Feb. 11: Jupiter Quartet Performs in Palm Beach in February
Jupiter Quartet Presented by the Flagler Museum Music Series
Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution here.
The Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by the Flagler Museum Music Series
Performing Music by
Franz Joseph Haydn, Anton Webern, and Johannes Brahms
Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 7:00pm
Flagler Museum | 1 Whitehall Way | Palm Beach, FL
Tickets and Information
“technical finesse and rare expressive maturity” – The New Yorker
Palm Beach, FL – On Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 7:00pm, the Jupiter String Quartet – the internationally acclaimed winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and Banff International String Quartet Competition who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) – will be presented in concert by the Flagler Museum Music Series at the Flagler Museum (1 Whitehall Way).
Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and performing all across the nation, 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 since 2001. 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.
The Jupiter Quartet brings its deeply refined, interconnected musical chemistry to three works composed from the turn of the 19th to the early 20th century. Each is steeped in dramatic musicality and leans into conjuring fervent emotions. The program includes: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, Hob.III: 82 by Franz Joseph Haydn; Langsamer Satz by Anton Weber; and String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms.The Jupiter Quartet’s lively and expressive playing style will showcase the dramatic tensions and strong emotions driving the music of this program.
“The quartet is so pleased to return to the lovely Flagler Museum for this performance, and is excited to share some of our favorite works—the sparkling Haydn Op. 77 No. 2 quartet, the lyrically gorgeous Langsamer Satz, and of course the fantastically dramatic C minor string quartet from Brahms.”
Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2 is the last of his many works in this genre. Considered by many to be the “grandfather of the string quartet”, Haydn developed the form over many years, experimenting with more dramatic structures and particularly with a more equal treatment of the four voices, instead of the first-violin dominated texture often heard earlier.. Next on the program, the Langsamer Satz is a single movement of a what was intended to be a larger work, composed in 1905. It features the lush, lyrical textures of late Romanticism, and was likely written after a getaway to the mountains that Webern took with his future wife. Continuing in the same key of C minor but spreading over a more epic scope, Brahms’s first string quartet was composed in a painstaking process over the course of several years.The work’s four movements are presented in the form of two outer movements fueled by torment and anxiety, and two inner movements framed by a more delicate and calm musical aesthetic.
More About Jupiter String Quartet: 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, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois 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.
The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert.
The quartet's latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by GRAMMY-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The Arts Fuse acclaimed, “This joint album from the Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet is striking for its backstory but really memorable for its smart program and fine execution.” The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon. In fall 2024, the Jupiter Quartet will record their next album with Judith Sherman, featuring the world premiere recordings of Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Stephen Taylor’s Chaconne/Labyrinth, and Kati Agócs's Imprimatur, which were all composed for the Jupiters.
The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.
For more information, visit www.jupiterquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, described by The New Yorker as “an ensemble of eloquent intensity,” is presented in concert by the Flagler Museum Music Series. The ensemble will perform a concert program that reflects music shaped by dramatic musical aesthetics and strong emotions. Featured works on the concert program will include: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, Hob.III: 82 by Franz Joseph Haydn; Langsamer Satz by Anton Weber; and String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by the Flagler Museum Music Series
What: Music by Franz Joseph Haydn, Anton Webern, and Johannes Brahms
When: Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 7:00pm
Where: Flagler Museum, 1 Whitehall Way, Palm Beach, FL 33480
Tickets and information: www.flaglermuseum.us/programs/music-series/2025-music-series
Feb. 6-8: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Returns to Emerald City Music
Feb. 6-8: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Returns to Emerald City Music
Emerald City Music Season 09
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in:
Spanish Journey
Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 7:00pm
Lairmont Manor | 405 Fieldston Rd | Bellingham, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldFeb2025Bellingham
Friday, February 7, 2025 at 8:00pm
415 Westlake | 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldFeb2025Seattle
Saturday, February 8, 2024 at 7:30pm
The Minnaert Center for the Arts | 2011 Mottman Rd SW | Olympia, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldFeb2025Olympia
“[Emerald City Music and] artistic director Kristin Lee, a renowned violinist and member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, shows a flair for attracting younger audiences.” – Strings Magazine
Seattle, Olympia, & Bellingham WA – Beginning the second half of its 2024-2025 season of Global Resonance, Emerald City Music (ECM) and founding Artistic Director Kristin Lee present a culturally immersive and musically colorful program titled Spanish Journey, featuring the esteemed talents of several artists from New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMSLC), which returns to the Emerald City Music, bringing a vibrant celebration of Spanish music to Bellingham, Seattle, and Olympia. This month’s exciting program features Emerald City Music Artistic Director and CMSLC member, Kristin Lee, alongside GRAMMY® Award–winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, who returns to the ECM stage. Additional featured CMSLC artists include soprano Vanessa Becerra, cellist Clive Greensmith, and pianist Soyeon Kate Lee.
The three performances of Spanish Journey will take place on Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 7pm as part of the Bellingham Festival of Music at Lairmont Manor (405 Fieldston Rd.), Friday, February 7, 2025 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N), and Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:30pm in Olympia at The Minnaert Center for the Arts (2011 Mottman Rd. SW). During the concert at 415 Westlake, audiences can enjoy ECM’s flagship “date-night experience,” which combines vibrant classical performance with an open bar, and a “wander-around” concert setting with no stage dividing the audience from the musicians.
Spend a musical evening in Spain, a country of enchanting colors, rhythms, and textures, in a program imaginatively created by violinist Kristin Lee. The distinctive Spanish style is beautifully expressed in piano trios of Falla and Turina, while guitar – an instrument deeply associated with Spain – is also featured, played by Jason Vieaux. Song complements the balance of the program with vocal works by Sarasate, Rodrigo, and Obradors, the texts of which beautifully express the flair and passion of the Spanish language. The combination of the guitar’s intoxicating sounds, the language’s seductive tones, and the trios’ vivid style illustrates the richness of this culture.
Audiences can look forward to hearing music that includes: Canciones Clásicas Españolas by Fernando Obradors (1921); Mallorca, Op. 202 by Isaac Albéniz (1891); Tres Piezas Originales en Estilo Español, Op. 1 by Enrique Arbós (1886); Siete Canciones Populares Españolas by Manuel De Falla (1914); “Romanza Andaluza” from Spanish Dances by Pablo De Sarasate Op. 22 (1878); Tres Canciones Españolas by Joaquín Rodrigo (1951); and Trio No. 2 In B Minor by Joaquín Turina (1933).
“Spring Season at ECM is going to kick off on a high note with a night of Spanish Music!” says Artistic Director Kristin Lee.
”We are thrilled to welcome back The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and this time, you will notice new faces like soprano Vanessa Becerra, cellist Clive Greensmith, and pianist Soyeon Kate Lee who have not joined the ECM stage before. On the other hand, I'm excited to be bringing back to our stage, guitarist Jason Vieaux, and myself on the violin, representing The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Spanish music is less familiar in the "classical" realm, but incredibly festive and powerful to experience- it's a night not to be missed, and you will have 3 chances to hear it in Bellingham, Seattle, and Olympia!
Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Deemed “a welcoming and more inclusive environment for intimate music-making” (The Seattle Times), 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 venues including 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.
About the Artists: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/season-artists
About Kristin Lee, ECM Artistic Director: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/team/kristin-lee
About ECM: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/about
Follow ECM on Social Media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/emeraldcitymusic
Instagram: www.instagram.com/emeraldcitymusic
Feb. 19: Jupiter Quartet Presented by the Library of Congress
Jupiter Quartet Presented by the Library of Congress
Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution here.
The Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by the Library of Congress
Performing Music by
Carlos Simon, Shulamit Ran, and Ludwig van Beethoven
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 8:00pm
Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium
10 1st Street SE | Washington D.C.
Tickets and Information
“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker
Washington D.C. – On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, the Jupiter String Quartet – internationally acclaimed winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) – will be presented in concert by the Library of Congress in the Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (10 1st Street SE) Washington D.C. There will be a pre-concert talk with the artists beginning at 6:30pm.
Based at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,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 since 2001. 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.
The Jupiter Quartet brings its well-honed musical chemistry to three works shaped by bold musicality and deeply meaningful thematic inspirations, written between the early 19th century and the present day, including Warmth from Other Suns by Carlos Simon (2020); String Quartet No. 3, Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory by Shulamit Ran (2013); and String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 with the Grosse Fuge by Ludwig van Beethoven (1825).
Carlos Simon, currently Composer-in-Residence at The Kennedy Center, writes in his program note for Warmth from Other Suns, “Between 1916 and 1970, the mass exodus of African-Americans leaving the rural South, seeking homes in the urban West, Midwest, and Northeast became known as the Great Migration. Inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s book The Warmth of Other Suns, I chose to bring these stories to life through the voice of a string quartet.”
Shulamit Ran’s third string quartet, Glitter, Shards, Doom, Memory is a tribute to the Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum and other victims of the Holocaust. The work’s name is tied to “Glitter and Doom,” the title of an exhibition of German art from 1919-1933, which was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006-07. Ran writes in her program note: [T]his is my way of saying, ‘Do not forget,’ something that I believe can be done through music with special power and poignancy.”
Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 130 has the epic scope and startling originality that characterized many of his works from the final years of his life. Completely deaf at this point, he entered a period of sustained creativity, which often found voice through the intimate vehicle of the string quartet. The Op. 130 quartet contains six movements. The first five are of traditional length—a standard first movement followed by a series of dance movements. The fifth movement, Cavatina, is one of the most famously sublime works ever written, after which Beethoven shocked premiere audiences by launching directly into an enormous and strident grand fugue (Grosse Fugue). Audiences were so upset by this that Beethoven’s publisher convinced him to write an alternative dance-like finale, which became the official final movement. However, many quartets have since decided to return to the original ending in order to honor Beethoven’s intentions—and therefore the Jupiter Quartet will conclude the program with the Grosse Fugue (now filed under its own opus number, 133).
Of performing this program and making their Library of Congress debut, the Jupiter Quartet says:
”We are immensely excited to return to the Library of Congress after many years, and particularly happy to get the privilege of playing on the library’s quartet of Stradivarius instruments again. Meg and Liz spent much of their childhood and early musical years in the Washington, DC area, and look forward to returning to the site of so many fond memories. The program we have prepared features multiple perspectives on the struggle to surmount powerful forces of darkness—an effort that is unfortunately still acutely relevant today.”
More About Jupiter String Quartet: 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, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois 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.
The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert.
The quartet's latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by Grammy-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The Arts Fuse acclaimed, “This joint album from the Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet is striking for its backstory but really memorable for its smart program and fine execution.” The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon. In fall 2024, the Jupiter Quartet will record their next album with Judith Sherman, featuring the world premiere recordings of Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Stephen Taylor’s Chaconne/Labyrinth, and Kati Agócs's Imprimatur, which were all composed for the Jupiters.
The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.
For more information, visit www.jupiterquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, described by The New Yorker as having “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” is presented in concert by the Library of Congress. The award-winning ensemble will perform a program of music from the 19th and 21st centuries, each shaped by bold musicality and different deeply thematic inspirations. Featured works on the concert program will include: Warmth from Other Suns by Carlos Simon (2020); String Quartet No. 3, Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory by Shulamit Ran (2013); and String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 with Grosse Fuge by Ludwig van Beethoven (1825). There will be a pre-concert talk with the artists beginning at 6:30pm.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by the Library of Congress
What: Music by Carlos Simon, Shulamit Ran, Ludwig van Beethoven
When: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 8:00pm with pre-concert talk with the artists from 6:30-7:00pm
Where: Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (LJG45E), 10 1st Street SE, Washington, DC 20540
Tickets and information: www.loc.gov/item/event-415276/jupiter-quartet/2025-02-19
Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases UBIQUE by Anna Thorvaldsdottir Featuring Flutist Claire Chase - Part of Chase’s Density 2036 Project
Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases UBIQUE by Anna Thorvaldsdottir Featuring Flutist Claire Chase - Part of Chase’s Density 2036 Project
Sono Luminus Releases
World Premiere Recording of UBIQUE by Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Featuring Flutist Claire Chase
with Pianist Cory Smythe and Cellists Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods
Commissioned as Part of Claire Chase’s Density 2036 Project
Worldwide Release Date: February 28, 2025
“[Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music] feels both otherworldly and elemental, as if forces of nature, from massive galaxies to tiny granules, are regenerating themselves to create new, unknown structures, essential for life.” – NPR Music
"The North star of her instrument's ever- expanding universe.” – The New York Times on Claire Chase
Review CDs and downloads available upon request.
www.annathorvalds.com | www.clairechase.net | www.sonoluminus.com
On Friday, February 28, 2025, Sono Luminus releases the world premiere recording of UBIQUE, a new evening-length chamber work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. The 50-minute piece was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Cheswatyr Foundation, Kurt Chauviere, and Density Arts for Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project. The world premiere was given in May 2023 at Carnegie Hall, performed by Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; and Cory Smythe, piano; with Levy Lorenzo, live sound. The same musicians have recorded the new album, and will perform its West Coast premiere at the Ojai Festival in California on June 7.
Anna writes of the piece, “UBIQUE lives on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion. Through a combination of sounds, pitches, and textural nuances, low deep drones envelop lyrical materials and harmonies that breathe in and out of focus throughout the progress of the piece. The flow of the music is primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction – of various kinds and durations – as it streams with subtle interruptions and frictions but ever moving forward in the overall structure. The work is inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance – throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the Infinite. 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.”
UBIQUE continues Sono Luminus’ commitment to releasing Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music. All of her orchestral music and many of her other works are available on Sono Luminus, and featured on Apple Music’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir Essentials Playlist.
