceptional performances within unique and intimate settings. Each July, against the picturesque backdrop of the City by the Sea, the Newport Classical Music Festival stands out as an unparalleled experience. With 27 concerts held in 11 historic venues over 18 days featuring 120 artists, patrons can craft a Festival itinerary tailored to their preferences. Be it the discovery of a new composer, the rhythm of percussion, or revisiting a beloved work with a fresh perspective, audiences are invited to broaden their musical horizons.
Highlights of the 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival include Opening Night with the dynamic and inspiring Sphinx Virtuosi and cello soloist Thomas Mesa; a sensational recital by acclaimed violinist Anne Akiko Meyers; the return to Newport of Chanticleer, Canadian Brass, and A Far Cry with special guests Kinan Azmeh and Dinuk Wijeratne; the Music Festival debut of the storied, Boston-based Handel and Haydn Society; two enchanting evenings with Tony Award-winning Broadway star Laura Benanti, recently a featured guest on HBO’s The Gilded Age; plus performances by star pianists Lara Downes, Joyce Yang, Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner, Drew Petersen, and Daniel del Pino; and appearances by numerous celebrated chamber ensembles including the Isidore String Quartet; PUBLIQuartet; Duo Kayo; Lincoln Trio; Fenway Quintet; Poulenc Trio with accordionist Hanzhi Wang; and Sō Percussion with vocalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.
For the fourth year in a row, Newport Classical has commissioned a brand new work to be premiered at the Music Festival. This year’s Composer-in-Residence is GRAMMY®-nominated Brazilian-American musician Clarice Assad, who is writing a new piece for mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier and PUBLIQuartet titled Whispers from the Pirate Queen, inspired by the unbreakable spirit of women who dare to challenge societal norms and fight for their convictions – including one of the earliest American feminists and famous Rhode Islander, Anne Hutchinson. Other highlights include the festival’s popular Opera Night at The Breakers which this year features Peter Brook’s production of Bizet’s La tragédie de Carmen, directed by Tara Barnham; Sunrise Meditations concerts; a concert inspired by nature at Norman Bird Sanctuary; a free Fourth of July concert at King Park; and this year’s young professional Newport Classical Festival Artists in eight performances throughout the festival.
Executive Director Gillian Friedman Fox, says, “Every summer Director of Artistic Planning and Engagement Trevor Neal and I aspire to curate a festival that celebrates the legacy of Newport Classical and introduces our audience to the musicians who are shaping the future of classical music. This year, for our 55th anniversary, we continue to honor music executed at the highest level and performed in magical settings. We are proud to offer an experience unlike any other.”
Now in its third year, Newport Classical’s Festival Artists Residency Program brings together five professional musicians at the early stages of their careers for an intense period of rehearsal and music making during the festival. This diverse group of emerging talents live, work, and play together, becoming engaged members of the community during their extended time in Newport. Each of these exceptionally gifted musicians are selected for their experience working in fast-paced chamber music settings and comfort tackling a wide range of repertoire. This summer, Newport Classical welcomes back returning artists Ariel Horowitz (violin), Jordan Bak (viola), and Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner (piano) alongside first-time artists SooBean Lee (violin) and Jonathan Swenson (cello). In varying configurations, the Festival Artists will perform in eight concerts as well as free community events.
2024 Newport Classical Music Festival Concerts:
The 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival kicks off on Thursday, July 4 at 7:30pm with a free, outdoor Fourth of July Patriotic Pops concert preceding the fireworks at King Park featuring Fenway Quintet, one of Boston’s most esteemed professional brass quintets, in a joyous program complete with percussion, celebrating America's birthday. This concert is part of the 2024 BankNewport Community Concerts Series, with additional support from a Rhode Island Foundation Community Grant.
Newport Classical Music Festival’s Opening Night concert on Friday, July 5 at 8pm at The Breakers features Sphinx Virtuosi, one of the nation’s most dynamic professional chamber orchestras, comprised of 18 of the nation's top Black and Latinx classical soloists. Set against the opulent backdrop of The Breakers, the self-conducted chamber orchestra will deliver a pioneering program spotlighting historically marginalized composers including Quenton Blache, Javier Farias, Andrea Casarrubios, Adolphus Hailstork, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. With cellist Thomas Mesa joining their ranks as soloist for GRAMMY®-winning composer Jessie Montgomery’s Divided, the brilliance and passion of this self-conducted ensemble promises to deliver an unforgettable performance.
On Saturday, July 6 at 8pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Joyce Yang, who captivates audiences with her virtuosity and interpretive sensitivity, brings her tactile, expressive playing to The Breakers. Acclaimed by The New York Times for her “vivid and beautiful playing,” Yang promises a passionate evening featuring music by the legendary Russian composers of the Romantic and Classical eras including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Mussorgsky.
On Sunday, July 7 at 9am, surrounded by the serene beauty of the Norman Bird Sanctuary, Newport Classical’s Festival Artists will present Italian Strings in Nature, a delightful program of Italian chamber music, including an arrangement of Rossini’s beloved William Tell Overture along with works by Boccherini, Cherubini, and Puccini.
In the evening on July 7, at 8pm at The Breakers, the GRAMMY® Award-winning male-voiced “orchestra of voices” Chanticleer makes their much-anticipated return to Newport after a sold-out concert during the 2021 Festival. Titled Music of a silent world, Chanticleer’s program features songs of the natural world and gives a voice to the rocks, stones, trees, and rivers that share the planet with us. Their performance will include music by Stephen Sondheim, Heinrich Isaac, and Joni Mitchell, and a new commission from Chanticleer’s composer-in-residence, Ayanna Woods.
On Tuesday, July 9, the day begins with an 11am concert at The Elms featuring the Festival Artists in an extraordinary program of Piano Trios. Delve into the rich tapestry of classical repertoire, beginning with Beethoven's lively and nimble Piano Trio in B-flat Major, journeying through Elfrida Andrée's evocative and dramatic Piano Trio in G minor, and culminating in the sublime beauty of Schumann's revered Piano Trio No. 1.
On Tuesday, July 9 and Wednesday, July 10 at 8pm at The Breakers, Newport Classical welcomes Broadway’s legendary Laura Benanti, celebrated for her Tony Award-winning performances and captivating presence on stage and screen, including her memorable role in HBO's The Gilded Age. Known for her iconic portrayals in Gypsy, Into the Woods, Nine, and My Fair Lady, Benanti will dazzle audiences with her unparalleled talent, extraordinary voice, and undeniable star power in these intimate, not-to-be-missed performances with pianist Billy Stritch, music director for stars including Tony Bennett and Liza Minnelli.
Two of last year’s Festival Artists, violist Edwin Kaplan and cellist Titilayo Ayangade, return to Newport as the innovative Duo Kayo for a performance on Wednesday, July 10 at 4pm at Newport Art Museum. Making bold statements in the classical music world, Duo Kayo challenges traditional thinking about the genre, serving as a vessel for new and exciting music. Surrounded by the Museum’s beautiful art collection, audiences can enjoy an interdisciplinary afternoon featuring a diverse program, from Vivaldi’s Double Cello Concerto, to Leonard Bernstein’s “Cool” from West Side Story, to the world premiere of a new piece by Newport Classical’s 2023 Composer-in-Residence Curtis Stewart. 2024 Festival Artists Jordan Bak and Jonathan Swenson join Kaplan and Ayangade for the final work by Paul Wiancko, Vox Petra.
On Thursday, July 11 at 11am, the Festival Artists present French Musings at The Elms. Inspired by the 18th-century French chateau d’Asnieres outside Paris, The Elms is the perfect place for a morning concert of delightful French repertoire ranging from Baroque elegance to neoclassical charm, including works by Marais, Leclair, Tailleferre, and Saint-Saëns.
That evening, Thursday, July 11 at 8pm, Opera Night brings director Peter Brook’s captivating reimagining of Bizet's timeless masterpiece Carmen to the festival, delving deep into the intricate relationships of the four lead characters. This semi-staged production of La tragédie de Carmen is directed by Tara Branham, and features the same beloved arias and musical moments, infused with renewed vitality and intensity, all set against the breathtaking backdrop of The Breakers. The cast includes Dane Suarez as Don José, Stephanie Sanchez as Carmen, Maria Brea as Micaëla, and Jeffrey Hoos as Escamillo, with music direction by Charles Kim.
Friday, July 12 begins with a 5:15am Sunrise Meditations concert at the Chinese Tea House. Witness the dawn of a new day with the Newport Classical Festival Artists as they enchant audiences with a program of meditative musical selections, immersing listeners in a journey curated to instill a sense of positivity and buoyancy, featuring music by Telemann, Glière, Sibelius, Haydn, and Elgar.
That evening, Friday, July 12 at 8pm at The Breakers, the GRAMMY®-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry returns to Newport, joined by Canadian pianist Dinuk Wijeratne and acclaimed Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, for an unforgettable evening of musical storytelling and global connection. This deeply personal and reflective program explores themes of emigration, travel, and home, featuring original compositions by Wijeratne and Azmeh in the first half. Following intermission, revel in the enchanting melodies of a young Janáček as he draws inspiration from Czech folk traditions, a lush showcase for the ensemble.
Hailed as the epitome of brass excellence, Canadian Brass treats Newport to an extensive program of compositions ranging from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 to the heartfelt melodies of the classic folk song “Danny Boy” on Saturday, July 13 at 8pm. Renowned for their captivating concert presentations that seamlessly blend virtuosity with charm, Canadian Brass promises to ignite The Breakers with their genre-transcending talents.
On Sunday, July 14 at 3pm, the Poulenc Trio with virtuoso accordionist Hanzhi Wang will present a spellbinding performance highlighting the accordion's versatility and charm at the historic Redwood Library & Athenæum. Their program spans genres and eras, creating an engaging musical dialogue, and includes music by Vivaldi, Poulenc, Rossini, plus emerging star composers Juri Seo and Viet Cuong, and the world premiere of a new work for solo accordion by Hanzhi Wang titled Mountain’s song: Echoes of Kawagarbo which reflects her personal pilgrimage to the sacred mountain.
That evening, Sunday, July 14 at 8pm, Newport Classical presents An Evening with Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. The GRAMMY®-nominated trailblazing violinist, joined by the virtuosic pianist Max Levinson, graces the illustrious halls of The Breakers in her Newport debut with an exquisite program that includes a new piece specifically commissioned for her by the legendary Philip Glass. Meyers’ concert also includes music by Corelli, Beethoven, Márquez, and Morten Lauridsen.
Newport Classical presents Classical Music Movie performed by the Festival Artists on Tuesday, July 16 at 11am at Blithewold Mansion, bringing together the magic of film with the beauty of chamber music. Experience John Williams' haunting Schindler's List and the nostalgic charm of E.T. alongside the adventurous spirit of Indiana Jones and the fantasy of Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, Lord of the Rings, and more. Enjoy a boxed lunch on the grounds following the performance by pre-ordering from Blithewold in advance.
That evening, Tuesday, July 16 at 7:30pm, Two Pianos are Better than One unites the dynamic talents of Drew Petersen and Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner at the picturesque Castle Hill Inn, for a thoughtfully curated program of works for two pianos that includes music by Mozart, Wagner, Beach, Rachmaninoff, and Chaminade.
On Wednesday, July 17 at 11am, the Lincoln Trio performs a morning concert at The Elms that marks their 20th anniversary as an ensemble. Revered for their pioneering spirit and innovative contemporary repertoire, the Trio will perform the iconic Brahms C Major Piano Trio which catapulted them to acclaim alongside a curated selection of works by trailblazing female composers, including the visionary Stacy Garrop, whose groundbreaking composition left a lasting impression as the inaugural Composer-in-Residence for Newport Classical in 2021.
That evening, Wednesday July 17 at 8pm at The Breakers, Newport Classical presents the Isidore String Quartet. This red-hot young quartet was founded in 2019 at the Juilliard School and launched their career by winning one of the most prestigious awards in chamber music at the 2022 Banff Competition. Their artistry and potential were further recognized when they were awarded a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Hailed for their “blazing virtuosity” by Violinist.com, the Isidore Quartet aims to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the string quartet repertoire. They perform music by Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Billy Childs at The Breakers.
At The Breakers on Thursday, July 18 at 8pm, Spanish pianist and beloved past Festival Artist Daniel del Pino, accompanied by the talented violist Marian Herrero and the 2024 Festival Artists, unveils a treasure trove of rarely performed masterpieces by Spanish composers. Experience the richness and diversity of Spanish musical heritage in pieces by J.S. Bach, Bowen, De Falla, Del Campo, culminating with Joaquín Turina's celebratory masterpiece, Escena Andaluza for viola, piano, and string quartet.
