 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Chamber Music at the Y: April 29-30, 2008 |
|
|
|
Apr 29, 8pm: Ticket Information
Apr 30, 8pm: Ticket Information |
|
|
|
 |
Program Notes |
|
|
Meet the Artists |
|
|
| back to top |
|
|
|
| Program Notes |
|
| SAINT-SAËNS: Carnival of the Animals |
|
Camille Saint Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and died in Algiers in 1921. He composed Carnival of the Animals in 1886.
Of Camille Saint Saëns, Berlioz once remarked, "He knows everything but lacks inexperience." This bon mot is ideally suited to describe a man who, having composed his first piece at age three, was hailed for a time as a second Mozart; who played a piano recital in Paris at age ten and offered to play as an encore any Beethoven piano sonata that the audience might be pleased to request; who was hailed by Liszt as the greatest organist in the world; who eagerly pursued studies in archeology, astronomy and philosophy and wrote extensively in all three fields, as well as taking a vigorous part in musical polemics. And, of course, in his 86 years, he composed 13 operas, five symphonies (of which two remained unpublished after his death), orchestral tone poems, ten full-fledged concertos for piano, violin, or cello, and a large body of chamber music and other works. But he is best remembered for a private burlesque which he dashed off in a matter of days, an amusing jest called The Carnival of the Animals (this fact would have caused him deep chagrin). Unlike many other composers of the romantic era, Saint-Saëns was more classical in his orientation, preferring clarity and craftsmanship to inspiration and personal expression. Today, when so many adopt the expression of personal feelings as the height of significant statement, we rather lose track of composers like Saint-Saëns, who remind us of the opposite swing of the artistic pendulum.
He also had a wry sense of humor, nowhere more apparent than in the satirical Carnival of the Animals, for two pianos, usually performed with chamber orchestra (with multiple strings), though conceived as a pure chamber work, with only one instrument on a part. The work was composed in 1886 and first performed semi privately in that year. The composer forbade publication during his lifetime (partly, no doubt, for copyright reasons, since he quotes a number of pieces by other composers, or maybe because he thought it wasn't "serious" enough), but a special note in his will removed the ban, and the piece was published in 1922. It has been a great favorite since then.
The animals in question include some of the more common occupants of Noah's Ark, characterized with gestural music that almost paints their portraits—the roaring lion, the galloping horses, the jumping kangaroos, and the hee hawing "persons with long ears."
Some animals are depicted through satiric references to earlier music of the nineteenth century: the Tortoises dance slowly, galumphing their way through Offenbach's cancan from Orpheus in the Underworld—the slowest cancan on record! The Elephants attempt a dance to Berlioz's feather light "Ballet of the Will o' the wisps" from The Damnation of Faust—though the slow footed animals can only dance it when played heavily at a fraction of the original tempo.
Among the more exotic wild animals are the Pianists (whose wild cry is the kind of five finger exercise we all suffered through in piano lessons) and even Fossils (their "dry bones" represented by the xylophone playing Saint Saëns' own Danse macabre, and their music including a pair of old French folksongs and a tune from Rossini's Barber of Seville, as if to indicate that Saint-Saëns considered Rossini to be antediluvian!). The graceful swan is represented by one of the most famous cello solos (and one of the best known tunes Saint Saëns ever composed). The finale brings the entire menagerie together for a high spirited final procession.
During Saint-Saëns' lifetime the work was only performed privately, usually with the composer himself taking one of the piano parts. Ironically, when it was finally published after his death, it established itself as his most famous work, pushing a string of piano concertos, historical operas like Henry VIII, and even his most famous large works, the "Organ" Symphony and the Biblical opera Samson and Delilah rather substantially into the shade. |
|
| STRAVINSKY: L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale) |
|
Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, Russia, in 1882 and died in New York in 1971. He composed L'Histoire du soldat in 1918.
During the First World War, Stravinsky was living in Switzerland, cut off from his family estates by revolution in Russia and from performance royalties of his notorious and popular ballet scores by the impossibility of keeping the Ballets Russes functioning in wartime. The idea occurred to him of creating a small scale theatrical production that could tour on a shoestring and perform almost anywhere. He chose a plot line adapted from a story by Afanasiev involving encounters between the Devil and a nameless soldier, an Everyman. The story was worked out with a Swiss writer, C.F. Ramuz, into an hour long theater piece involving a narrator, a pair of male actors, and a female dancer, accompanied by an ensemble of seven instruments, divided in such a way as to have one high and one low instrument from each family: clarinet and bassoon, cornet à piston and trombone, violin and double bass, plus a percussionist playing high and low pitched side drums, bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, and triangle.
