California Symphony Announces 2025-2026 Season Led by Artistic & Music Director Donato Cabrera

Photo by Kristen Loken. Hi res photos available here.

CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY ANNOUNCES 2025-2026 SEASON

Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director 

Timeless Classics, Bold New Works, World-Class Soloists
and Thrilling Performances to Excite, Move, and Connect Us All

“Under the leadership of the irrepressible Mexican-American maestro Donato Cabrera since 2013, California Symphony takes its music seriously . . . But the educational agenda is no excuse for discounting the pleasure principle. Want to take selfies? Bring drinks to your seats? Clap when the spirit moves you? Please do! And prick up your ears for exciting new sounds! . . . Regional press is glowing” – Air Mail 

Subscriptions available now. Single tickets go on sale in July.

CaliforniaSymphony.org

WALNUT CREEK, CA (February 6, 2025) – California Symphony, led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera and Executive Director Lisa Dell, announces its 2025-2026 season – featuring timeless classics, bold new works, and world-class soloists – in five thrilling programs over ten performances at Hoffman Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Performing Arts from September 2025 to May 2026.

Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concerts, rich in storytelling and spanning the breadth of orchestral repertoire, this season explores evocative programmatic music including Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik; the fruitful intersection of jazz and classical in music by Jessie Montgomery, Friedrich Gulda, and George Gershwin; the monumental symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Borodin; the timelessness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart including excerpts from Don Giovanni; and world-class soloists in riveting concertos including pianist Robert Thies in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Nathan Chan in Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto, violinists Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, and pianist Sofya Gulyak in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

Donato Cabrera says, “What’s the connection to Paris between a French, American, and Russian composer? How do composers from three different nationalities react to being subject to the tyrannical rule of another country? Why did a woodwind ensemble hold sway over Vienna’s musical life for over two hundred years? Each concert is my attempt at answering questions like these, through a mixture of new works, forgotten masterpieces, and known warhorses. And to help tell these stories, I have enlisted five incredible soloists to dazzle us in works ranging from Mozart to Arvo Pärt. I’m very excited to share this season with you and I can’t wait to bring these works to life with my dear colleagues in the orchestra.”

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. During the 2024-2025 season, California Symphony’s season ticket revenue was the highest ever in the organization’s history. 

In the 2025-2026 season, California Symphony will continue to serve its community beyond the stage through its nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds and its innovative lifelong learning program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed. It will also expand its programs for vulnerable populations at Trinity Center Walnut Creek and continue community partnerships to reach more underserved youth throughout Contra Costa County.

California Symphony 2025-2026 Concert Schedule:

PICTURES FROM PARIS
Saturday, September 27, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 4pm

Maurice Ravel: Boléro (1928)
George Gershwin: An American in Paris (1928)
Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (1874; orch. by Ravel 1922) 

California Symphony launches its season with a trio of evocative, orchestral showstoppers. French composer Maurice Ravel’s mesmerizing Boléro from 1928 builds from a whisper to a triumphant climax as two beguiling melodies are shared throughout the entire orchestra in what became the composer’s most famous piece. Jazz meets classical in American composer George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, also from 1928. Gershwin described the piece as an effort to, “portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere.” Gershwin and Ravel shared a musical friendship, meeting in Paris in 1926, with Gershwin later being instrumental in bringing Ravel to tour the U.S. Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition for piano in 1874 as a musical depiction of the paintings of artist Viktor Hartmann, but this version is Ravel’s famous update for orchestra from 1922, which showcases his unmatched ability to use the orchestra as a palette to create rich textures and vivid imagery.

BEETHOVEN’S EROICA
Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 4pm

Jessie Montgomery: Overture (2022)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 (1785)
     Robert Thies, piano
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) (1804)

California Symphony’s November concerts feature music that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit. Full of rich harmonies, GRAMMY-winning composer Jessie Montgomery’s Overture from 2022 blends elements of jazz, American classical music, and Baroque rhythms. Nicknamed the Elvira Madigan concerto because of its use in the 1967 Swedish film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 features one of classical music’s most famous and serene melodies, performed by Robert Thies, praised by the Los Angeles Times as, "A pianist of unerring warm-toned refinement, revealing judicious glimmers of power." Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 – the Eroica Symphony – changed the game for symphonic music: A bold and powerful celebration of struggle, triumph, and humanity, it is where Beethoven truly began to push boundaries, introducing the emotional depth and drama that later culminated in the grandeur of the Ninth.

SCHUBERT IN VIENNA
Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, January 25, 2026 at 4pm 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Excerpts from Don Giovanni (1787)
Friedrich Gulda: Cello Concerto (1980)
     Nathan Chan, cello
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 9 (The Great) (1824-26)

California Symphony’s first concerts of 2026 feature a genre-blending program that showcases the wind and brass instruments of the orchestra, moving from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's classical elegance to Friedrich Gulda's jazz-inspired Cello Concerto. The concerts begin with excerpts from Mozart’s brilliantly witty and melody-filled opera Don Giovanni in an arrangement for the Harmoniemusik of Mozart’s day, when bands of wind players would roam the streets of Vienna to promote coming attractions. Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto, performed by Bay Area native Nathan Chan, is a fusion of jazz, rock, and European folk dance performed with a big band brass section, electric guitar, bass, and drum set. Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 – aptly known as The Great – is a grand and majestic journey through soaring melodies and lively folk rhythms, almost all of which are first introduced by the woodwind and brass sections.

NORTHERN LIGHTS
Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 22, 2026 at 4pm 

Valentin Silvestrov: Stille Musik (Quiet Music) (2002)
Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa (1977)
     Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser, violins
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 (1901-02)

California Symphony’s March concerts feature contemplative and calming music by Northern and Eastern European composers spanning the last century. Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik from 2002 sets a calm and reflective tone with gentle melodies that take listeners on a meditative journey, away from the noise of everyday life. California Symphony all-stars Concertmaster Jennifer Cho and Assistant Concertmaster Sam Weiser are featured in Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, a minimalistic, melodic conversation between two violins, in a dramatic, modern masterpiece from 1977 that is deeply moving and powerful. Stirring and uplifting, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, written at the turn of the last century, captures the breathtaking beauty of the Nordic landscape and evokes a sense of fearless optimism. Its sweeping melodies and bold themes make it a powerful celebration of resilience and triumph. 

HEROIC RACHMANINOFF
Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 10, 2026 at 4pm

Saad Haddad: World Premiere
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 (1909)
   Sofya Gulyak, piano
Alexander Borodin: Symphony No. 2 (1869-76)

California Symphony’s season finale concerts feature Rachmaninoff's dazzling piano concerto, Borodin's dramatic symphony, and a world premiere. The performances include the third and final commission for the California Symphony by Resident Composer Saad Haddad, whose music explores the relationship between the West and the East and has been praised by The New York Times for “achiev[ing] a remarkable fusion of idioms.” Sofya Gulyak, First Prize winner of the 2009 Leeds International Piano Competition, takes on one of the most celebrated and challenging concertos ever written – Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 – often called the “Mount Everest” of piano concertos for its legendary degree of difficulty. The concerts conclude with Alexander Borodin’s Symphony No. 2, composed intermittently between 1869 and 1876 due to the demands of the composer’s primary career as a chemist and physician. The work is filled with dramatic energy and rich melodies inspired by Russian folklore – a bold and heroic sound that combines mighty rhythms with rich orchestral textures.

Concert Details:

Location for All Performances: Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts; 1601 Civic Drive; Walnut Creek, CA 

Ticket Information: 5-Concert Subscriptions concerts start at $120 and are available now. 3- and 4-Concert subscriptions go on sale in late May, and single tickets ($50-110) and student tickets ($25 for students 25 and under with valid Student ID) on sale in July. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call 925.280.2490.

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. 

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 2025-26 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.

The Lysander Piano Trio Announces James Kim as New Cellist - Releases New Videos and Website

 L-R: Itamar Zorman, violin; Liza Stepanova, piano; James Kim, cello. Photo by Irina Rozovsky available in high resolution here.

The Lysander Piano Trio Announces James Kim as New Cellist

“an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness” – The Washington Post

New Website: www.lysandertrio.com

Watch New Performance Videos of Lysander Piano Trio with Cellist James Kim

Athens, GA (February 4, 2025)  – The Lysander Piano Trio announces that James Kim has been appointed as the ensemble’s new cellist; Kim succeeds Michael Katz and joins original members violinist Itamar Zorman and pianist Liza Stepanova. Founded at The Juilliard School in 2009, the Lysander has been praised by The Strad for its “incredible ensemble, passionate playing, articulate and imaginative ideas and wide palette of colors” and by The Washington Post for “vivid engagement carried by soaring, ripely Romantic playing.” The Trio is devoted to inventive programming, finding intriguing connections between works from all over the world, and uncovering lesser-known gems of the repertoire from the past to the present. Coinciding with the announcement of James Kim’s appointment, the Trio has released several new performance videos with Kim, a preview of a new collaboration with performance artist Kevork Mourad, and a newly re-designed website.

Outgoing cellist Michael Katz joined the Lysander Piano Trio in 2010, performing with the group for several competition wins, including the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition in 2012, on two commercial recordings, and in multiple performances at Carnegie Hall as well as extensively on tour in over 100 concerts in the US, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and Israel. He is departing the ensemble to join the Philadelphia Orchestra in April 2025.

Cellist James Kim, who continues the Lysander Piano Trio’s connection to The Juilliard School having studied there as well, is lauded by The New York Times for his “admirable purity of tone and accuracy.” Kim has appeared as soloist with the Boston Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Wallonie Royal Chamber, and Juilliard Orchestra working with conductors such as David Zinman, Michael Sanderling, Alexander Shelley, Keith Lockhart, Frank Braley, Tan Dun, Julian Kovatchev, and Benjamin Zander onstage at Carnegie Stern Auditorium, Boston Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kim has given solo recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall, Seoul Arts Center IBK Hall, Midday Masterpieces Series at the Greene Space, McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase hosted by Robert Sherman, Beautiful Thursday Series at Kumho Art Hall, Garden City Chamber Music Series curated by Bruce Adolphe, James Kim with Friends at Music Space Camerata in Paju, Tuesday Series at Seoul National University, and Faculty Artist Series at UGA Performing Arts Center. His performances have been broadcasted on radio stations NPR and WQXR. Kim also performs extensively in his native Korea. A champion of the music by Shinuh Lee, he premiered her Cello Concerto in 2021 and released Death and Offering, an album of her works dedicated to him, through Sony Classical in the same year. Winner of the 2006 David Popper International Cello Competition and 2012 Salon de Virtuosi’s Sony Career Grant, Kim is a laureate of the 2015 Isang Yun International Cello Competition and 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition. 

Stepanova and Zorman say, "It is a bittersweet day. We are grateful to Michael for fifteen years of adventures on the road and for getting to know the cornerstones of the piano trio literature inside and out through many performances with him. We thank him for these many years of joyful music-making and are certainly wishing him all the best for his next chapter with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At the same time, we are very excited to welcome James to our group. Reading with him late in the fall, and starting to perform together this January, it was clear right away that this was an excellent musical fit. We think about phrasing, colors, and making chamber music in a similar way. And, he just sounds fantastic! We are looking forward to working together from our joint homebase at the University of Georgia in Athens, which will allow for in-depth rehearsing as well as some exciting recording opportunities!”

“I am delighted to join the Lysander Piano Trio in future concerts and projects,” says James Kim. “Our rehearsals produce a joy I look forward to sharing with audiences. Our pursuit of bringing music to life through meaning and conversation embodies my ideal life as a musician, so I am immensely excited to start this new chapter.”

The Lysander Piano Trio performed for the first time with James Kim on January 9 at the University of Georgia in Athens, where both Stepanova and Kim are on the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. On February 9, the Trio will collaborate with Franklin Pond Chamber Music in Atlanta to present an educational workshop and performance. Next season’s highlights thus far include collaborations with Argentine bandoneonist JP Jofre and a new concert program with visual artist Kevork Mourad, as well as performances in New York, New Mexico, California, a tour of the US Southeast, and more. 