Friday, July 19 begins with a 5:15am concert at Chinese Tea House, Melodic Introspections at Sunrise, performed by the Festival Artists. Experience the stunning sunrise over Newport’s iconic Cliff Walk during this inspiring and introspective concert which features works by Lei Liang, Dobrinka Tabakova, Wei-Chieh Lin, Florence Price, and Beethoven.
The Handel and Haydn Society, established in 1815 and acclaimed for its performances of Baroque and Classical music for 209 seasons, performs at The Breakers on Friday, July 19 at 8pm. The ensemble brings classical music to life with the same immediacy it had the day it was composed. Their joyful programming features acclaimed soloists soprano Joélle Harvey, violinist Aisslinn Nosky, and oboist Debra Nagy in a series of concerti and works for chamber orchestra from the Baroque period by Corelli, Handel, and J.S. Bach.
On Saturday, July 20, at 3pm, Festival Artist Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner performs an invigorating afternoon piano recital at historic Emmanuel Church, known for its breathtaking English Gothic Revival architecture that enhances the acoustic ambiance. “A gifted virtuoso” (San Francisco Chronicle), Sánchez-Werner quickly became a beloved pillar of the Newport Classical Music Festival last summer, bringing technical prowess and passion to every electrifying chamber performance. In this solo appearance, he performs music by Chopin, Beethoven, Rubio, Velázquez, and Rachaminoff.
That evening, on Saturday, July 20 at 8pm at The Breakers, PUBLIQuartet and special guest mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier perform the world premiere of a new work commissioned by Newport Classical from 2024 Composer-in-Residence Clarice Assad. A bold composer, a brilliant pianist, and an inventive vocalist, Assad's theatrical composition is her newest chapter in Chronicles of Ghosts. Whispers from the Pirate Queen explores the timeless bond between two remarkable women: Grace O'Malley, the legendary 16th-century Irish pirate queen, and Anne Hutchinson, the influential Puritan spiritual leader and pioneer of the 17th century. PUBLIQuartet pairs the new piece with What is American, a captivating reimagination of Dvořák's American Quartet, blending classical melodies with blues, jazz, and rock influences, as well as music by Vijay Iyer, Duke Ellington, and Julia Perry. At 11am that morning, Assad will give a free Composer Talk at Emmanuel Church Library, discussing her new work.
On Sunday, July 21 at 11am, Sō Percussion with vocalist and composer Caroline Shaw perform at The Colony House. Enjoy the vibrant collaboration of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw and the innovative Sō Percussion in an electrifying program blending voice and percussion quartet as they share the music from their newest album, Rectangles and Circumstance. Co-written by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion, the genre-blending songs use verses from nineteenth-century poems by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake. Chamber music meets singer-songwriter storytelling in this extraordinary performance showcasing vital, expressive, and imaginative music-making.
That afternoon, Sunday, July 21 at 2pm, pianist Lara Downes, hailed as “a musical ray of hope” by NBC News, gives a free family concert at Temple Shalom, before performing at The Breakers that evening at 8pm in the Newport Classical Music Festival Closing Night concert. The American pianist and cultural visionary returns to Newport after a sold-out performance on the 2021 Festival to present THIS LAND, a concert that captures 100 years of American transformation, celebrating the spirit of innovation and imagination, resilience and resistance, and reflecting a wide diversity of voices to illustrate the beauty that grows at the crossroads of our American journeys. THIS LAND features music by Scott Joplin, Arturo O’Farrill, Florence Price, Kian Ravaei, William Grant Still, Angelica Negrón, Jake Heggie, Margaret Bonds, George Gershwin, and more.
For the full schedule, visit: www.newportclassical.org/music-festival
About Newport Classical
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc. and previously known as Newport Music Festival, Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 55 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of music on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.
Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, and Clarice Assad.
Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir Announced as a Winner of the CHANEL Next Prize
Anna Thorvaldsdottir Announced as a Winner of the CHANEL Next Prize
Photo courtesy of CHANEL, available in high resolution here.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir Announced as a Winner of the CHANEL Next Prize
One of Ten Artists Awarded
“[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance” – The Times
“Thorvaldsdottir's natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.” – The Guardian
More Information About the CHANEL Next Prize
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: CHANEL Next Prize Profile
Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has been selected as one of the ten winners of the CHANEL Next Prize, the second edition of the House’s international arts and culture prize, announced by the CHANEL Culture Fund. Jurors of the 2024 edition include actress Tilda Swinton, artist Cao Fei, and curators Legacy Russell and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Each artist embodies CHANEL’s mission to advance the new and the next. Each of the ten prize winners will receive €100,000 in funding, allowing them to fully realize their most ambitious artistic projects.
The NEXT Prize was established in 2021 as part of the CHANEL Culture Fund, CHANEL’s global initiative to accelerate the ideas that advance culture, extending the House’s century-long legacy of cultural patronage.
Yana Peel, the Global Head of Arts & Culture at CHANEL, says: “The CHANEL Next Prize was founded to amplify the work of artists who are making a difference and redefining their discipline. Each is a catalyst and a pioneer. Each is disrupting established practice in their field, from art and opera to cinema and game design. Watching their creative journeys will be thrilling.”
Anna Thorvaldsdottir says: “It is such an honor to receive the CHANEL Next Prize from this iconic and monumental institution. It is a true pleasure to be one of the awarded artists in this wide-ranging recognition of various art forms from around the world. The prize shines an important and distinctive light on diverse fields within the arts and shows unequivocal commitment to the support of the arts and culture into the future."
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and "riveting" (The Times) sound world has made her “a leading voice in contemporary music” (The Guardian). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times.
Anna’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least twenty-one countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Slovenia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Her current schedule is available on her website.
This season also brings the world premiere of Anna’s major new installation piece METAXIS by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on June 1, 2024 at Harpa, part of the opening celebration of the 2024 Reykjavík Arts Festival and of the festival's collaboration with Harpa and the ISO. Anna describes METAXIS as, “an installation for deconstructed orchestra and space.” Audiences will have the unique opportunity to explore the music from different perspectives, as they wander through Harpa’s iconic foyer and feel how their experience of the music changes with every step. The musicians will be spread out over the different levels of the building, blending together in myriad ways and creating a unique sound world with innumerable textures. The piece is half an hour in length and will be conducted by Eva Ollikainen.
Anna’s music is widely recorded, and all of her orchestral works are available on the Sono Luminus label. Most recently, Sono Luminus released Anna’s latest portrait album, ARCHORA / AIŌN, which was recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen. The album was chosen as one of the best of 2023 by The Boston Globe, NPR, and The New York Times. The label’s previous releases include CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques in 2023; METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020. Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.
Anna’s work is frequently performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Anna’s “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy.
Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra 2018-2023, Anna was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego, and is currently based in the London area.
The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is published by Chester Music, part of Wise Music Group.
Website: annathorvalds.com
Instagram: @annathorvalds
Facebook: @annathorvaldsdottirmusic
X: @annathorvalds
About the CHANEL Culture Fund
Extending a century of commitment to the arts, the CHANEL Culture Fund fosters a vibrant network of creators and innovators to advance the ideas that shape culture worldwide.
Core programmes include CHANEL’s Art Partners, institutions whose leaders seek to collaborate on ground-breaking, long-term initiatives that bring innovation to the cultural landscape. The CHANEL Next Prize celebrates artists and accelerates their future successes through access to resources and mentorship. And the podcast CHANEL Connects amplifies the voices of thought-leaders across disciplines, generations, and geographies – tackling the defining issues of our time.
From emerging curators at the MCA Chicago to leading ecologists at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, from game-changing artists at the Venice Biennale to the brightest directors at the British Film Institute, the CHANEL Culture Fund champions creative audacity for a better future.
April 2: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Lebanon Valley College Performing the Music of George Walker and Antonin Dvořák
Telegraph Quartet Presented by Lebanon Valley College Performing the Music of George Walker and Antonin Dvořák
Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
Telegraph Quartet Presented by Lebanon Valley College
Performing the Music of
George Walker and Antonin Dvořák
Tuesday, April 2, 2024 at 7:30pm
Lutz Recital Hall at Blair Music Center
101 College Ave. | Annville, PA
Free and Open to the Public - More Information
New Album: Divergent Paths (Azica Records)
Available Now
“full of elegance and pinpoint control” – The New York Times
Annville, PA – On Tuesday, April 2, 2024, the San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” will be presented in concert by Lebanon Valley College performing the music of George Walker and Antonin Dvořák. The concert is free and open to the public.
George Walker’s sublime Lyric is an emotive and moving tribute to his grandmother, Melvina King, and was first published as part of his String Quartet No.1. Walker composed his first quartet in a neo-romantic style when he was 23 years old, at a time when classical music in America was turning toward a more severe, mathematical approach. Dvořák crafted his String Quartet No. 14 in A flat-major –– his final chamber piece –– in two stages: starting around March 1895 when he was scheduled to depart the United States to return to his homeland and then revisiting the work in December 1895, after writing his Quartet in G Major. He finished the A flat-major in just under three weeks and the music largely reflects Dvořák’s spiritual temperament during this time, which was one of uplifting positivity and joy
Telegraph Quartet says of performing the historically and culturally complex music in this program:
“When Dvorak came to the U.S. to be the director of the National Conservatory of Music, he spent three years exploring the culture and folk music here and encouraged his American colleagues to use their own folk music as the foundation for a distinct American style, just as he had succeeded in doing for Bohemia. He placed a great emphasis specifically on the music of Native American and African American folk music from which he felt American composers should draw their inspiration and began his last string quartet at the end of his famed visit. A half century later, in spite of all of the societal barriers thrown in his and his ancestors’ paths, we find George Walker, an African American composer of great talent and skill forging his own style and voice in his String Quartet No. 1. While it does not overtly heed Dvorak’s advice of building its foundation on American folk music per se, it does exude a distinctly American and modern style, full of haunting lyricism and defiantly sinewy harmonies that respectively entice and demand the attention of the listener.”
The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released on August 25 via Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”
About Telegraph Quartet: The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as, “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The Telegraph Quartet released its new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths––which features Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet––on August 25 via Azica Records.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
About Lebanon Valley College: Lebanon Valley College educates students for lifelong success through exceptional undergraduate liberal arts programs and professional graduate programs delivered in an engaging and supportive academic and co-curricular environment. We educate our students to think critically and creatively, analyze and address complex issues, and communicate effectively. We guide them in deepening their commitment to inclusion, civic engagement, and global citizenship.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, described by The New York Times as being “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented in concert by Lebanon Valley College on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 at 7:30pm. The Bay Area ensemble will perform a program that features two works deeply shaped by personal experiences and relationships, written in the 19th and 20th centuries: George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 Lyric (1946) and Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193 (1895).
Short description: The Telegraph Quartet, which is described as “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented in concert by Lebanon Valley College on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 at 7:30pm. The ensemble will perform the music of Walker and Dvořák.
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Lebanon Valley College
What: Music by Walker and Dvořák
When: Tuesday, April 2, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Lutz Recital Hall at Blair Music Center, 101 College Ave., Annville, PA 17003
Tickets and information: www.lvc.edu/events/burgner-series-telegraph-quartet/
Robert Sirota: The String Quartets Presented by the Kaufman Music Center Featuring the American String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, and Soprano Abigail Fischer
Robert Sirota: The String Quartets, Presented by the Kaufman Music Center and Featuring the American String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, and Soprano Abigail Fischer
Photo by Ryuhei Shindo available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/robert-sirota
Robert Sirota: The String Quartets
Presented by the Kaufman Music Center
Featuring the American String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, and Soprano Abigail Fischer
Thursday, April 11, 2024 at 7:30pm
Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center | 129 W 67th St. | New York, NY
“Sirota’s musical language is personal and undogmatic, in the sense that instead of aligning himself with any of the competing contemporary styles, he follows his own internal musical compass.” – Allan Kozinn, The Portland Press Herald
New York, NY – On Sunday, April 11, 2024 at 7:30pm, Kaufman Music Center will present Robert Sirota: The String Quartets, featuring the American String Quartet and the Telegraph Quartet with soprano Abigail Fischer, performing Sirota’s complete works for string quartet thus far. For the first time ever, Sirota's four string quartets –– each of which he describes as “in essence a long journal entry reflecting a response to our times" –– will be heard together in one concert program: Triptych (2002), American Pilgrimage (2016) Wave Upon Wave (2017) and the New York premiere of Contrapassos for soprano and string quartet (2019) with text by Stevan Cavalier.