The first performance took place in Lausanne, Switzerland, on September 28, 1918. The standard Stravinsky references maintain that the evening was a popular success for the notorious composer of Le sacre du printemps, but one musician in attendance that night—conductor Maurice Abravanel (whose death in 1990 broke one of the last remaining links with a vanished musical world)—insisted to this writer that "The books have it wrong!" There were some cheers, he said, but the hall also resounded with boos and catcalls from listeners who found Stravinsky's dissonant harmonization of the chorale to be an artistic abomination if not positively sacrilegious.
Still, the small size of the work made it performable at a time when few other entertainments were available, and it might have gone on to become a great hit but for the outbreak of the worldwide killer influenza epidemic that forced the closing of the theaters.
Determined not to let L'histoire sink into oblivion, Stravinsky quickly adapted the music as a concert suite. This was first performed in London under Ernest Ansermet on July 20, 1920; it retained most of the larger musical numbers. Until fairly recently, most listeners have come to know Stravinsky's work only through the form of the suite, thereby losing the dramatic element that was its point. Increasingly the full dramatic form has found its way back to performance, allowing us to marvel at Stravinsky's prodigious imagination in pulling a vast range of color, mood, and effect out of his small ensemble.
Though derived from Russian stories, the plot of L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale) was adapted into a wider cultural framework with some reflection of the traditional Faust legend.
A Soldier returning from his military service carries with him always his violin. He encounters a stranger, by turns whimsical and ominous, who turns out to be the Devil. A master of disguises, the Devil is willing to employ any trick to obtain the Soldier's violin (which symbolizes his soul). He buys it in return for a magic book that foretells the future, but the Soldier soon becomes disillusioned with the wealth he can acquire through his knowledge and tries to get the fiddle back. In one encounter he plays cards with the Devil, and plies him with wine until finally the Devil falls unconscious and he is able to make off with the instrument. He uses it to cure an invalid princess, who dances to his music and falls into his arms.
When the Devil attempts to seize him again, he plays wild music on the fiddle, forcing the Devil into contortions and driving him away from the kingdom. Only after he has been married to the princess for several years and she urges him to take her to visit his old home does the Devil get his due. As soon as the Soldier crosses the border, the Devil gets control of the violin once more and marches the Soldier away triumphantly.
Stravinsky himself commented that L'Histoire has a characteristic "sound"—"the scrape of the violin and the punctuation of the drums," the former representing the Soldier's soul and the latter the diablerie. These two basic sonorities, enriched by the woodwind and brass instruments (which play a major role in the Soldier's marches and in the dances of the princess (all in popular styles of tango, waltz, and ragtime), provide a delicious musical resource for telling this folk tale of one man's temporary driving out of the Devil, as well as the Devil's final triumph.
Stravinsky composed the score in self-contained musical units, most of which he later assembled into the familiar concert suite. When heard as part of a complete performance, with narrator and a couple of actors, some of these are repeated (The Soldier's Violin, also called "Airs by the stream," for example, is heard, in whole or in part, several times, and The Soldier's March also recurs frequently as action music). They fill out and give shape to the scenes of the play and also lend a special feeling to each scene. The narrator, of course, recounts the tale as it unfolds, so that the music becomes more directly illustrative. And that, of course, is how Stravinsky intended the work to be seen and heard.