Watch selections from the Lysander Piano Trio’s stunning first performance with cellist James Kim: 

Watch Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70 No. 1 "Ghost”:

Watch Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio: 

Watch video of the Lysander’s new collaboration with Kevork Mourad: 

More About the Lysander Piano Trio:

The Lysander Piano Trio has spent over a decade performing around the US with appearances at notable venues such as the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, Los Angeles’ Da Camera Society, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, San Francisco’s Music at Kohl Mansion, Palm Beach's Kravis Center and Norton Museum of Art, Chamber Music Raleigh, Concerts International Memphis, Sanibel Music Festival, Florida Keys Concert Association, Chamber Music Tulsa, Juneau Jazz and Classics, and notable college venues including Middlebury College, Clemson University, Lee University’s Presidential Concert Series, Purdue University’s Convocations Series, and University of Illinois’ Krannert Center. Summer and festival appearances include the Bard Music Festival, Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, Copenhagen Summer Festival, The Chautauqua Institution, Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts, and a critically acclaimed recital at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Lysander Trio also performed abroad in recent seasons, notably at Calgary Pro Musica in Canada, Pro Musica San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and a tour of Israel. Orchestral engagements include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, University of Wyoming Symphony Orchestra and Greenwich Village Orchestra in New York City.

Highlights of the 2024-25 season include performances at the Asheville Chamber Music Series, Bender JCC of Greater Washington, Chamber Music Society of Central Kentucky, Chamber Music Society of Utica, Cosmos Club, Valley Classical Concerts, Westchester Chamber Music Society, Music Mountain, Hunter International Music Festival, Nantucket Musical Arts Society, and other notable series in Chattanooga, Palm Beach, and the Greater Boston area. In the 2023-24 season, the Trio gave debuts at Parlance Chamber Concerts, Feldman Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg, Northeast Kingdom Classical Series, Blue Hill Concert Association, University of Idaho's Auditorium Chamber Music Series, Nelson Overture Concerts Society, and Kelowna Chamber Concert Association in Canada. In the spring of 2023, the Lysander "brought the house down" (Dumbarton Concerts) with its new tango-infused collaboration with Argentine bandoneonist and composer JP Jofre.

The Trio has a long-standing commitment to working with living composers and building a new repertoire for the piano trio. The Lysander Trio's latest commission, Nostos by Udi Perlman, was premiered in 2024 and has been received enthusiastically by audiences across the US. Following a recent performance of Nostos at Music Mountain, The Millbrook Independent proclaimed: "That melody has been ringing in my ears over the past twenty-four hours; it provided a delightful conclusion, and I wished to hear the work once more!" The ensemble’s commissions also include Gilad Cohen’s Around the Cauldron (2017), co-commissioned by Concert Artists Guild and premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; Ghostwritten Variations, by Venezuelan-American composer Reinaldo Moya; Jakub Ciupinski’s The Black Mirror; and Four Movements Inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” penned by four pre-teen composers of ComposerCraft from NYC’s Kaufman Music Center and premiered at Merkin Concert Hall in 2014.

Lysander members also premiered Jennifer Higdon’s Love Sweet for soprano and piano trio, which received its world-premiere recording together with acclaimed soprano Sarah Shafer on the group’s 2021 release, Mirrors. Beyond its praise from Musical America for being “strikingly inventive…meticulous” and from The Strad for its “evocative moments,” Gramophone celebrated Mirrors by noting that “all six of this release’s compositions benefit from the Lysander Trio’s finely honed ensemble values and well-characterised solo contributions.” The Trio’s debut recording After A Dream (CAG Records) was acclaimed by The New York Times for  its “polished and spirited interpretations.”

The Lysander Piano Trio, whose name is inspired by the character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was formed at The Juilliard School. The Trio studied with Ronald Copes of the Juilliard String Quartet, the late Joseph Kalichstein, and Seymour Lipkin. Early in their career, Lysander became a standout at competitions, with top honors at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition (Grand Prize), the J. C. Arriaga Chamber Music Competition (First Prize), and the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition.

Photo by Irina Rozovsky available in high resolution here.

March 21: Sony Classical Releases Songs With Words New Album from Vocalist & Composer Malakoff Kowalski – Debut Single When I Died, Love feat. Igor Levit Out Now

Album Artwork (Download)

Sony Classical Releases Songs with Words
New Album from Vocalist and Composer Malakoff Kowalski
with Pianists Igor Levit, Johanna Summer, and Chilly Gonzales

Out Now: Debut Single When I Died, Love
Featuring Igor Levit
Listen Here | Watch Here

Album Release Date: March 21, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

Songs With Words is the new album by vocalist and composer Malakoff Kowalski, together with pianists Igor Levit, Johanna Summer, and Chilly Gonzales. Set for release on March 21, 2025 and available for pre-order now, the new Sony Classical album features miniatures by classical composers coupled with sung poems by American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Reflecting on Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, this extraordinary quartet presents a new kind of music, and possibly a whole new genre that has never before appeared in this form either in classical music, jazz, or pop. Accompanying the album news is the first track release, When I Died, Love featuring pianist Igor Levit - watch the official video.

In his liner notes, Kowalski, the Berlin-based German-American composer and singer of Persian origin, succinctly describes the album thus: “It took about five years to birth these twelve songs. They were assembled from both famous and lesser-known miniatures by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Aram Khachaturian, Maurice Ravel, Edvard Grieg, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré. I kept unearthing timeless, intimate, vulnerable poems from Ginsberg’s oeuvre, and for some reason, again and again, these poems, with little or no reworking, functioned very naturally as song lyrics. The quiet, inner-directed vocals strictly followed the piano’s motifs and themes, while the piano parts, in turn, stuck to their original versions, with only the most imperceptible of alterations here and there.”

The result is a song cycle reminiscent of Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, and David Bowie, infused with the musicality of Bill Evans, Kurt Weill, and Michel Legrand. Malakoff Kowalski describes it as a great stroke of luck that three of his closest musician friends played the piano on this album in order to transform a mere concept into actual music: “Three personalities with contrasting pianistic spirits, as distinct as the material we engaged with here: Igor Levit, whom I love above all for his three great Bs: Busoni, Bach, Brahms. Johanna Summer, who improvises between jazz and classical so freely and so thoroughly that it makes me dizzy with joy. And Chilly Gonzales, who with SOLO PIANO and its successors, has done more for contemporary miniatures than any other living composer.”

With the album Songs With Words, this remarkable group has created a fascinating interplay between the pristine European piano tradition and the American poetry of the Beat Generation.

“All I know: my parents were born in Tehran, I was born in Boston, I grew up in Hamburg and I now live in Berlin. I love nothing more than music. Everything else equals question marks, exclamation marks and dashes.” This is how musician and composer Malakoff Kowalski describes himself. VOGUE magazine named him “The Piano Poet,” fellow musician Chilly Gonzales regards him as one of his “favorite living composers.”

Kowalski refers to Debussy, Scriabin and Frederic Mompou as his influences—while Jazz and Psychedelic music from the fifties and sixties is just as important to him. “One is being forced to listen closely. Kowalski’s compositions may appear to be rather simple, but the world hidden inside them is most complex. From unresolved harmonic turns to frequent musical quotations—it remains unclear on how many different levels his music takes place. Its calm is only a facade.” (Concerti Magazine)

In addition to his solo music, recorded on seven albums to date, Malakoff Kowalski composes for film and theater as well. As a writer he publishes passionate and controversial music critiques. In his concerts the auditorium is entirely dark, with a small reading lamp above the grand piano and a white spotlight being the only sources of light.

Igor Levit, who recently premiered a work specially written for him by Kowalski at the Salzburg Festival, raves about his compositions: “Ferruccio Busoni once said, ‘Music is sonorous air.’ That’s what this music is. Most wonderful sonorous air.”

Malakoff Kowalski, Vocals
Igor Levit / Johanna Summer / Chilly Gonzales, Piano
Songs With Words

Tracklist:

1. Dry Old Rose (Ft. Johanna Summer)

2. Shadow Changes into Bone (Ft. Igor Levit)

3. When I Died, Love (Ft. Igor Levit)

4. See the World Go Wild (Ft. Chilly Gonzales)

5. Interlude #A

6. A Strange Wild Leaf (Ft. Johanna Summer)

7. The Weight of the World Is Love (Ft. Igor Levit)

8. Until They Try (Ft. Johanna Summer)

9. An Empty Hungry Ghost (Ft. Johanna Summer)

10. Interlude #B

11. One Day (Ft. Igor Levit)

12. The Nightingale at Night (Ft. Chilly Gonzales)

13. Dawn (Ft. Johanna Summer)

14. Awake (Ft. Chilly Gonzales)

Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records, and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com.

April 11: Leif Ove Andsnes Releases New Album on Sony Classical – Franz Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works

Album Artwork (Download)

Leif Ove Andsnes Unveils the Hidden Side of Liszt

New Album to be Released on Sony Classical
Franz Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works

Out Today: Consolations No. 3 – Listen Here

Album Release Date: April 11, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

The pianist explores the introspective beauty of Liszt’s consolations and the spiritual depth of Via Crucis with the Norwegian Soloist Choir, led by Grete Pedersen

“a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight.” – The New York Times

“as usual with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, blend is exquisite, intonation perfect and articulation superlative.” – Gramophone

On his latest album Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works for Sony Classical, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes unveils the often-forgotten side of the famed virtuoso Franz Liszt - the sacred music that offers a more intimate picture of the man and his deeply held faith. The new album, Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works, is set for release on April 11, 2025 and available for pre-order now. The first single, Consolations No. 3 is out today – listen here.

With acclaimed vocal ensemble the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Andsnes has recorded Liszt’s remarkable late work Via Crucis (The Way of the Cross’) for choir and piano. The pianist completes his all-Liszt album with the solo piano work Consolations and two movements from the composer’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.

Franz Liszt is often described as the ‘first virtuoso’ - a superstar pianist and composer who invented the piano recital and whose fame and following in the nineteenth century were unprecedented. Much of Liszt’s reputation hangs on sweeping virtuosic showpieces so technically challenging that only Liszt could play them.

But that is only half the story. In 1847, at the age of just 35, Liszt retired from public performance to focus on writing and teaching. Thirteen years later he took another step back, taking Holy Orders and embarking upon a new life of religious devotion and creative introspection.

In this later period, a new aesthetic took root in Liszt, one characterized by austere, spare and sometimes inscrutable musical utterances that tended to question more than they assert. ‘I find Liszt’s religious music fascinating,’ says Andsnes, who has lived with Liszt’s music since childhood. ‘This is very different music, with so few notes but with a tension and beauty.’

One of the major statements of Liszt’s late period was Via Crucis, a journey through the Roman Catholic tradition’s Stations of the Cross for choir and piano, written in Rome in 1866 but considered too unusual by Liszt’s publisher and never performed in the composer’s lifetime. It wasn’t until 1929 that the work was given its first airing, on Good Friday, in the capital of the composer’s native Hungary, Budapest.

Via Crucis is unlike any other work in the repertoire: a concentrated ritual drama, ranging from liturgical chant to Lisztian chromaticism at its most searching and expressive. It sets a pianist and choir in dialogue with one another, each performing alone as well as together.

“This is something very different,” says Andnsnes. “It is incredible, the journey Liszt made as a composer, from this very flamboyant virtuosic style to [Via Crucis], which is very bare, with so few notes, but still an incredible tension and beauty. It points forward to the twentieth century while also building on the tradition of scared music.”

The work’s unusual scoring gave Andsnes the opportunity to extend his long-standing collaboration with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir - one of the finest vocal ensembles in the world and a seasoned recording group, consisting of 26 handpicked professional singers.

“Via Crucis tells a story about a man who gave his life for others, and at the same time is so much about humanity,” says Grete Pedersen, artistic director of the choir; “it is a piece with a lot of question marks, and I hope listeners will feel that.”