UBIQUE was commissioned for the tenth cycle of Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project, a 24-year initiative to create a new repertory for the flute leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Each year until 2036, Chase will commission, premiere, and record an adventurous new program of flute music. Chase, who the New York Times describes as having “dizzying technical facility across the flute family,” and who The Wall Street Journal writes as having “a rare combination of grace and guts,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase was the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season, only the second time in that organization’s history that the position has been given to a performing artist. Chase’s discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres.
Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and striking sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). 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. The Guardian reports, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”
Anna’s 2024-2025 season (September 2024 to June 2025) includes performances of her music across at least seventeen countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. She is currently the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair. Since 2015, the orchestra has invited a composer to hold this position each season, including, formerly, Arvo Pärt, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Toshio Hosokawa, among others. From September 2024 to June 2025, a wide variety of Anna’s music will be performed, ranging from string quartets to large orchestral pieces. Additionally, Anna continues her two-year period as one of ten CHANEL Next Prize winners. The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Another major highlight of this concert season is the world premiere of Anna’s new cello concerto by the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Dalia Stasevska from May 15 to 17. Written for Johannes Moser and titled Before we fall, the new concerto is co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Proms. Additional country premieres will be announced.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music 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. Her “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. Anna was Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2018-2023, and 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.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com
Claire Chase: www.clairechase.net/about
Cory Smythe: www.corysmythe.com/bio
Katinka Kleijn: www.katinkakleijn.com
Seth Parker Woods: www.sethparkerwoods.com/About
ALBUM TRACK LISTING:
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: UBIQUE
Claire Chase, flute; Cory Smythe, piano; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cello
Sono Luminus | Release date: February 28, 2025
[1] part I [5:34]
[2] part II [10:33]
[3] part III [1:48]
[4] part IV [1:28]
[5] part V [3:58]
[6] part VI [6:19]
[7] part VII [0:39]
[8] part VIII [2:05]
[9] part IX [5:35]
[10] part X [1:24]
[11] part XI [6:45]
Total Time: 45:00
Claire Chase, flute / bass flute / contrabass flute
Cory Smythe, piano
Katinka Kleijn, cello
Seth Parker Woods, cello
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, composer
A MEYER SOUND PRODUCTION
Recorded at Studio 9, The Porches, North Adams, MA, October 19, 2023
Producer and Session Engineer: Rick Jacobsohn
Executive Producers: Helen Meyer and John Meyer
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Mixing and Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Cover Photography: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Performance Photography: Jennifer Taylor
Design & Layout: Joshua Frey
Jan. 18: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik Makes his Las Vegas Philharmonic Debut
Jan. 18: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik Makes his Las Vegas Philharmonic Debut
Photo by Corey Hayes available in high resolution at: https://www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/yevgeny-kutik
Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Makes his Debut with the Las Vegas Philharmonic
Conducted by Michelle Merrill
Performing Violin Concerto No. 2 – The American Four Seasons
by Philip Glass
Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 7:30pm
The Smith Center | 361 Symphony Park Ave. | Las Vegas, NV
Tickets and More Information
“polished dexterity and genteel, old-world charm”
– WQXR
Las Vegas, NV — On Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 7:30pm, violinist Yevgeny Kutik, who is described by The New York Times as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” will be a guest soloist with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, conducted by Michelle Merrill in his debut with the orchestra Kutik will perform Violin Concerto No.2, The American Four Seasons, by Philip Glass. The concert program will also include Gioachino Rossini’s Williams Tell Overture and Antonín Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony No. 9.
Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of standard works as well as rarely heard and newly composed repertoire.
Kutik says of making his debut with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, collaborating with conductor Michelle Merrill, and performing Philip Glass’s “American Four Seasons.”
“I am thrilled to be collaborating with the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Michelle Merrill to perform Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 2. This work is a masterpiece of emotional depth and minimalist beauty, and I can't wait to share this incredible musical journey with the audience. What a wonderful musical companion to the Four Seasons we all know and love.”
Known as The American Four Seasons, Philip Glass composed his Violin Concerto No. 2 in the summer and autumn of 2009, for violinist Robert McDuffie. Glass wrote the work with the intent that it would serve as a companion to Antonio Vivaldi's iconic work The Four Seasons. At the same time, Glass ultimately decided to design his work to be more open-ended, particularly as it relates to the audience’s experience. In his program notes about the work, he says he saw it as “an opportunity, then, for the listener to make his/her own interpretation. Therefore, there will be no instructions for the audience, no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall might appear in the new concerto – an interesting, though not worrisome, problem for the listener.”
More about Yevgeny Kutik: Committed to the music of our time, Kutik regularly gives premiere and repeat performances of major works by today’s most celebrated composers. In 2022 at the Tanglewood Music Festival, he gave the world premiere of Cântico, a work for solo violin by Andreia Pinto Correia co-commissioned for Kutik by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2021, he debuted with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin, performing the world premiere of Joseph Schwantner’s Violin Concerto, written for him. The concerto is based on Schwantner’s earlier work, The Poet’s Hour – Soliloquy for Violin, which Kutik recorded on episode six of Gerard Schwarz’s All-Star Orchestra, released on DVD by Naxos and broadcast nationally on PBS.
A native of Minsk, Belarus, Yevgeny Kutik immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of five. His 2014 album, Music from the Suitcase: A Collection of Russian Miniatures (Marquis Classics), features music he found in his family’s suitcase after immigrating to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1990, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Classical chart. The album garnered critical acclaim and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in The New York Times. Kutik’s recent releases on Marquis include The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021) and Meditations on Family (2019), for which he commissioned eight composers to translate a personal family photo into a short musical miniature – a project featured on the cover of Strings magazine. Kutik’s other recordings include his debut album, Sounds of Defiance (2012), and Words Fail (2016), both released to critical acclaim.
Other recent performance highlights include debuts at the Kennedy Center presented by Washington Performing Arts, and at the Ravinia Festival, as well as recital appearances as part of the Dame Myra Hess Concerts Chicago; at UCLA; Peoples' Symphony Concerts, Kaufman Music Center, and National Sawdust in New York City; the Embassy Series and The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; and at the Lobkowicz Collections Prague presented by Prince William Lobkowicz. Festival performances have included the Tanglewood Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele in Germany, and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.
Kutik made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and The Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition, and has since performed with orchestras throughout the country including the Rochester and Dayton Philharmonics; the Detroit, New Haven, Asheville, and Wyoming symphony orchestras; and more. Abroad, he has appeared with Germany’s Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock and WDR Rundfunk Orchestra Köln, Montenegro’s Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s Tokyo Vivaldi Ensemble, and the Cape Town Philharmonic in South Africa.
Passionate about his heritage and its influence on his artistry, Kutik is an advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the United States, and regularly speaks and performs across the United States to both raise awareness and promote the assistance of refugees from around the world.
Yevgeny Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and went on to study with Zinaida Gilels, Shirley Givens, Roman Totenberg, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory. Kutik is the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Birch Festival – a festival built around connecting and integrating leading musicians with the Berkshire community, while highlighting the unique and original stories of those who make up the Berkshires. His violin was crafted in Italy in 1915 by Stefano Scarampella. For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, described as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” (The New York Times) is the featured soloist in a performance with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, conducted by Michelle Merrill, on Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 7:30pm. In his debut with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, Kutik will perform Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2, known as The American Four Seasons. A piece composed for violinist Robert McDuffie, Glass wrote it with the idea that it would serve as a companion to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The concert program will also include major works by Gioachino Rossini and Antonín Dvořák.
Concert details:
Who: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Presented by Las Vegas Philharmonic
Conducted by Michelle Merrill
What: Music by Philip Glass, Gioachino Rossini, and Antonín Dvořák
When: Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89106
Tickets and information: www.lvphil.org/events/dvoraks-new-world-symphony
Feb 1 & 2: California Symphony led by Donato Cabrera presents Mozart Serenity featuring Guitarist Meng Su - Music by Carlos Simon, Rodrigo, Mozart
Feb 1 & 2: California Symphony led by Donato Cabrera presents Mozart Serenity featuring Guitarist Meng Su - Music by Carlos Simon, Rodrigo, Mozart
Photo of Meng Su courtesy of the artist and of Donato Cabrera by Kristen Loken; high resolution photos available here.
California Symphony Continues its 2024-2025 Season with
MOZART SERENITY
Led by Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director
In Concert February 1 at 7:30pm & February 2 at 4:00pm
At Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts
Featuring Guitar Soloist Meng Su in Rodrigo's iconic Concierto de Aranjuez
Watch Meng Su in Performance
California Symphony’s 2024-2025 Season Showcases the Crowning Achievements of
Composers at the Peak of Their Powers: Watch Donato Cabrera’s Introduction
Tickets & Information: www.californiasymphony.org
WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera continue the 2024-2025 season, showcasing the crowning achievements of composers at the peak of their powers, with MOZART SERENITY – two concerts combining a calming meditation by composer Carlos Simon, a world-famous Spanish guitar concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo, and Mozart’s classical grandeur on Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 7:30pm and Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 4:00pm at Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts (1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek).
Inspired by the words of theologian and former San Francisco resident Howard Thurman, Carlos 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.
“In choosing music to precede a great milestone such as Mozart’s final symphony, I decided that it was best to showcase music of a completely different and opposing style and aesthetic,” Donato Cabrera says. “Simon’s Breathe is contemplative and meditative, music that speaks softly but carries a big stick! Like the music of Arvo Pärt, Simon’s Breathe also has a natural forthrightness to it that is beguiling and gently invites one to just be present in the moment. With everyone in a heightened state of mind, the beginning of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez should be particularly magical and poignant. I know to many guitarist’s chagrin, this is the only guitar concerto that is typically asked of them, but it’s hard to pass up each movement’s iconic melodies, sentiment, and deep emotion, and I know that our soloist, Meng Su, is the ideal soloist. There are many reasons why Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 has been considered one of the greatest achievements of Western Classical Music, but most of these reasons are best left in the textbooks. For me, and I believe for the listener, the magic that this piece possesses is that it somehow contains a facet of every aspect of human existence and experience.”
A deeply contemplative work, Carlos Simon's Breathe was inspired by Howard Thurman's Meditations of the Heart, a collection of meditations on the beauty of humility. Simon writes, “I was deeply inspired by one section entitled 'Still Dews of Quietness,' which urges one to 'stay put for a spell.' Through his words, I wanted to take the gesture further by writing a piece that encourages others to simply reflect and breathe.” The piece was commissioned by Bay Area-based Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. Simon, who is Composer-in-Residence at The Kennedy Center, was recently profiled in The New York Times, saying of his work, “If this music is done in the right way, if it’s being honest, it doesn’t matter whatever your language, whatever your background, whether you’re white, Black, whoever – it goes straight to you. And that’s what I always strive for, honesty, in my music.”
Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez was inspired by the gardens at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, rebuilt in the 18th century. Rodrigo wrote that the concerto captures “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains.” The piece has been performed and recorded numerous times in many forms since its premiere in 1940 – including as part of Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain and by jazz pianist Chick Corea as part of his composition Spain. California Symphony’s featured guitar soloist, Meng Su, has performed in over 30 countries and is on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Classical Guitar Magazine reports that she has the “star potential to serve as inspiration for new generations of guitarists to come.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 41 in C Major is his final symphony, and his longest and grandest. Mozart completed the monumental piece in a brief, two-month period over the summer of 1788, along with his Symphonies Nos. 39 and 40, creating a final trilogy of works that has puzzled scholars – we don't know for what occasion he wrote them, since they were not commissioned by any patron for any specific performance, an anomaly in Mozart’s career. Mozart and his Jupiter Symphony were praised in a German lexicon of music in 1814 as, “. . . overpoweringly great, fiery, artistic, pathetic, sublime, Symphony in C. . . we would already have to perceive him as one of the first[-ranked] geniuses of modern times and the century just past.”
Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers, the 2024-2025 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; Joaquín 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.
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Donato Cabrera since 2013. 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.
Three-concert subscriptions start at $120 and are available now. Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. A 30-minute pre-concert talk by lecturer Scott Fogelsong will begin one hour before each performance. More information is available at CaliforniaSymphony.org.
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:
WHAT: California Symphony presents Mozart Serenity
California Symphony’s first concerts of 2025, conducted by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, combine a calming meditation by composer Carlos Simon, a world-famous Spanish guitar concerto by Joaquín 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.
California Symphony takes the stuffiness out of the concert experience: Take selfies at the photo booth, order a signature cocktail, and sip at your seat. Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by award-winning instructor Scott Foglesong, starting one hour before the show.
WHEN: Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 4:00pm
WHERE: Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
CONCERT:
Mozart Serenity
7:30pm, Saturday, February 1
4:00pm, Sunday, February 2
Donato Cabrera, conductor
Meng Su, guitar soloist
California Symphony
PROGRAM:
Carlos Simon: Breathe
Joaquin Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
Meng Su, guitar
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No.41, K.551, C Major (“Jupiter”)
TICKETS: Three-concert subscriptions start at $120 and are available now. Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under.
INFO: For more information or to purchase tickets, the public may visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, noon to 6pm).
PHOTOS: Available here.
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.
Jan 24: Newport Classical Presents the Telegraph Quartet in Next Chamber Series Concert
Jan 24: Newport Classical Presents the Telegraph Quartet in Next Chamber Series Concert
Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
Newport Classical Presents
Telegraph Quartet Performs Beethoven
Next Chamber Series Concert
Friday, January 24, 2025 at 7:30pm
Newport Classical Recital Hall | 42 Dearborn St | Newport, RI
Tickets and Information
Newport, RI – Newport Classical continues its fourth full-season Chamber Series, featuring twelve concerts held on select Fridays at 7:30pm at the organization’s home venue the Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with a performance on Friday, January 24, 2025 by the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group praised by The New York Times for being, “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” and the San Francisco Chronicle for its, “soulfulness [and] tonal beauty.”