©2008 Steven Ledbetter |
|
| back to top |
|
|
|
| Meet the Artists |
|
| Alan Alda |
|
 In one year (2005), Alan Alda was nominated for an Oscar (The Aviator), a Tony (Glengarry Glen Ross) and an Emmy (The West Wing) and became a best-selling author ("Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I've Learned"). Since then he won an Emmy for The West Wing, and his second book, "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself," also became a bestseller. Among his other film honors, Alda won the D.W. Griffith Award and the New York Film Critics Award for Crimes and Misdemeanors. Among other films, he appeared in Everyone Says I Love You, Flirting With Disaster, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Same Time, Next Year and California Suite. He wrote and starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan and also wrote and directed The Four Seasons, Sweet Liberty, A New Life and Betsy's Wedding. On Broadway, Alda has appeared in many plays, including QED, ART, The Apple Tree and Jake's Women, and he has received three Tony nominations. On television, he is best-known as M*A*S*H's Hawkeye Pierce, and he has hosted the award-winning PBS series Scientific American Frontiers for 11 years. In all, he has won six Emmys for acting, writing and directing — and received 32 nominations. He has won the Director's Guild Award three times, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. He has been a member of the Board of the Museum of Television & Radio and a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. Alda was born in New York City, the son of actor Robert Alda. His wife, Arlene, is the author of 14 children's books and an award-winning photographer. |
|
| Noah Wyle |
|
 Noah Wyle is best known as Dr. John Carter on ER, a role he played for over ten years, and which earned him five Emmy and three Golden Globe nominations and won him three Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble. As a film actor, he has just finished filming Rod Lurie's thriller, Nothing but the Truth. His other feature film appearances include Boy of Pigs (to be released this year), White Oleander, Enough, Donnie Darko and A Few Good Men. He also had the title role in cable's top rated original films, The Librarian: Quest for the Spear and The Librarian 2: Return to King Solomon's Mines, and he is currently shooting The Librarian 3. Other TV-film work includes a critically-acclaimed turn as Steve Jobs in the Emmy-nominated Pirates Of Silicon Valley for TNT. Devoted to the theater, Wyle serves as creative producer of the award-winning Blank Theatre Company and recently portrayed Salvador Dali in their production of Lobster Alice. He is also involved in numerous issue-oriented initiatives, such as Physicians for Human Rights, Doctors of the World, Human Rights Watch and Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. One of six brothers and sisters, Wyle was born and raised in Los Angeles. He developed an interest in acting when he participated in a theater arts program at Northwestern University after his junior year of high school. Upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and began studying acting with Larry Moss. He currently lives in southern California with his wife Tracy and their two young children, Owen and Auden. |
|
| Colleen Dunn |
|
 Heralded as one of Broadway's leading dancers, Colleen Dunn is also establishing herself as a talented film and television actress. She won instant acclaim when she stepped into the role of the Girl in the Yellow Dress in Susan Stroman's Contact at the Lincoln Center Theater, performing it also on the show's national tour and in its Emmy Award-winning broadcast on PBS' Live from Lincoln Center. Among her other Broadway credits, she appeared in the Roundabout's revival of Sondheim's Follies, she played Grace Farrell in the 20th anniversary revival of Annie, and she played Cassandra in Cats. As an original cast member, she was Hedy Lamar/Lana Turner in Sunset Boulevard, Gerry Cartwright in Ain't Broadway Grand, Princess Veronica in My Favorite Year, and a dancer in the Will Rogers Follies and Legs Diamond. On film she played Marianne Stevens in Frank Oz' The Stepford Wives and appeared in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, Susan Stroman's The Producers, and Norah Ephron's Bewitched, among others. She made her television debut in the cult hit The Dana Carvey Show and has appeared in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, As the World Turns, All My Children and Another World, though she may be best known as the "French Maid" who sat in the lap of a man who turned out to be her husband in a now-famous Dannon yogurt commercial. |
|
| Jaime Laredo |
|
| In more than 40 years before the public, Chamber Music at the Y artistic director Jaime Laredo has excelled in the multiple roles of soloist, conductor, recitalist and chamber musician. Since his orchestral debut at the age of 11 with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics and fellow musicians. His education and development were greatly influenced by private coaching with eminent masters Josef Gingold, Pablo Casals, Ivan Galamian and George Szell. At the age of 17, Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence. This season highlights Laredo's musical versatility. As a conductor, he continues to serve as music director of the Vermont Symphony; he is guest-conducting the Seattle, Chicago and Alabama symphonies; and in December he led the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. As the violinist of the Laredo-Robinson Duo with cellist Sharon Robinson, he has appeared with the Nashville and Delaware symphonies, and in February the duo gave the world premiere of Daron Hagen's double concerto, Masquerade, with the Sacramento Philharmonic. His chamber music engagements this season include concerts in Massachusetts, Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C. (Kennedy Center), Detroit, Miami and Indianapolis. Laredo has recorded close to 100 discs. He has received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize; has won a Grammy Award for a disc of Brahms Piano Quartets which he performed with Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma; and has earned seven Grammy nominations. Other recent releases with Ax, Stern and Ma feature the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Fauré. Laredo holds a chair position at the Indiana University School of Music. |