“We live in a world of pain and conflict and Via Crucis offers room for empathy, for philosophical thought, and for the taking-in of different emotions,” says Andsnes. “Audiences seem to be mesmerized by it. It really is a special work in which you can discover so much beauty.” He likens the work to ‘14 miniature tone poems’.

The musicians examined the piece extensively before recording it together in Oslo, performing it in concert and attempting to fathom is unusual scoring in which piano and choir are sometimes partners yet sometimes sound diametrically opposed.

“It was inspiring to be in the middle of the sound of a choir of this quality,” says Andsnes; “I was inspired by the exacting way Grete and the Soloists’ Choir do these things. Their attention to detail is so great, which is important in music that is so fragile.” Grete Pedersen comments: “If any pianist can make the piano sing, it’s Leif Ove.”

Completing the program is music from two earlier cycles by Liszt that prove there was always more to his musical outlook than showmanship and virtuosity. A mood of thoughtful reflection dominates the composer’s Consolations, written on the eve of the composer’s retirement from public performance and in a paired-back idiom that alternates the lyrical, the winsome and the forthright before dissolving into silence.

Two of the six movements are cast in the key of E major, the tonality Liszt reserved for music addressing the divine. “ find the Consolations so tender, so intimate, speaking from heart to heart,” says Andsnes. “But still, they have different styles, from the spiritual to the dramatic. They are so wonderfully written for the piano; it always sings.”

Andsnes’s album also includes two movements from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a magnificent 10-movement cycle written in 1853, inspired by poetry by Alphonse de Lamartine. Andsnes describes the ‘Andante Lagrimoso’ as “full of sorrow.”

The other movement from the set, which ends the album, is something else entirely. Liszt’s ‘Miserere, d’après Palestrina’ is a startling creation written in homage to Italy’s great Renaissance polyphonic composer, which treats a chant-like theme with an almost improvisatory spontaneity. “It ends with an enormous flourish,” says Andsnes, “it’s a relief after all the intimate music we have been through. But it also brings us back to the very beginning of the album, as the Via Crucis begins with a Gregorian chant.”

Franz Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works
TRACKLIST
Via Crucis, S. 53       

1          Vexilla regis                  
2          Station I: Jesus wird zum Tode verdammt                    
3          Station II: Jesus trägt sein Kreuz          
4          Station III: Jesus fällt zum ersten Mal           
5          Station IV: Jesus begegnet seiner heiligen Mutter               
6          Station V: Simon von Kyrene hilft Jesus das Kreuz tragen       
7          Station VI: Sancta Veronica                  
8          Station VII: Jesus fällt zum zweiten Mal       
9          Station VIII: Die Frauen von Jerusalem            
10        Station IX: Jesus fällt zum dritten Mal             
11        Station X: Jesus wird entkleidet           
12        Station XI: Jesus wird ans Kreuz geschlagen             
13        Station XII: Jesus stirbt am Kreuze                  
14        Station XIII: Jesus wird vom Kreuz genommen         
15        Station XIV: Jesus wird ins Grab gelegt           

Consolations, S. 172                         

16        No. 1 in E Major. Andante con moto            
17        No. 2 in E Major. Un poco più mosso             
18        No. 3 in D-Flat Major. Lento placido                
19        No. 4 in D-Flat Major. Quasi adagio              
20        No. 5 in E Major. Andantino                
21        No. 6 in E Major. Allegretto sempre cantabile         

Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S. 173                

22        No. 9. Andante lagrimoso     
23        No. 8. Miserere, d'après Palestrina. Largo    

Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records, and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com.

FOLLOW LEIF OVE ANDSNES

Website: http://www.andsnes.com/
Facebook: @LeifOveAndsnes
Instagram: @leifoveandsnes
YouTube: @LeifOveAndsnesTV

Feb-March: GatherNYC Presents Five Mindful Musical Mornings at the Museum of Arts and Design in Columbus Circle - Sundays at 11AM

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 February and March

2/2 ensemble 132
2/16 Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
3/2 Toomai Quintet + Maria Brea
3/16 Daedalus Quartet
3/30 MATA

Spring 2025 GatherNYC Concerts: 

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 five upcoming concerts in February and March - ensemble 132 on February 2, Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner on February 16, Toomai Quintet + Maria Brea on March 2, Daedalus Quartet on March 16, and a MATA showcase on March 30. 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: 

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.”

GatherNYC's Remaining Spring 2025 Schedule – All Concerts Take Place at 11AM:  

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.

Feb. 28: World Premiere Recording of Lisa Bielawa’s Centuries in the Hours on Leandra Ramm's New Album Watching glass, I hear you

Photo of Lisa Bielawa by Desmond White. Available in hi-resolution at https://www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/lisa-bielawa.

World Premiere Recording of Lisa Bielawa’s Centuries in the Hours
A Song Cycle Illuminating the Lives of American Women

Recorded by Mezzo-Soprano Leandra Ramm
On Her Album Watching glass, I hear you

Release Coincides with International Women’s Day

Worldwide Release Date: February 28, 2025 (Ablaze Records)

Press Downloads Available Upon Request

“the formal sophistication and lyrical richness of Bielawa’s music go deep”
– The New Yorker

LisaBielawa.net | LeandraRamm.com | AblazeRecords.net

The world premiere recording of composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa’s song cycle Centuries in the Hours, which illuminates the lives of American women by setting selections from women’s diaries spanning three centuries, will be released on a new album from mezzo-soprano Leandra Ramm titled Watching glass, I hear you (Ablaze Records). The recording will be released on February 28, 2025, shortly before International Women’s Day on March 8. The album also includes song cycles by composers Cyril Deaconoff, Daron Hagen, Douglas Knehans, and David T. Little. All of the works except for Deaconoff’s songs are premiere recordings.

Lisa Bielawa is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition, who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She is the recipient of the 2017 Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and a 2020 OPERA America Grant for Female Composers. She was named a William Randolph Hearst Visiting Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society for 2018 and was Artist-in-Residence at Kaufman Music Center in New York for the 2020-2021 season. In 1997, she co-founded the MATA Festival.

Of the origin of Centuries in the Hours, Bielawa says, “While at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, I uncovered an entire alternative American history, woven together through the experiences of women from all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, of all ages, from all corners of the US and its nascent territories, and from all chapters of our history. I eventually read 72 diaries, representing staggering diversity . . These women showed me an America that was completely unknown to me, invisible yet fully lived, behind the doors and in the corners, for centuries.”

Each song in Bielawa’s Centuries in the Hours reflects the experiences of a different American woman whose life circumstances rendered her historically invisible. The stories of the women represented include Emily French, a divorced and impoverished house cleaner in the 1890s; Betsey Stockton, a formerly enslaved woman en route to Hawai’i in the 1820s; Angeles Monrayo Raymundo, a Filipina teenager in the 1920s with great ambition; Sallie McNeill, a plantation owner’s daughter in Civil War-era Texas; and Sarah Wister, a Revolutionary War-era girl whose family fled Philadelphia. ​​The project meditates on the theme of invisibility: How do we, through performance, make visible the invisible, make things vivid in unexpected ways? To that end, it brings to light written words of women who were “invisible” in their social milieu.

The premiere performance of the Centuries in the Hours song cycle (orchestral version) was performed by mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin with ROCO in September 2019 in Houston, TX. It was co-commissioned by the ASCAP Foundation, Charles Kingsford Fund, and ROCO. Bielawa has also created a chamber opera version of Centuries in the Hours with librettist Claire Solomon, which was premiered online during the pandemic by Kaufman Music Center's Special Music School High School in May 2021. The online chamber opera was commissioned in part by Kaufman Music Center, underwritten by Cathy White O’Rourke. Development of Centuries in the Hours was funded in part by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

About Lisa Bielawa: www.lisabielawa.net/bio
About Leandra Ramm: www.leandraramm.com/bio

TRACK LIST

Watching glass, I hear you
Release Date: February 28, 2025
Leandra Ramm, mezzo-soprano; Michael Delfín, piano
Ablaze Records

1-5: Centuries in the Hours
Composed by Lisa Bielawa / Texts by Emily French, Betsey Stockton, Angeles Monrayo Raymundo, Sallie McNiell, Sarah Wister

I. Emily [4:15]
II. Betsey [4:08]
III. Angeles [3:38]
IV. Sallie [3:29]
V. Sarah [4:28]

6-9: Watching glass, I hear you
Composed by Douglas Knehans / Text by Katarina Knehans

I. Hear [2:37]
II. See [2:28]
III. Touch [2:37]
IV. Feel [2:45]

10-20: Eleven Fragments for the Book of Dreams
Composed by David T. Little / Text by Sonja Krefting

I. (wait for sleep - [0:55]
II. and there is always a possibility [1:00]
III. During the most recent earthquake [1:14]
IV. perhaps your hands [0:45]
V. but what will you remember? [1:13]
VI. name until you are no longer sure of the spelling… [0:34]
VII. What happened to the stone? [0:40]
VIII. your long journey through the underworld? [0:37]
IX. These new eyes are meant for looking [0:39]
X. you will be able to find [0:56]
XI. I shall possess my body forever [0:31]

21-24: Transformations
Composed by Cyril Deaconoff / Texts by Leslie Haight, Susan Noyes Anderson, Emma Weeks

I. Dance of Love [1:42]
II. Peace [2:38]
III. Don’t Mess With Me [0:53]
IV. Sweet Sorrow [4:26]
V. Dance of Love [1:50]

25-29: Four Songs for Mezzo-Soprano & Piano
Composed by Daron Hagen / Texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, Charles Baudelaire, Traditional, Paul Verlaine

I. Atem der Statuen [3:27]
II. To a Street Person [2:59]
III. La Flor de la Canela [4:25]
IV. The Nightingale [2:35]

Total Time: 64:24

Recording/Editing/Mixing/Mastering Engineer: Michael Hughes
Producer: Douglas Knehans
Design: Josephine McLachlan
Recorded on July 20-23, 2022 at Cohen Studio, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, OH

OUT NOW: Violinist Esther Abrami Presents Wiegala – First Single from New Album on Sony Classical to be Released April 25

Violinist Esther Abrami Presents Wiegala

First Single from New Album on Sony Classical
Listen Here | Watch Music Video

Album Release Date: April 25, 2025

Esther Abrami presents moving lullaby by Jewish composer Ilse Weber in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Violinist Esther Abrami releases a poignant new interpretation of Wiegala a lullaby by Jewish poet and composer Ilse Weber. Arranged for violin and string quintet by Abrami herself, the song is available now, alongside a music video - watch here in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Ilse Weber (1903–1944) was a Czech-born Jewish poet, writer, and composer known for her children’s books and heartfelt songs, many of which she wrote during her imprisonment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. “Wiegala, a lullaby which she composed during this time, stands as a testament to Weber’s courage and compassion. While working as a nurse for children in the camp, Weber offered music as a source of comfort and hope when medicine was unavailable. She composed songs, led performances, and even formed a choir, bringing light into one of history’s darkest chapters. When the children were deported to Auschwitz in 1944, she chose to accompany them, singing “Wiegala” with them for the last time before she was murdered, alongside the children she had cared for.

Esther Abrami’s delicate arrangement captures the profound emotional depth of the piece, honoring Weber’s legacy and highlighting the enduring power of music in the face of unimaginable adversity. Wiegala is the first single from Abrami’s forthcoming album, which will exclusively feature works by female composers. The Sony Classical album will be released on April 25, 2025. Wiegala is available in both Stereo and Dolby Atmos.

About Esther Abrami

Esther Abrami is much more than a musician: she's an inspiration to a new generation of music enthusiasts. Through her large social media platform, Esther shares her passion for music, performance, and practice sessions and shares behind-the-scenes glimpses into her life as a musician with an ever-growing community worldwide. With her dazzling talent, infectious personality, and boundless enthusiasm for music-making, Esther Abrami is a rising star.