For its Newport debut, the Telegraph Quartet presents music rarely experienced by its creators: Rebecca Clarke’s Poem for String Quartet; Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat Major, Op. 74 (“Harp”); and Bedřich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, From My Life. 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 has received the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The ensemble has performed across the country including at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Interlochen Arts Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival, and is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.
Rebecca Clarke wrote her Poem for String Quartet – a serene work rooted in rhythmic and melodic repetition – in 1926. However, she would never see the work published and disseminated before her passing in 1979. Beethoven had begun losing his hearing by his late 20s and by the time the good-natured “Harp” Quartet was composed in 1809, its cheery quality belied the composer’s 11-year-long struggle with hearing loss that inevitably kept him from fully experiencing this work. Similarly, Smetana would not have been able to even hear his own first string quartet at all, as he fell victim to severe hearing loss in 1874. His own autobiographical string quartet, for all its joy and enthusiasm, ends with a piercing e-string note that denotes the onset of that hearing loss two years prior to the quartet’s creation.
Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. The Chamber Series, newly expanded to twelve concerts held between September and June, reaffirms Newport Classical’s commitment to offer year-round classical music programming. Audiences are invited to enjoy performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with a complimentary glass of wine from Greenvale Vineyards and homemade treats by Newport Classical volunteers.
As part of Newport Classical’s desire to create connections between classical music, the artists who perform it, and the Newport community, all musicians performing on the Chamber Series also visit Newport-area schools to perform for, speak with, and inspire students, through Newport Classical’s Music Education and Engagement Initiative.
Up next, the Newport Classical Chamber Series continues with Boyd Meets Girl coming to Newport for a performance on Valentine’s Day, February 14 – the impressive husband-and-wife guitar and cello duo has toured the world sharing their eclectic mix of music from Debussy and Bach to Radiohead and Beyoncé. On February 28, the acclaimed Trio Karénine, which has established itself in recent years as a key group on the French and international stage, pairs Schubert’s second piano trio with Dvořák’s rarely programmed second piano trio, filled with color, warmth, lively dance, and Slavic folk elements. Oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, joins forces with acclaimed pianist Gloria Chien in music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and more, on March 21. On April 25, Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) presents the music of Bach and Messiaen, alongside works by Grieg and Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, with pianist Anna Polonsky. Pianist Orion Weiss, known for his “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post), returns to Newport for a solo recital of Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations on May 16. On June 13, the GRAMMY®-nominated Norwegian Trio Mediaeval, who captivate audiences with their crystalline voices, closes the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Chamber Series with an enchanting evening of Norwegian and Swedish traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads.
The 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-22, 2025, with programming to be announced at the end of March.
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., 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.
Feb 14: Islandia Music Records Releases Composer Lei Liang’s New Album Dui Featuring Maya Beiser, Wu Man, Steven Schick, Mark Dresser, and more
Feb 14: Islandia Music Records Releases Composer Lei Liang’s New Album Dui Featuring Maya Beiser, Wu Man, Steven Schick, Mark Dresser, and more
Islandia Music Records Releases
Composer Lei Liang’s Dui
Featuring Performances by Maya Beiser, cello; Wu Man, pipa; Steven Schick, percussion; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Zhe Lin, percussion; Mark Dresser, contrabass; and loadbang ensemble
Worldwide Release Date: February 14, 2025
CDs or press downloads, including album booklet, available upon request.
bit.ly/ComposerLeiLiang | www.islandiamusic.com
New York, NY – Islandia Music Records announces the release of Dui, a portrait album of the music of Lei Liang, available worldwide on February 14, 2025. The new album features performances by Maya Beiser, cello; Wu Man, pipa; Steven Schick, percussion; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Zhe Lin, percussion; Mark Dresser, contrabass; and loadbang (Andy Kozar, trumpet; William Lang, trombone; Carlos Cordeiro, bass clarinet; and Jeffrey Gavett, baritone). The album’s title Dui, 對, means “to face.” Lei Liang is a Chinese-born American composer whose works have been described as "hauntingly beautiful and sonically colorful" by The New York Times, and as, "far, far out of the ordinary, brilliantly original and inarguably gorgeous" by The Washington Post.
Dui stages instruments and performance as elements of surprise from distant worlds. Collaborations between the pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the great percussionist Steven Schick offer a musical face-off through an unlikely combination of instruments, revealing a playfulness in their inherent tensions. The innovative techniques of Mark Dresser on the contrabass embody a rich spectrum of extreme opposites – lightness and darkness, angels and ghosts, paradise and inferno – in a singular vibrating body. Cellist Maya Beiser renders songs of the Mongolian steppe in a trancelike elegance, portraying notions of home that resonate over time and space. The ensemble loadbang conveys the tranquil image of a beaver swimming under the moonlight, disturbed by showers of phonetic particles drawn from poetry as the piece traverses through different states of mind. Cho-Liang Lin and Zhe Lin weave together the sonic characteristics of violin and percussion, transforming sound into infinite possibilities.
Liang writes about the music on this album, “Composing offers me a chance to explore and foster deeply personal relationships, including the relationship with my own cultural and spiritual heritage. It also presents me the opportunity to face seemingly insurmountable challenges. Who am I without my cultural heritage and without my friendships? I like to think of my music as the ultimate tribute to the past and present bonds that have shaped my life and given it meaning. All of the works on this album were written for and performed by artists who have inspired me. The challenge in composing each piece, however, is unique.”
Read the complete program notes for the album and artist biographies in the album’s liner notes, available here.
About Lei Liang:
The winner of the 2011 Rome Prize, Lei Liang (b. November 28, 1972) is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland Award, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto for saxophone and orchestra, Xiaoxiang, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015. His orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, won the prestigious 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. As a scholar and conservationist of cultural traditions, he edited and co-edited eight books and editions, and published more than fifty articles.
Lei Liang’s work has received global recognition, with commissions including the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series. Other commissions and performances come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, MAP Fund, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Arditti Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Lei Liang’s fourteen portrait discs are released on Naxos, New World, Mode, New Focus, BMOP/sound, Encounter, Albany and Bridge Records.
With interest in our sonic world, Lei Liang’s recent works address issues of sex trafficking across the US-Mexican border (Cuatro Corridos), America's complex relationship with gun and violence (Inheritance), and environmental awareness through the sonification of coral reefs. Lei Liang served as Composer-in-Residence from 2013 through 2016 at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology where his multimedia works preserve and reimagine cultural heritage through combining scientific research and advanced technology. In 2023, the Institute launched "Lei Lab" where he continues to collaborate with engineers, geologists, oceanographers and software developers, to explore what he calls "the unique potential for learning offered by creative listening."
Lei Liang studied composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogan, Chaya Czernowin and Mario Davidovsky, and received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (B.M. and M.M.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.). A Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, he held fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships. Lei Liang serves as the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. His catalogue of more than a hundred compositions is published exclusively by Schott Music.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Maya Beiser: www.mayabeiser.com
Wu Man: www.wumanpipa.org
Steven Schick: www.stevenschick.com
Cho-Liang Lin: www.cholianglin.com
Zhe Lin: www.onepointfm.com/en/zhelin
Mark Dresser: www.mark-dresser.com
loadbang: www.loadbang.com/bios.html
ALBUM TRACK LISTING:
Lei Liang: Dui
Islandia Music Records | Release Date: February 14, 2025
Maya Beiser, cello; Wu Man, pipa; Steven Schick, percussion; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Zhe Lin, percussion;
Mark Dresser, contrabass; and loadbang: Andy Kozar, trumpet; William Lang, trombone; Carlos Cordeiro, bass clarinet; Jeffrey Gavett, baritone
1. Vis-à-vis [12:28]
Wu Man, pipa • Steven Schick, percussion
2. Mongolian Suite I: Tongliao Mountain [1:59]
3. Mongolian Suite II: Where Is Home? [2:46]
4. Mongolian Suite III: Chifeng Mountain [1:40]
5. Mongolian Suite IV: Mother and Daughter [4:05]
6. Mongolian Suite V: Yin Shan Dance [1:58]
7. Mongolian Suite VI: Feng [4:04]
Maya Beiser, cello
8. déjà vu [14:31]
Cho-Liang Lin, violin • Zhe Lin, percussion
9. Luminosity [18:00]
Mark Dresser, contrabass
10. Lakescape V [10:14]
loadbang: Andy Kozar, trumpet; William Lang, trombone; Carlos Cordeiro, bass clarinet; Jeffrey Gavett, baritone
Total Time: [72:43]
Produced by Lei Liang and Maya Beiser
Engineering by Andrew Munsey (vis-à-vis and Lakescape V)
Engineering by by Andy Bradley (déjà vu)
Engineering by Dave Cook (Mongolian Suite)
Engineering by by Mark Dresser (Luminosity)
Editing by by Andrew Munsey at UC San Diego, Studio A (vis-à-vis, déjà vu, Luminosity, and Lakescape V)
Editing by Dave Cook at Area 52 Studios, Saugerties, NY (Mongolian Suite)
Mastering by Andrew Munsey
Art direction by Denise Burt | elevator-design.dk
Creative direction by Kristen Loring Brennan
All music by Lei Liang is published by Schott Music Corporation, New York (ASCAP).
About Islandia Music Records:
Islandia Music Records is an independent record label founded and spearheaded by cellist and producer Maya Beiser, one of the foremost soloists and avant-garde artists of her generation. Maya Beiser’s desire to be the driving force behind her artistic expression led her to concentrate on an intensely rich and innovative solo career. She has engaged composers, choreographers, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, sound designers, and technology innovators to create works written for her or by her and interpreted through her singular artistic lens. The freedom to chart her own course made it possible to become a game changer in the contemporary creative landscape. A platform for self-expression and daring artistic adventures, Islandia Music Records allows for a broad palette of collaborative patterns: between the old and the new, the brazen and the subtle, the dark and the hopeful.
Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases Aequora from Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin - Music by Icelandic Composers
Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases Aequora from Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin - Music by Icelandic Composers
Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin
Release New Album Aequora on Sono Luminus
The Duo’s First Recording as Mystery Sonata
Featuring Music by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Daníel Bjarnason, and Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Worldwide Release Date: February 28, 2025
CDs or press downloads, including album booklet, available upon request.
www.minagajic.com | Zachary Carrettin | www.sonoluminus.com
On February 28, 2025, pianist Mina Gajić and violinist Zachary Carrettin will release Aequora on Sono Luminus. The album is inspired by Iceland and the cultural legacy of its music, featuring works by several prominent Icelandic composers, including Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Daníel Bjarnason, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Páll Ragnar Pálsson.
Until the present recording, Mina Gajić and Zachary Carrettin have recorded under their given names, occasionally performing live under the duo’s moniker, especially in non-classical settings presenting a diversity of repertoire and styles. Aequora is the first recording the married duo will release under the name Mystery Sonata, embracing the inherent mystery in presenting contemporary music and new arrangements for the first time. The new album builds on Gajić and Carrettin’s strong recording history with Sono Luminus. The duo’s 2020 album, Boundless featuring Schubert’s Sonatinas, made the Top 10 on The Billboard Classical Chart. In 2022, they released Confluence featuring Balkan dances and Tango Nuevo, described by The Whole Note as “a merging of two different compositional languages, coming from regions that are geographically distanced but complementary with their distinct rhythmicity and melodic flavour.” In April 2024, they released Bach Uncaged alternating the Sonatas of J.S. Bach and John Cage.
Gajić writes, “In our years recording seven albums for Sono Luminus, Zachary and I have marveled at the label’s releases of new orchestral and chamber music composed by Icelanders. Collectively, this music seems to offer an alternate reality, a sound space that is distinct in each work and with each composer, and yet shared, almost as a collective consciousness, or at least a community with similar ideals expressed in music. Zachary and I traveled to Iceland to experience the landscapes and to meet with several composers, exploring their work and observing where the connections between their interests and ours as a duo seemed congruous. María had been wanting to rework her Aequora, adding a violin to the piano and electronics, and Páll had been imagining adapting the harp part for piano in his work Notre Dame. Both turned out to be remarkably successful, and rewarding to study and perform. In exploring works to program alongside these, Anna’s Reminiscence and Daníel’s First Escape worked beautifully – solos complementing the other works while providing refreshing contrast to the duo works. We asked María to create an entirely new work for us with the goal of providing a contemplative environment for the audience, as a shared meditation, a community-building ritual. She composed an utterly gorgeous work, Re/fractions, casting light on what is possible when the intention is, as she so eloquently stated when we first met, ‘to refrain from adding noise to an already noisy world.’”
Aequora for grand piano and electronics by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir was originally commissioned for the Iceland Arts Festival in 2015 by the pianist Árni Heiðar Karlsson. The work is inspired by a text of Anne Carson from her book Nox. In meeting Sigfusdottir, she expressed to Gajić and Carrettin that she had been thinking about adding a texture, an element, a new voice to the composition. She and Carrettin connected in sharing stories of their violin studies and they came to find that many years ago, they both studied with the same great violinist at a summer festival. Not only did Sigfúsdóttir successfully and beautifully create and integrate the violin into this work, she also composed a coda of new material, a melody that seems to exist without pulse and beyond time; it is extraordinarily effective and magical.
Sigfusdottir writes, “The manuscript is hand-written without time signature. The electronic part creates a certain atmosphere and a frame over which the instruments play. The piano part is more fixed and the violin is written as a counterpoint to the other layers, creating tension and release. The piece evolves from uncertainty towards a clearer structure and demands from the performers a close listening and attention to delicate nuances.”