Over five decades, composer Robert Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernible in all of his work – whether symphonic, choral, stage, or chamber music. Writing in the Portland Press Herald, Allan Kozinn asserts: “Sirota’s musical language is personal and undogmatic, in the sense that instead of aligning himself with any of the competing contemporary styles, he follows his own internal musical compass.
Robert Sirota's impressive catalog of composed work evokes a wide range of emotion that touches on several aspects of the human experience. He says of this collaborative performance and the highlighting of his string quartets:
“I am so looking forward to hearing this significant body of work performed in a single evening by great musicians I have worked with for many years.” .
In response to the calamitous events of September 11, 2001, Sirota wrote Triptych –– the first of what would become a trilogy of string quartets. The work is meant as a commemorative tribute to all those lost on the day of the attacks. The composition was written in conjunction with a painting of the same name by artist Deborah Patterson. Following the premiere of Triptych in September of 2002 at Trinity Church Wall Street, Lucid Culture called the performance "viscerally harrowing,” "impactful," and "riveting."
American Pilgrimage was written by Sirota for the American String Quartet. Though initially reluctant to write another string quartet following Triptych, Sirota found his inner vision for the new piece, calling American Pilgrimage “a true companion” to Triptych. The raw material of the work is derived from four sources: Protestant hymnody, Gospel music, Native American songs, and jazz. The Arts Fuse describes the American String Quartet's premiere recording of American Pilgrimage as “compelling and invigorating.”
Wave Upon Wave is the final piece in the trilogy of quartets that Sirota began with Triptych in 2002. Sirota explains that the quartet is about human hopes, and fears, as well as “prayers that we will triumph over the forces of darkness which threaten to overwhelm us.” Fittingly, The New York Music Daily describes the work as “a search for hope within the human soul.”
After several postponements of its 2020 premiere due to the pandemic, Contrapassos' long awaited debut was presented in July 2022 by the Sierra Chamber Society. With text by librettist Stevan Cavalier and vocals by soprano Abigail Fischer –– a dear, long-time friend of Sirota's –– the 24-minute work for string quartet and soprano reflects a seamless collaboration between poetry, vocal, and instrumental music, inspired by the imagery of Dante. This concert will mark its New York premiere.
More about Robert Sirota: Robert Sirota’s works have been performed by orchestras across the US and Europe; ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound, Sequitur, yMusic, Chameleon Arts, and Dinosaur Annex; Concerts on the Slope; the Chiara, American, Ethel, Elmyr, Blair and Telegraph String Quartets; the Peabody, Concord, and Webster Trios; and at festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, and Cooperstown; Bowdoin Gamper and Bowdoin International Music Festival; and Mizzou International Composers Festival. Recent commissions include Jeffrey Kahane and the Sarasota Music Festival, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Palladium Musicum, American Guild of Organists, the American String Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, the Naumburg Foundation, and yMusic, Thomas Pellaton, Carol Wincenc, Linda Chesis, Trinity Episcopal Church (Indianapolis), and Sierra Chamber Society, as well as arrangements for Paul Simon.
Since 2021, Sirota has presented Muzzy Ridge Concerts, an annual series featuring performances by world-class musicians, in his home studio in Searsmont, Maine. Robert Sirota has received grants from the Guggenheim and Watson Foundations, NEA, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center. His music is recorded on Legacy Recordings, National Sawdust Tracks, and the Capstone, Albany, New Voice, Gasparo and Crystal labels, and is published by Muzzy Ridge Music, Schott, Music Associates of New York, MorningStar, Theodore Presser, and To the Fore. For complete information, visit www.robertsirota.com.
About Telegraph Quartet
About American String Quartet
About Soprano Abigail Fischer
For Calendar Editors:
Description: On April 11, 2024, The Kaufman Music Center will present Robert Sirota: The String Quartets, a performance featuring four of the composer’s works as performed by the American String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, and Soprano Abigail Fischer: Triptych (2002), American Pilgrimage (2016), Wave Upon Wave (2017) and the New York premiere of Contrapassos for soprano and string quartet (2019), with text by Stevan Cavalier. The Portland Press Herald describes Sirota’s works, which encompass an array of emotions and experiences, as “personal and undogmatic.”
Short description: On April 11, 2024, The Kaufman Music Center will present Robert Sirota: The String Quartets. The American String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, and soprano Abigail Fischer will perform a program of Robert Sirota’s “personal and undogmatic” (Portland Press Herald) four string quartets: Triptych (2002), American Pilgrimage (2016) Wave Upon Wave (2017) and the New York Premiere of Contrapassos for soprano and string quartet (2019).
Concert details:
What: Robert Sirota: The String Quartets
Who: Telegraph Quartet, American String Quartet, and Soprano Abigail Fischer
Presented by Kaufman Music Center
When: Thursday, April 11, 2023 at 7:30pm
Where: Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th St, New York, NY 10023
Tickets and Information: www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/robert-sirota-the-string-quartets
Jupiter Quartet and Pianist Kenneth Osowski are Presented by York College of Pennsylvania – Performing Music by Wynton Marsalis, Su Lian Tan & Dvořák
The Jupiter String Quartet and Pianist Kenneth Osowski, Presented by York College of Pennsylvania
Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Elle Logan available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/jupiter-string
The Jupiter String Quartet and pianist Kenneth Osowski Perform in York on April 12
Presented by York College of Pennsylvania
Performing Music by Wynton Marsalis, Antonin Dvořák & Su Lian Tan
Friday, April 12, 2024 at 7:30pm
Waldner Performing Arts Center
441 Country Club Road | York, PA
Free and Open to the Public
More Information
“technical finesse and rare expressive maturity” – The New Yorker
York, PA – The Jupiter String Quartet –– internationally acclaimed winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition, who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) –– will be presented in concert by York College of Pennsylvania at Waldner Performing Arts Center (441 Country Club Road) on Friday, April 12, 2024 at 7:30pm. The concert will feature a collaboration with York College faculty pianist Kenneth Osowski. The performance is free and open to the public.
The Jupiter Quartet will perform a program of works that spans more than a century and highlights a range of musical styles.The first half of the concert will include excerpts from At the Octoroon Balls, String Quartet No. 1 by Wynton Marsalis (1995), as well as Su Lian Tan’s Life in Wayang (2002). Mr. Osowski will join the quartet in the second half for a performance of Antonin Dvorak's Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 (1887).
This globally inspired program pairs Su Lian Tan’s evocation of traditional South Asian puppet theater with Wynton Marsalis’ exploration of the complicated American Creole experience through the lens of a New Orleans ball. The program finishes with chamber music by Dvořák. His second Piano Quintet in A Major feels like the climatic milestone, as Dvořák had attempted to write in the quintet form, to his personal dissatisfaction, 10 years before this work’s conception in 1887. Not only does the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major reflect a successful second attempt and a sophisticated display of chamber writing but its completion overlapped with a burst of international recognition for Dvořák.
The Jupiter Quartet says of performing this program and performing with Ken Osowski:
”We have known Ken since the very early years of our string quartet career, when all of us were students together at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Vermont. He is a dynamic and engaging pianist, with an incredibly wide knowledge of musical styles and genres, and it is always a joy to get to play with him.”
Based in Urbana and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Brought together by ties both familial and musical, the Jupiter Quartet has been performing together for 23 years. Exuding an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous, the Quartet celebrates every opportunity to bring their close-knit and lively style to audiences.Their connections to each other and the length of time they’ve shared the stage always shine through in their intuitive performances.
More About Jupiter String Quartet: This tight-knit ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music. Artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana since 2012, the Jupiter Quartet maintain private studios and direct the University’s chamber music program.
The Jupiter Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Music at Menlo, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.
Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two.
About Kenneth Osowski:
Ken Osowski serves as Associate Professor of Music at York College. Professor Osowski earned a doctoral degree from the Peabody Conservatory, a master’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. He serves as Principal Pianist of the York Symphony Orchestra, Collaborative Pianist for the York County Senior Honors Choir, and Founder/Artistic Director for the York Chamber Players. Professor Osowski has collaborated with the Jupiter, Lydian, and Parker String Quartets, and Apollo Chamber Players. He has also appeared as soloist with the Hershey Symphony and York Symphony Orchestra.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign who are described by The New Yorker as having “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” is presented by York College of Pennsylvania for a performance at Waldner Performing Arts Center (441 Country Club Road). The ensemble will perform a stylistically diverse, collaborative program that includes excerpts from At the Octoroon Balls, String Quartet No. 1 by Wynton Marsalis, Su Lian Tan’s Life in Wayang and Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 (1887), performed with pianist Ken Osowski.
Short description: The Jupiter Quartet, who are described as having an ensemble of “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity” (The New Yorker), is presented by York College of Pennsylvania in a collaborative concert with pianist Ken Osowski, performing the music of Wynton Marsalis, Su Lian Tan, and Antonin Dvořák.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet with Pianist Ken Osowski
Presented by York College of Pennsylvania
What: Music by Su Lian Tan, Wynton Marsalis, and Antonin Dvořák
When: Friday, April 12, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Waldner Performing Arts Center, 441 Country Club Road, York, PA 17403
Tickets and information: www.ycp.edu/news-and-events/events/featured/
April 5: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Presented with Baroklyn by Gogue Performing Arts Center – Featuring the Music of J.S. Bach
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Presented with Baroklyn by Gogue Performing Arts Center
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented with Baroklyn by Gogue Performing Arts Center
Featuring the Music of J.S. Bach
Third Performance as part of the Gogue Center’s 2023–24 Orchestra & Chamber Music Series
Friday, April 5, 2024, 7pm
Woltosz Theatre at Gogue Performing Arts Center
910 South College Street | Auburn, AL
“colorful and idiosyncratic” – The New York Times
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Auburn, AL – On Friday, April 5, 2024, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein returns to the Woltosz Theatre at the Gogue Performing Arts Center (910 South College Street) for her third performance as part of the Gogue Center’s 2023–24 Orchestra & Chamber Music Series. Dinnerstein, who is heralded for her distinctive musical voice and commitment to sharing classical music with everyone, will perform together with her ensemble Baroklyn, in a concert the Baroque-era music of J.S. Bach. The program will include Sonata in D Major for Cello and Piano; Keyboard Concerto in D Minor; Sonata in C Minor for Violin and Piano; and Keyboard Concerto in E Major. The evening’s program is subject to change.
Over the course of more than a decade, Dinnerstein has steadily gained recognition as both a skilled and imaginative performer of Bach’s music. Public appreciation for her performances of his music began with the exuberant and wide-reaching reception of her 2007 debut album featuring J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The recording reflected an aesthetic that was both profoundly idiosyncratic and deeply rooted in the score. Dinnerstein is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Since then, Dinnerstein has remained passionately dedicated to continually honing her artistry and musicianship across the extensive breadth of J.S. Bach’s body of work for solo piano and collaborative performances. The Washington Post has called Simone Dinnerstein “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” Baroklyn merges Dinnerstein’s appreciation for musical collaboration with musical leadership, as Dinnerstein both founded the ensemble and conducts the group from the piano.
Of bringing a collaborative performance with Baroklyn to the Gogue Performing Arts Center and illuminating the iconic music of J.S. Bach:
”I am so excited to bring the principal members of Baroklyn to Auburn and the Gogue Performing Arts Center. Every one of these musicians is a superlative musician, and they bring individual personality and life to every voice of Bach’s intricate counterpoint.”
Simone Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Seoul Arts Center and the Sydney Opera House.
She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard classical charts, with repertoire ranging from Couperin to Glass. From 2020 to 2022, she released a trilogy of albums recorded at her home in Brooklyn during the pandemic. A Character of Quiet (Orange Mountain Music, 2020), featuring the music of Philip Glass and Schubert, was described by NPR as, “music that speaks to a sense of the world slowing down,” and by The New Yorker as, “a reminder that quiet can contain multitudes.” Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic (Supertrain Records, 2021), surpassed two million streams on Apple Music and was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The final installment in the trilogy, Undersong, was released in January 2022 on Orange Mountain Music.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.
For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein –– who has gained recognition as both a proficient and imaginative performer of Bach’s music and is described by The New York Times as “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” –– is presented in concert with Baroklyn. Dinnerstein is the Artistic Director of the ensemble, which she also conducts from the piano. The collaborative performance will feature an array of music by Baroque era icon, J.S. Bach, including two concertos and two sonatas.