|
| Susie Park |
|
| Winner of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and a top prize winner of the 2002 Indianapolis International Violin Competition, Susie Park is gaining international renown for her dynamic stage presence and passionate musicianship. She has appeared with such orchestras as the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Lille National Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony, Korea's KBS Orchestra, the Wellington Sinfonia and all the major Australian orchestras. As a chamber musician, Park is the violinist of the Grammy-nominated Eroica Trio, which is embarking on a cross-country tour to coincide with the release of its eighth CD for EMI featuring new arrangements of music from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Bernstein's West Side Story, commissioned by the Eroica. She is also a founding member of ECCO, a conductor-less chamber orchestra comprised of some of the most talented young musicians in America. She has performed with the Guarneri Quartet, Kim Kashkashian, Samuel Rhodes and Jaime Laredo and her festival appearances include Marlboro, Music from Angelfire (NM), Ravinia, Aspen, Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove (UK), Sommerakademie Mozarteum in Austria and Israel's Keshet Eilon. A native of Sydney, Australia, Park is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two, a three-year residency program for young emerging artists. She has a Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Jaime Laredo, and an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory. |
|
| Mark Holloway |
|
| Violist Mark Holloway is an active chamber and orchestral musician, both within the United States and abroad. He received his diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Michael Tree, and a B.M. summa cum laude from Boston University. Holloway was principal violist at Tanglewood and has played chamber music at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Angel Fire, Sarasota, Prussia Cove, Banff and Taos music festivals. With the Brandenburg Ensemble he played in Florida and at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and he has played with Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, Cho-Liang Lin, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson in Carnegie Hall and at the Library of Congress. He plays as a substitute with the New York Philharmonic, the American Symphony, and Orpheus, with whom he has also toured. Holloway was twice principal violist of the New York String Orchestra, and a member of the Portland Symphony and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. He has played at Bargemusic, on WQXR-NY and WGBH-Boston, and with the Boston Symphony, and as soloist and guest principal viola with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. This summer he will play with the Mainly Mozart and San Luis Obispo festivals and in France at Musique de Chambre à Giverny, and next season he will tour with Musicians from Marlboro. Holloway has also appeared in recital at Caramoor; with the chamber music societies of Boston and Richmond; with the Jupiter Chamber Players, Concordia Chamber Players, Lyric Chamber Music Society and North Country Chamber Players; and on tour in the U.S. and Asia with the New York Philharmonic. |
|
| Sharon Robinson |
|
| Winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award, the Piatigorsky Memorial Award and the Pro Musicis Award, and a Grammy nominee, cellist Sharon Robinson divides her time between teaching as a faculty member at Indiana University, solo engagements, performing with her husband Jaime Laredo, and touring with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Her 2007-08 activities with the Laredo-Robinson Duo include double concerto performances with the Nashville, Vermont and Delaware symphonies, the world premiere of Daron Hagen's double concerto, Masquerade, with the Sacramento Philharmonic, a recital in New York City and concerts across the country. The 2006-07 season marked the 30th anniversary of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Laredo-Robinson Duo and the couple's wedding. In commemoration, they commissioned new works from Andy Stein and Richard Danielpour, and the Trio toured the U.S. and traveled to Lisbon, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Calgary. Robinson has made guest appearances with the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston, Dallas, National, St. Louis, and San Francisco symphonies and, in Europe, the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zürich's Tonhalle Orchester and the English, Scottish and Franz Liszt chamber orchestras. Her festival engagements have included Spoleto, Mostly Mozart, Aspen, London's South Bank, Madeira, Granada, Edinburgh and Prague's Autumn Festival where she performed Dvořák's Cello Concerto in Dvořák Hall. In addition to the Trio's vast discography, Robinson's CDs include Vivaldi's Cello Sonatas on Vox and a Grenadilla disc of solo cello works by Debussy, Fauré and Rorem. She received a Grammy nomination for her participation in a CD of Brahms' two sextets, and her many Duo recordings include a CD of duets by Handel, Gliere and Kodaly. Robinson and Laredo are co-artistic directors of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle. |