Born in 1996 in Aix-en-Provence, the violinist studied at the Royal College of Music and completed her master's degree at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, for which she received a full scholarship. In 2019, she became the first classical musician ever to win the ‘Social Media Superstar’ category at the Global Awards and in 2021 she was featured in Classic FM's ‘30 under 30 Classical Artists to Watch’ series, curated by Julian Lloyd Webber and was listed as a ‘Rising Star’ by BBC Music Magazine. In the UK, Esther Abrami is considered one of the most promising young classical artists of her generation and has been appointed Creative Partner and Artist in Residence by the English Symphony Orchestra. With her debut album ‘Esther Abrami’ (2022), the follow up “Cinema” (2023) and an EP “Spotlight” dedicated to women composers recorded with ‘Her Ensemble’, a free-form group that seeks to address the gender gap and gender stereotypes in the music industry, Esther has become an artist who achieves wide attention outside the classical sphere and on social media. In her podcast ‘Woman in Classical’, Esther Abrami regularly interviews outstanding women musicians and composers from the world of classical music with the hope of inspiring young people to pursue a career in music. Esther Abrami plays a violin by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, kindly provided by Beare's International Violin Society.

Follow Esther Abrami

Website: https://www.estherabrami.com/
Instagram: @estherabrami
TikTok: @estherabrami
Facebook: @estherabramiviolin
X: @estherabrami
YouTube: @estherabrami

March 8: Sarah Cahill Honors International Women's Day with The Future is Female

Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill

Pianist Sarah Cahill Celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8 with The Future is Female

Performing Six Hours of Music by
Women Composers from Around the Globe
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saturday, March 8, 2025 from 2-8pm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY
European Paintings 1250–1800, Gallery 609
Free with Museum Admission
More Information

“a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction” – Gramophone

Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert featuring music from The Future is Female

Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com

New York, NY – Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “fiercely gifted” by The New York Times, will mark International Women’s Day on Saturday, March 8, 2025 from 2-8pm with a six-hour marathon performance of music from her ongoing project The Future is Female presented by MetLiveArts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue), in the European Paintings 1250-1800 Gallery 609. The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe, some commissioned by or for Cahill as part of the project. This is Cahill’s debut performance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sarah Cahill has been featured performing music from The Future is Female in an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, as well as in eight-hour marathon performances at the Barbican Centre in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., both celebrating International Women’s Day. In addition, Cahill recorded 30 works from The Future is Female on a three-volume set of albums released in 2022 and 2023 on the First Hand Records label, which included many world premiere recordings and was widely acclaimed by publications including in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, The Wire, Gramophone Magazine, and more. BBC Music Magazine reported, “the American pianist [Sarah Cahill] takes us on a chronological journey that zips around the world, stitching together contrasting styles into an enjoyable musical patchwork,” while Textura notes Cahill’s “ability to capture the essence of each piece and illuminate it with eloquent playing.”

Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female in 2018. She says, “For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but I felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe. Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive . . . The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”

For her marathon installment of The Future is Female at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on International Women’s Day this year, Cahill will perform music for solo piano by women composers written across five centuries from 1687 to 2020, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods, including works such as:

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Suite in D minor (1687)

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was celebrated in her lifetime as both a composer and harpsichordist, an acclaimed musician in the court of Louis XIV, and one of only a few French composers to publish keyboard pieces in the 17th century. Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suites speak to her boundless imagination and prodigious talents at the keyboard.

Hélène de Montgeroult: Sonata No. 9, Op. 5 No. 3 (1811)

Hélène de Montgeroult was a virtuoso pianist and composer. In a possibly apocryphal story, she saved herself from the guillotine by improvising variations on “Le Marsaillaise” during the French Revolution. Sonata No. 9 is one of Montgeroult’s many works for keyboard.

Vítězslava Kaprálová: April Preludes (1937)

Vítězslava Kaprálová was one of the most brilliant young Czech composers to emerge between the two world wars. Before her death at age 25, she composed prolifically, and was the first woman to conduct the Czech Philharmonic. Her April Preludes were composed for the pianist Rudolph Firkusny.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru (1951)

Born Yewubdar Guèbrou, Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Gebru (1923-2023), was an Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun who composed an abundance of works, predominately for piano, released several albums, and used her music in an effort to help educate of young children. She became a nun in 1944 and spent 10 years living in a hilltop monastery in Addis Ababa, taking the title Emahoy and the religious name Tsegué-Maryam. The homeless wanderer is a beloved piece of Gebrou’s, the narrative of which she describes as such: “The homeless wanderer plays on his flute, while he worries about the wilderness around his life. At night in the mountains, when people and animals rest after the day, one hears the song of a flute which the little wanderer plays, alone and far from home. The wild animals and snakes do not dare approach him, but listen spellbound to the melody his flute produces, which becomes its protector through the power of the notes. This he loses his fear of the nocturnal visitors. They become his friends."

Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water (1967)

Margaret Bonds was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. Bonds is regarded as one of the first well-recognized Black composers and performers in the U.S.. Bonds was a prolific arranger of African-American spirituals and often collaborated with Langston Hughes. She was the first Black soloist to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Kaija Saariaho: Ballade (2005)

The late Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) was a leading voice of her gener­ation of composers, in her native Finland and worldwide. She studied compo­sition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she lived from 1982 to her death. Her studies and research at IRCAM, the Parisian center for electroacoustic exper­i­men­tation, had a major influence on her music, and her charac­ter­is­ti­cally luxuriant and myste­rious textures were often created by combining live performance and electronics.

Mary D. Watkins: Summer Days (2020)

Mary D. Watkins composed Summer Days for Sarah Cahill in 2020. Watkins is an eclectic composer as well as a pianist, arranger, recording artist, and record producer. Her music reflects many styles – jazz, gospel, country, rock, classical and pop. She says of the piece, “[the music] makes me think of children on a hot summer day freely playing in the water of a sprinkler, bouncing, running, wrestling, yelling, laughing, and screaming with delight.”

Additional composers featured on Cahill’s March 8 marathon performance include Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Teresa Carreño, Louise Farrenc, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Maria Szymanowska, Frangiz Ali-Zadeh, Mel Bonis, Julia Perry, Ann Southam, Fannie Charles Dillon, Valerie Capers, Theresa Wong, Viola Kinney, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Marianna Martines, Reena Esmail, Grażyna Bacewicz, Zenobia Powell Perry, Chen Yi, Janice Giteck, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Meredith Monk, Marion Bauer, Anna Bon, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Tania León, Leokadiya Kashperova, Annea Lockwood, Gabriela Lena Frank, Aida Shirazi, Betsy Jolas, Ethel Smyth, Maria Corley, Johanna Beyer, Chiquinha Gonzaga, and Linda Catlin Smith.

Sarah Cahill has previously brought The Future is Female to venues across the U.S. including Carolina Performing Arts in Chapel Hill, NC; Carlsbad Music Festival in San Diego, CA; the University of Iowa; Bowling Green New Music Festival in Ohio; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; North Dakota Museum of Art; the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York; the Newport Classical Music Festival in Rhode Island, and more.

Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):

Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3

More about Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. Keyboard Magazine writes, “Through her inspired interpretation of works across the 20th and 21st centuries, Cahill has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers.” She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).

Cahill enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars to prepare scores for each performance. She researched and recorded music by prominent early 20th- century American modernists Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford and commissioned a number of new pieces in tribute to their enduring influence. Cahill has worked closely with composer Terry Riley since 1997, and for his 80th birthday, she commissioned nine new works for solo piano in his honor and performed them with several of Riley’s own compositions at venues across the country. Cahill also had the opportunity to work closely with Lou Harrison and has championed many of his works for piano.

Cahill has performed classical and contemporary chamber music with artists and ensembles such as Jessica Lang Dance; pianists Joseph Kubera, Adam Tendler, and Regina Myers; violinist Stuart Canin; the Alexander String Quartet; New Century Chamber Orchestra; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and many more. She also performs as a duo with violinist Kate Stenberg.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass thirty compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.

Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “fiercely gifted” by The New York Times, will perform music from her ongoing project The Future is Female in a concert presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe, some commissioned by or for Cahill as part of the project. Cahill will perform music by an array of women composers, featuring works written between 1687 and 2020, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female on International Women’s Day
What: Music for Solo Piano by Women Composers Spanning Five Centuries
When: Saturday, March 8, 2025 from 2-8pm
Where: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave. New York, NY 10028
Free with Museum Admission.
More information: www.engage.metmuseum.org/events/metlivearts/2024-25-season/sarah-cahill-the-future-is-female/

March 7: World Premiere Recording of Music by Fernande Decruck by Conductor Matthew Aubin and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra Out on Claves Records

World Premiere Recording of Music by French Composer
Fernande Decruck: Concertante Works Volume 2 

Conductor Matthew Aubin and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra

With Soloists Jeremy Crosmer, cello; Mitsuru Kubo, viola;
and Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord

Worldwide Release Date: March 7, 2025 (Claves Records)
Coinciding with International Women’s Day

“This album is a real revelation, necessary in any collection of 20th century French music.” – All Music on Vol. 1 

“As a composer, Fernande Decruck combines polytonality with impressionism, exoticism with neo-romanticism in her own unique way – her imaginative orchestral treatment is most comparable to Ravel.” – Fidelity Magazine on Vol. 1

Review CDs and downloads available upon request. 

Pre-Save: https://orcd.co/album-decruck-ii 

Jackson Symphony Orchestra’s Equal Billing Project: www.jacksonsymphony.org
Claves Records: www.claves.ch

On Friday, March 7, 2025, Claves Records will release the world premiere recordings of four works by French composer Fernande Decruck (1896-1954) on a new album titled Concertante Works Volume 2, conducted by Matthew Aubin and featuring the Jackson Symphony Orchestra (Michigan) alongside soloists Jeremy Crosmer, cello; Mitsuru Kubo, viola; and Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord. The album includes the first commercial recordings of Decruck’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1932); Sonata in C# for Alto Saxophone (or Viola) and Orchestra (1943) with viola soloist; The Bells of Vienna: Suite of Waltzes (1935); and The Trianons: Suite for Harpsichord (or Piano) and Orchestra (1946). The release coincides with International Women’s Day on March 8, and follows Aubin and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Decruck’s Concertante Works Volume 1 in 2022 on Claves, which included her Sonata in C-sharp for Alto Saxophone (or Viola) and Orchestra (1943) with saxophonist Carrie Koffman; Heroic Poem for Solo Trumpet in C, Solo Horn in F and Orchestra (1946) with soloists Amy McCabe, trumpet and Leelanee Sterrett, horn; and Concerto for Harp and Orchestra (1944) with soloist Chen-Yu Huang.

Fernande Decruck’s career showed promise from an early age when she won several prizes at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. She later taught many students there, including Oliver Messiaen, who dedicated a score to her. Marcel Dupré introduced her to improvisation, a talent she showcased in an organ tour of the U.S. in 1928. She later gave solo recitals in the great auditoriums of New York. The trajectory of Decruck as a composer can be traced through her early works, which give prominence to the organ (her instrument), saxophone and double bass (her husband’s instruments). The Decrucks lived in New York for several years, and her husband Maurice played double bass and saxophone for the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. Decruck’s American period saw the birth of numerous compositions for piano, organ, orchestra and a concerto for cello and orchestra as well as many works for a wide range of wind instruments, notably for saxophone. In 1937, Fernande Decruck moved to Toulouse alone with her three children, working as a professor at the Toulouse Conservatory. Beginning in 1942, she devoted herself entirely to composition, notably writing several of the works on these recordings. Her divorce in 1950 led to financial difficulty, and a series of health problems led to her untimely death at the age of 57. Many of her compositions remained unpublished and were thought to be lost.

For the last decade, Dr. Matthew Aubin (Music Director of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra and the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra, and Artistic Director of The Chelsea Symphony in New York), has championed efforts to bring Decruck’s music back to orchestral performances, giving orchestras further access and insight into her brilliant work through these recordings and by editing and creating critical editions of her music, published by Éditions Billaudot. As the foremost scholar on Decruck’s music, he has earned multiple research grants to study her significant life and work, and has worked closely with her family – even learning to speak French fluently. He has also organized performances of Decruck’s music in the U.S. and in Europe. His critical editions of the works on this album will be published by Billaudot coinciding with the release of the recording in March 2025.