First Escape for solo violin by Daníel Bjarnason was commissioned and first performed by violinist Jennifer Koh in 2018. The composer informed Carrettin of his plan to write a series of “Escapes,” this having been the first. Carrettin writes in the liner notes for First Escape, “Daníel’s piece is brilliantly composed for the violin, utilizing the natural harmonics of the string in the most virtuosic ways. It’s a wonderful contrast to Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s Notre Dame, which explores the expressivity of intonation across the harmonic series in a slow context. In contrast, Daníel uses the harmonics more in the way Paganini is rumored to have used them in the early 19th Century in his performances, achieving large leaps of pitch within a fast sequence. There is a manic quality to the work and yet a clear and intelligible form.”
Notre Dame was originally written in 2021 for an Icelandic duo, Elísabet Waage on harp and Laufey Jónsdóttir on violin. The work explores the many distinct timbres and intonations of a unison pitch as played in various places on the strings, and on various lengths of string. The composer, Páll Ragnar Pálsson wrote, “I was thinking a lot about Notre Dame after the fire. There is a feminine connotation in the name of the church and I perceive the religiousness of it from a motherly aspect. It was a deep shock for the Occident when Notre Dame of Paris burned in 2019. As a joint effort of foresters, carpenters, engineers and benefactors, the roof is now being restored to its original state using materials and methods from the 13th century. The urgency and devotion of this act indicates the significance a building can have for a vast group of people.”
Reminiscence by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir was composed in 2017 in recognition of Democracy 25. This pan-European political movement explores alter-globalization, social ecology, ecofeminism, post-growth, post-capitalism, and universal basic income. Carrettin writes in the liner notes, “In this work for solo piano, Thorvaldsdottir uses specific notation to achieve the most captivating and moving resonances from the instrument, often conjuring mental images and memories of witnessing and experiencing natural phenomena, such as a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, or a storm over the ocean.” However, although Thorvaldsdottir finds inspiration in the musical qualities of nature, as she explained in an interview with NPR, “This has to do with energy and the flow and structure, the nuances and perspectives you can take to zoom into the tiniest detail and zoom out. It's much more about the flow and the energy rather than specific landscapes. It's also not about romanticizing it at all, because nature is also brutal.” Reminiscence is composed in seven short sections, delineated by textural changes requiring different extended techniques on the piano.
Re/fractions, composed in 2023/24 by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, was commissioned by Mystery Sonata and the Boulder Bach Festival in Colorado, where Gajić and Carrettin gave the world premiere in February 2024. Sigfúsdóttir writes, “The piece is inspired by a few different things – space (in the register of the instruments and the actual space between sounds), time (actual tempo and sense of time), and textures. The textures in the piece are often felt by changes of light or color in the tonal quality and chords. The terminology of the word refraction is: the bending of light as it passes from one transparent substance into another. This bending of light by refraction makes it possible for us to have lenses, magnifying glasses, prisms and rainbows. The piece is loosely divided into two parts, fraction 1 and 2, but is at the same time one whole arc of music. The second half of the piece gravitates around the note D and d-minor, which is also referred to as Re.”
About the Artists
Mina Gajić has garnered an international reputation for insightful and dynamic performances of a vast and ever-evolving repertoire including many new works by living composers, concertos and recitals performed on historic Romantic Era pianos, and collaborations on harpsichord and fortepiano. She started her education and music career in Yugoslavia and subsequently performed as concerto soloist and recitalist in Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Montenegro, China, Bolivia, and across the United States. As duo partner with violinist Zachary Carrettin, she has appeared on four continents, focusing on a diverse repertoire spanning the centuries and various styles – on historic period pianos in addition to modern concert instruments, and including new works composed for the duo. Gajić currently serves as Artistic Director of Boulder Bach Festival and COmpass REsonance.
Zachary Carrettin has performed as violinist, violist, cellist da spalla, and conductor in more than twenty-five countries on four continents and has established a reputation for presenting diverse programs which feature repertory from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries – on period, modern, and electric instruments. He has conducted orchestras across the United States, Europe, and South America, resurrecting works from manuscript and presenting world premiere performances of contemporary music. As soloist and music director with Project Bandaloop, he appeared at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts Face of America Series, the Stavanger Festival (Norway), and in a private concert for the Sultan and Royal Family of Oman, in Muscat, performing original music on electric violin. Carrettin currently serves as Music Director of Boulder Bach Festival and COmpass REsonance.
Track List:
Aequora
Mystery Sonata: Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin
Recorded at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce VA
August 6-9, 2023 & February 26-29, 2024
[1] Aequora [10:01]
Composed by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
[2] First Escape [4:26]
Composed by Daníel Bjarnason
[3-4] Notre Dame
1. La Tour Nord [5:49]
2. La Tour Sud [3:52]
Composed by Páll Ragnar Pálsson
[5] Reminiscence [7:53]
Composed by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir
[6-7] Re/fractions
I. [5:38]
II. [4:24]
Composed by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
Total Time: 42:08
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Producer: Dan Merceruio
Recording Engineer: Daniel Shores
Mixing & Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Editing Engineer: Dan Merceruio
Piano Technician: John Veitch
Cover/Bio Photography: Heather Gray
Textural Photography: Collin J. Rae
Liner Notes: Zachary Carrettin
Design & Layout: Joshua Frey
Jan-Feb: GatherNYC Presents Four Mindful Musical Mornings - Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer, Gabriel Cabezas, ensemble 132, Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Jan-Feb: GatherNYC Presents Four Mindful Musical Mornings - Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer, Gabriel Cabezas, ensemble 132, Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Press photos available here.
GatherNYC Continues 2024-2025 Season in NYC
at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in Columbus Circle
Every Other Sunday Morning at 11AM
Mindful Musical Mornings Include Spoken Word and Brief Celebration of Silence
Coming Up in January and February
1/5 Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer
1/19 Gabriel Cabezas
2/2 ensemble 132
2/16 Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Spring 2025 GatherNYC Concerts:
3/2 Toomai Quintet
3/16 Daedalus Quartet
3/30 MATA
4/13 Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
4/27 ETHEL + Layale Chaker
5/11 Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
5/25 Rupert Boyd, guitar
6/8 Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl
“thoughtful, intimate events curated with refreshing eclecticism by its founders, the cellist Laura Metcalf and the guitarist Rupert Boyd, complete with pastries and coffee”
– The New Yorker
“A sweet chamber music series”
– The New York Times
“Impressive Aussie/American led concert series proves music can be a religion.”
– Limelight Magazine
Museum of Arts and Design | The Theater at MAD | 2 Columbus Circle | NYC
Tickets & Information: www.gathernyc.org
New York, NY – GatherNYC, a revolutionary concert experience founded in 2018 by cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, continues its 2024-2025 season at the series’ home venue, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) (2 Columbus Circle) with four upcoming concerts in January and February - Emi Ferguson (flute) + Dan Tepfer (clavichord) on January 5, cellist Gabriel Cabezas on January 19, ensemble 132 on February 2, and Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner on February 16. The season runs through June 2025, with concerts held every other Sunday at 11am in The Theater at MAD. Coffee and pastries are served before each performance at 10:30am. Admission for children under 12 is free.
Guests at GatherNYC are served exquisite live classical music performed by New York’s immensely talented artists, artisanal coffee and pastries, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour and evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service – but the religion is music, and all are welcome.
Spoken word artists perform briefly at the midpoint of each concert, many of whom are winners of The Moth StorySLAM events. “It’s an interesting moment of something completely different from the music, and it often connects with the audience,” Metcalf told Strings magazine in a feature about the series last year. “Then we have a two-minute celebration of silence when we turn the lights down, centering ourselves in the center of the city. Then the lights come back on, and the music starts again out of the silence. We find that the listening and the feeling in the room changes after that.”
Metcalf and Boyd say, “We are thrilled to be returning to the beautiful Museum of Arts and Design, offering 17 concerts throughout our 2024-25 season, our largest lineup yet. We look forward to inviting audiences to join us for these mindful, musical mornings with world-class artists in an intimate, unique setting – complete with spoken word, silence, coffee and a communal, welcoming environment.”
Up Next, Sundays at 11AM:
Dec. 22: Excelsis Percussion Quartet
Hailed as, "one of the most innovative and exciting percussion ensembles to emerge in the golden age of chamber music" (Jonathan Haas, New York University) for their immersive sound world, this international group of women with a multilingual combination of five languages join together to speak the universal language of rhythm, rooted in their belief that music possesses an ability to unite us all. Excelsis brings vibrancy to its audiences through eclectic programming, innovative storytelling, and embracing their intersectional identities.
Jan. 5: Emi Ferguson (flute) + Dan Tepfer (clavichord)
Two of NYC’s most acclaimed and versatile artists come together for a program of baroque delights by Bach, Bonporti and more. Tepfer is a #1 Billboard-charting keyboard player who is equally at home in classical and jazz realms, while Ferguson is a 2023 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, known for her performances alongside the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Paul Simon. The pair brings the spirit of their far-reaching musical practices to breathe new life into ancient music.
Jan. 19: Gabriel Cabezas
Acclaimed cello soloist and chamber musician Gabriel Cabezas shares a creatively constructed solo cello program that explores a wide range of timbral possibilities on the instrument. Bringing his thoughtful virtuosity to music by some of the most important compositional voices of his generation including Jessie Montgomery, Allison Loggins-Hull, Paul Wiancko, Alyssa Weinberg and more, Cabezas masterfully takes listeners on a journey through the world of the cello alone.
Feb. 2: ensemble132
ensemble132 presents a genre-bending program honoring the expansive legacy of two musical icons for their joint 150th birthday: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Maurice Ravel. This group of all-star chamber musicians drawn from the rosters of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Marlboro Music Festival, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and more, explores these composers’ influence on other visionaries through the 20th and 21st centuries. ensemble132 traces these connections in a program featuring movements from Ravel’s and Coleridge-Taylor’s string quartets along with special e132 arrangements and a rollicking finale by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
Feb. 16: Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Vocalist and composer Sarah Elizabeth Charles, hailed as “soulfully articulate” by The New York Times, and acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Jarrett Cherner will present music from their debut album as a duo. The album, called Tone, centers its concept on the magical, fleeting and delicate nature of life as well as the need to take care of ourselves and the world around us as best as we possibly can.
GatherNYC's Spring 2025 Schedule – All Concerts Take Place at 11AM:
Mar. 2: Toomai Quintet + Maria Brea
Toomai String Quintet, an ensemble dedicated to expanding the Latin American chamber music repertoire, presents this family-friendly concert of music from Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. The program features Cuban composer Keyla Orozco’s The Song of the Cicada (2024) for narrator and quintet, inspired by Onelio Jorge Cardoso’s vivid children’s story of the same title. Also on the program are Toomai’s original arrangements of works by Hermeto Pascoal, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Léa Freire, and Manuel Ponce.
Mar. 16: Daedalus Quartet
Winners of the highest honor in string quartet playing, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Daedalus Quartet will perform the visceral, folk-inspired sixth string quartet by Béla Bartók, alongside the atmospheric, pop-influenced Space Between by acclaimed composer and Guggenheim fellow Anna Weesner.
Mar. 30: MATA
Music at the Anthology (MATA), an incubator for adventurous emerging artists in the early stages of their careers, presents, supports, and commissions composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA composers have since emanated to include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur “Geniuses.” In 2010 MATA was awarded ASCAP’s prestigious Aaron Copland award in recognition of its work. For its first collaboration with GatherNYC, MATA will showcase highlights from previous festivals as well as selected works from its global Call for Submissions. The New Yorker has hailed MATA as, “the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world.” The New York Times has called it “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic;” and The Wall Street Journal said that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.”
Apr. 13: Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
Violinist Deborah Buck, praised by The Strad as having a “surpassing degree of imagination and vibrant sound,” and Orli Shaham, described as a “brilliant pianist” by The New York Times, present a program to celebrate Clara Schumann's legacy. In addition to works by Robert and Clara Schumann, the program features the couple's circle of friends, including the music of Amanda Maier.
Apr. 27: ETHEL + Layale Chaker
From their beginnings in 1998, the members of ETHEL have prized collaboration. In recent years, the quartet has struck up a particularly fruitful collaboration with the Lebanese-born, Brooklyn-based violinist and composer Layale Chaker. Their album Vigil offers a chance to document some of that collective work, with each member of ETHEL contributing a piece and Chaker contributing two works, one of which is the remarkable work that gives the project its name.
May 11: Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
Acclaimed violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv is known for channeling her award-winning virtuosity as a means of championing worthy music by lesser or unknown composers from her native Ukraine. For her first appearance at GatherNYC, Solomiya is joined by violist William Frampton and cellist Laura Metcalf to present a forgotten masterwork by Fedir Yakymenko, a colorful and rhapsodic piece written around the turn of the 20th century. Ukrainian by birth and spending his life in Russia and France, Yakymenko deftly blends French and Ukrainian sounds and styles into this delightful piece, which deserves to be heard and remembered.
May 25: Rupert Boyd, guitar
GatherNYC artistic director and classical guitar virtuoso Rupert Boyd takes listeners on a journey across centuries and continents on the six strings of his guitar. From Malian kora music to atmospheric sounds from Japan to contemporary music from his home country of Australia to classic works for the Spanish guitar, Boyd’s riveting program has something for everyone.
June 8: Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl
Building on a highly successful collaboration during the 2023-24 season, GatherNYC artistic directors Laura Metcalf and Rupert Boyd in their duo formation of Boyd Meets Girl once again team up with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for an expanded collaborative program featuring classical favorites and creative, virtuosic takes on popular tunes.
For tickets and information, visit www.gathernyc.org.