Short description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” (The New York Times) is presented in a performance with Baroklyn, the chamber ensemble Dinnerstein conducts from the piano and of which she is the Artistic Director. Together they will perform the music of J.S. Bach.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn
Presented by the Gogue Performing Arts Center
What: Music by J.S. Bach
When:Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7pm
Where: Woltosz Theatre at Gogue Performing Arts Center, 910 South College Street, Auburn, AL
Tickets and information: www.goguecenter.auburn.edu/simone-dinnerstein-with-baroklyn/
April 5: Telegraph Quartet Presented by University of Vermont Lane Series Performing the Music of Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
Telegraph Quartet Presented by University of Vermont Lane Series Performing the Music of Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
Telegraph Quartet Presented by University of Vermont Lane Series
Performing the Music of
Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7:30pm
UVM Recital Hall | 384 South Prospect Street | Burlington, VT
Tickets & Information
New Album: Divergent Paths (Azica Records)
Available Now
“full of elegance and pinpoint control” – The New York Times
Burlington, VT – On Friday, April 5, 2024, the San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” will be presented in concert by the University of Vermont Lane Series. The award-winning ensemble will perform a program featuring Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet, George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric” and Antonin Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193.
Each of the works on this program are directly shaped by significant relationships and delicate emotional connections in the composers’ lives. In hearing them together, one gets not only an artistic performance but also a glimpse into how these composers viewed their respective relationships. There’s a degree of personal intimacy one can take away from the music that extends beyond straightforward historical facts.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel wrote her String Quartet in the shadow of her highly praised brother Felix, taking a bold step and ultimately choosing to embrace her own musical voice rather than defer to a style or form that would have been more accepted by her sibling and long-time musical confidant. George Walker’s Lyric poses a more direct but no less meaningful interpersonal connection, as a tribute to his grandmother Melvina King. The relationship itself is obvious but what makes it even more powerful is Walker’s decision to turn away from the more widely used mathematical musical style being used in America at the time, in favor of a more emotionally driven neo-romantic style, in order to write a piece fitting of the vision Walker had for honoring King. Dvořák’s final chamber work, his String Quartet No. 14 in A flat-major, doesn’t extend ties to a specific individual the way Mendelssohn’s and Walker’s works do. However, the 1895 quartet embodies a profound relationship all the same: Dvořák’s vacillating connection to the cultures of the United States – where he wrote part of the quartet – and his love of the Bohemian culture and his home in Prague, where he eventually completed the piece. Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music and the experiences of composers, the Telegraph Quartet will blend their own deeply forged relationships with each of these works to bring the unique ties of the songs to life with an engaging and attentive artistry.
The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released on August 25 via Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”
More about Telegraph Quartet: Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as, “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The Telegraph Quartet released its new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths––which features Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet––on August 25 via Azica Records.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
About University of Vermont Lane Series: The George Bishop Lane Series was established in 1955 by a generous gift from the Lane family and has been presenting the finest in live performing arts since 1955. We have approximately 25 events a season, primarily in the comfortable, intimate, and acoustically superb UVM Recital Hall on Redstone Campus. We enjoy an international reputation as presenters of classical, jazz, folk/traditional, chamber, and choral music as well as theater, film, and dance. As a program of the University of Vermont School of the Arts , we are also dedicated to providing educational outreach to students of all ages, both on and off campus.
Serving as a link among many constituencies, the Lane Series finds its audience, volunteers, and advisors from the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of UVM as well as the community at large. In addition to the presentation of performances, the Lane Series ensures students and public direct interaction with performers through master classes, workshops, residencies, lectures, and receptions. The Lane Series is committed to a dual mission of cultural presentation and outreach, and education. Through our ARTIX program we provide free tickets to over 30 social service agencies to insure arts access to all audiences. We also offer reduced ticket prices to students.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, described by The New York Times as being “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented in concert by the University of Vermont Lane Series on Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7:30pm. The Bay Area ensemble will perform a program featuring three works that are shaped by immensely personal experiences and relationships, written during the 19th and 20th centuries: Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat major (1834), George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 Lyric (1946) and Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193 (1895).
Short description: The Telegraph Quartet, which is described as “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented in concert by Lebanon Valley College on Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7:30pm. The ensemble will perform the music of Walker and Dvořák.
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by University of Vermont Lane Series
What: Music by Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
When: Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: UVM Recital Hall, 384 South Prospect Street, Burlington, VT 05405
Tickets and information: www.uvm.edu/laneseries/telegraph-quartet
April 18-20: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA in Boston Premiere Performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA in Boston Premiere Performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Andris Nelsons
Photo by Saga Sigurdardottir available in high resolution at www.annathorvalds.com/photos
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA
in Boston Premiere Performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Andris Nelsons
April 18-20, 2024 | Symphony Hall | 301 Massachusetts Ave. | Boston, MA
Tickets & Information
“The energy that inspires the Icelandic composer’s colossus doesn’t feel of this Earth, but rather an internal combustion – we are the sublime composite of everything. Low, bellowing brass and woodwinds drone as flutes carry our light forward. Monumental music that feels rigorously intimate.” – Lars Gotrich, NPR, on ARCHORA
“Thorvaldsdottir’s music partakes of deep, primordial textures and a mysterious sense of structure and flow.” – David Weininger, The Boston Globe, on ARCHORA
First Commercial Recording of ARCHORA is Available Now on Sono Luminus
Chosen as One of the Best Albums of 2023 by NPR, The Boston Globe, & The New York Times
Press downloads available upon request.
Read a Q&A with Anna about ARCHORA from Wise Music Classical
Boston, MA – Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s latest major orchestral work, ARCHORA, will receive its Boston premiere performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons in concerts on April 18 at 7:30pm, April 19 at 1:30pm, and April 20 at 8pm, at Symphony Hall. The program also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 and Brahms’ Violin Concerto with guest soloist Hilary Hahn.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “riveting” (The Times) sound world has made her “a leading voice in contemporary music” (The Guardian). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times in its review of ARCHORA.
ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." The premiere was selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.
ARCHORA is featured on Anna’s latest portrait album, ARCHORA / AIŌN, which was recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen and released on the Sono Luminus label. The album was chosen as one of the best of 2023 by The Boston Globe, NPR, and The New York Times. (Press downloads available upon request).
Anna writes of ARCHORA:
The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centres around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The piece revolves around the extremes on the spectrum between the Primordia and its resulting afterglow – and the conflict between these elements that are nevertheless fundamentally one and the same. The halo emerges from the Primordia but they have both lost perspective and the connection to one another, experiencing themselves individually as opposing forces rather than one and the same. As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such – it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece.
All of Anna’s orchestral music is now available on Sono Luminus. In addition to ARCHORA / AIŌN, in spring 2023 the label released Anna’s major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques, conducted by Daníel Bjarnason. Sono Luminus’s previous releases include METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020.
Anna’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least sixteen countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Slovenia. Her current schedule is available on her website.
More about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy, as well as commissions by many of the world’s top orchestras. CATAMORPHOSIS was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in January 2021, following the orchestra’s European premiere of METACOSMOS with Alan Gilbert in 2019. CATAMORPHOSIS received its UK premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot in June 2022, with the US premiere with the New York Philharmonic and Santtu-Matias Rouvali taking place in January 2023. ARCHORA - the latest addition to Anna’s “ever-growing and ever more essential catalogue of orchestral pieces” (BBC Radio 3) - was premiered at the BBC Proms in August 2022, by the BBC Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen. The work received its US premiere with the LA Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen in May 2023. And “while [she] has made the symphony orchestra her own,” according to Gramophone magazine, “her chamber music is cut from the same cloth and somehow sounds with much the same combination of immensity and intimacy.” Anna’s recent string quartet Enigma was recorded and released by Sono Luminus in August 2021, performed by the Spektral Quartet, and was one of the New York Times’s recordings of the year (“a masterly entrance to the genre”). Portrait albums with Anna’s works have appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, Sono Luminus, and Innova.
Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations – such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Among the many other orchestras and ensembles that have performed her music include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Quatuor Bozzini, BBC Singers, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Portrait concerts with Anna’s music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including Wigmore Hall, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, London’s Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester’s Nachtmusic der Moderne series, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s Point Festival. Other prominent venues and festivals include the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, London’s Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Darmstadt Summer Course, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Helsinki’s Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. Invited lectures and presentations include Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra 2018-2023, Anna was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego.
For more information: www.annathorvalds.com
April 8 & 9: San Francisco's Telegraph Quartet Presented in Two Virginia Performances
Telegraph Quartet Presented in Two Virginia Performances – Performing Music by Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
Photo of the Telegraph Quartet by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
The Telegraph Quartet Performs in Norfolk and Williamsburg, Virginia
Performing the Music of
Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
Monday, April 8, 2024 at 7:30pm
Kaufman Theater at Chrysler Museum of Art
1 Memorial Place | Norfolk, VA
Tickets and Information
Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 7:30pm
Williamsburg Regional Library | 515 Scotland St. | Williamsburg, VA
Tickets and Information
New Album: Divergent Paths (Azica Records)
Available Now
“precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication” – The Strad
Norfolk & Williamsburg, VA – The award-winning, San Francisco-based, Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” will be presented in two performances on Monday, April 8 in Norfolk, VA and Tuesday April 9 in Williamsburg, VA. For each of these concerts, the Bay area ensemble will perform a program featuring Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet, George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric” and Antonin Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193.
On April 8 at 7:30pm, the Telegraph Quartet will be presented in concert by the Feldman Chamber Music Society at the Kaufman Theater at Chrysler Museum of Art (1 Memorial Place). Then on Tuesday April 9, the group will travel to Williamsburg where they will be presented in concert by the Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg at the Williamsburg Regional Library (515 Scotland St.).
Each of the works on the Telegraph Quartet’s program are directly shaped by significant relationships and delicate emotional connections in the composers’ lives. In hearing them together, one gets not only an artistic performance but also a glimpse into how these composers viewed their respective relationships via melodic expression. There’s a degree of personal intimacy one can take away from the music that extends beyond straightforward historical facts.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel wrote her String Quartet in the shadow of her highly praised brother Felix, taking a bold step and ultimately choosing to embrace her own musical voice rather than defer to a style or form that would have been more accepted by her sibling and long time musical confidant. George Walker’s Lyric poses a more direct but no less meaningful interpersonal connection, as a tribute to his grandmother Melvina King. The relationship itself is obvious but what makes it even more powerful is Walker’s decision to turn away from the more widely used mathematical musical style being used in America at the time, in favor of the more emotionally driven neo-romantic style, in order to write a piece fitting of the vision Walker had for honoring King. Dvořák’s final chamber work, his String Quartet No. 14 in A flat-major, doesn’t extend ties to a specific individual the way Mendelssohn’s and Walker’s works do. However, the 1895 quartet embodies a profound relationship all the same: Dvořák’s vacillating connection to the cultures of the United States – where he wrote part of the quartet – and his love of the Bohemian culture and his home in Prague, where he eventually completed the piece. Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music and the experiences of composers, the Telegraph Quartet will blend their own deeply forged relationships with each of these works to bring the unique ties of each song to life with an engaging and attentive artistry.
The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released on August 25 via Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”
More about Telegraph Quartet: Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as, “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The Telegraph Quartet released its new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths––which features Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet––on August 25 via Azica Records.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, described by The New York Times as being “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented in two performances on Monday, April 8 and Tuesday April 9, 2024 –– both at 7:30pm. Both concerts will feature the Bay Area ensemble performing a program featuring three works that are shaped by immensely personal experiences and relationships, written during the 19th and 20th centuries: Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat major (1834), George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 Lyric (1946) and Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193 (1895).
Short description: The Telegraph Quartet, which is described as “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented in concert by Lebanon Valley College on Friday, April 5, 2024 at 7:30pm. The ensemble will perform the music of Walker and Dvořák.
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Feldman Chamber Music Society
What: Music by Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
When: Monday, April 8, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Kaufman Theater at Chrysler Museum of Art, 1 Memorial Place, Norfolk, VA 23510
Tickets and information: www.chambermusicwilliamsburg.org/telegraph-quartet-april-9-2024/
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg
What: Music by Fanny Mendelssohn, George Walker, and Antonin Dvořák
When: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Williamsburg Regional Library, 515 Scotland St., Williamsburg, VA 23185
Tickets and information: www.feldmanchambermusic.org/telegraph-quartet-april-8-2024/
Newport Classical Announces Spring Community Concerts Free, Casual, and Welcoming to All
Newport Classical Announces Spring Community Concerts
Free, Casual, and Welcoming to All
L-R: Empire Wild (photo by Titilayo Ayangade), Invoke (photo by Nathan Russell) available in high resolution here.