 “The works on this album are a diverse representation of Decruck's many compositional voices,” Aubin says. “The cello concerto is forward thinking, cinematic and from a time where the cello concerto repertoire is sparse. Les Trianons blends Neo-Baroque elements with 20th century orchestral color. Decruck's saxophone sonata works incredibly well in her setting for viola – so much so that many JSO musicians prefer this version . . . especially the string players! The charming waltzes that complete the album are light, but bear the melancholy spirit that infuses much of Decruck's work. They're sure to find a place on many a future orchestral program.”

MATTHEW AUBIN’S NOTES ON THE MUSIC

Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1932)

Fernande Decruck’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, completed in New York City on October 29, 1932, is a remarkable work that showcases her early melodic and harmonic style. Representing her first known concerto and large-scale orchestral composition, it reflects Decruck’s life during that time as she balanced her roles as a composer, organist, and mother of two. . . While the specific dedicatee of the concerto remains unknown, her collaboration with cellist Robert Refuveille may have inspired its creation. This concerto serves as a testament to Decruck’s talent and versatility as a composer, laying the foundation for her subsequent works that would evolve and mature over time.

Sonata in C# for Alto Saxophone (or Viola) and Orchestra (1943)

The Sonata in C# for Alto Saxophone (or Viola) is Decruck’s most well-known work. Decruck created two versions of her world famous sonata, one with saxophone or viola and piano, the other with full orchestral accompaniment. The latter version is rarely heard. Decruck combines the Classical sonata form with impressionistic harmony and at times, polytonality. Decruck dedicated this work to Marcel Mule, the world-renowned French saxophonist. Although Mule had countless compositions written

for him in his lifetime, he took the time to record the Fileuse movement of the Sonata.

The Bells of Vienna: Suite of Waltzes (1935)

Decruck published Les clochers de Vienne (The Bells of Vienna) in 1935, and it was performed in several concerts and live broadcasts around that time. The music of this relatively early work by Decruck is bright and lively. The piece is unique in its pioneering inclusion of the vibraphone, an instrument that only became widely available in the previous decade. . . I originally thought that it was lost. The family only had four of the five string parts. I found the rest of the parts and score to most of the composition in a music library at a Portuguese radio station. The people there scanned and emailed it to me, but three of the parts were missing. Another friend helped locate the missing parts in a conservatory library in Tours, France, and sent them to me.

The Trianons: Suite for Harpsichord (or Piano) and Orchestra (1946)

Les Trianons is a suite concertante for harpsichord or piano and orchestra composed by Decruck in 1946. It is dedicated to Marcelle de Lacour, who later became a distinguished professor of harpsichord at the Paris Conservatory. The suite is named after the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon, two opulent royal buildings in Versailles from the 17th and 18th centuries, which serve as an evocative backdrop to the music. Decruck’s composition is written in a Neo-Baroque style, blending traditional Baroque elements with modern 20th-century orchestration. The chamber orchestra is enriched with contemporary additions such as alto saxophone, celesta, and concert toms, creating a unique sound palette.

Read Aubin’s full liner notes here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS: 

Matthew Aubin, Conductor: www.matthewaubin.com/about.html
Jeremy Crosmer, Cello: www.jeremycrosmer.com/about
Mitsuru Kubo, Viola: www.mitsurukubo.com/bio
Mahan Esfahani, Harpsichord: www.mahanesfahani.com/biography
Jackson Symphony Orchestra: www.jacksonsymphony.org/about-jackson-symphony-orchestra

ALBUM TRACK LISTING: 

Fernande Decruck: Concertante Works Volume 2
Conductor Matthew Aubin | Jackson Symphony Orchestra
Jeremy Crosmer, cello | Mitsuru Kubo, viola | Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord
Claves Records | Release Date: March 7, 2025 

1-3: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1932)
4-6: The Trianons: Suite for Harpsichord (or Piano) and Orchestra (1946)
7-10: Sonata in C# for Alto Saxophone (or Viola) and Orchestra (1943) with viola soloist
11: The Bells of Vienna: Suite of Waltzes (1935)

World Premiere Recordings

Publisher: Gérard Billaudot Editeur SA
CD Number: CD 50-3108 | EAN / UPC: 7619931310824 | Label Code: 3369
Copyright © & ℗ 2025 Claves Records SA, Prilly (Switzerland)
Recording Producer: Dirk Sobotka, Soundmirror, Inc.
Recording Engineers: Mark Donahue and Jacob Steingart, Soundmirror, Inc.
Design: Amethys
Executive Producer: Claves Records
Recorded in the Harold Sheffer Music Hall at the George E. Potter Center, Jackson, Michigan (USA), June 2023
Cover: Fernande Decruck, Paris, vers 1933 © DR

The New School’s College of Performing Arts Welcomes Bassoonist Adrian Morejon to Wind Faculty

The New School’s College of Performing Arts Welcomes Acclaimed Bassoonist Adrian Morejon to Wind Faculty

New York, NY (Jan. 22, 2025) – The New School’s College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama, today announces the appointment of acclaimed bassoonist and prolific performer Adrian Morejon to the faculty of the esteemed performing arts school. As a faculty member in the Mannes School of Music, Morejon will lead classes and ensembles, teach private lessons, develop and create new projects, and share with students his depth of experience as an accomplished soloist, chamber and orchestral musician.

"I truly look forward to joining my esteemed colleagues on the Mannes wind faculty and working with the talented young musicians of tomorrow. The school's dedication to preparing today's students for a myriad of varied musical paths both excites and inspires me to share my musical experience and guidance," said Adrian Morejon.

“We are quite proud of our wind faculty at Mannes and thrilled about Adrian Morejon coming on board. His career is in so many ways a model of what is possible and what so many of our students need to embrace, including of course, his bassoon playing and teaching, his harpsichord playing, and his work in arts management and entrepreneurship. I so look forward to Adrian and what he brings to Mannes students, faculty, and staff,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.

Morejon has been praised for his "teeming energy" and "precise control" by The New York Times and having "every note varnished to a high gloss" by The Boston Globe. As a soloist, Morejon has appeared throughout the US, Mexico, and Europe with the Talea Ensemble, IRIS Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and the Miami Symphony. Most recently, Morejon is featured on the recording of Joan Tower's Bassoon Concerto, Red Maple, released by BMOP/Sound. An active chamber musician and advocate of contemporary music, Morejon is a member of the Dorian Wind Quintet and Executive Director/Bassoonist of Talea Ensemble. He has appeared with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Boston Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Essex Winter Series, among others. An experienced orchestral musician, Morejon is a member of Orchestra Lumos and the IRIS Collective, and has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Novus, The Knights, and others.

Morejon was a recipient of Theodore Presser Foundation Grant, 2nd prize of the Fox-Gillet International Competition, and shared top prize at the Moscow Conservatory International Competition. During the past summers, he has participated in many festivals, including the Composer's Conference at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music Summer Music Festival, Bay Chamber Concerts, the Portland Chamber Music Festival, and the Monadnock Music Festival.

In joining the wind faculty at Mannes, Morejon will provide mentorship to a new generation of musicians, guiding them in technical mastery, creative expression and the practical realities of a professional music career. For more information on Adrian Morejon: www.adrianmorejon.com

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.

March 7: Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason Releases Debut Solo Album Fantasie on Sony Classical

Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason
Releases Debut Solo Album on Sony Classical
Fantasie

New Single: Summerland by William Grant Still
Listen Here | Watch the Music Video

Album Release Date: March 7, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason has a passion for curating programmes that cross diverse musical landscapes, and on her debut solo album Fantasie, she takes listeners on a journey that explores connections across different composers’ sound worlds – whether they met, influenced each other, or simply existed in resonance.

From Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin and Alexander Scriabin to Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still, Jeneba presents a programme which is also very personal to her as an artist. “I’ve always loved coming up with quite complex programmes which flow really nicely from one piece to the other and all these works mean a lot to me” she says. “By gathering them here for my debut album, I am not only revealing more of myself as a musician, but also sharing the very different styles of music I grew up listening to.”

William Grant Still’s 1935 Summerland - released today alongside album launch, listen here and watch the music video - perfectly illustrates Jeneba’s sense of the composers and their inter-connecting soundworlds. “I hear a lot of similarity between Still & Debussy” she explains. “I think that they occupy a similar sound world. ‘Summerland’ is very beautiful and it’s about a soul reaching heaven, and you can definitely hear that in the music. Like the Debussy Preludes, it’s very tranquil, but also harmonically complex… when you listen to it, you’re transported.”

Frédéric Chopin is central to Jeneba’s repertoire, and she opens with his Second Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op 35, one of his most powerful works, celebrated for its emotional depth and technical brilliance. This is followed by The Nocturnes, Op 27, two contrasting pieces that illustrate Chopin’s mastery in evoking complex emotions in music. “These pieces need to feel as if they’re being improvised” she reveals. “I’ve had to know the notes inside out, so that when I come to perform it, I can see what happens. With Chopin, I don’t feel like I do the same thing every time.”

From Chopin she takes us into the sound world of Claude Debussy and his Préludes - ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ (‘The girl with flaxen hair’ from Book 1) and ‘Bruyères’ (‘Mists’ from Book 2), both of which evoke delicate, atmospheric worlds, where simplicity belies harmonic depth.

Then in a nod to the Russian tradition, Jeneba plays three works by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), who, like Chopin, expanded the piano’s expressive capacity. Two of his Op 11 Preludes, youthful works, and his Sonata No 2 offer her a canvas of harmonic daring and rhythmic freedom. “They both have a beautiful way of making the piano sing” she comments on Chopin & Scriabin. “You can hear Chopin’s influence in Scriabin’s music as he sometimes has these Chopin-esque decorations over the melodies. What I also really love about Scriabin’s music is that it’s very colourful. When he goes to a specific key, it’s important for him that it’s that key, and not any other key.”

Anchoring her programme’s central section are three African-American composers dear to Jeneba’s heart – Florence Price (1887-1953), Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) and William Grant Still (1895-1978) – each in their way pioneering new modes of musical expression. Jeneba’s affinity for Florence Price is palpable, dating back to her 2021 BBC Proms debut with Price’s Piano Concerto. Jeneba notes “I was very grateful to be able to perform Florence Price’s music at the BBC Proms and I am delighted to have her on my album as well. In lots of concerts when I have played her Fantasie in E Minor, people have come to me after the performance and said: ‘that was my favourite piece; that’s what I really loved’. I think it’s because her music is very vulnerable and instantly speaks to the heart. She has such a distinct style to which a lot of people can relate. Maybe it’s the passion and her direct connection to the Spirituals that she uses that makes her music so emotional and easy to connect to.”

Troubled Water by Margaret Bonds – who was a pupil and friend of Florence Price and a champion of her music and who played Price’s Concerto at its premiere in 1934 – is based on the Spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’ and combines syncopations, jazz influences and virtuoso demands. “The Spiritual in ‘Troubled Water’ is ‘Wade in the Water’ and I grew up listening to that when I was very young, so it’s nice to have a piece where you can really hear the pianistic side of Margaret Bonds’ playing and how she’s managed to weave in the Spiritual. There’s this sense of rhythm which follows through the whole piece and it’s a constant pulse underneath the Spiritual. It was an easy choice for me to include Margaret Bonds’ ‘Troubled Water’ on my debut album” Jeneba remarks, emphasizing the rhythmic intensity Bonds brings to her work.

William Grant Still’s Summerland’is a vision of paradise, and it suggests to Jeneba a similar musical world to the Debussy Préludes. It offers a delicate, rising hymn to transcendence and is the central movement of his Three Visions. “It's so beautiful and visual, yet delicate and intimate as well. It starts very simply, and then even though it grows in the left hand and the accompaniment becomes more harmonically complex, it stays in this peaceful Paradise world. Then the pitch gets higher and higher, as if the soul is lifting to heaven”.