Press photos available here.
American Counterpoints Receives Two GRAMMY® Nominations - Named One of NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024
American Counterpoints Receives Two GRAMMY® Nominations - Named One of NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024
American Counterpoints Receives Two GRAMMY® Nominations
Best Classical Compendium
Best Classical Instrumental Solo for Julia Perry’s Violin Concerto
Named One of NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024 and Top 10 Classical Albums of 2024
Experiential Orchestra
James Blachly, Music Director
Curtis Stewart, Violin Soloist
Available Now on Bright Shiny Things
“This important – arguably long overdue – album spotlights two versatile mid-20th century artists whose music fell into neglect.”
– NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024
"a fine example of the sober yet seething angularity of its era, leavened with warm strings and hints of Coplandesque expansiveness"
– The New York Times on Perry's Violin Concerto
“It’s not often you can claim a CD offers true revelations, but that’s the case with this fascinating release”
– The Strad
Stream the Album Now
Downloads and CDs available for press on request.
jamesblachly.com | experientialorchestra.com | curtisjstewart.com | brightshiny.ninja
American Counterpoints – the newest album and co-creation between James Blachly, GRAMMY®-winning founder and Music Director of Experiential Orchestra, and GRAMMY®-nominated violinist Curtis Stewart, whom The New York Times credits with “combining omnivory and brilliance” – celebrates the centenary of composer Julia Perry, as well as the work of fellow composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
This album, which Tom Huizenga of NPR Music writes presents “strong performances” by the Blachly-led Experiential Orchestra and a “committed performance” of Perry’s Violin Concerto by Curtis Stewart, received two GRAMMY® nominations in the categories of Best Classical Compendium and Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The 2025 GRAMMYs will take place Sunday, February 2 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and will broadcast live on the CBS Television Network and stream live and on demand on Paramount+. This is the first GRAMMY nomination for the music of Julia Perry.
In addition to the world premiere recording of Perry’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, American Counterpoints includes her Prelude for Strings, Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses, and Ye, Who Seek the Truth, as well as Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Sinfonietta No. 1 and Louisiana Blues Strut for solo violin. Curtis Stewart’s We Who Seek complements both composers’ works, and serves as the album’s finale. The album is produced by GRAMMY-winner Blanton Alspaugh and Soundmirror.
American Counterpoints has also been named as one of NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024 across all genres, as well as one of NPR Music’s Top 10 Classical Album of 2024. NPR’s Tom Huizenga reports, “After the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, steps (albeit small ones) have been taken to better represent the work of Black American composers, past and present. This important – arguably long overdue – album spotlights two versatile mid-20th century artists whose music fell into neglect. The once-celebrated Julia Perry died in 1979, leaving her arresting violin concerto in disarray. Recently reconstructed, it receives a committed performance by Curtis Stewart, keen to the score's chromatic nuances. Her Prelude is serene, unlike the experimental Symphony in One Movement, which probes dark harmonies with the urgency of a search party. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an agile pianist-composer who collaborated with Max Roach and Marvin Gaye, channels Handel in his neoclassical Sinfonietta No. 1 and conjures gritty southern styles in Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk for Violin. These strong performances by the Experiential Orchestra will hopefully spark a resurgence in the music of these exceptional composers.”
Julia Perry (1924-1979) was an African American composer, born in Lexington, Kentucky and raised in Akron, Ohio. Her early career was filled with promise: she spent two summers at the Berkshire Music Center, studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and briefly with Nadia Boulanger, won the Prix Fontainebleau and two Guggenheim Fellowships, and her Study for Orchestra was performed by the New York Philharmonic in 1965. But tragically, many of her roughly 100 compositions remain unknown. Perry suffered a paralytic stroke in 1970. As musicologist J. Michele Edwards writes, “Her letters reveal her effort to walk, talk, and conduct again. She did learn to write with her left hand and resumed composing; however, she endured tragic emotional and financial difficulties.”
Through the research work of the non-profit organization Videmus led by Dr. Louise Toppin, in partnership with Boosey & Hawkes, many of Julia Perry’s unpublished works are now being discovered and made available for performance for the first time. The core of the effort to publish Perry’s music has been the three-person Videmus editorial team of Louise Toppin; conductor Christopher Wilkins, music director of the Akron Symphony; and James Blachly. Blachly first encountered Perry’s music in 2014, and in addition to his work on the editorial team, has championed Perry’s music in performances for the past five years. With Toppin, he co-directed the Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in March 2024. The four-day Festival brought together 140 performers and scholars in New York in the largest Julia Perry celebration in the world to date. Blachly has also brought Perry’s music to new audiences through performances with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Experiential Orchestra, and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra.
Known as “Perky," Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was said to have had a musical talent rivaled only by Leonard Bernstein. He played jazz piano with Max Roach, studied conducting at Berkshire Music Center, and was a prolific and accomplished composer. While he composed roughly 30 works in a classical idiom, the vast majority of his compositions were for film and television.
American Counterpoints aims to dramatically change the visibility and reputation of these two extraordinary African American composers, bringing their works to a much wider audience and a place of higher prestige, as well as to help inspire more frequent performances of their music throughout the world.
Of their intention in making this album, Curtis Stewart and James Blachly say:
"The title American Counterpoints refers to the compositional technique of interweaving independent melodies into a powerful whole, and the strength, integrity, and imaginative music that results. It underscores how these two masterful composers were required to create new musical paths for themselves because the mainstream of classical music did not have a place for them centerstage. Julia Perry flourished in Europe, with only limited success in the United States. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's boundless musical talents found most success in film and television, jazz and popular music. Yet despite being marginalized and largely ignored for many decades, both composers are essential to American classical music, and our intention with this album is to advocate for their music to claim its rightful place within the core of our American repertoire."
The juxtaposition of the two composers on the album forms its own counterpoint, adding a layer to the compositions themselves; Curtis Stewart’s final track weaves together all three compositional voices.
ALBUM TRACKLIST
American Counterpoints
James Blachly, Experiential Orchestra, Curtis Stewart
Bright Shiny Things | Release Date: March, 1, 2024
1. Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
Curtis Stewart, violin
2. Prelude for Strings by Julia Perry, Arr. Roger Zahab
3-5. Sinfonietta No. 1 by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
I: Sonata Allegro
II: Song Form-Largo
III: Rondo-Allegro furioso
6. Symphony in One Movement for Violas and String Basses by Julia Perry
7. Ye, Who Seek the Truth by Julia Perry, Arr. Jannina Norpoth
8-13. Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Julia Perry
I. Slow; Moderate; Fast; Moderate
II. Slow; Moderate; Fast
III. Moderate
IV. Fast
V. Slow; Fast
VI. Fast; Moderate; Fast
Curtis Stewart, violin
14. We Who Seek by Curtis Stewart
Curtis Stewart, violin
Album co-curated by Curtis Stewart and James Blachly
Executive Producer James Blachly
Director of Artistic Planning Pauline Kim Harris
Produced by Blanton Alspaugh (Soundmirror)
Engineering, Mixing and Mastering by Mark Donahue (Soundmirror)
Feb. 8: Telegraph Quartet in Sound Imagined – Performing in Madison
Feb. 8: Telegraph Quartet in Sound Imagined – Performing in Madison
Photo of the Telegraph Quartet by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution here.
Telegraph Quartet in Sound Imagined
Presented by Madison Performing Arts Foundation
Performing the Music of Rebecca Clarke,
Ludwig van Beethoven, and Bedřich Smetana
Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:00pm
The Picker House | 110 St. Michaels Ave. | Madison, IN
More information
“soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail ... an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape.”
– San Francisco Chronicle
Madison, IN – On Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:00pm, the 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 Madison Performing Arts Foundation at The Picker House (110 St. Michaels Ave). The award-winning ensemble will perform a program titled Sound Imagined, which features the music of Rebecca Clarke, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Bedřich Smetana.
The Telegraph Quartet 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.
Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet bring their well-honed musical chemistry and expressive performance to a program titled Sound Imagined. The idea that a composer might never actually hear their own creation might at first seem like an oxymoron: unheard music. The Telegraph Quartet explores just that - compositions that may never have been fully experienced by the creators themselves. Rebecca Clarke, a truly accomplished composer of the 20th century, composed her Poem for string quartet but would never see the work published and disseminated in her lifetime. Beethoven had begun losing his hearing by his late 20s and by the time the good-natured “Harp” Quartet was composed, its cheery quality belied the composer’s 11-year-long struggle with hearing loss that would have kept him from fully experiencing this work. Similarly, Smetana would not have been able to even hear his own first string quartet at all, as he fell victim to severe hearing loss in 1874. His own autobiographical string quartet, for all its joy and enthusiasm, ends with a piercing e-string note that denotes the onset of that hearing loss two years prior to the quartet’s creation.
The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released in 2023 on 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: The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including 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. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.
Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.
In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. This first volume features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “…full of elegance and pinpoint control…” Divergent Paths follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten.
Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music 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. 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. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Madison Performing Arts Foundation
What: Music by Rebecca Clarke, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Bedřich Smetana
When: Saturday, February 8, 2025 @ 7:00 PM
Where: The Picker House, 110 St. Michaels Ave., Madison, IN 47250
Tickets and information: www.madisonperformingartsfoundation.com
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, which the San Francisco Chronicle describes as having “soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail” and being “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape,” is presented by the Madison Performing Arts Foundation on Saturday, February 8, 2025. The concert will feature Rebecca Clarke’s Poem for String Quartet Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 74 “Harp” and Bedřich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 “From My Life,” in a program curated by the ensemble and titled Sound Imagined. Through this performance, the Telegraph Quartet explore the idea that a composer may never actually hear and experience their own creations.
Dec. 22: Ethan Iverson Performs Music from Playfair Sonatas at Mezzrow
Ethan Iverson Performs Music from Playfair Sonatas at Mezzrow
Clockwise: Pianist Ethan Iverson, Violinist Miranda Cuckson, Pianist Hiroko Sasaki, Trumpeter Tim Leopold
Ethan Iverson Performs Music from His Album
Playfair Sonatas at Mezzrow
Violin Sonata with Miranda Cuckson, violin
Trumpet Sonata with Tim Leopold, trumpet
Plus Sonata for Piano Four-Hands, with Hiroko Sasaki, piano
Playfair Sonatas is Available Now on Ulricht AudioVisual
Stream the Album
Sunday, December 22, 2024 at 4pm
Mezzrow | 163 West 10th Street | New York, NY
Free Admission
“a welcome stream of fully notated music by the jazz pianist and composer Ethan Iverson” – The New York Times
CDs and press downloads available upon request.
https://iverson.substack.com | www.urlicht-av.com
New York, NY – On Sunday, December 22, 2024 at 4pm, pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson performs music from his recently released album Playfair Sonatas – Violin Sonata with violinist Miranda Cuckson and Trumpet Sonata with trumpeter Tim Leopold plus his Sonata for Piano Four-Hands with pianist Hiroko Sasaki – at Mezzrow (163 W 10th St). Admission is free. Located in Manhattan’s West Village, Mezzrow, is a cultured jazz club at which Iverson has performed on several different occasions, including a duo engagement with bassist Ron Carter during the club’s first month of operation.
Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas album was released on the Urlicht AudioVisual label on November 15. The recording features six sonatas composed by Iverson for six different instruments and piano, and recorded by Iverson with some of today’s most vibrant classical performers – Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet. The album is bookended by a Fanfare and Recessional performed by the whole ensemble.
Playfair Sonatas was born in 2020 during the pandemic, when Iverson met curator, producer, and frequent commissioner of new work Piers Playfair for a summertime outdoor dinner. Like most musicians that year, Iverson had downsized and was concerned about making a baseline income. He had recently moved and rented a smaller, cheaper studio, and when Playfair asked if there was anything he could help with, Iverson replied, “Yeah, I’d love to cover the studio rent for a few months.” The two agreed that in exchange for six months of rent, Iverson would write six sonatas, and that Playfair would be allowed to choose the instrumentation.
Writing these Playfair Sonatas led Iverson to composing larger works, including his Piano Sonata, recently recorded as part of his album Technically Acceptable on the Blue Note label. Seth Colter Walls wrote of the piece in The New York Times, “Classical in conception... it also contains traces of crunchy harmonic modernism and the bumptious sounds of vintage American jazz styles.”
Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas similarly showcase this signature approach. The sonatas intertwine 21st-century jazz gestures with the formal structures of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. While the outer movements are titled with traditional tempo indications (Allegro, Rondo, Scherzo, and similar), the middle movements of each work are dedicated to an artist whose work blended jazz and classical.
"These dedications came about late in the game," says Iverson. "I had scrapped a previous Adagio for clarinet, and wrote a new middle movement I really liked. However, was this ‘oom-pah' rhythm too much like one of Carla Bley's amusing ‘music hall’ pieces? Well, what if I dedicated the movement to her? That would fix the issue of appropriation. As it turned out, Carla passed away the same day I finished ‘Music Hall’ and devised the ‘dedications’ stratagem. The other five salutations to Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Paul Desmond, Joe Wilder, and Roswell Rudd came easily, for they had been in the back of my mind the whole time."
Piers Playfair adds, “It’s cool that out of a Covid dinner we were able to put a project together that so encapsulates one of our joint core beliefs, that the divisions that divide music, such as jazz, classical, blues etc, into neat little boxes are really just names that people put on them and shouldn’t define the artists."
“Ethan and Piers assembled an absolute dream team of soloists, each of who brought their A game to Oktaven Audio for two days of amazing and inspiring music-making,” says producer Gene Gaudette. “The recording sessions were spirited, crackling with energy, and seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. The Playfair Sonatas are such terrific music – engaging, witty, and still fresh even after multiple hearings. They will no doubt find not only a wide listening audience via this recording but surely be embraced by players looking for new, challenging, genre-crossing repertoire.”