|
| Peter Lloyd |
|
| A native of Philadelphia, Peter Lloyd is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Settlement Music School, having studied with Roger Scott and Eligio Rossi. Upon graduation from Curtis he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra and remained there for more than eight seasons before accepting the position of principal bass with the Minnesota Orchestra, a title he held from 1986 to 2007. A dedicated chamber musician, Lloyd has appeared with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Brandenburg Ensemble and Chicago Chamber Musicians, and he has been a regular participant and guest at the Marlboro School of Music, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society and Bargemusic in New York City. He is a member of the faculty of Northwestern University's School of Music and regularly gives master classes, lectures and recitals at many of the leading music schools in the U.S., including Curtis, Juilliard, Tanglewood Music Festival, Manhattan School of Music, The Mannes School, Indiana University, The Peabody Conservatory and the Chautauqua Institute and Youth Orchestra of the Americas. He serves as a coach at the New York String Orchestra Seminar held at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Jaime Laredo, he is a regular visiting teacher at The New World Symphony and he has been invited to the Guangzhou International Music Academy under the direction of Charles Dutoit and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Lloyd performs on a world-renowned bass violin made by Daniel Hachez, provided by Robertson Violins. |
|
| Tara Helen O'Connor |
|
| This season flutist Tara Helen O'Connor travels to Paris to premiere a new flute work written for her by composer John Zorn. She also teaches a summer master class at the Banff Centre, appears in "Wall to Wall Bach" at New York's Symphony Space and completes a recording of Bach's flute sonatas as well as a CD of new works written for her by American composers. She is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble, a member of the virtuoso woodwind quintet Windscape and the chamber ensemble Andalucian Dogs, and she is the flute soloist for the Bach Aria Group. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, she was the first wind player chosen to participate in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two, a three-year residency program for young emerging artists. She performs regularly with the Brandenburg Ensemble and at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Spoleto Festival USA and Music from Angel Fire. She received two Grammy nominations in 2003 for her recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Yiddishbbuk, and she has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch and Bridge Records. Her performance collaborations include Peter Serkin, Dawn Upshaw, David Shifrin, Ransom Wilson, Paula Robison, the Tokyo String Quartet and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. She has appeared on Live from Lincoln Center and A&E's Breakfast with the Arts. O'Connor is professor of flute and head of the wind department at Purchase College Conservatory of Music and is on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music and Bard College Conservatory of Music. |
|
| Alan R. Kay |
|
| Clarinetist Alan R. Kay has been a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra since 2002, and is principal clarinet of New York's Riverside Symphony. He also often performs as principal clarinet with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and at the American Ballet Theater. He is a founding member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and the piano and wind sextet Hexagon, and he appears frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and as a guest of numerous string quartets and chamber ensembles, including the Mendelssohn, Rossetti, Mirò, and Shanghai quartets. A guest at many summer festivals, Kay returns this summer for his third season at Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and his seventh season at the Yellow Barn Festival. His performance of Weber's Concerto at the 2005 Windham Chamber Festival was heard through the U.S. on NPR's "Performance Today." Artistic Director of the New York Chamber Ensemble, his series at the ensemble's Cape May Music Festival draws growing audiences each year. Also a conductor, Kay studied conducting as a Bruno Walter Scholar at Juilliard with Otto-Werner Mueller and has led ensembles at Purchase College and Juilliard, as well as in Buck's County (PA), Staten Island, California and New York City. He taught at the Summer Music Academy in Leipzig, Germany, in 2004 and currently teaches at the Manhattan, Hartt and Juilliard schools. Kay has recorded CDs with Hexagon, Windscape and the Sylvan Winds; he also appears on many other chamber music, orchestral and new music CDs. His honors include the C.D. Jackson Award at Tanglewood and a Presidential Scholars Teacher Recognition Award. |
|
| Frank Morelli |
|