The third youngest of the prodigiously musical Kanneh-Mason family, 22-year-old Jeneba knows instinctively who she is as a musician. “We are a very close-knit family and yet we all have very individual personalities” she explains. “We constantly influence each other, and I have learned a lot from my siblings - and still do. We all have our own voices yet can always turn to each other for support. Isata is six years older than me and she gave me a lot of lessons when I was younger. She’s always been a massive inspiration for me, and she’s already released many albums, so I feel like I’m following in her footsteps.”

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason is a musician deeply committed to her craft, relishing the challenges of performance and recording and dedicated to her audience, whether in the concert hall or via her recordings and is a talented young artist for whom mastery isn’t just technical but emotional too.

Fantasie will be released internationally on March 7, 2025 on Sony Classical.

Tracklist

Chopin: Piano Sonata No.2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35
1. I. Grave - Doppio movimento
2. II. Scherzo
3. III. Marche funèbre (Lento)
4. IV. Finale (Presto)
5. Chopin: Nocturne No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 1
6. Chopin: Nocturne No. 8 in D-Flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2
7. Price: Fantasie Nègre No. 1 in E Minor
8. Bonds: Troubled Water
9. Still: Three Visions: II. Summerland
10. Debussy: La fille aux cheveux de lin
11. Debussy: Bruyères
12. Scriabin: 24 Preludes, Op. 11: No. 1 in C Major
13. Scriabin: 24 Preludes, Op. 11: No. 11 in B Major - Allegro assai
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in G-Sharp Minor, Op. 19 "Sonata Fantasy"
14. I. Andante
15. II. Presto

Newport Classical presents Valentine's Day Concert with Married Duo Boyd Meets Girl on Feb 14 and Trio Karénine from France on Feb 28

L-R: Boyd Meets Girl & Trio Karénine. Photos available in high resolution here.

Newport Classical Presents Two Chamber Series Concerts in February

Valentine’s Day with Boyd Meets Girl
Friday, February 14, 2025 at 7:30pm 

Trio Karénine performs Schubert and Dvořák
Friday, February 28, 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 two performances in February. Spend a perfect Valentine’s Day, February 14, with the impressive married duo Boyd Meets Girl – classical guitarist Rupert Boyd and cellist Laura Metcalf – who have toured the world sharing their eclectic mix of music from Debussy and Bach to Radiohead and Beyoncé. Trio Karénine, an established group on the French and international scene lauded for its musical integrity and joie de vivre, takes the stage on February 28.

Boyd Meets Girl pairs Australian guitarist Rupert Boyd with American cellist Laura Metcalf. The duo’s two studio albums have received over 4 million streams on Spotify alone. Both acclaimed soloists in their own right, Boyd has been described as “truly evocative” by The Washington Post, and as "a player who deserves to be heard" by Classical Guitar Magazine, while Metcalf, who has also toured as a member of the popular chamber ensembles Eighth Blackbird, Break of Reality and Sybarite5, has been called "brilliant" by Gramophone. Boyd Meets Girl has toured throughout the USA, India, Nepal, New Zealand, and every state and territory in Australia, including engagements at Caramoor, Festival Napa Valley, Austin Classical Guitar, Moab Music Festival and many others. The duo arranges much of their repertoire themselves, drawing inspiration from artists across all genres, and often speak from the stage about the works to create an engaging, conversational concert experience that breaks down boundaries not only between musical genres but between audience and performer. Boyd Meets Girls brings music ranging from Bach, Elgar and Ravel to the Beatles and Radiohead to Newport for a memorable Valentine’s Day concert on February 14.

Watch Boyd Meets Girl

Founded in Paris in 2009, Trio Karénine bears the name of Tolstoy’s beautiful and emotionally honest heroine. The trio of Julien Dieudegard (violin), Louis Rodde (cello) and Paloma Kouider (piano) is acclaimed by critics and audiences for its musical integrity and passionate interpretation. The group has performed in the world’s most prestigious halls, including the Philharmonie and Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Frick Collection in New York, Salle Bourgie in Montréal, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Herkulessaal and Prinzregententheater in Münich, the Leiszhalle in Hamburg, and Sydney Opera House. In a true celebration of the piano trio, Trio Karénine’s program in Newport on February 28 opens with Schubert’s second piano trio – one of the very last compositions completed during his lifetime – and concludes with Dvořák’s rarely programmed second piano trio which is filled with color, warmth, lively dance, and Slavic folk elements. 

Watch Trio Karénine

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 oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, who 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. 4: Jupiter Quartet Performs with David & Phillip Ying at Krannert Center

L-R David and Phillip Ying, Jupiter Quartet

The Jupiter Quartet
with Cellist David Ying and Violist Phillip Ying

Presented by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

Performing Music by
Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm
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

www.jupiterquartet.com

Urbana, IL – On Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Jupiter String Quartet –– whose playing The Washington Post describes as “characterful, illuminating and utterly committed” –– gives its third concert of the season at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’s Foellinger Great Hall (500 S. Goodwin Ave). Alongside cellist David Ying and violist Phillip Ying of the Ying Quartet, the collaborative sextet of musicians will perform a program of lively and intense music, featuring the String Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 by Richard Strauss, Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4,by Arnold Schoenberg, and the String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36, by Johannes Brahms.

The Jupiter and Ying Quartets share a close bond as friends and musical colleagues. The two groups have collaborated many times over the years, including frequently at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine, where David and Phillip Ying serve as Artistic Directors

Of their program at the Krannert Center, the Jupiter Quartet says:

“We are incredibly pleased to welcome our good friends, David and Phillip Ying, to the UIUC campus. We have spent the past eight summers at their wonderful Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine, and one of the highlights for us every year is the chance to collaborate in concert with them and their fantastic colleagues in the Ying Quartet. It is a joy to combine with them on this exciting program made up completely of string sextets. This particular chamber music formation provides both the intimacy inherent in smaller ensembles, as well as a rich, orchestral lushness provided by an additional cello and viola.”

About the Music

Strauss’ final opera, Capriccio, is a highly Romantic work. Presenting an opera within an opera, the story poses and attempts to answer the question of, “What is more important – music or poetry?” In their performance of a string sextet excerpt from the opera, the musicians embody the argument between music and poetry, and the texture alternates between beautiful lyricism and dramatic articulation.

Continuing in the vein of hyper-Romanticism, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is one of Schoenberg’s most popular and accessible works. It is inspired by a poem of the same name, written by Richard Dehmel and published in the collection Weib und Welt (1896; “Woman and World”). The work is full of extreme drama and extraordinary beauty, and reflects vividly the struggle between despair and acceptance featured in the underlying poem. The journey leads gradually to a transformation from darkness into light. .

Brahms wrote his second sextet (in G Major) roughly five years after the first (in B-flat Major). The work is a sublime example of his extreme range of expression, containing both great subtlety and extreme brilliance. It starts with a hazy oscillation and slow unfolding of the melody in the first movement, and ends at the other end of the spectrum in the last movement, with a bright, ecstatic close. Throughout the work, Brahms weaves the six voices around each other with a deft and ingenious touch.

About the Artists

Violist Phillip Ying is a frequent speaker, panelist and outside evaluator on subjects such as arts-in-education, advocacy through performance, and chamber music residencies. He served a six-year term as President of Chamber Music America, a national service organization for chamber music ensembles, presenters, and artist managers. Cellist David Ying and his wife, pianist Elinor Freer, are artistic directors of the Skaneateles Festival where their imaginative view of music has earned the festival national recognition including a special ASCAP award for adventurous programming.

The Ying Quartet first came to professional prominence in the early 1990s during their years as resident quartet of Jesup, Iowa, a farm town of 2000 people. Now quartet-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, the Ying Quartet members have private teaching studios and lead a rigorous, sequentially designed chamber music program. The Ying Quartet’s enterprising view of concert performance has taken it to celebrated music venues of the world as well as the White House, correctional facilities, business schools, and hospitals, not to mention Grammy Award-winning musical collaborations.

Founded in 2001, the Jupiter Quartet is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous. The New Yorker states, “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.”

The Quartet 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 will perform one more concert at the Krannert Center, including a concert of octets including the Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat Major with the Aris Quartet on March 13, 2025.

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). 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.

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,” continues its season series presented by at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, performing with cellist David Ying and violist Phillip Ying of the Ying Quartet. The six esteemed musicians will combine their expressive musicality and shrewd technical skills to perform a program that includes: String Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 by Richard Strauss, Verklarte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg, and String Sextet No. 2 in G Major by Johannes Brahms.

Concert details:

Who: Jupiter String Quartet, Cellist David Ying, and Violist Phillip Ying
What: Music by Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms
When: Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: University of Illinois; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Foellinger Great Hall
500 S Goodwin Ave.; Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: www.krannertcenter.com/events/jupiter-string-quartet-david-ying-cello-and-phillip-ying-viola

Feb. 28-Mar. 1: Dreamers’ Circus Returns to Emerald City Music

Emerald City Music Season 09
The Return of Dreamers’ Circus

Friday, February 28, 2025 at 8:00pm
415 Westlake | 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldDreamers2025Seattle

Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
The Minnaert Center for the Arts | 2011 Mottman Rd SW | Olympia, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldDreamers2025Olympia

“[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 

www.emeraldcitymusic.org

Seattle & Olympia WA – Emerald City Music (ECM) and founding Artistic Director Kristin Lee embrace an even bolder appreciation of Season 09’s Global Resonance theme with the next season program, set for Friday, February 28 and Saturday, March 1, 2025: the long-awaited and highly anticipated return of acclaimed trio, Dreamers Circus.

The Danish folk ensemble made both its U.S. West Coast and Emerald City Music debuts in 2019. Known for their innovative and fantastical approaches to folk music inspired by several different Nordic cultures and traditions, the members of Dreamers Circus – Niokolaj Busk (piano, keyboards, accordion), Ale Carr (cittern, guitar, keyboards), and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, also of Danish String Quartet (violin, fiddle, kannel) will bring their rich musical artistry and lively spirit back to the Pacific Northwest, enchanting audiences with a thrilling program of works that will be announced directly from the stage.

These two special performances will take place on Friday, February 28, 2025 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N), and Saturday, March 1, 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.

Contemporary and endlessly innovative in their approach, Dreamers Circus draws inspiration from the deep traditions of folk music in the Nordic region and reshapes them into something bright, shiny, and new. Dreamers’ Circus display inventiveness and talent in their approach to performances that include music from Denmark and Sweden as well as Finland, Norway, and the far reaches of the windswept Faroe Islands. The ensemble has won five prestigious Danish Music Awards and were named 2023 Artist of the Year by the Danish national classical radio channel P2, becoming the first non-classical group to earn that honor.

“Emerald City Music is so thrilled to be welcoming back Dreamers' Circus.” says ECM Artistic Director Kristin Lee.

”Since their smashing West Coast debut in 2019 on the ECM stage, Dreamers' Circus has gone to build fans all over the US and beyond. We are eager to welcome them back this spring and experience their new works they have built over the past 5 years. Knowing their immaculate technique, ability to intimately draw the audience with their unique sound, and tell a story through their music, this is definitely going to be the highlight of our 9th season!”

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

Jan. 31: Sony Classical Releases The World Of Hans Zimmer Part II: A New Dimension – New Single Dune II Suite Out Today

Sony Classical Releases
The World Of Hans Zimmer – Part II: A New Dimension

Out Today: Dune II Suite
Listen Here

Featuring Composer’s Acclaimed Film Music In Captivating Orchestral Suites Includes New Arrangements Of Iconic Themes From
Dune II, No Time To Die, The Rock, The Prince Of Egypt

New Album Release Date: January 31, 2025
Pre-Order Now

Sony Classical announces the release of Dune II Suite from the forthcoming double album, The World Of Hans Zimmer – Part II: A New Dimension available January 31, 2025 - pre-order here. The highly anticipated sequel to the acclaimed 2019 album The World of Hans Zimmer – A Symphonic Celebration features over 2 hours of music, reimagining 17 of the legendary composer’s most iconic film scores. Melding the grandeur of symphonic music with the dynamic power of Zimmer’s cinematic compositions, this album transforms more of his most successful soundtracks into epic new orchestral suites. Highlights include a short, captivating “cello-concerto-like” version of Final Ascent from No Time to Die, a tranquil rendition of A Time of Quiet Between the Storms from Dune II, and a new romantic suite from The Prince of Egypt. Additionally, Zimmer revisits one of his classic 90s soundtracks with a newly crafted suite of The Rock.