Read Ethan Iverson’s notes on each of the Playfair Sonatas, including the dedication movements, here.
Alongside the album, Iverson is publishing the scores for all of the Playfair Sonatas, making them available to interested musicians free of charge.
Playfair Sonatas are commissioned by Piers Playfair and 23Arts Initiative.
The album is released worldwide on Gene Gaudette’s Ulricht AudioVisual label.
About Ethan Iverson:
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson was a founding member of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King. The New York Times called TBP “Better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.” During his 17-year tenure, TBP performed in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, and Bonnaroo; collaborated with Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group; and created a faithful arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and a radical reinvention of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction.
Since leaving TBP, Iverson has released critically-acclaimed jazz albums on ECM and Blue Note, often accompanied by bonafide jazz stars such as Tom Harrell or Jack DeJohnette. Downbeat has called Iverson “A master of melody” while Hot House recently raved, "Known for his intellectual depth and adventurous musical spirit, Ethan Iverson has traversed the boundaries of jazz tradition while leaving an indelible mark on its evolution.” After witnessing a 2024 concert of standards spontaneously chosen by the audience, Stereophile wrote, “Iverson is a natural, consistent crowd-pleaser. For his entire career, he has been finding ways to be accessible while pushing the envelope.”
Iverson holds down the piano chair in the critically acclaimed Billy Hart quartet and has recorded with other elder statesmen like Albert “Tootie” Heath and Ron Carter. In terms of performing classical music, Iverson has accompanied Mark Padmore in Schubert’s Winterreise and Johnny Gandelsman in the three Brahms Violin Sonatas.
On top of his activities as a pianist and composer, Iverson has an active career as a writer, publishing significant criticism in The Nation, JazzTimes, The New York Times, and the Culture Desk of The New Yorker. He also posts frequently on his Substack, Transitional Technology.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson performs music from his recently released album Playfair Sonatas (Urlicht AudioVisual) –– which The New York Times calls “a welcome stream of fully notated music” –– with violinist Miranda Cuckson and trumpeter Tim Leopold, plus his Sonata for Piano Four-Hands with pianist Hiroko Sasaki at Mezzrow, on Saturday, December 22, 2024 at 4pm. Admission is free.
Concert details:
Who: Ethan Iverson with Miranda Cuckson, Tim Leopold, and Hiroko Sasaki
Presented by Mezzrow
What: Selections from Ethan Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas, plus his Sonata for Piano Four-Hands
When: Sunday, December 22, 2024 at 4pm
Where: 163 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10014
Free Admission
About the Instrumentalists:
Miranda Cuckson, violin: www.mirandacuckson.com
Makoto Nakura, marimba: www.makotonakura.com
Carol McGonnell, clarinet: www.carolmcgonnell.com
Mike Lormand, trombone: www.deviantseptet.com/mike-lormand
Taimur Sullivan, saxophone: www.taimursullivan.com
Tim Leopold, trumpet: www.mostlymodernfestival.org/tim-leopold-trumpet
Album Track List:
Playfair Sonatas
Music by Ethan Iverson
Ethan Iverson, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet
Ulricht AudioVisual | Release Date: November 15, 2024
CD 1
1. Fanfare [1:54]
The Full Ensemble
2. Violin Sonata: I. Andante – Allegro moderato [7:14]
3. Violin Sonata: II. Blues (for Ornette Coleman) [3:50]
4. Violin Sonata: III. Rondo. Allegro [5:25]
Miranda Cuckson, violin • Ethan Iverson, piano
5. Marimba Sonata: I. Allegro [5:13]
6. Marimba Sonata: II. Blues (for Eric Dolphy) [2:10]
7. Marimba Sonata: III. Cadenza [3:13]
8. Marimba Sonata: IV. Rondo. Presto [3:04]
Makoto Nakura, marimba • Ethan Iverson, piano
9. Clarinet Sonata: I. Allegro [5:22]
10. Clarinet Sonata: II. Music Hall (for Carla Bley) [3:06]
11. Clarinet Sonata: III. Scherzo – Minuet [2:25]
12. Clarinet Sonata: IV. Rondo. Allegro moderato [3:45]
Carol McGonnell, clarinet • Ethan Iverson, piano
CD 2
1 Trombone Sonata: I. Allegro moderato [4:32]
2 Trombone Sonata: II. Hymn (for Roswell Rudd) [4:14]
3 Trombone Sonata: III. Rondo [5:30]
Mike Lormand, trombone • Ethan Iverson, piano
4 Alto Saxophone Sonata: I. Allegro [5:44]
5 Alto Saxophone Sonata: II. Melody (for Paul Desmond) [5:16]
6 Alto Saxophone Sonata: III. Allegro [5:17]
Taimur Sullivan, alto saxophone • Ethan Iverson, piano
7 Trumpet Sonata: I. Allegro [5:56]
8 Trumpet Sonata: II. Theme (for Joe Wilder) [4:30]
9 Trumpet Sonata: III. Rondo [4:34]
Tim Leopold, trumpet • Ethan Iverson, piano
10 Recessional [1:16]
The Full Ensemble
Recorded December 2 & 3, 2023 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber
Piano technician: Shane Hoshino
Edited by Ryan Streber and Gene Gaudette
Produced by Gene Gaudette
Executive producer: Piers Playfair
Cover art: Roz Chast
Jan 19: GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs in Mobile
Jan 19: GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs in Mobile
Photo by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution here
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Reflections
A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection
Presented by Mobile Chamber Music Society
Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 3pm
USA Laidlaw Performing Arts Center
5751 USA South Drive | Mobile, AL
Tickets and More information
“colorful and idiosyncratic”
– The New York Times
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Mobile, AL – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” performs on Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 3pm at the USA Laidlaw Performing Arts Center (5751 USA South Drive) presented by the Mobile Chamber Music Society.
Dinnerstein –– who is celebrated for her Bach recordings –– will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.
“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”
Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades –– including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.”
Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.
Dinnerstein released her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer’s 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.
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 and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. 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.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY-nominated® pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will perform a program of Baroque-era inspired works in a concert presented by the Mobile Chamber Music Society. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by the Mobile Chamber Music Society
What: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 3pm
Where: USA Laidlaw Performing Arts Center, 5751 USA South Drive, Mobile, AL 36608
Tickets and information: www.mobilechambermusic.square.site
Composer Julia Perry’s Previously Unavailable Catalog of Music Published by Videmus Inc. Through New Relationship with Boosey & Hawkes
Composer Julia Perry’s Previously Unavailable Catalog of Music Published by Videmus Inc. Through New Relationship with Boosey & Hawkes
Julia Perry (Photo: Rider University Libraries’ Julia A. Perry Collection); high resolution photos available here.
Videmus Inc. Publishes Julia Perry’s Previously Unavailable Catalog of Music
Through New Relationship with Boosey & Hawkes
www.videmus.org | www.boosey.com/composer/julia+perry
NEW YORK, NY (December 5, 2024) – Videmus Inc. announced today that through a new relationship with Boosey & Hawkes, one of the world’s leading classical music publishers, it will make available the previously unpublished music of composer Julia Perry, whose work fell into obscurity after her death in 1979 and is only now beginning to receive the attention it has so richly deserved. Directed by Dr. Louise Toppin, Videmus is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to the promotion of concert works by African American, women, and under-presented composers, providing access to the work of marginalized composers through educational programming, performance opportunities, and scholarly research. In 2024, Julia Perry’s centennial year, the Estate of Julia A. Perry assigned all copyrights for her unpublished work to Videmus Inc. Perry’s music is also currently GRAMMY-nominated for the first time, as part of the American Counterpoints album from Experiential Orchestra, music director James Blachly, and violinist Curtis Stewart.
Julia Perry (1924-1979) was an African American composer, born in Lexington, Kentucky and raised in Akron, Ohio. Her early career was filled with promise: she spent two summers at the Berkshire Music Center, studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and briefly with Nadia Boulanger, won the Prix Fontainebleau and two Guggenheim Fellowships, and her Study for Orchestra was performed by the New York Philharmonic in 1965. But tragically, many of her roughly 100 compositions remain unknown. Perry suffered a paralytic stroke in 1970. As musicologist J. Michele Edwards writes, “Her letters reveal her effort to walk, talk, and conduct again. She did learn to write with her left hand and resumed composing; however, she endured tragic emotional and financial difficulties.”
As a non-profit, mission-based organization, Videmus supports the research, publication, recording, and performances of Perry’s music, creating accurate materials serving the practical needs of performers and providing regularly updated editions. Videmus intends for this endeavor to serve as a model for others seeking to bring works of unjustly ignored composers to light. Additionally, the publication of Perry's works will help scholars to reconstruct her musical and personal journey, providing a valuable resource to future biographers. For distribution of Perry’s works, Videmus is proud to partner with Boosey & Hawkes to make Perry’s music available worldwide through print, performance, and licensing.
Louise Toppin says, “Julia Perry’s prominence in music history as an African American woman composer has been erased for too long. Her story as a rising star in the world of composition and conducting during the years of extreme segregation in the United States is both compelling and astonishing. Her compositions (although to date her known output is small) show craftsmanship of the highest caliber that appeal to performers and audiences alike. Many of her compositions remain lost. Videmus is devoted to uncovering any works that still lie in publishers’ archives, university libraries, or in public or private collections. The neglect Perry’s music has faced is not unique. We hope that this endeavor might serve as a model for others seeking to bring additional works of unjustly ignored composers to light.”
“During her too-brief career, Julia Perry’s compositions earned praise in every esteemed musical circle from New York to Paris, despite the immense systemic challenges she faced,” says Steven Lankenau, Senior Vice President of Boosey & Hawkes. “She is an indisputably important figure in the history of 20th-century American music, and Boosey & Hawkes is proud to partner with Videmus to bring her unpublished works to the public as this noteworthy composer’s larger legacy continues to unfold.”
Julia Perry’s Works to be Published:
The Julia Perry catalog published by Videmus, which will be released across multiple years, includes a broad range of works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, songs, and piano music.
The following works are immediately available from Boosey & Hawkes:
Three Spirituals for Orchestra (1965–67)
Prelude for Piano (1946/1962)
Prelude for Strings (Prelude for Piano 1946/1962; arr. for strings by Roger Zahab, 2020)
Symphony in One Movement for Violas and String Basses (1961)
Quartette for Wind Quintette (Symphony No. 13 for Wind Quintet) (1963/1976)
Quinary Quixotic Songs for Bass-Baritone and Five Instruments (1976)
Works planned for future release include Four Spirituals for orchestra, Contretemps for orchestra, Hymn to Pan for choir, and The Selfish Giant: A Sacred Musical Fable (piano reduction of a three-act opera).
The Path to Publication:
The path to publication of Julia Perry’s catalog was complex and spanned many years, involving a dedicated volunteer working group of musicians and scholars galvanized by a desire to bring her music to a wider public, and brought together by Dr. Louise Toppin at Videmus Inc.
When Julia Perry died without a will on April 24, 1979, twenty-one of her approximately one hundred works had been published, and there was no mechanism to secure permission to publish the rest of her music. Beginning in 2021, the Akron Symphony sought a legal solution, and with the support of Probate Judge Elinore M. Stormer of Summit County, Ohio, an estate was opened in Julia Perry’s name on October 12, 2022. Over the course of two years, the estate granted permission for performances and recordings, and ultimately transferred copyrights to Perry’s unpublished music to Videmus Inc. in September 2024.
Concurrent to the legal process, Louise Toppin brought together a Julia Perry working group in 2021 to coordinate the various efforts underway internationally to promote Perry’s music and to share new research with each other. Since then, the core of the effort to publish Perry’s music has been the three-person Videmus editorial team of Louise Toppin; conductor Christopher Wilkins, music director of the Akron Symphony; and conductor James Blachly, music director of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra and Experiential Orchestra.
For over 30 years, Louise Toppin has specialized in performing, promoting, commissioning, and educating students on music by African American composers, including lectures around the world, co-founding and directing the George Shirley Competition, and her creating of the African Diaspora Music Project (ADMP) a digital online catalog including over 3,000 songs searchable by voice type, and over 1,400 works for orchestra. She also brings her decades of experience working with heirs, including her work with the heirs of Margaret Bonds, which ultimately led to the successful publication of Bonds’ music in recent years. In co-curating with James Blachly the four-day 2024 Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in New York, Toppin gathered scholars at The New School to deliver 14 lectures and keynote addresses on Julia Perry’s life and music. Through her direction of Videmus, Toppin wrote grants and raised funds for the legal fees as well as engraving and editorial costs.
In Perry’s hometown of Akron, Ohio, conductor Christopher Wilkins began researching Perry’s works in 2018 and created the Julia Perry Project with the Akron Symphony in 2021, including six archival recordings of previously unheard works, and recorded interviews with violinist, conductor, and scholar Roger Zahab, and Ophelia Averitt, a neighbor and friend of Julia Perry. Since 2021, Wilkins has led multiple reading and recording sessions and performed many of Perry’s unpublished works with the Akron Symphony. He also spearheaded the legal effort with Akron attorneys Dave Lieberth and Kevin Davis.
Conductor James Blachly first encountered Perry’s music in 2014, and in addition to his work on the editorial team, has championed Perry’s music in performances for the past five years. With Louise Toppin, he co-directed the Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in March 2024. The four-day Festival brought together 140 performers and scholars in New York in the largest Julia Perry celebration in the world to date. Blachly has also brought Perry’s music to new audiences through performances with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Experiential Orchestra, and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra. His latest album with Experiential Orchestra, American Counterpoints on the Bright Shiny Things label, features the first commercial recording of Perry’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra performed with soloist Curtis Stewart, and is currently nominated for two 2025 GRAMMY® Awards in the Classical Compendium and Best Classical Instrumental Solo categories. This is the first GRAMMY nomination for the music of Julia Perry.