Newport Classical Announces Spring Community Concerts
Free, Casual, and Welcoming to All
Presented by BankNewport
Empire Wild
Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 2:30pm
Newport Craft Brewing | 293 JT Connell Highway | Newport, RI
Invoke
Sunday, May 19, 2024 at 2:30pm
Miantonomi Memorial Park | 120 Hillside Ave | Newport, RI
Information & Registration: www.newportclassical.org
Newport, RI – Newport Classical presents two spring Community Concerts featuring Empire Wild on Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 2:30pm at Newport Craft Brewing (293 JT Connell Highway) and Invoke on Sunday, May 19, 2024 at 2:30pm at Miantonomi Memorial Park (120 Hillside Ave). Audiences can look forward to these casual, engaging, and welcoming concerts – presented right in their own Newport neighborhoods. The performances are free and advanced registration is required for Empire Wild due to the limited capacity of the Taproom. Registration is requested but not required for Invoke’s performance at Miantonomi Memorial Park.
On April 28, Empire Wild brings a genre-bending musical experience to Newport Craft Brewing, where audiences can purchase beer and bites to enjoy during the performance. Empire Wild channels their love for musical exploration into their sound, fusing pop, folk, jazz, and more. In this program, the group puts its own spin on music by composers whose work has endured the test of time. Hear classics by Beethoven, Ravel, Bach and more brought to new life in the trio’s unique arrangements, at this free concert – fun for listeners of all ages.
On May 19, Invoke, described as “...not anything but everything: Classical, Folk, Bluegrass, Americana and a sound yet to be termed seamlessly merged into a perfect one,” brings its signature blend to Miantonomi Memorial Park. Invoke strives to successfully dodge even the most valiant attempts at genre classification. The multi-instrumental quartet encompasses traditions from across America, including bluegrass, Appalachian fiddle tunes, jazz, and minimalism. Featuring violin, viola and cello, plus banjo, mandolin, and vocals, this free, family-friendly concert promises a joyful afternoon outdoors, with music and community.
These free concerts are generously presented as part of the BankNewport Community Concerts Series with additional support from the NewportFed Charitable Foundation, RISCA, and a Rhode Island Foundation Community Grant.
Up next as part of Newport Classical’s Chamber Series, on March 22 bassoonist Eleni Katz and pianist Evren Ozel bring to life classical bassoon repertoire exploring themes of dance styles, rhythms, lyricism, and emotion, at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport. Newport Classical’s April 26 Chamber Series concert will be performed by the award-winning Balourdet Quartet, which recently won the Grand Prize at the 2021 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, and will feature music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Karim Al-Zand. Polish-American soprano Magdalena Kuźma, praised as a "standout" with "star quality" by Opera News, performs a program spanning from Chopin to Rachmaninoff to Rodgers and Hammerstein on May 17. On June 7, pianist Asiya Korepanova closes the Chamber Series with music by Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Beach, Chopin, and more. Celebrating its 55th anniversary, the 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-21, 2024, with programming to be announced on March 26, and tickets going on sale to the general public on April 10.
For Newport Classical’s complete concert calendar, visit www.newportclassical.org/concerts
About Newport Classical:
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc. and previously known as Newport Music Festival, Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music.
Newport Classical is proud to be an essential pillar of New England’s cultural landscape, and to invest in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form. Newport Classical’s four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow – illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
April 19: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein is Guest Soloist with Berkshire Symphony
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs as Guest Soloist with Berkshire Symphony
Photo by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs as Guest Soloist with the Berkshire Symphony
Featuring Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major
Conducted by Music Director Ronald Feldman
Friday, April 19, 2024 at 7:30pm
Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall | 54 Chapin Hall Drive | Williamstown, MA
Free and Open to the Public - More Information
“colorful and idiosyncratic”
– The New York Times
Williamstown, MA – On Friday, April 19, 2024, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will be the featured guest soloist with the Berkshire Symphony in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major. The concert will be held at Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall (54 Chapin Hall Drive) and will be conducted by Ronald Feldman –– his final performance as the Berkshire Symphony’s Music Director. A beloved guest artist of the Berkshire Symphony, Dinnerstein returns for the first time since 2015, to perform as part of a concert program that also features Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major. There will be a pre-concert talk with Ronald Feldman at 6:45pm in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. This event is free and open to the public. There are no reservations or ticketing.
The Washington Post has called Simone Dinnerstein “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
While Dinnerstein has come to be recognized and celebrated for her appreciation of music by J.S. Bach, she has also brought bold and expressive artistry to the work of Brahms in performances for over 10 years –– including the other of Brahms’ two piano concertos: No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15. Brahms’ second piano concerto is a newer addition to her repertoire –– one which Dinnerstein has been excited to perform this season.
She says of performing Brahms’s second piano and getting to collaborate with Ronald Feldman and the Berkshire Symphony on an all-Brahms program:
“I am honored to join Ronny Feldman for his final concert as the beloved music director of the Berkshire Symphony. We last collaborated on Brahms’s First Piano Concerto for the reopening of the beautiful Chapin Hall and it will be a joy to collaborate on his Second piano concerto for this special event. Since he is also a fine cellist, I know that Ronny will bring a special sensitivity to this work, which so prominently features the cello in the gorgeous third movement. And it just so happens that Julian Müller will be playing principal cello in this performance. I’ve known Julian since he was a student of mine at the Mannes School of Music, and he is a member of my string ensemble, Baroklyn. It will be an added joy to play this work with him.”
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
About the Berkshire Symphony: The Berkshire Symphony is a 75-member symphonic orchestra comprising, in roughly equal proportions, Williams College music students, Williams music faculty members, and area professionals. The Symphony performs music by a range of composers, including Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Wagner. The Berkshire Symphony was founded in 1946 and is directed by Ronald Feldman.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” is the featured soloist with the Berkshire Symphony, conducted by Music Director Ronald Feldman. Dinnerstein will perform Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2. in B-flat Major. The concert will also include a performance of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major. A pre-concert talk will be held at 6:45pm in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. This event is free and open to the public. There are no reservations or ticketing.
Short description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” (The Washington Post) is the guest soloist with the Berkshire Symphony in Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, led by Music Director Ronald Feldman. The concert will also include Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. There will be a pre-concert talk at 6:45pm in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. This event is free and open to the public.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Conducted by Music Director Ronald Feldman
Presented by the Berkshire Symphony
What: Music by Johannes Brahms
When: Friday, April 19, 2024 at 7:30pm, Pre-Concert Talk at 6:45pm
Where: Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, 54 Chapin Hall Drive, Williamstown, MA 01267
Tickets and information: www.events.williams.edu/event/berkshire-symphony-62
March 22: Newport Classical Brings Eleni Katz and Evren Ozel in Music by Saint-Saëns and Debussy to Downtown Newport
Newport Classical Brings Eleni Katz and Evren Ozel in Music by Saint-Saëns and Debussy to Downtown Newport
Eleni Katz (left) and Evren Ozel (right). Photo by Geneva Lewis available in high resolution here.
Eleni Katz and Evren Ozel play Saint-Saëns and Debussy
Friday, March 22, 2024 at 7:30 PM
Newport Classical Recital Hall | 42 Dearborn St | Newport, RI
Tickets and Information
Read an interview with Eleni Katz in the Newport Daily News
“potent and agile bassoon”
–South Florida Classical Review
“daring creativity and fierce passion”
–ClevelandClassical.com
Newport, RI – Continuing its commitment to ongoing year-round programming and following two sold out concerts in January and February, Newport Classical presents its next Chamber Series concert featuring bassoonist Eleni Katz and pianist Evren Ozel on Friday, March 22, 2024 at 7:30pm at Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.). In her Newport Classical debut, Eleni Katz performs music by French composers Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Noël Gallon, and Camille Saint-Saëns alongside Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Deep River, 2024 GRAMMY-winner Jeff Scott’s Elegy for Innocence, and Cindy Hsu’s Spring Fever. Katz will be joined by pianist Evren Ozel in his return to the Newport Classical stage – together the two bring to life classical bassoon repertoire exploring themes of dance styles, rhythms, lyricism, and emotion.
Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. Audiences are invited to enjoy these performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with a complimentary glass of wine from Greenvale Vineyards. Both performers and audience members alike have described these concerts as some of their favorites. “I always enjoy the artist, but I also enjoy the attendees. Each attendee seems to have such a genuine interest in the music,” raved one concert goer. “The concert was absolutely breathtaking ... What beautiful music and a perfect setting for the performance,” said another.
Hailed for her virtuosity and vibrant musical spirit, bassoonist Eleni Katz has established herself as a prominent soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player – and one of the country’s foremost bassoonists. What makes Katz’s performances special is her approach to this instrument. Eleni Katz is a classically trained singer and has always believed that the bassoon should emulate the human voice. The Royal Gazette described her playing as “uncannily human.”
A native of Iowa City, Iowa, Eleni Katz trained at University of Wisconsin’s Mead Witter School of Music before earning her master’s degree at the Yale School of Music. In 2022, she was named a winner of the Concert Artist Guild Competition and enjoyed her Carnegie Hall debut through Young Performers Career Advancement. She performs across the country including with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Jupiter Chamber Players, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra.
Pianist Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician of “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), combining fluent virtuosity with probing, thoughtful interpretations. He is the recipient of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is currently represented by Concert Artists Guild as an Ambassador Prize Winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition. Most recently, he was selected as a Bowers Program Artist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Since his debut at age 11 with the Minnesota Orchestra, Ozel has gone on to be a featured soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, Boston POPS Orchestra, and The Orchestra Now at Bard College.
More about the Concert Program:
Eleni Katz and Evren Ozel will begin their concert in Newport with Camille Saint-Saëns’ Sonata for Bassoon and Piano, Op. 168, showcasing the full range of the bassoon’s rich dynamics and lyricism, before performing Debussy’s Images II and Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera. Originally written for bass voice and piano, Ravel later transcribed his Pièce en forme de Habanera for cello and piano. The work incorporates the grace and movement of the habanera dance form with technically difficult melodic passages and lush accompaniment. Cindi Hsu’s Spring Fever opens the program following intermission. Composed in the spring of 2017, Hsu’s two-movement piece for bassoon and piano is inspired by the spring-bloom of flower fields outside her Colorado home.
The penultimate work on Katz’s and Ozel’s program, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Deep River, draws on the tradition of Black spirituals. Coleridge-Taylor famously noted, “What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies.” Closing out the program is Jeff Scott’s Elegy for Innocence. Beginning with emotive melodic ascensions, the piece quickly turns darker, with virtuosic interplay between the bassoon and piano, encompassing the hardships of personal growth. The program also includes selections from Debussy’s Preludes, Book 1; Noel Gallon’s Récit et Allegro, a mainstay of the bassoon repertoire; Leon Kirchner’s Interlude II; and Coleridge-Taylor’s The Phantom Tells his Tale of Longing, Op. 66.
More about Eleni Katz: www.elenikatzbassoon.com
More about Evren Ozel: www.evrenozel.com
Newport Classical’s next Chamber Series concert is on April 26, performed by the award-winning Balourdet Quartet, which recently won the Grand Prize at the 2021 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, featuring music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Karim Al-Zand. Polish-American soprano Magdalena Kuźma, praised as a "standout" with "star quality" by Opera News, performs a program spanning from Chopin to Rachmaninoff to Rodgers and Hammerstein on May 17. On June 7, pianist Asiya Korepanova closes the Chamber Series with music by Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Beach, Chopin, and more. The 2024 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-21, 2024, with programming to be announced on March 26.
For Newport Classical’s complete concert calendar, visit www.newportclassical.org/concerts
About Newport Classical:
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc. and previously known as Newport Music Festival, Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music.
Newport Classical is proud to be an essential pillar of New England’s cultural landscape, and to invest in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form. Newport Classical’s four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow – illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
April 12-16: Premiere Tour of Song Cycle by Gity Razaz Performed by Karim Sulayman and the Israeli Chamber Project
Premiere Tour of Song Cycle by Gity Razaz Performed by Karim Sulayman and the Israeli Chamber Project
Photos available in high resolution here.