The World Of Hans Zimmer – Part II: A New Dimension features Zimmer accompanied by a stellar ensemble of soloists and collaborators, including singers Lebo M, Lisa Gerrard, Gan-ya Ben-gur Akselrod, and Nokukhanya Dlamini; multi-woodwind wizard Pedro Eustache; bass player Juan García-Herreros; guitarist Alexios Anest; pianist Eliane Correa; cellist Mariko Muranaka; violinist Rusanda Panfili; and percussionists Aleksandra Šuklar, Luis Ribeiro, and Lucy Landymore. Together, they perform alongside the Odessa Orchestra & Friends and the Nairobi Chamber Choir, under the baton of conductor Gavin Greenaway.

Hans Zimmer says: “We’re taking music that fans know and love and presenting it with a renewed sense of energy, scale, and emotion. These new orchestral suites are a testament to the incredible musicians I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and the magic that happens when we come together with the orchestra and choir. It’s about capturing those transformative moments in performance.”

The World of Hans Zimmer – Part II: A New Dimension is available for streaming and digital download in stereo and the immersive format Dolby Atmos. The album will also be released as a 2-CD set and a limited-edition 3 x 180g audiophile vinyl box – preorder here.

US Version: Hans Zimmer fans can experience the magic of his music live in January 2025 in five additional concerts of the hugely successful HANS ZIMMER LIVE tour:

Friday, January 31 Austin, Texas - Moody Center
Sunday, February 2 Nashville, Tennessee - Bridgestone Arena
Tuesday, February 4 Columbus, Ohio - Nationwide Arena
Thursday, February 6 Brooklyn, New York - Barclays Arena
Friday, February 7 Baltimore, Maryland - CFG Arena

For tickets and more information, visit:
www.hanszimmerlive.com.

HANS ZIMMER – THE WORLD OF HANS ZIMMER – PART II: A NEW DIMENSION

SUITES ON THE ALBUM:

Part 1

Man of Steel Suite: Part 1 "What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving The World?
Driving (Miss Daisy)
The Rock: Two Parts Suite
James Bond: Two Parts Suite
Interstellar: Two Parts Suite
Dune II - Part 1: Intro + Part 2: "A Time of Quiet…"
The Prince of Egypt: Three Parts Suite
Wonder Woman: Two Parts Suite
Sherlock Holmes: Three Parts Suite
Inception: Part 1: Dream Is Collapsing + Part 2: Time

Part 2

The Dark Knight
Gladiator: Four Parts Suite
Pearl Harbor: Two Parts Suite
Kung Fu Panda: Two Parts Suite
Power of One: Mother Africa
The Lion King: Four Parts Suite
Pirates of the Caribbean: Two Parts Suite

ABOUT HANS ZIMMER

Hans Zimmer has scored more than 500 projects across all mediums, which combined have grossed more than 28 billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Zimmer has been honored with two Academy Awards®, three Golden Globe® Awards, five Grammy® Awards, an American Music Award, and a Tony® Award, as well as six Emmy® nominations.

Upcoming, Zimmer scored Steve McQueen’s highly anticipated Blitz, set for release in November, and Joseph Kosinski’s F1, which will premiere in June 2025.

Most recently, Zimmer scored Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed sequel, Dune: Part Two, which premiered in March 2024. The film is the follow-up to the 2021 Hollywood blockbuster Dune, which earned Zimmer his second Academy Award® in the category of Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures. He was recently nominated for his three Emmy® Awards on behalf of his work on Planet Earth III and The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Zimmer’s additional work highlights include No Time to Die, Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, As Good as It Gets, Rain Man, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Thelma and Louise, The Last Samurai, 12 Years A Slave, Blade Runner 2049 (co-scored w/ Benjamin Wallfisch) and Dunkirk, as well as recent film scores including Top Gun: Maverick, Wonder Woman 1984 and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.

In 1994, Zimmer won his first Academy Award® for the Best Original Score of Disney animated film The Lion King. Additionally in 2019, he scored the live-action remake of the iconic film and received a Grammy® nomination for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Beyond his award-winning compositions and globally recognizable achievements, Zimmer has gone on to complete highly successful Hans Zimmer Live tours around the world. After sold-out European runs, he is gearing up to bring the tour to North America for his first performances in the region since his 2017 Coachella performance. Previously, he performed in the Middle East at Dubai’s renowned Coca-Cola Arena for two consecutive nights as well as Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix.

Hans Zimmer Approved Image (Credit Lee Kirby): Download

Connect With Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer Live | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Emerald City Music Appoints Sean Campbell as Executive Director

Emerald City Music Appoints Sean Campbell as Executive Director

“Emerald City Music [is] known for its innovative approaches to presenting classical music.”
– Cascade PBS

www.emeraldcitymusic.org

Seattle & Olympia, WA – Today, January 9, 2025, Emerald City Music (ECM) announces the appointment of Sean Campbell as its new Executive Director. Campbell comes to ECM from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he worked as its Artistic Planning Manager. Campbell will join ECM’s founding Artistic Director, Kristin Lee, in bringing ECM’s inventive programming to audiences in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

As Executive Director, Campbell will provide administrative leadership and support to ECM’s Board of Directors, assist Artistic Director Kristin Lee in developing and executing engagement events and educational programs, work with the ECM Board and staff to develop partnerships and collaborations with community organizations and local businesses, serve as a community ambassador, and develop a forward-thinking, strategic plan for the organization, among other key duties and responsibilities. Campbell will begin his tenure with ECM on February 3, 2025.

“I am absolutely thrilled to join the Emerald City Music team as its next Executive Director,” Campbell says. “ECM’s ability to combine exceptional performances with inviting, social concert experiences is an extraordinary benefit to the Puget Sound Region. Having grown up in Portland, Oregon, I’m so excited to return to the Pacific Northwest and support this wonderful organization’s growth as it continues to serve its thriving arts communities.”

Artistic Director Kristin Lee says, “I am thrilled to begin this exciting new chapter of Emerald City Music alongside Sean Campbell as our new Executive Director! Sean's extensive experience with various arts organizations and his deep passion for chamber music gives me confidence in the future of ECM. Together, I’m eager to bring this unique organization to even greater heights, continuing to bring meaningful musical experiences to our community.

On behalf of everyone at Emerald City Music, I want to extend our gratitude to the dedicated members of the Search Committee—Lynn Grant, Hsing-Hui Hsu, Sam Paris, Van Pham, John C. Robinson, and Shiva Shafii—whose collective efforts led to the selection of our new Executive Director. We also express our sincere thanks to Interim Executive Director Thom Mayes for his guidance throughout this process.”

“We are delighted to welcome Sean Campbell to Emerald City Music as our new Executive Director. His passion and experience as an arts administrator at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center set him apart from a field of candidates for the position,” says Hsing-Hui Hsu, President of Emerald City Music’s Board of Directors. “I am looking forward to working with him – and our fabulous Artistic Director, Kristin Lee – to bring intimate, eclectic chamber music experiences for the coming seasons."

Sean Campbell is an innovative and results-driven arts administrator and producer, with experience in managing programming, operations, and production for some of the nation's most respected performing arts organizations. With a deep passion for many styles of music, Campbell is skilled at building dynamic, inclusive environments that elevate artistic expression and enhance audience engagement.

Through his work at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Campbell planned and produced hundreds of events, digital partnerships, and film productions. Campbell led the programming and delivery of a premier partnership between CMS and Apple Music Classical, which launched in November 2024. This first-of-its-kind initiative accumulated more than 50,000 listeners in the first month. Other notable projects include producing the Emerson String Quartet’s final concerts, a two-part film for PBS, and a documentary on composer George Crumb.

Before moving to New York City in 2019, Campbell lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he performed as a saxophonist, taught saxophone at the Baltimore School for the Arts, and taught woodwinds for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program. Campbell also founded a contemporary music series that connected artists and audiences from disparate corners of Baltimore’s music communities.

Campbell holds a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, where he held a teaching assistantship in Ethnomusicology, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Denver. Campbell will be relocating to Seattle with his wife Swetha, and their dog Inji.

Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest’s 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 seven programs annually, with each program 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), and a once annual concert at the Bellingham Music Festival.

About ECM: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/about

Follow ECM on Social Media:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/emeraldcitymusic
Instagram: www.instagram.com/emeraldcitymusic

Feb. 28: The Jupiter Quartet Returns to Adelphi University

Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution here.

The Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Adelphi University

Performing Music by
Carlos Simon, Shulamit Ran, and Ludwig van Beethoven

February 28, 2025 at 7:30pm
Adelphi University Performing Arts Center
1 South Ave. | Garden City, NY
Tickets and Information

“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker

www.jupiterquartet.com

Garden City, NY. – On Friday, February 28, 2025 at 7:30pm, 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 Adelphi University at the Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, (1 South Ave.). The Jupiter Quartet last performed at Adelphi University in February 2022.

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 for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C., 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 returning to Adelphi University, the Jupiter Quartet says:

“It is always a joy to return to Adelphi University, which we have visited numerous times over the course of our career. We always relish the chance to work with student musicians while there, and look forward to playing again in Adelphi’s beautiful Performing Arts Center. 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 Adelphi University. 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).

Concert details:

Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Adelphi University
What: Music by Carlos Simon, Shulamit Ran, Ludwig van Beethoven
When: Friday, February 28, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, 1 South Ave., Garden City, NY 11530
Tickets and information: www.adelphi.edu/events/jupiter-string-quartet

Jan. 10: Sony Classical Releases 2025 New Year’s Concert with Vienna Philharmonic & Riccardo Muti

Sony Classical Releases The 2025 New Year’s Concert
with The Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti

The World’s Most Famous Classical Music Event Released on Audio and Video
Celebrating the 200th Birthday of Johann Strauss II

Album Release Dates:
Digital - January 10, 2025
CD - February 14, 2025
DVD and Blu-Ray - March 7, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

The Vienna Philharmonic’s 2025 New Year’s Concert will be released by Sony Classical in both audio and video formats. On January 1, 2025, Maestro Riccardo Muti will take the stage to conduct the New Year’s Concert for the seventh time in the world-renowned Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein.

Available for preorder and pre-save now, the live recording of the 2025 New Year’s Concert is set for digital release on January 10, 2025, with the physical CD release on February 14, and both the DVD and Blu-ray arriving March 7.

There are few concerts in the world that are awaited with as much excitement as the New Year’s Concert from Vienna. This year, it will be broadcast to over 90 countries around the world, reaching an audience of millions of people. The program will feature a repertoire from the Strauss family and their
contemporaries, with a unique addition: for the first time, a work by a female composer, and a friend of Johann Strauss II, will be performed. The Ferdinandus-Walzer, composed by the twelve-year-old Constanze Geiger in 1848, will be part of this year’s program.

The artistic collaboration with Maestro Muti that began in 1971 has given rise to more than 500 mutual concerts, including six New Year’s Concerts, Philharmonic subscription concerts, memorial concerts, guest performances and tours, as well as numerous opera productions. A special highlight of the 2024 season will be the concert celebrating the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Muti’s baton.

Daniel Froschauer, Chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic, emphasizes the conductor’s special significance for the orchestra: “Riccardo Muti has held an exceptional position in the history of the Vienna Philharmonic for over fifty years. An honorary member of the orchestra since 2011, Muti has helped shape the repertoire and specific sound of the ensemble in a unique manner.”

Riccardo Muti first came to public attention in 1967, when he won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Milan. From 1968 to 1980, he served as Principal Conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In 1971, Herbert von Karajan invited him to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, which in 2020 marked fifty years of collaboration with the Austrian festival. During the 1970s, he was Chief Conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (1972–1982), and later served as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra (1980–1992). From 1986 to 2005, he was Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Muti also became Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2010, a position he held until 2023, whereupon he was named Music Director Emeritus for Life.