In addition to the editorial team of Toppin, Wilkins, and Blachly, the assistance of composer, conductor, violinist and scholar Roger Zahab has been essential in the path to publication. Zahab has been researching and creating editions of Perry's music for more than 30 years, including his widely performed arrangement Prelude for Strings, and has given several notable premieres of her works both as a violinist and conductor. He is also one of the only musicians alive who had direct communication with Julia Perry during the final years of her life.
About Julia Perry:
Julia Amanda Perry
Born: March 25, 1924, Lexington KY
Died: April 24, 1979, Akron OH
Julia Perry is a unique figure in American music. In her twenties, she gained international recognition for her modernist classical compositions, while also publishing vocal and choral works inspired by Black American musical traditions. She composed across nearly every genre, including orchestral and choral works, operas, chamber music, solo instrumental pieces, and vocal compositions. Her eclectic style constantly evolved as she experimented with new forms and responded to the shifting cultural landscape around her.
An accomplished performer, Perry excelled as a mezzo-soprano soloist, orchestral and choral conductor, violinist, and pianist. She trained with some of the most esteemed teachers and institutions in the field. She studied voice and composition at Westminster Choir College, worked with composer Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood, received orchestral conducting training through the extension division of the Juilliard School, and attended Nadia Boulanger’s renowned composition class at Fontainebleau.
In November 1951, Perry moved from New York City to Florence, Italy, to continue her studies with Dallapiccola. While in Italy, she gained increasing recognition as a composer, with critics especially praising her setting of the Stabat Mater, noting her sensitivity to the language and her compelling performance as the vocal soloist. Perry spoke fluent Italian, setting an Italian text in a vocal-orchestral cantata and creating an Italian version of her opera The Cask of Amontillado. She also wrote original poetry and prose—often composing her own texts and librettos—and translated seventy-eight African fables into English from a book she had acquired in Italy.
Her achievements were recognized through two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Marian Anderson Awards for vocal excellence, a "Grand Prix" in Boulanger’s class, prizes from the National Association of Negro Musicians, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award, and eight residencies at MacDowell.
After touring European cities with support from the U. S. Information Service—conducting her own compositions and lecturing on American music—she returned to the United States permanently in 1959. The 1960s began with promise, with support for recordings and more offers from publishing houses. In 1965, the New York Philharmonic performed her Short Piece for Orchestra.
However, despite her efforts to earn a living as a composer, Perry found that doors were not open to her in the United States as they had once been in Europe, and several of her most significant works were never performed or published. After suffering a paralytic stroke in 1970, she continued to compose with her left hand, despite the lack of professional opportunities, until her death on April 24, 1979. Through the research work of Videmus, in partnership with Boosey & Hawkes, many of Julia Perry’s unpublished works are now being discovered and made available for performance for the first time.
About Videmus Inc.:
Videmus Inc. is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to the promotion of concert works by African American, women and under-presented composers. The organization’s vision is to provide access to marginalized composers through educational programming, performance opportunities, and scholarly research. Videmus produces recordings, created an annual competition for students ages 14-35, created and maintains a scholarly research database, produces concerts and conferences, encourages research and publication in scholarly books and journals, creates editions for publication, and collaborates with other organizations to strengthen the diverse perspectives of our industry.
Videmus Inc. was founded and incorporated (501c3) in Massachusetts (1986) by Vivian Taylor. For the first ten years the arts organization presented concerts in New England and world premiere recordings of African American composers including William Grant Still, Donal Fox, T.J. Anderson, David Baker, Olly Wilson, George Walker, Undine Smith Moore, Florence Price, Julia Perry, Margaret Bonds, and Betty Jackson King.
In 1997, Videmus Inc. appointed Louise Toppin as the Director of the organization and under her leadership, its catalog of recordings expanded to include the world premiere vocal recordings of Leslie Adams and Robert Owens with tenor Darryl Taylor, the world premiere of William Grant Still opera Highway One, USA, the first recordings of the Sphinx organization finals, the world premiere recording of Leslie Adams’ 24 etudes on two CDs (Maria Corley and Thomas Otten, pianists), and many more.
Videmus’s recording strategy has been to fill in historic gaps by documenting the works of well-established composers such as Still, Baker, Bonds, Price, Moore, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Hall Johnson, Adolphus Hailstork, and many others, while presenting world premiere recordings (symphonic, chamber and solo) of newer composers such as Richard Thompson, Stephen Newby, Bill Banfield, Nkeiru Okoye, Robert Morris, and many more. In addition to its own recordings, Videmus has assisted many artists with repertoire, liner notes and introductions for their recordings that have received GRAMMY nominations, including Lawrence Brownlee and Will Liverman.
Videmus continues to curate concerts throughout the United States, has created scholarship programs including the Bridges Award and The George Shirley Vocal Competition; conferences such as “Reflecting on the Past Reaching Toward the Future” and the four-day “Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival” co-presented with Experiential Orchestra, created a database in the African Diaspora Music Project; and published scores of vocal, instrument, chamber and orchestral repertoire with Classical Vocal Reprints, Hal Leonard, Hildegard Press, Carl Fischer and Boosey & Hawkes.
About Boosey & Hawkes:
Boosey & Hawkes, a Concord company, is the world’s largest specialist classical music publishing company. Together with its sister company Sikorski, it owns an unrivaled catalog of music copyrights including the works of such major 20th century composers as Stravinsky, Copland, Britten, Bartók, Shostakovich, Prokofieff, Khachaturian, Strauss and Rachmaninoff. In the 21st century, Boosey & Hawkes continues to publish the very best in new music and has exclusive agreements with many of the leading international classical composers of today, including John Adams, Unsuk Chin, Anna Clyne, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karl Jenkins, James MacMillan, Olga Neuwirth, Steve Reich and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Boosey & Hawkes is a global publisher, with offices in the cultural hubs of New York, London, and Berlin, as well as a network of agents in other countries. It promotes its repertoire throughout the music world and seeks to lead artistic and creative taste, and continue to invest in development towards a fully digital future.
Boosey & Hawkes serves many different customers: licensing and renting music for performance, recording and broadcast; licensing music for film, TV, advertising, video games and online use; and publishing sheet music for purchase.
Boosey & Hawkes’s extensive catalog of printed and digital music for the professional, student and leisure markets ranges from instrumental, band and choral to market-leading tutor books and creative teaching materials.
Jan. 26: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections: A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection – Presented by Chamber Music Wilmington
Jan. 26: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections: A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection – Presented by Chamber Music Wilmington
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution here
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Reflections
A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection
Presented by Chamber Music Wilmington
Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 4pm
Beckwith Recital Hall | 5270 Randall Drive | Wilmington, NC
Tickets and More information
“an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity”
– The Washington Post
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Wilmington, NC – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as “an intrepid artistic personality,” performs on Sunday, January 26, 2025 at the Beckwith Recital Hall (5270 Randall Drive) presented by Chamber Music Wilmington.
Dinnerstein –– who is celebrated for her Bach recordings –– will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.
“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”
Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades –– including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.”
Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.
Dinnerstein released her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer’s 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.
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 and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. 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.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY-nominated® pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described as “an intrepid artistic personality” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, will perform a program of Baroque-era inspired works in a concert presented by Chamber Music Wilmington. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by Chamber Music Wilmington
What: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 4pm
Where: Beckwith Recital Hall, 5270 Randall Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403
Tickets and information: www.uncwarts.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=1908
Jan. 26: Jupiter Quartet Perform the World Premiere of Singing Land with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers at Krannert Center – Music by Su Lian Tan & Text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Jan 26: Jupiter Quartet Performs the World Premiere of Singing Land with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers
L-R Robin Wall Kimmerer, Photo by Dale Kakkak; Jupiter Quartet, Photo by Todd Rosenberg; Su Lian Tan, Photo courtesy of artist
The Jupiter String Quartet
and the University of Illinois Chamber Singers
Perform the World Premiere of Singing Land
Music by Su Lian Tan & Text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Commissioned by the Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 3:00pm
University of Illinois | Krannert Center | Foellinger Great Hall
500 S Goodwin Ave. | Urbana, IL
Tickets and Information
“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker
Urbana, IL – On Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 3:00pm, the Jupiter String Quartet –– internationally acclaimed winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) –– will start the new year at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, giving the highly-anticipated world premiere of Singing Land, performed with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers, in Foellinger Great Hall (500 S. Goodwin Ave). Singing Land, a collaboration with Potawatomi botanist/writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and composer Su Lian Tan, is the latest in a series of Jupiter Quartet-commissioned works celebrating the environment. The program will also feature Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores –– a work written in 2020 specifically for the Jupiter Quartet, which was commissioned by Bay Chamber Concerts in partnership with the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign –– as well as a series of works for chamber choir alone and in collaboration with the quartet. Ms. Kimmerer, author of the profound and popular Braiding Sweetgrass, as well as other works, will also be featured throughout the program. Interactive events will follow in the Krannert Center Stage 5 lobby.
Su Lian Tan and Robin Wall Kimmerer describe Singing Land as, “a new garden of sound, recalling ancient and modern voices and the mysticism of string instruments, voices of bullfrogs, and hawks who cry warnings. The circle of life continues and we create a world that is both spiritual and material. Text becomes music, music weaves the lushness of greenery and the breath exchanging on our planet, perhaps with the required urgency. Are we now in the aubade or the twilight? We can love the earth back to wholeness.”
Of this unique collaborative program, Jupiter Quartet says:
”We are honored to share the stage with two powerfully artistic women, author Robin Wall Kimmerer and composer Su Lian Tan. It will be a joy to explore their work together, and to collaborate with students, faculty, and community members at our home base of the University of Illinois.”
[Based in Urbana, IL 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 since 2001. 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. The 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, Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall, and more.
In addition to performances worldwide, the Jupiter has been in residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program. This season, they perform four concerts at the Krannert Center including this season opener on October 20; a concert on November 12, 2024; a program of sextets with two of their Ying Quartet colleagues, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying on February 4, 2025; and a concert of octets including the Mendelssohn Octet with the Aris Quartet on March 13, 2025.
A dedicated flutist, composer, and teacher, Su Lian Tan is a professor of music at Middlebury College who has received accolades and awards from ASCAP, the Academy of Arts and Letters of Québec, the Toulmin and Naumburg Foundations, and the Yaddo and MacDowell arts colonies. Her “wonderfully dramatic music” (Gramophone) is inspired by tonalities, timbres, and themes of her Malaysian Chinese heritage. Previous commissioning collaborators include the Grammy-winning Takács String Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, Vermont Symphony, and author Jamaica Kincaid. The Jupiter Quartet introduced Krannert Center audiences to the music of Su Lian Tan last season (November 2023) in their program “Folk Encounters.”
A mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of the award-winning books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. The 2022 MacArthur Fellow lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of environmental biology and the founder/director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which The New Yorker describes as “an ensemble of eloquent intensity,” gives the world premiere of Singing Land, a collaboration with Potawatomi botanist/writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and Malaysian-Chinese composer Su Lian Tan, with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers. Singing Land is the latest in a series of Jupiter Quartet-commissioned works celebrating the environment.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers
What: Singing Land – music by Su Lian Tan and text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
When: Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 3:00pm
Where: University of Illinois; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Foellinger Great Hall; 500 S Goodwin Ave.; Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: https://krannertcenter.com/events/rescheduled-jupiter-string-quartet-ui-chamber-singers-and-special-guests-robin-wall-kimmerer
Jan. 25: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections: A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection – Presented by the American Music Festival
Jan. 25: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections: A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection – Presented by the American Music Festival
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution here
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by the American Music Festival
Performs Reflections: A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection
Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 7pm
First Presbyterian Church | 1604 Arendell St. | Morehead City, NC
Tickets and More information
“Innovatively thematic, masterful, and emotional”
– The Boston Music Intelligencer
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Morehead City, NC – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will be presented in concert as part of the American Music Festival on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 7pm at First Presbyterian Church (1604 Arendell St.).
Dinnerstein –– who is celebrated for her Bach recordings –– will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.
“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”
Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades –– including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.”
Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.
Dinnerstein released her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer’s 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.
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 and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. 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.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY-nominated® pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will perform as part of The American Music Festival. The program, titled Reflections, will feature an assortment of Baroque-era inspired works. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by American Music Festival
What: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 7pm
Where: First Presbyterian Church, 1604 Arendell St., Morehead City, NC 28557
Tickets and information: https://www.americanmusicfestival.org/
The New School’s College of Performing Arts Welcomes Andy Akiho, Alison Deane, Jack Schatz and Jeffrey Zeigler to Faculty
The New School’s College of Performing Arts Welcomes Andy Akiho, Alison Deane, Jack Schatz and Jeffrey Zeigler to Faculty
(Left to right) Andy Akiho, Alison Deane, Jack Schatz, Jeffrey Zeigler
The New School’s College of Performing Arts Welcomes Andy Akiho,
Alison Deane, Jack Schatz and Jeffrey Zeigler to Faculty
New York, NY (November 25, 2024) – The New School’s College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama, today announced the appointment of Andy Akiho, Alison Deane, Jack Schatz, and Jeffrey Zeigler to the distinguished faculty of the celebrated performing arts school. As faculty members in the Mannes School of Music, the acclaimed musicians will lead classes and ensembles, teach private lessons, develop and create new projects, and more.