World Premiere Tour of New Song Cycle by Composer Gity Razaz
Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being
Performed by Tenor Karim Sulayman and the Israeli Chamber Project
Friday, April 12, 2024 at 7:30pm
Kaufman Music Center | 129 West 67th Street | New York, NY
Tickets & Information
Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 7:30pm
Bender JCC of Greater Washington | 6125 Montrose Road | Rockville, MD
Tickets & Information
Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 7:30pm
Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington
4040 George Washington Lane Northeast | Seattle, WA
Tickets & Information
“There’s an uncompromising beauty to works by the Iranian-born American composer.” – BBC Music Magazine
“Razaz has a compelling voice and refreshing command of sonority and harmony.” – San Diego Union-Tribune
Stream the Canadian Premiere Performance of Razaz’s Methuselah (In Chains of Time):
https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/35704
Composer Gity Razaz’s music has been hailed by The New York Times as “ravishing and engulfing” and in 2022, she was named a “Rising Star” by BBC Music Magazine. Her new song cycle, Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being, will be given its world premiere performances by the Israeli Chamber Project with Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman in three performances in April – in New York, NY at Kaufman Music Center on April 12; in Rockville, MD at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington on April 14 as part of the Poling Artists of Excellence Concert Series; and in Seattle, WA at Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington on April 16. Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being for tenor, violin, viola, cello, clarinet, harp and piano is based on poetry and prose of Rumi and Rainer Maria Rilke. The song cycle is commissioned by the Israeli Chamber Project.
Gity Razaz, who was born in Tehran, Iran in 1986 and now lives in New York, is a composer whose music is deeply influenced by the constantly changing, at times tumultuous, realities of the world, including her identity and personal journey as an immigrant. This process of what Razaz describes as “uprooting and rebuilding” occupies much of her work, resulting in music that is emotionally charged and dramatic, while still maintaining mystery and lyricism. Her compositions are her means of responding to a hyperactive, disconnected world and offering transformation to listeners.
Razaz’s new song cycle, Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being, juxtaposes the writing of Rumi and Rainer Maria Rilke. In an interview with I Care If You Listen, Razaz explains:
“Rumi and Rilke lived about 700 years apart and on nearly opposite sides of the earth, and with completely different religious backgrounds. Yet their philosophical and imaginative perspectives on some of the most existential topics in the history of mankind are eerily similar. In the poems selected for this project, I was attracted to the almost identical poetic imagery they both used in the poems which I ended up selecting for this project: they both use the imagery of ‘widening rings and circles’ to describe life and existence. Rumi calls for embracing uncertainty and living the ‘questions,’ ‘flowing down the always widening rings of being’ while Rilke acknowledges life’s unyielding truth, and moves through it with the confession that ‘I live my life in widening circles.’…”
“Tibi Cziger, artistic director of the Israeli Chamber Project, and I have been dreaming up a collaboration for many years,” Razaz says. “It’s been a joy to finally write for this fantastic ensemble, and of course, Karim Sulayman, whose voice is absolutely divine and sure to bring such depth of color and expression to these poems.”
“I first heard Gity Razaz’s music when we were both students at the Juilliard School, nearly twenty years ago,” says Israeli Chamber Project Artistic Director and clarinetist, Tibi Cziger. “Her unique, original and meaningful voice was already apparent and it was clear to me that I would one day commission a work from her. When the idea to collaborate with tenor Karim Sulayman was hatched, we at ICP felt the need and even the duty to include a new, original work, and I could not think of a more appropriate composer to reflect the beauty of this collaboration. The upcoming premiere is one of the artistic peaks in the sixteen years of our existence and we are eagerly looking forward to it.”
Also this spring, Razaz’s major orchestral work Methuselah (In Chains of Time), commissioned by the League of American Orchestras and Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, received its Canadian premiere in performances in February by the National Arts Centre Orchestra conducted by Alexander Shelley. The performance is available to stream online in full on NACO’s website.
Other spring 2024 highlights for Razaz include a performance by Alisa Weilerstein of Secrets, Invocations for solo cello, presented by Washington Performing Arts at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC on April 6, 2024. The piece in two movements was commissioned by Weilerstein as part of her multi-year FRAGMENTS project which weaves the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works.
More about Gity Razaz:
Gity Razaz’s music has been commissioned and/or performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, Seattle Symphony, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, National Sawdust, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, former cellist of the Kronos Quartet Jeffrey Zeigler, cellist Inbal Segev, violinist Jennifer Koh, League of the American Orchestras, violinist Francesca dePasquale, Metropolis Ensemble, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, and Amsterdam Cello Biennale among many others.
Recent works include a piece for Alisa Weilerstein and her ground-breaking project Fragments, a commission from BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo for the prestigious Last Night of the BBC Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and a world premiere with San Diego Symphony under Rafael Payare as part of an ambitious multiple-orchestra spanning initiative from the League of American Orchestras. Upcoming commissions include a collaboration with Israeli Chamber Project and the Grammy-winning tenor, Karim Sulayman, as well as a concerto for flautist Sharon Bezaly and London’s Wigmore Soloists.
Her compositions have earned numerous national and international awards, such as the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters that is “is given to a composer of demonstrated artistic merit in mid-career”, the Jerome Foundation award, the Libby Larsen Prize in 28th International Search for New Music Competition, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Composer Institute, Juilliard Composers’ Orchestra Competition, multiple ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer awards, ASCAP Plus Awards, Juilliard’s Palmer Dixon Award for the outstanding composition of the year in 2010 and 2012, as well as special recognition from the Brian Israel Composition Prize, Margaret Blackburn Memorial Competition, the League of Composers (ISCM), to name a few.
Razaz’s debut album, The Strange Highway, which was recently released on Sweden’s preeminent BIS Records, has garnered international praise. As described by BBC Music Magazine, “There’s an uncompromising beauty to these works by the Iranian-born American composer, the opening title work, for cello octet, is a wild rhythmic ride, while the closing Metamorphosis of Narcissus offers some fantastic musical storytelling. Impressive.”
Violinist Kristin Lee is Guest Soloist with the Olympia Symphony
Violinist Kristin Lee is Guest Soloist with the Olympia Symphony
Performing Tchaikovsky’s Virtuosic Violin Concerto Conducted by Music Director Alexandra
Photo by Lauren Desberg available in hi-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/kristin-lee
Violinist Kristin Lee is Guest Soloist for
the Olympia Symphony’s Concert Pride on March 17
Performing Tchaikovsky’s Virtuosic Violin Concerto
Conducted by Music Director Alexandra Arrieche
Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 3pm
Washington Center for the Performing Arts
512 Washington St. SE | Olympia, WA
Kristin Lee: www.violinistkristinlee.com
Olympia, WA – On Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 3pm, violinist Kristin Lee, praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy,” will be the featured soloist with the Olympia Symphony, led by Music Director Alexandra Arrieche at Washington Center for the Performing Arts (512 Washington St. SE) in a concert titled Pride. Lee will perform Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s passionate Violin Concerto in D Major from 1878 as part of this program exploring the theme of prohibited love – the composer had intended to dedicate the piece to his partner but relented to societal pressure to hide that he was gay. The concert also includes Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story in an unconventional mashup arrangement, and a special, unannounced encore. Pride is part of Olympia Symphony’s 2023-2024 season True Colors, which invites audiences to appreciate authenticity.
Kristin Lee is a familiar face in Olympia. She last soloed with the Olympia Symphony in spring 2022, giving a fiery performance of Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. She is also co-founder and Artistic Director of Emerald City Music, which presents eclectic and vibrant chamber music performances in both Olympia and Seattle. The series was recently deemed "the beacon for the casual-classical movement" (CityArts) and seeks to provide concert experiences that leave both the audience and performers mutually transformed.
Lee is dedicated to forging personal connections between audiences and classical music. She performs widely as a member of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, including on tour in Italy, Croatia, Germany, Taiwan, and across the U.S. Always up for adventure, at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, Lee has performed in such unexpected places as rafting down the Colorado River, in a natural rock grotto, and in the magical landscape of the red rock canyons of the area.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity.” Lee has performed as soloist with leading orchestras around the world including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many more.
Of returning to perform with the Olympia Symphony, Lee says,
“Olympia holds such a very special place in my heart, especially because of the many meaningful friendships I’ve made through Emerald City Music. I am extremely thrilled to join forces again with my friends at the Olympia Symphony to perform my absolute favorite piece - Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. This will be my first time collaborating with Alexandra [Arrieche] and from the incredible development of the Olympia Symphony I have followed and witnessed through her leadership, I know that she is an absolute force of nature! I can hardly wait to see the magic we'll bring together to the stage!”
Born in Seoul, Kristin Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, and Itzhak Perlman. Her many honors include awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Her violin was crafted in Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley.
Lee is committed to the future of classical music as a devoted mentor and educator for the next generation, serving on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin, and teaching in residencies with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute, among others. For more information, visit www.violinistkristinlee.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Violinist Kristin Lee, praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy,” will be the featured soloist with the Olympia Symphony, led by Music Director Alexandra Arrieche, in a concert titled Pride. Lee will perform Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s passionate Violin Concerto as part of this program exploring the theme of prohibited love – the composer had intended to dedicate the piece to his partner, but relented to societal pressure to hide that he was gay. The concert also includes Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story in an unconventional mashup arrangement, and a special, unannounced encore. Pride is part of Olympia Symphony’s 2023-2024 season True Colors, which invites audiences to appreciate authenticity.
Concert details:
Who: Violinist Kristin Lee
Soloist with the Olympia Symphony in Pride
Conducted by Music Director Alexandra Arrieche
What: Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Leonard Bernstein, and more
When: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 3pm
Where: Washington Center Main Stage, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, WA 98501
Tickets and information: www.olympiasymphony.org
March 23: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs as Guest Soloist with the Erie Philharmonic in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 Conducted by Music Director Daniel Meyer
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs as Guest Soloist with the Erie Philharmonic
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs as Guest Soloist with the Erie Philharmonic
Featuring Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major
Conducted by Music Director Daniel Meyer
Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 8pm
Warner Theatre | 811 State Street | Erie, PA
Tickets & Information
“colorful and idiosyncratic”
– The New York Times
Erie, PA – On Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 8pm GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will be the featured guest soloist with The Erie Philharmonic in a performance of Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major. The performance will be held at the Warner Theatre (811 State Street) and will be conducted by Music Director Daniel Meyer. A beloved guest artist of the Erie Philharmonic, Dinnerstein returns as part of a vivid concert program that also includes Modest Mussorgsky's famed work, Pictures at an Exhibition, as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.
The Washington Post has called Simone Dinnerstein “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
While Dinnerstein has come to be recognized and celebrated for her appreciation of music by J.S. Bach, she has also brought bold and expressive artistry to the work of Brahms in performances for over 10 years –– including the other of Brahms’ two piano concertos: No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15. Brahms’ second piano concerto is a newer addition to her repertoire –– one which Dinnerstein has been excited to perform this season.
She says of Brahms’ second piano concerto and performing alongside Daniel Meyer and the Erie Philharmonic:
“I am eagerly anticipating collaborating with Daniel Meyer and the Erie Philharmonic on this magnificent work. I have had wonderful experiences with them in the past and always enjoy visiting the community of Erie and playing in the historic Warner Theatre. In addition; I am looking forward to meeting their new piano!”
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
About The Erie Philharmonic: The mission of the Erie Philharmonic is to strengthen our community and region by providing high-quality live orchestra concerts and programs that enrich, educate, and entertain people of all ages. In existence since 1913, the Philharmonic is one of the oldest ensembles in the country and is consistently recognized on a national level as one of the top orchestras in our budget size. With a season that features 15 mainstage concerts, a free regional summer-concert tour, various chamber music performances, youth concerts and numerous outreach events, the orchestra reaches nearly 50,000 people annually. In the last seven seasons, the orchestra has become an unrivaled presence in the community, selling out concerts and presenting life-changing musical experiences that have garnered national attention from Good Morning America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Forbes Magazine and the Telly Awards.
In 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the orchestra broadcasted 20 free concerts on WQLN PBS. These free performances represented a positive and healing light for our region as Erie looked to weather the ongoing health crisis. In January 2022, the orchestra returned to a newly renovated Warner Theatre, and has since seen audience growth nearly unparalleled in the classical music world. The 2023-24 concert season marks the 111th season of the orchestra.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” is the featured soloist with the Erie Philharmonic, led by Music Director Daniel Meyer. Dinnerstein will perform Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2. in B-flat Major. The concert will also include a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s iconic Pictures at an Exhibition, as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.