| Bassoonist Frank Morelli studied with Stephen Maxym at the Manhattan and Juilliard schools of music and was the first bassoonist awarded a doctorate by Juilliard. A member of the renowned quintet, Windscape, the ensemble-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music, he also is principal bassoon of the New York City Opera Orchestra and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has made nine appearances as a soloist in Carnegie Hall. A prolific chamber musician, Morelli has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on numerous occasions, including at the White House for the final State Dinner of the Clinton presidency. He is a member of the Festival Chamber Music, and his recent festival appearances include the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Banff Centre for the Arts, where he gave performances and held master classes. With over 150 recordings for major labels to his credit, he has recently released three solo CDs: Bassoon Brasileiro, Baroque Fireworks and Romance and Caprice on the MSR Classics Label. Among Orpheus' CDs that feature Morelli are a recording of Mozart's Bassoon Concerto and Shadow Dances, which won a 2001 Grammy Award. He has written several transcriptions for solo bassoon as well as for woodwind quintet published by TrevCo Music, and he selected the music for the landmark excerpt book, Stravinsky: Difficult Passages, published by Boosey & Hawkes. Chosen to succeed his teacher, Stephen Maxym, Morelli serves on the faculties of the Juilliard, Yale and Manhattan schools of music as well as SUNY Stony Brook. His website, www.morellibassoon.com, was designed and built by his teenage son, Anthony, who will be attending MIT this coming fall. |
|
| Raymond Mase |
|
| Trumpeter/cornetist Raymond Mase enjoys a diverse career as soloist, chamber artist, orchestral player and teacher. As a member of the American Brass Quintet (ABQ) since 1973, he has performed worldwide, has premiered countless new works for brass, and has contributed many of his own editions of 16th, 17th and 19th-century brass music to the ABQ library and its highly acclaimed discography. He is also a founding member of the New York Cornet and Sacbut Ensemble and the Summit Brass. Mase has appeared as soloist with the American Composers Orchestra, Boston Pops, Moscow Soloists, Naumberg Orchestra, New York Virtuosi, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Summit Brass; at the Bethlehem Bach and Aspen music festivals and with numerous regional orchestras throughout the U.S. He can be heard on well over 100 recordings, including as soloist on the Albany, Deutsche Grammophon, Summit, Koch, Cambria, Troy, MHS and Furious Artisans labels. Mase is principal trumpeter of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, co-principal trumpeter of the American Composers Orchestra, and he has performed and recorded with many New York-based ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, Orpheus and Musica Sacra. Frequently engaged as guest clinician, he serves as trumpet instructor, chamber music coach, and Chairman of the Brass Department at The Juilliard School, has served on the Board of Directors of Chamber Music America and has been an Aspen Music Festival artist/faculty member since 1973. |
|
| Weston Sprott |
|
| Weston Sprott has been second trombone of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 2005. A native of Texas, he attended Indiana University before receiving his Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was principal trombone of the Pennsylvania Ballet and Delaware Symphony Orchestra. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, American Wind Symphony Orchestra and The Sphinx Symphony (Detroit), and his festival appearances include Tanglewood, Spoleto Festival USA and the Hot Springs Music Festival. He was recently featured in the documentary A Wayfarer's Journey: Listening to Mahler with Richard Dreyfuss and Kathleen Chalfant, and he was a performer in Robert Downey's Rittenhouse Square, a documentary that played in major U.S. film festivals. In September 2007, Sprott made his Carnegie Hall solo debut performing Lars Erik-Larsson's Concertino in Weill Recital Hall at the invitation of the Bulgarian Consulate. He was the founding member of the Texas Trombone Octet, which won the Emory Remington Competition and was featured at the International Trombone Festival in Helsinki. He has also performed with such gospel and jazz artists as Branford Marsalis, Take 6 and Donnie McClurkin. Performances and interviews with Sprott have been seen and heard on PBS' Great Performances, NPR's "Performance Today" and Sirius Satellite Radio. In demand as a soloist and master class clinician, he has been a featured guest artist at several leading conservatories and universities in the U.S., and is a former faculty member of The New School University, a division of the Mannes School of Music. He is currently an artist/clinician for the Edwards Instrument Company. |
|
| Ayano Kataoka |
|
| Marimbist-percussionist Ayano Kataoka is known for her artistic versatility, regularly performing music of diverse genres and mediums. A native of Japan, she began her marimba studies at age five and percussion at age 15. She started her performance career as a marimbist with a tour of China at the age of nine. In 2006, she performed Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with pianists Jonathan Biss and Benjamin Hochman at the 92nd Street Y. She has collaborated with many of the world's most distinguished and respected artists, including Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, Fred Sherry, Paula Robison and Ransom Wilson. Kataoka is the first percussionist to be chosen for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two, a three-year residency program for young emerging artists. She has given performances and master classes throughout the U.S. and Canada, including at such educational institutions as the Eastman School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, New York University, Stony Brook University, University of California San Diego, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of British Columbia. She was an on-stage performer in Yale Repertory Theater's All's Well That Ends Well, and she belonged to the Latin percussion group Marimba Tropicana which released two recordings on Respect Records and toured Japan. Kataoka received her Bachelor's degree from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts Music, her Master's from the Peabody Conservatory, and her Artist Diploma from Yale, where she studied with Robert van Sice. |