Throughout his career, Riccardo Muti has conducted the most important orchestras in the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Vienna Philharmonic – an orchestra to which he has particularly close ties.

When Muti was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary concert in 1992, he was presented by the orchestra with the Golden Ring, awarded only to a few chosen conductors. After presiding over New Year’s Concerts in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2018, Riccardo Muti conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in this annual celebration for the sixth time in 2021.

The story of the Vienna Philharmonic can be traced back to 1842, when Otto Nicolai conducted a “grand concert” with “all the members of the Orchestra of the Imperial and Royal Court Opera Theatre”. This event is generally regarded as marking the birth of the orchestra. Ever since it was founded, the orchestra has been run by a democratically elected committee and is artistically, organisationally and financially independent. In the twentieth century its artistic profile has been shaped by such leading musicians as Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler and, after 1945, by three emeritus conductors, Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. Since it was formed, the orchestra has given around 9,000 concerts in every part of the world. Since 1989 it has presented a Vienna Philharmonic Week in New York. A similar series of concerts has been held in Tokyo since 1993.

The tradition of presenting New Year’s Concerts began in 1941. The first concert marking the New Year was given in 1939, albeit on 31 December. The first conductor was Clemens Krauss. Willi Boskovsky took over in 1955 and conducted no fewer than twenty-five New Year’s Concerts between then and 1979. The list of musicians who have conducted New Year’s Concerts reads like a who’s who of leading maestros. The New Year’s Concert was first broadcast live on television in 1959. The Vienna Philharmonic regards this now traditional event as a way of wishing the world a Happy New Year through the medium of music in a spirit of hope, friendship and peace.

2025 New Year’s Concert Program

Johann Strauss I Freiheits-Marsch op. 226
Josef Strauss Dorfschwalben aus Österreich Waltz op. 164
Johann Strauss II Demolirer-Polka Polka française op. 269
Johann Strauss II Lagunen-Walzer op. 411
Eduard Strauss Luftig und duftig Polka schnell op. 206
Johann Strauss II Overture to Der Zigeunerbaron
Johann Strauss II Accelerationen Waltz op. 234
Joseph Hellmesberger II Fidele Brüder* March from Das Veilchenmädel
Constanze Geiger Ferdinandus-Walzer* (arr. Wolfgang Dörner)
Johann Strauss II Entweder – oder! Polka schnell op. 403
Josef Strauss Transactionen Waltz op. 184
Johann Strauss II Annen-Polka op. 117
Johann Strauss II Tritsch-Tratsch Polka schnell op. 214
Johann Strauss II Wein, Weib und Gesang Waltz op. 333

Encores will be announced at a later date.
*First performance at a New Year’s Concert

Feb. 13: The Jupiter & Jasper Quartets Presented by BIG ARTS

L-R Jupiter String Quartet, Jasper String Quartet

Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution here
Photo of Jasper Quartet by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution here

The Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper Quartet
Presented by BIG ARTS

Performing Music by
Joseph Haydn, Grażyna Bacewicz and Felix Mendelssohn

Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 7:30pm
Christensen Performance Hall | 900 Dunlop Road | Sanibel Island, FL
Tickets and Information

“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 Arts Fuse

www.jasperquartet.com | www.jupiterquartet.com

Sanibel Island, FL – On Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 7:30pm, 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), and the Jasper String Quartet, who The Strad describes as “sonically delightful,” will be presented together in concert by BIG ARTS at the Christensen Performance Hall (900 Dunlop Road).

For this concert, the two award-winning ensembles will perform works which display both their individual and collaborative artistries, featuring quartets by Franz Joseph Haydn, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Felix Mendelssohn, which span the dawn of the 19th century and mid-20th century.

The Jupiter and Jasper quartets celebrate many years of deep connections that go beyond simply enjoying playing music together. There are siblings – J Freivogel from the Jasper is the younger brother of Jupiter members Meg and Liz Freivogel; spouses – Rachel Henderson Freivogel and J are married in the Jasper, and Daniel McDonough and Meg are married in the Jupiter; and longtime friends – Nelson Lee and Karen Kim were apartment mates while they were college students in Boston. In 2021, the two quartets celebrated the release of a collaborative album on Marquis Classics, produced by GRAMMY Award-winner Judith Sherman, which features Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, which they will perform on Sanibel Island.

Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2 (1799) 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. Grażyna Bacewicz’s striking String Quartet No. 4 was composed in 1951, several years after the end of World War II, during which Bacewicz lived through theNazi occupation of Warsaw. The quartet unfolds with an air of sorrow-tinged hope that rises up to a happy conclusion in the third movement. Felix Mendelssohn composed his String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, an intricate masterpiece, in 1825, at the age of sixteen. The work is known for its joyous energy. Rather than treating the two quartets as separate entities, Mendelssohn weaves all kinds of deft and subtle conversations among the eight musicians, in every possible combination.

About the Jasper Quartet: Celebrated as one of the preeminent American string quartets of the twenty-first century, the prizewinning Jasper String Quartet is hailed as being “flawless in ensemble and intonation, expressively assured and beautifully balanced” (Gramophone). The Quartet is highly regarded for its “programming savvy” (ClevelandClassical.com), which strives to evocatively connect the music of underrepresented and living composers to the canonical repertoire through thoughtful programs that appeal to a wide variety of audiences.

A recipient of Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award (2012), the Quartet’s playing has been described as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad). The ensemble has released eight albums, including its most recent release, Insects and Machines: Quartets of Vivian Fung (2023) which Strings Magazine praised as being “intensely dramatic throughout demonstrating both their advocacy of new music and their transcendent mastery.” The Quartet’s 2017release, Unbound, was named by The New York Times as one of the year’s 25 Best Classical Recordings.

The Quartet will release new recordings in 2024 and 2025, including Reinaldo Moya’s Pájaros Garabatos with soprano Maria Brea in 2024, works by Tina Davidson with pianist Natalie Zhu in 2024, and Richard Festinger’s Quartet No. 5 in 2025. In celebration of its twentieth anniversary in 2026-27, the Quartet has commissioned new works from composers Patrick Castillo, Brittany J. Green, Reinaldo Moya, and Michelle Ross.

The Jasper String Quartet is passionate about connecting with audiences beyond the concert hall and is the Professional Quartet-in-Residence at Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians and Director of the annual Saint Paul Chamber Music Institute. The Quartet is Artistic Director of Jasper Chamber Concerts, a series in Philadelphia dedicated to encouraging curiosity, community, and inclusivity through world-class chamber performances. The Jasper String Quartet is named after Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada and is represented by Suòno Artist Management.

For more information, please visit www.jasperquartet.com.

About the 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,” and the Jasper String Quartet, which The Strad describes as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling,” are presented in concert together by BIG ARTS. The two award-winning ensembles will perform a concert that highlights their individual and collaborative quartet chemistries with emotive and intricate quartets written between the dawn of the 19th century and mid-20th century. Featured works include: Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, Hob.III: 82, performed by Jupiter Quartet, Bacewicz’s Quartet No. 4 performed by Jasper String Quartet, and Felix Mendelssohn’s iconic Octet, performing together by both ensembles.

Concert details:

Who: Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet
Presented by BIG ARTS
What: Music by Joseph Haydn, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Felix Mendelssohn
When: Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Christensen Performance Hall, 900 Dunlop Road, Sanibel Island, FL 33957
Tickets and information: www.bigarts.org/event/jupiter-and-jasper-quartets

Feb. 16: Violinist Kristin Lee Performs American Sketches in Cincinnati

(l to r): Kristin Lee and Michael Chertock

Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Michael Chertock
Perform American Sketches in Cincinnati

Presented by the Linton Chamber Music Series

Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 4pm
First Unitarian Church | 536 Linton Street | Cincinnati, OH
Tickets & Information

Kristin Lee: www.violinistkristinlee.com

Cincinnati, OH – On Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 7:30pm, violinist Kristin Lee – hailed in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy” – will perform with pianist Michael Chertock presented by the Linton Chamber Music Series at First Unitarian Church (536 Linton Street). Their concert follows the release of Kristin Lee’s debut solo album, American Sketches, which was released on First Hand Records on November 15. American Sketches reflects the distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history, encompassing both Lee’s journey as an American, as well as the journeys of the composers she selected. Although this is Lee’s debut on the Linton Chamber Music Series, she is well-known in the Cincinnati community through her work on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin.

For her performance in Cincinnati, Kristin Lee has taken inspiration from the concept of her new album and will perform works including Praeludium and Allegro by Fritz Kreisler; Sonata No. 4, Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting by Charles Ives; Sonata No. 2, Poeme Mystique by Ernst Bloch; Road Movies by John Adams; Porgy and Bess Suite by George Gershwin (arranged by. Frolov), and Romance Op. 23 by Amy Beach, which can be found on Lee’s new album.

A violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique, Kristin Lee enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”

American Sketches has a personal resonance for Lee. A native of Seoul, Korea, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. During her childhood, playing the violin was a refuge from bullying and racism for Kristin – she moved to the U.S. not speaking any English, and felt the violin became her voice. As a foreign-born citizen of the U.S., Lee was compelled to select repertoire for her album American Sketches, which would express her pride in the country she now calls her own. On it, Lee has recorded works by American composers that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history.

Of performing her American Sketches program in Cincinnati, Lee says:

“It's an honor to give a recital at the historic Linton Series this spring. Having lived in Cincinnati for the past few years, I've always admired the first class musicians that come through the Linton Series, allowing the opportunities for the audience to be up and close to experience extraordinary performances. I'm especially excited to be sharing the stage with Michael Chertock, the eminent pianist who is an ambassador to Cincinnati, and give this performance that celebrates the diverse sounds of American composers.”

About Kristin Lee:

As a soloist, Kristin Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, Singapore National Youth Orchestra, and many others.

She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. 

An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee became a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center after winning The Bowers Program audition and completing the program's three-year residency. Kristin performs at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season. For seven years, she was a principal artist of Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, sitting as The Bernard Gondos Chair. Lee has also appeared in chamber music programs at Music@Menlo, La Jolla Festival, Medellín Festicámara of Colombia, Moab Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, Chamber Music Sedona, Music in the Vineyards, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of Germany, the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, among many others.

In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is also a devoted educator. She is on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin. She has also been in residence with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and is a summer faculty member at Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute.

Lee is the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music (ECM), a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Since 2015, she has crafted unconventional and captivating programs that have led to Emerald City Music’s renown for its eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. The series was recently deemed "the beacon for the casual-classical movement" (CityArts).

An advocate for living composers, Kristin Lee has collaborated with many of today’s prominent composers, including Vivian Fung, Andy Akiho, Patrick Castillo, Jakub Ciupiński, Shobana Raghavan, Steve Coleman, Jeremy Jordan, and more. She made the world premiere recording of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, which won a Juno Award and is available on Naxos.

Kristin Lee’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. Her performances have been broadcast on PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center,” the Kennedy Center Honors, WFMT Chicago’s “Rising Stars” series, WRTI in Philadelphia, and on WQXR in New York. She also appeared on Perlman in Shanghai, a nationally broadcast PBS documentary that chronicled a historic cross-cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory.

Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Violinist Kristin Lee, praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy,” will perform with pianist Michael Chertock in American Sketches, a concert inspired by Lee’s new album of the same title, which reflects the distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history, encompassing both Lee’s journey as an American, as well as the journeys of the composers she selected. The concert, presented by the Linton Chamber Music Series, will include works by Fritz Kreisler, Charles Ives, Ernst Bloch, John Adams, George Gershwin, and Amy Beach.

Concert details:

Who: Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Michael Chertock, presented by the Linton Chamber Music Series
What: American Sketches
When: Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 4pm
Where: First Unitarian Church, 536 Linton Street, Cincinnati, OH 45219
Tickets and information: https://lintonmusic.org/linton-chamber-music/