Short description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” (The Washington Post) is the guest soloist with the Erie Philharmonic in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, led by Music Director Daniel Meyer. The performance will also include Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Conducted by Music Director Daniel Meyer
Presented by the Erie Philharmonic
What: Music by Johannes Brahms and Modest Mussorgsky / Maurice Ravel
When: Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 8pm
Where: Warner Theatre, 811 State Street, Erie, PA, 16501
Tickets and information: www.eriephil.org/calendar/pictures
May 3: Sony Classical Announces Antonello Manacorda & Kammerakademie Potsdam Conclude Their Recording of Beethoven's Complete Symphonies
Sony Classical Announces Antonello Manacorda and Kammerakademie Potsdam
Beethoven - The Complete Symphonies
Sony Classical Announces
Antonello Manacorda and Kammerakademie Potsdam
Conclude Their Recording of
Beethoven - The Complete Symphonies
with Release of All Nine Masterworks Together
First Single “Scherzo” from “Eroica Symphony No. 3” Out Today
Final Installment in Series Celebrates the 200th Anniversary of the Ninth Symphony’s Premier Performance
Cycle Out May 3, 2024 on Sony Classical as Special Boxset and Digitally
“Those listening to these new recordings will be richly rewarded.” – Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
The Kammerakademie Potsdam (Chamber Academy Potsdam) and its principal conductor Antonello Manacorda will complete their new Beethoven cycle with the release of all nine symphonies in a special box set out on Sony Classical on May 3, 2024. As the third and final installment in the series, the release will include their new recording of Beethoven’s Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies as well as the composer’s legendary Ninth Symphony. The release coincides with the 200-year anniversary celebrations of the premiere performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in early May. The first single is out today - the “Scherzo. Allegro vivace” from Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55 "Eroica” – listen here.
The first two installments in the ensemble’s Beethoven cycle recording have been released to great critical acclaim. Reviewing their first installment, German magazine Stereoplay spoke of an “incredible anticipatory pleasure and love of life,” Gramophone Magazine remarked “The orchestra’s rhythmic assurance is similarly impressive, and especially in the way they bring a sense of the dance to these scores,” while Fono Forum singled out the performances’ “inner logic and power of conviction.” Reviewing the second installment, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung wrote, “Those listening to these new recordings will be richly rewarded.”
Antonello Manacorda explains his approach to the cycle “What matters to me personally is that Beethoven is not just a composer but basically also a philosopher. He tells us not just about music but also about ourselves: who we are, where we are coming from and where we are going; why we are here in this world and what we hope to achieve here. A traversal of these symphonies is far more of a philosophical journey than a musical one.”
Of the composer’s seminal Ninth Symphony Manacorda believes, “it was and remains a hugely provocative piece. Every instrument in the orchestra is taken to its limits. Then comes a theme that is so simple and yet so memorable but which he repeats with dangerous frequency. What he does with the four vocal soloists borders on the ridiculous. The bass is a kind of Evangelist of Joy, the tenor a hero for the whole of humankind and the poor women are two angels. To me it’s like a Mass but with secular words, a philosophical credo. Beethoven spent his whole life asking himself why humankind has been placed on this earth and what our mission may be. Here he gives his answer: it revolves around the ideal of brotherly love, the great fraternization of humankind in a spirit of life-affirming joy.”
The Kammerakademie Potsdam and its music director Antonello Manacorda have garnered multiple awards with their complete recordings of the symphonies of Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn, while their release of Mozart’s last three symphonies earned them the title of Orchestra of the Year at the 2022 OPUS Klassik Awards – Germany’s leading televised classical awards. Brandenburg’s first orchestral academy appears in Potsdam and throughout Brandenburg, performing concerts geared to all age-groups, while also undertaking Europe-wide tours. The musicians perform on a combination of old and modern instruments which allows them to perform works for relatively large ensembles without a large string section, while enabling them to achieve the right balance and requisite degree of clarity.
As an Italian with a pronounced affinity for German music, Manacorda has appeared in many of the world’s leading opera houses from London and Munich to New York. Among the internationally renowned symphony orchestras with which he has worked are the Berliner Philharmoniker, where he returns in May, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. He will also conduct Carmen at London’s Royal Opera House in April this year.
Sony Classical will release Beethoven – The Complete Symphonies on May 3 as boxset and on all digital formats. The artwork has been created by renowned German artist Jorinde Voigt.
Antonello Manacorda & Kammerakademie Potsdam
Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies
Ludwig Van Beethoven 1770–1827
Tracklist
CD 1
Symphony No. 1 In C Major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 3 In E-Flat Major “Eroica”, Op. 55
CD 2
Symphony No. 2 In D Major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 4 In B-Flat Major, Op. 60
CD 3
Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67
Symphony No. 6 In F Major “Pastoral”, Op. 68
CD 4
Symphony No. 7 In A Major, Op. 92
Symphony No. 8 In F Major, Op. 93
CD 5
Symphony No. 9 In D Minor “Choral”, Op. 125
Kammerakademie Potsdam
Antonello Manacorda, Conductor
April 19: ECM Releases Fred Hersch's new album Silent, Listening
ECM
Fred Hersch: Silent, Listening
ECM Releases
Fred Hersch: Silent, Listening
Release date: April 19, 2024
ECM 2799
Press downloads available upon request.
Silent, Listening is both a highly individual musical offering and an important contribution to ECM’s line of innovative solo piano recordings. It finds US pianist Fred Hersch, one of jazz’s most outstanding soloists, putting a poetic emphasis on alert, open improvisation while also embracing original compositions and a scattering of standard tunes in his album’s graceful creative arc. Interspersing songs and spontaneously composed pieces, Hersch shapes and sustains a musical atmosphere that he describes as “nocturnal”, an atmosphere of heightened sensitivity to sound.
“I still believe in the idea of an album as a complete musical statement from beginning to end,” he says, adding that this is a perspective being lost in an impatient age. “To me, an album has to tell a story.” Silent, Listening builds upon Hersch’s alliance with Manfred Eicher, established with The Song Is You, Fred’s duo album with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava.
“The things that I’ve been happiest with in my life as a musician in jazz,” says Fred, “have been those things that have happened most organically. And in that recording with Enrico, which was made very spontaneously, I recognized that something special was going on. I said afterwards that I’d really like to make a solo album with Manfred as producer, in the same hall – where the acoustics, to my ear, are pretty-near perfect - and on the same piano.”
In May 2023 Hersch returned to Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI. “I came with some ideas of tunes of mine I might want to play, and with some little snippets of things that were like launching pads for improvisation. ’Silent, Listening’, the title piece, for instance, has written material at the beginning and the end, and I improvise on its motives and feel.”
“Little Song” is a Hersch composition, written originally for the duo with Rava, which receives its recorded premiere here. As for the standard pieces chosen, “I had no idea I was going to play those. I just sort of felt them in the moment, and then the spontaneous compositions arose to offset the tunes.” To name the latter, Hersch brought along a list of titles culled from a Robert Rauschenberg monograph – “Rauschenberg was always good with titles” - hence “Volon”, “Aeon” and more.
“I play a little more inside the piano than I usually do,” says Hersch of the exploratory, freely-structured pieces. “People don’t necessarily associate me with open improvising, but it is something that I have done a lot of, over the years. In fact, the recording with Enrico also included an improvisation that worked really well. And Manfred’s very positive response to that encouraged me to go further in this direction, alternating tunes and not-tunes on the solo album.”
Among the standards, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington’s “Star-Crossed Lovers” sets the scene with a sparse, haunted interpretation that cleaves to the melody. “It’s such a beautiful melody, and sometimes it’s enough to state it. I learned the tune from Jimmy Rowles who used to play the song , as did Tommy Flanagan. I knew both of them well when we all worked at Bradley’s in New York, and recorded a version of ‘Star Crossed Lovers’ on my very first album back in 1985.”
“The Winter of my Discontent” is a tune that Hersch began playing after meeting its composer Alec Wilder in 1978. “Wilder made contact – also at Bradley’s, as it happens - and sent me books of his songs, and that’s one I’ve been playing ever since, in different formats including duo and trio. In Lugano, the mood of what I was playing seemed to suggest and lead to it.”
“Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” is, in Fred Hersch’s mind, “always associated with Sonny Rollins at the Village Vanguard. Sonny’s version is the gold standard for me. Sonny Rollins is my hero, frankly. As a jazz musician he has everything, and I’ve been strongly influenced by him.”
“Akrasia” is an instance of a Hersch composition that took on a second life in the studio. Its title, meaning “acting against one’s better interests”, is an allusion to life in lockdown when, Fred says, he found himself spending too much time indulging in detective novels and computer games. “You know you shouldn’t be doing it, but… Anyway, ‘Akrasia’ is a longer composition and, when we started recording it in Lugano, I suddenly realized that the music was on the floor, and I couldn’t see it! So I played the beginning of it and then just kept going, improvising, and it turned into something unexpected but, we felt, interesting.”
This openness to contingency and willingness to honour the flow of things was also, Hersch says, reflected in his performance of Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, which provides one of the album’s most magical sequences. Fred says that his younger, perfectionist self might have balked at his delineation of the melody but that, at 68, he is trying “not to micromanage everything anymore. What we got was a great first take” – gentle, but full of feeling – “that would have been impossible to recapture with the same spirit.”
The in-the-moment spontaneity of Silent, Listening makes it, similarly, a self-contained one-off. Hersch enjoys the challenge of finding new musical solutions for new spaces and his upcoming touring activities include solo piano performances in both the US and Europe. Dates include Merkin Concert Hall, New York City (April 16), Piedmont Piano Company, Oakland CA (April 28) ,Dakota, Minneapolis MN (April 29), SPACE, Chicago IL (April 30), Cleveland OH (April 31), Firenze, Italy (May 11), Festival Ste Germain, Paris, France (May 18), Stadtcasino, Basel, Switzerland (May 21), Innsbruck, Austria (May 23),), Flagey, Brussels, Belgium (May 31), Ghent, Belgium, June 1. Additionally Fred Hersch plays duo concerts in France with Avishai Cohen in Nantes (May 6) and Coutances (May 8), and appears with the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra in Stockholm, Sweden on May 17. He plays in trio with Drew Gress and Joey Baron in Treviso, Italy on May 25. Hersch returns to Europe for another round of concerts in October.
For biographical and other details, visit Fred’s web site: www.fredhersch.com
Further ECM recordings with Fred Hersch are in preparation.
Sony Classical Announces New Solo Album from Award-Winning Composer Mike Post – Message From The Mountains & Echoes Of The Delta
Sony Classical Announces Message From The Mountains & Echoes Of The Delta
New Solo Album from Mike Post
Sony Classical Announces
Message From The Mountains & Echoes Of The Delta
New Solo Album from Mike Post
The Award-Winning Composer Behind TV’s Most Memorable Music
The Iconic Composer For Law & Order, The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I. & More Brings A-List
Soloists Together with a Full Orchestra In Celebration of Bluegrass & Blues Music
Lead Single Campfire Breakdown/Night Sky
Out Today – Listen Here
Available April 5, 2024 – Preorder Now
From the iconic “dun-dun” sting that has become synonymous with the Law and Order universe to instantly recognizable riffs from The Rockford Files, Hill Street Blues, Magnum P.I., L.A. Law and more, Emmy®- and Grammy®-winning composer Mike Post has helped shape half a century of pop culture with his beloved television themes. Now, he celebrates the music that inspired this prolific career with Message from the Mountains & Echoes of the Delta, a truly unique solo album that pays homage to bluegrass and blues music, available April 5, 2024 via Sony Classical. Making its debut today alongside the album preorder is the collection’s lead single, Campfire Breakdown/Night Sky – listen here.
The way composer Mike Post simply describes himself now – “I’m an American musician” – is as grateful and respectful as it is limitless in its compass and its ambition. His new solo album, Message from the Mountains & Echoes of the Delta, emerged as his own celebration of the music of the American people that has inspired him in a career spanning six decades. Presented as a pair of original works, the album combines the sounds of a bluegrass band (Message from the Mountains) and a blues band (Echoes of the Delta) – joined by two “dream teams” of soloists who are his longtime friends and colleagues – with the rich palette and expressive power of a full orchestra.
The first in a pair of original works encompassing the album, Message from the Mountains features nine multifaceted movements utilizing the sounds of bluegrass to celebrate the mingling of tradition and diverse cultural experience in American music. The immensely talented and decorated members of these rhythm sections are as follows: Herb Pedersen (5-string banjo); Gabe Witcher (fiddle); Mike Witcher (dobro); Patrick Sauber (acoustic guitar/mandolin); and Amy Keys (orator). Echoes from the Delta, meanwhile, reflects and explores the exuberant joy and the well of anguish that forged the blues in 14 short, expressive movements. Joining Post and the orchestra as soloists are Sonny Landreth (slide guitar); Eric Gales (electric guitar); Abe Laboriel Sr. (bass); Abe Laboriel Jr. (drums); Robert Turner (organ/piano); Jon O’Hara (keyboards); and Amy Keys (vocalist).