“In 1916, David and Clara Mannes hired a full roster of brand new faculty including the likes of Ernest Bloch, Angela Diller, Elizabeth Quaile, and their dear friend, Pablo Casals as a regular guest artist. In that spirit, we announce a wonderful slate of new faculty, including the brilliant composer and percussionist Andy Akiho, the wonderful pianist and pedagogue Alison Deane, the mainstay of bass trombone in the New York area, Jack Schatz, and returning to Mannes after a few years in Miami, the creative powerhouse cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. I am sure David and Clara Mannes would be impressed by this remarkable group of new faculty members,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.
Composer Andy Akiho, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and multi-GRAMMY® nominee, brings a visionary approach to contemporary classical music to Mannes. Hailed as a “trailblazing” artist by the Los Angeles Times, Akiho has gained worldwide acclaim for his genre-defying compositions. His works have been featured by leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestra, and he has been called “increasingly in demand” by The New York Times for his ability to craft music that emphasizes the natural theatricality of live performance. Akiho collaborates closely with College of Performing Arts Ensemble-in-Residence, Sandbox Percussion for whom he wrote Seven Pillars, a boldly genre-defying audio and video collaboration for percussion quartet, commissioned by Sandbox Percussion. “Seven Pillars is pretty much as pure as music gets — it’s only ‘about’ its own structure and self-imposed constrictions” (The New York Times). Akiho’s most recent release, BeLonging, is nominated for GRAMMYs in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo and Best Classical Compendium categories.
Read the full announcement about Andy Akiho’s appointment here.
Pianist Alison Deane brings a wealth of experience and talent, and her passion for music, along with her commitment to excellence, will greatly contribute to the vibrant musical community at Mannes. She has graced stages across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe, and her extensive career as both a soloist and chamber musician is marked by numerous accolades, prizes, and awards. A native New Yorker, Deane holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was honored with the school’s highest award, the Harold Bauer Award. The New York Times described her playing as “a dazzling affair…has the fingers of a really first-class technician…her performances are exhilarating…the virtuoso demands suited her superbly.”
Read the full announcement about Alison Deane’s appointment here.
Trombonist Jack Schatz’s bold work spans orchestral, operatic, Broadway, and jazz, alongside an equally accomplished career as an educator. He has performed with premiere ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera–where he recorded Wagner’s Ring Cycle, as well as the National Grand Opera, the Houston Opera, and the New Jersey Symphony. On Broadway, Schatz’s credits include Phantom of the Opera, A Chorus Line, The Music Man, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Damn Yankees, Hello, Dolly!, and Side Show, among others. Schatz played and toured with the Big Bands of Bob Mintzer, Tom Pierson, Louie Bellson, and Bobby Watson. He has recorded with The Ed Palermo Big Band, James Moody, Alan Pasqua, and Ted Nash.
Read the full announcement about Jack Schatz’s appointment here.
A celebrated musician with a reputation for his innovative approach to both classical and contemporary repertoire, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler brings a wealth of experience and passion for teaching to the Mannes community. His career has spanned the globe, with performances in major concert halls, collaborations with celebrated composers, and advocacy for new music. As a member of the internationally acclaimed Kronos Quartet, he performed and recorded for nearly a decade. Throughout his career, Zeigler has been a powerful voice in the intersection of classical music and modern composition. Strings Magazine described his most recent solo album, Houses of Zodiac, as “one of the greatest and most ambitious solo cello albums of all time.” This year, he gave the world premiere of Andy Akiho’s new cello concerto, Nisei. In his teaching, Zeigler brings a student-centered philosophy that emphasizes creativity, technical mastery, and an exploration of the cello’s rich potential in both solo and ensemble settings.
Read the full announcement about Jeffrey Zeigler’s appointment here.
The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for vigorous training, cross-disciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, innovative education, and world-class performances.
The 1,000 students at the College of Performing Arts are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts for all people. Students and faculty collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more.
The curriculum at the College of Performing Arts is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.
Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for foundational excellence and radically progressive music education, dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. Distinguished Mannes alumni include the 20th-century songwriting legend Burt Bacharach, the great pianists Michel Camilo, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, and Bill Evans, acclaimed conductors Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung, JoAnn Falletta, and Julius Rudel, beloved mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, as well as the great opera stars of today, Yonghoon Lee, Danielle de Niese, and Nadine Sierra. As part of The New School’s College of Performing Arts, together with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the School of Drama, Mannes makes its home on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus in a state-of-the-art facility at the newly renovated Arnhold Hall.
Founded in 1919, The New School was established to advance academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. A century later, The New School remains at the forefront of innovation in higher education, inspiring more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students to challenge the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The university welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and public programs that encourage open discourse and social engagement. Through our online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence.
Dec-Jan: GatherNYC Presents Mindful Musical Mornings with W4RP, Excelsis Percussion Quartet, Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer, and Gabriel Cabezas
Dec-Jan: GatherNYC Presents Mindful Musical Mornings with W4RP, Excelsis Percussion Quartet, Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer, and Gabriel Cabezas
Press photos available here.
GatherNYC Launches 2024-2025 Season in NYC
at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in Columbus Circle
Every Other Sunday Morning at 11AM
Coming Up Next in December and January
Season Schedule - Every Other Sunday Morning at 11AM:
12/8 W4RP
12/22 Excelsis Percussion Quartet
1/5 Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer
1/19 Gabriel Cabezas
Spring 2025 GatherNYC Concerts:
2/2 ensemble 132
2/16 Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
3/2 Toomai Quintet
3/16 Daedalus Quartet
3/30 MATA
4/13 Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
4/27 ETHEL + Layale Chaker
5/11 Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
5/25 Rupert Boyd, guitar
6/8 Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl
“thoughtful, intimate events curated with refreshing eclecticism by its founders, the cellist Laura Metcalf and the guitarist Rupert Boyd, complete with pastries and coffee”
– The New Yorker
“A sweet chamber music series”
– The New York Times
“Impressive Aussie/American led concert series proves music can be a religion.”
– Limelight Magazine
Museum of Arts and Design | The Theater at MAD | 2 Columbus Circle | NYC
Tickets & Information: www.gathernyc.org
New York, NY – GatherNYC, a revolutionary concert experience founded in 2018 by cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, continues its 2024-2025 season at the series’ home venue, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) (2 Columbus Circle) with four upcoming concerts in December and January - W4RP on December 8, Excelsis Percussion Quartet on December 22, Emi Ferguson (flute) + Dan Tepfer (clavichord) on January 5, and cellist Gabriel Cabezas on January 19. The season runs through June 2025, with concerts held every other Sunday at 11am in The Theater at MAD. Coffee and pastries are served before each performance at 10:30am. Admission for children under 12 is free.
Guests at GatherNYC are served exquisite live classical music performed by New York’s immensely talented artists, artisanal coffee and pastries, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour and evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service – but the religion is music, and all are welcome.
Spoken word artists perform briefly at the midpoint of each concert, many of whom are winners of The Moth StorySLAM events. “It’s an interesting moment of something completely different from the music, and it often connects with the audience,” Metcalf told Strings magazine in a feature about the series last year. “Then we have a two-minute celebration of silence when we turn the lights down, centering ourselves in the center of the city. Then the lights come back on, and the music starts again out of the silence. We find that the listening and the feeling in the room changes after that.”
Metcalf and Boyd say, “We are thrilled to be returning to the beautiful Museum of Arts and Design, offering 17 concerts throughout our 2024-25 season, our largest lineup yet. We look forward to inviting audiences to join us for these mindful, musical mornings with world-class artists in an intimate, unique setting – complete with spoken word, silence, coffee and a communal, welcoming environment.”
Up Next, Sundays at 11AM:
Dec. 8: W4RP
Described as, “a talented group that exemplifies the genre-obliterating direction of contemporary classical music” (Columbia Free Times), W4RP (née Warp Trio) is an internationally touring cross-genre chamber music experience. Reflecting the combination of Juilliard-trained members juxtaposed with members steeped in rock and jazz styles, the one-of-a-kind trio ensemble can be seen performing classical works in prestigious halls on the same tour where they headline a standing-room-only show at a rock venue.
Dec. 22: Excelsis Percussion Quartet
Hailed as, "one of the most innovative and exciting percussion ensembles to emerge in the golden age of chamber music" (Jonathan Haas, New York University) for their immersive sound world, this international group of women with a multilingual combination of five languages join together to speak the universal language of rhythm, rooted in their belief that music possesses an ability to unite us all. Excelsis brings vibrancy to its audiences through eclectic programming, innovative storytelling, and embracing their intersectional identities.
Jan. 5: Emi Ferguson (flute) + Dan Tepfer (clavichord)
Two of NYC’s most acclaimed and versatile artists come together for a program of baroque delights by Bach, Bonporti and more. Tepfer is a #1 Billboard-charting keyboard player who is equally at home in classical and jazz realms, while Ferguson is a 2023 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, known for her performances alongside the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Paul Simon. The pair brings the spirit of their far-reaching musical practices to breathe new life into ancient music.
Jan. 19: Gabriel Cabezas
Acclaimed cello soloist and chamber musician Gabriel Cabezas shares a creatively constructed solo cello program that explores a wide range of timbral possibilities on the instrument. Bringing his thoughtful virtuosity to music by some of the most important compositional voices of his generation including Jessie Montgomery, Allison Loggins-Hull, Paul Wiancko, Alyssa Weinberg and more, Cabezas masterfully takes listeners on a journey through the world of the cello alone.
GatherNYC's Spring 2025 Schedule – All Concerts Take Place at 11AM:
Feb. 2: ensemble132
ensemble132 presents a genre-bending program honoring the expansive legacy of two musical icons for their joint 150th birthday: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Maurice Ravel. This group of all-star chamber musicians drawn from the rosters of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Marlboro Music Festival, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and more, explores these composers’ influence on other visionaries through the 20th and 21st centuries. ensemble132 traces these connections in a program featuring movements from Ravel’s and Coleridge-Taylor’s string quartets along with special e132 arrangements and a rollicking finale by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
Feb. 16: Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Vocalist and composer Sarah Elizabeth Charles, hailed as “soulfully articulate” by The New York Times, and acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Jarrett Cherner will present music from their debut album as a duo. The album, called Tone, centers its concept on the magical, fleeting and delicate nature of life as well as the need to take care of ourselves and the world around us as best as we possibly can.
Mar. 2: Toomai Quintet + Maria Brea
Toomai String Quintet, an ensemble dedicated to expanding the Latin American chamber music repertoire, presents this family-friendly concert of music from Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. The program features Cuban composer Keyla Orozco’s The Song of the Cicada (2024) for narrator and quintet, inspired by Onelio Jorge Cardoso’s vivid children’s story of the same title. Also on the program are Toomai’s original arrangements of works by Hermeto Pascoal, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Léa Freire, and Manuel Ponce.
Mar. 16: Daedalus Quartet
Winners of the highest honor in string quartet playing, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Daedalus Quartet will perform the visceral, folk-inspired sixth string quartet by Béla Bartók, alongside the atmospheric, pop-influenced Space Between by acclaimed composer and Guggenheim fellow Anna Weesner.
Mar. 30: MATA
Music at the Anthology (MATA), an incubator for adventurous emerging artists in the early stages of their careers, presents, supports, and commissions composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA composers have since emanated to include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur “Geniuses.” In 2010 MATA was awarded ASCAP’s prestigious Aaron Copland award in recognition of its work. For its first collaboration with GatherNYC, MATA will showcase highlights from previous festivals as well as selected works from its global Call for Submissions. The New Yorker has hailed MATA as, “the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world.” The New York Times has called it “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic;” and The Wall Street Journal said that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.”
Apr. 13: Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
Violinist Deborah Buck, praised by The Strad as having a “surpassing degree of imagination and vibrant sound,” and Orli Shaham, described as a “brilliant pianist” by The New York Times, present a program to celebrate Clara Schumann's legacy. In addition to works by Robert and Clara Schumann, the program features the couple's circle of friends, including the music of Amanda Maier.
Apr. 27: ETHEL + Layale Chaker
From their beginnings in 1998, the members of ETHEL have prized collaboration. In recent years, the quartet has struck up a particularly fruitful collaboration with the Lebanese-born, Brooklyn-based violinist and composer Layale Chaker. Their album Vigil offers a chance to document some of that collective work, with each member of ETHEL contributing a piece and Chaker contributing two works, one of which is the remarkable work that gives the project its name.
May 11: Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
Acclaimed violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv is known for channeling her award-winning virtuosity as a means of championing worthy music by lesser or unknown composers from her native Ukraine. For her first appearance at GatherNYC, Solomiya is joined by violist William Frampton and cellist Laura Metcalf to present a forgotten masterwork by Fedir Yakymenko, a colorful and rhapsodic piece written around the turn of the 20th century. Ukrainian by birth and spending his life in Russia and France, Yakymenko deftly blends French and Ukrainian sounds and styles into this delightful piece, which deserves to be heard and remembered.
May 25: Rupert Boyd, guitar
GatherNYC artistic director and classical guitar virtuoso Rupert Boyd takes listeners on a journey across centuries and continents on the six strings of his guitar. From Malian kora music to atmospheric sounds from Japan to contemporary music from his home country of Australia to classic works for the Spanish guitar, Boyd’s riveting program has something for everyone.
June 8: Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl
Building on a highly successful collaboration during the 2023-24 season, GatherNYC artistic directors Laura Metcalf and Rupert Boyd in their duo formation of Boyd Meets Girl once again team up with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for an expanded collaborative program featuring classical favorites and creative, virtuosic takes on popular tunes.
For tickets and information, visit www.gathernyc.org.
Press photos available here.