|
| Anna Polonsky |
|
| Pianist Anna Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. She has appeared with the Moscow Virtuosi, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the Columbus Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and others. She has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, and Audubon quartets and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, David Shifrin, Richard Goode, Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Arnold Steinhardt and Anton Kuerti. She is regularly invited to perform chamber music at Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle, Moab, Santa Fe, Bridgehampton, Bard and Caramoor music festivals, among others, as well as at Bargemusic in New York City. Polonsky has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, performing in such noted venues as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and New York's Alice Tully, Weill, Zankel and Merkin halls. In 2006, she took a part in the European Broadcasting Union's project to record and broadcast all of Mozart's keyboard sonatas, and in 2007, she performed a Carnegie Hall solo recital, inaugurating the Emerson Quartet's Perspectives Series. A frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she has been a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two, a three-year residency program for young emerging artists. Polonsky made her solo piano debut at the age of seven in Moscow, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1990. She received her Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with Peter Serkin, and she continued her studies with Jerome Lowenthal, earning her Master's degree at Juilliard. Polonsky was a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2003, and she serves on the faculty of Vassar College. Her website is www.annapolonsky.com. |
|
| Reiko Uchida |
|
| First prize-winner of the Joanna Hodges Piano Competition and Zinetti International Competition, pianist Reiko Uchida has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Santa Fe Symphony, the Greenwich Symphony and the Princeton Orchestra. She made her New York solo debut in 2001 at Carnegie's Weill Hall under the auspices of the Abby Whiteside Foundation, and she was one of the first pianists selected for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two, a three-year residency program for young emerging artists. She has performed solo and chamber music throughout the world, including Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Finland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Her festival appearances include Spoleto, Tanglewood, Santa Fe and Marlboro. Uchida is a member of the Laurel Trio and the Moebius Ensemble, a group in residence at Columbia University that specializes in contemporary music. She has been the recital partner for Jennifer Koh, Thomas Meglioranza, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, with whom she performed the complete works of Beethoven for cello and piano, and she has collaborated with the Borromeo and Tokyo string quartets. She began studying the piano at the age of four, made her orchestral debut with the Los Angeles Repertoire Orchestra at the age of nine, and performed twice on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, a Master's from the Mannes College of Music and an Artist Diploma from Juilliard. Her teachers have included Claude Frank, Leon Fleisher, Edward Aldwell and Margo Garrett. She resides in New York City where she is on the faculty of Columbia University. |
|
| Susan Misner |
|
 Susan Misner has earned acclaim equally as an actress and a dancer in film, television and the theater. Film audiences may best know her as Liz, the member of Murderer's Row who gave her husband "two warning shots...into his head" in the Academy Award-winning Chicago. For her work she was included in Chicago's Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast. Individually, Misner won the Best Supporting Actress Award from the New York International Independent Film Festival for Walking on the Sky. She can be seen in the upcoming releases Gigantic, Eavesdrop, Caymen Went and Tanner Hall, and her recent films include If I Didn't Care, The Hoax, Mentor, Two Weeks, The Forgotten and Stick it in Detroit. On Broadway, Misner was one-half of Geminae in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and she also appeared in Guys and Dolls, Dream and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Misner has had recurring roles in several television series; she is currently appearing in the new hit CW series Gossip Girl as Allison Humphrey, and she has appeared in the ESPN mini-series The Bronx is Burning as well as Rescue Me, Night Stalker, The Wedding Album, Vanished and New Amsterdam, among others. She has guest-starred on many top-rated shows, such as all three Law & Order series, both CSI and CSI: Miami, Without a Trace, Ed and Sex in the City.
Apr 29, 8pm: Ticket Information
Apr 30, 8pm: Ticket Information |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