Mike Post: Message From The Mountains & Echoes Of The Delta
Tracklisting
1. Message from the Mountains: I. Journeys - The Message
2. Message from the Mountains: II. Onward
3. Message from the Mountains: III. Sunrise Special
4. Message from the Mountains: IV. Redemption Valley
5. Message from the Mountains: V. Campfire Breakdown - Night Sky
6. Message from the Mountains: VI. Fort Smith Waltz
7. Message from the Mountains: VII. Strings Afire
8. Message from the Mountains: VIII. Spirit of the Owl
9. Message from the Mountains: IX. Destined to Dream
10. Echoes of the Delta: I. John the Revelator
11. Echoes of the Delta: II. River Walkin'
12. Echoes of the Delta: III. Just Before Dawn
13. Echoes of the Delta: IV. Highway 41
14. Echoes of the Delta: V. Little Zion
15. Echoes of the Delta: VI. The Gate to Greenwood
16. Echoes of the Delta: VII. Crossed Road
17. Echoes of the Delta: VIII. Riley Smiles
18. Echoes of the Delta: IX. Riffs 'Round the Sun
19. Echoes of the Delta: X. Sunday With Maudes
20. Echoes of the Delta: XI. Boogie Offspring
21. Echoes of the Delta: XII. Backside Middle
22. Echoes of the Delta: XIII. Sonny in the Second Line
23. Echoes of the Delta: XIV. Light the Dark Sky
24. Echoes of the Delta: XV. The Call
25. Echoes of the Delta: XVI. Circle Back Home
About Mike Post
If his name is not instantly recognizable, Mike Post’s music is. His unforgettable themes for The Rockford Files, Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, Magnum P.I., NYPD Blue, L.A. Law and many other TV classics – including the Law & Order family of dramas (notably, in the landmark, two-note “dun-dun” effect he created) – are part of the soundtrack of modern American life.
Steeped in music from childhood, Post was a go-to session musician as a teenager in the Los Angeles area, quickly becoming part of a legendary collective of studio musical virtuosos known as The Wrecking Crew. Post played for virtually everyone active in the LA recording scene during this time. Most notably he worked on all of Sonny and Cher’s early hits, starting with “I Got You Babe.” While working for producer Jimmy Bowen, he formed The First Edition, featuring then unknown bassist/vocalist, Kenny Rogers. A breakout success – and at 23, winning the first of his five Grammy® Awards – with his arrangement of the 1968 instrumental smash hit “Classical Gas” raised Post’s profile as a composer, arranger and producer, before television changed the course of his career in the early 1970s.
Over the years, he’s written the music for seven thousand hours of TV including: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, Magnum PI, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, The A-Team, Wiseguy, Hunter, The Commish, Quantum Leap, Doogie Howser MD, Blossom, Hooperman, The White Shadow, Hardcastle & McCormick, Byrds of Paradise, News Radio, Silk Stalkings and Renegade. Theme songs from The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero, Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law all became chart-topping records and landed Post four of his five Grammy® Awards. In 1996 he won the Emmy® for outstanding achievement in Main Title composition for the critically acclaimed Murder One.
Connect With Mike Post: Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Tiktok
Mike Post Approved Images (Credit Lawrence Sumulong): Download
# # #
Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com/
California Symphony Announces 2024-25 Season - Showcasing the Crowning Achievements of Composers at the Peak of their Powers
California Symphony Announces 2024-25 Season - Showcasing the Crowning Achievements of Composers at the Peak of their Powers
Photo by Kristen Loken. Hi res photos available here.
CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY ANNOUNCES 2024-2025 SEASON
Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director
Showcasing the Crowning Achievements of Composers at the Peak of their Powers
Featuring the Final Symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Bruckner
and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
Plus a World Premiere by 2023-2026 Composer-in-Residence Saad Haddad
New Works by Carlos Simon and Mason Bates
Joaquin Rodrigo’s Famous Guitar Concerto
and Rarely Performed Music by Louise Farrenc and Grażyna Bacewicz
“a performance of vividness and grace” – San Francisco Chronicle
“the past decade has seen [Donato Cabrera] accomplishing great things — revitalizing the organization with smart programs and offstage innovations, making the California Symphony one of the region’s most vibrant musical attractions.” – Mercury News
Subscriptions available now. Single tickets go on sale in July.
WALNUT CREEK, CA (February 22, 2024) – California Symphony, led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera and Executive Director Lisa Dell, announces its 2024-2025 season, showcasing the crowning achievements of composers at the peak of their powers in five imaginative programs over ten concerts at Hoffman Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Performing Arts from September 2024 to May 2025.
Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, this season features the iconic final symphonies of titans of classical music Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; the unfinished masterpieces of Anton Bruckner and Franz Schubert; a Grammy-winning Disney Fantasia-esque concerto for film and orchestra by Bay Area composer Mason Bates paired with Benjamin Britten’s lively introduction to the ensemble; a world premiere by the orchestra’s 2023-2026 Young American Composer-in-Residence Saad Haddad; a recent work by Grammy-nominated composer and Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon; Joaquin Rodrigo’s famous tour-de-force guitar concerto Concierto de Aranjuez; and rarely performed music by 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc and 20th-century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz.
“In celebrating the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, it became clear to me that an interesting journey for our audience would be to hear the final symphony of a great composer at each concert of the 2024-2025 season,” Donato Cabrera says. “I’ve paired these five final symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Bruckner, with contrasting orchestral works, some of which are completely new, while others are very well known. We continue our deep commitment to living and overlooked composers by performing a diverse list of works from our current and former composers-in-residence and others throughout the season. We are re-establishing a partnership we began pre-pandemic with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music [SFCM] Chorus, as well as welcoming guitar soloist and SFCM faculty member, Meng Su. It has been a dream of mine to pair Schubert’s unfinished symphony with Bruckner's, but performing these two extraordinary symphonies together requires a very special bond between conductor and orchestra. Indeed, very few orchestras could successfully summit both of these masterpieces, but this concert will confirm why my colleagues in the California Symphony have rightfully gained such a well-deserved national reputation.”
California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through its commitment to community, imaginative programming, and support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere, serving a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area. During the 2023-2024 season, the orchestra enjoyed a 27% increase in subscribers, meeting or exceeding pre-pandemic attendance at its concerts.
In the 2024-2025 season, California Symphony will continue to serve its community beyond the stage through its nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds and its innovative lifelong learning program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed. It will also expand its programs for vulnerable populations at Trinity Center Walnut Creek and initiate new community partnerships to reach more underserved youth throughout Contra Costa County.
BEETHOVEN’S NINTH
Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 7:30pm
Sunday, September 22, 2024 at 4pm
Louise Farrenc: Overture No. 2 in E-flat
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Laquita Mitchell, soprano; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Nicholas Phan, tenor;
Allen Michael Jones, bass; San Francisco Conservatory of Music Chorus, Eric Choate, Director
California Symphony launches its season with two thrilling concerts marking the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, a monumental masterpiece that celebrates our shared humanity. The concerts open with a vivacious and powerful overture by pioneering 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc, who was well known during her lifetime but whose work is only now being performed widely. Instantly recognizable, Beethoven's final symphony is widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces in classical music. Four internationally acclaimed singers with Bay Area connections – Laquita Mitchell, soprano; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Nicholas Phan, tenor; and Allen Michael Jones, bass – join the California Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Chorus. Powerful and uplifting, the work’s final movement Ode to Joy has become an enduring anthem for unity.
BRAHMS ODYSSEY
Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 4pm
Benjamin Britten: Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Mason Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique – The Making of the Orchestra
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No.4, Op. 98, E minor
California Symphony’s November concerts take audience members on an odyssey through the orchestra. Benjamin Britten’s lively Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra uses a catchy theme to introduce different instruments in the orchestra, making it a great way to learn about the symphony. Former California Symphony Resident Composer Mason Bates invokes the spirit of Disney’s classic Fantasia in his Grammy-winning concerto for orchestra and animated film, Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, guided by a mischievous sprite. Brahms' Symphony No. 4 – his final symphony – is a deeply emotional, poignant masterpiece. Even though Brahms lived for more than a decade after its premiere, it was the last symphony he wrote, with many considering it to be the pinnacle of his career.
MOZART SERENITY
Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 4pm
Carlos Simon: Breathe
Joaquin Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
Meng Su, guitar
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No.41, K.551, C Major (“Jupiter”)
California Symphony’s first concerts of 2025 combine a calming meditation by composer Carlos Simon, a world-famous Spanish guitar concerto by Joaquin Rodrigo, and Mozart’s classical grandeur. Inspired by the words of theologian and former San Francisco resident Howard Thurman, Simons’ Breathe is a serene appeal to “stay put for a while.” For music lovers and guitar enthusiasts alike, Rodrigo's iconic Concierto de Aranjuez, performed with the stunningly virtuosic San Francisco-based guitarist Meng Su, features evocative melodies and distinctive Spanish guitar solos, designed to transport listeners to another time and place. A majestic, intricate, exuberant masterpiece, Mozart's final symphony, his Symphony No. 41, is one of his most celebrated and frequently performed works, showcasing a genius at the height of his powers. The work is commonly known as the “Jupiter” Symphony for the Roman god because of its grand scale.
TCHAIKOVSKY PASSION
Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 23, 2025 at 4pm
Saad Haddad: World Premiere (Commissioned by California Symphony)
Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Concerto
David Fung, piano
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”)
California Symphony’s March concerts feature music that is full of emotion and high drama, concluding with Tchaikovsky’s powerful final symphony, Symphony No. 6. The concerts begin with the world premiere of Composer-in-Residence Saad Haddad’s second commission for the orchestra. Haddad’s music frequently delves into the relationship between the West and the East by transferring the performance techniques of traditional Arab instruments to Western symphonic instruments. Pianist David Fung, praised by The Washington Post for his “poetic and exquisitely sculpted interpretations,” makes his California Symphony debut as soloist in 20th century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s Piano Concerto. Bacewicz incorporates Polish folk themes in this work which features intense moments of drama and a demanding and virtuosic solo piano part. Tchaikovsky’s sixth and final symphony is also known as the “Pathétique,” but the composer originally called it the “Passionate.” Grand, sweeping, and with themes recognizable from movies and pop culture, it is one of the Russian melody master’s most popular and frequently performed works.
UNFINISHED BRUCKNER
Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 4pm
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8, D.759, B minor (Unfinished)
Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (Unfinished)
California Symphony concludes its 2024-2025 season with a striking pair of unfinished masterpieces, each marking the pinnacle of achievement for the composer. The orchestra will perform the two surviving movements of Franz Schubert’s haunting and beautiful Symphony No. 8. Declining health, hesitation over how to continue the piece, work overload, or even that the pages were completed but ultimately lost . . . theories abound, but no one really knows why Schubert never finished it. The three completed movements of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 conclude the program, showcasing his signature big symphonic sound, iconic themes, and brass fanfares. Featuring one of the largest ensembles to take the stage during the season, Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9 makes a fittingly epic grand finale to California Symphony’s 2024-2025 season.
Concert Details:
Location for All Performances: Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts; 1601 Civic Drive; Walnut Creek, CA
Ticket Information: Subscriptions for three, four, or five concerts start at $99 and are available now, with single tickets ($45-90) and student tickets ($20 for students 25 and under with valid Student ID) going on sale in July. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm).
About the California Symphony:
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera since 2013. It is distinguished by its vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area.
California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.
Since 1991, California Symphony's three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program has provided a composer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with the orchestra over three consecutive years to create, rehearse, premiere, and record three major orchestra compositions, one each season. Every Composer-in-Residence has gone on to win top honors and accolades in the field, including the Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Awards, and more.
The orchestra's nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds impacts students' trajectories by providing instruction for violin or cello and musicianship skills. Sound Minds has proven to contribute directly to improved reading and math proficiencies and character development, as students set and achieve goals, learn communication and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. Inspired by the El Sistema program of Venezuela, the program is offered completely free of charge to the students and families of Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, California.
Through its innovative adult education program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed, California Symphony provides lifelong learners a fun-filled introduction to the orchestra and classical music. Led by celebrated educator and California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong, these live classes are held over four weeks in the summer annually and are available to stream online year-round.
In 2017, California Symphony became the first orchestra with a public statement of a commitment to diversity. Its website is available in both Spanish and English.
Reaching far beyond the performance hall, since 2020 the orchestra's concerts have been broadcast nationally on multiple radio series through Classical California (KUSC/KDFC) and the WFMT Radio Network, reaching over 1.5 million listeners across the country.
For more information, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org.
California Symphony’s 2024-25 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.