When Haydn put together the first string quartet, did he know that it would become the backbone of chamber music?
Coming up from 92Y School of Music, Naomi Lewin speaks with a “virtual quartet” made up of members from four different ensembles: violinists Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo String Quartet and Melissa White of the Harlem Quartet; violist Jan Grüning of the Ariel String Quartet, and cellist Estelle Choi of the Calidore String Quartet. They’ll talk about how they got together and stayed together, and how they make music—even during difficult times. Lewin is the former weekday afternoon host on WQXR, and host of the syndicated program Classics for Kids.
Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions via Q&A chat during the program.
Borromeo String Quartet
Harlem Quartet
Ariel String Quartet
Calidore String Quartet
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Violinist Nicholas Kitchen has performed throughout the world both as soloist and chamber musician, most significantly as founding member and first violinist of the Borromeo String Quartet for 30 years …
Violinist Nicholas Kitchen has performed throughout the world both as soloist and chamber musician, most significantly as founding member and first violinist of the Borromeo String Quartet for 30 years. He has extensively performed and worked on projects with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, and Performance Today, and has initiated many innovative collaborations, combining multiple forms of artistic expression with performance. The BSQ has performed his acclaimed transcriptions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I internationally, the latter of which the Quartet released on an acclaimed premiere recording which hit the billboard charts.
A passionate educator, he often leads discussions enhanced by projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audience the creative process of the composer, and has lectured and given master classes across the globe, and has encourage audiences and students of all ages to explore and listen to both traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. Teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music, Nicholas has pioneered the use of computers and page-turning pedals to make it possible for the Borromeo and students to always work from the complete score, which has allowed him to become involved in the serious study of composer’s manuscripts. In the case of Beethoven, this manuscript study has led him to exciting discoveries of a new dynamic and articulation system within the manuscripts, praised and supported by scholars and institutions and performed world-wide. He is Artistic Director of the Heifetz International Music Institute.
American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences and critics around the world as both a soloist and a chamber musician. Her February 2020 performance with the National Philharmonic was deemed “absolutely breathtaking” by Maryland Theatre Guide critic Katie Gaab …
American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences and critics around the world as both a soloist and a chamber musician. Her February 2020 performance with the National Philharmonic was deemed “absolutely breathtaking” by Maryland Theatre Guide critic Katie Gaab, who cited the “grace, precision, and warmth” of her playing in Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1; reviewing the same concert for The Washington Post, Matthew Guerrieri called her “an excellent advocate, prioritizing ease and fluency over intensity, suiting the music’s lyric and episodic nature.” Ms. White’s other recent orchestral activity includes engagements with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Sinfonietta, and debuts with the Monroe, Pasadena, Knox-Galesburg, and Johnson City symphony orchestras. Her 2020-21 schedule includes an appearance with the Richmond Symphony in October 2020.
A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, she has performed with such leading U.S. ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. Internationally, she has appeared as soloist with Poland’s Fillharmonia Dolnoslaska; with the Colombian Youth Orchestra in a tour of that country; and as a recitalist in Baku, Azerbaijian. Her film credits include a violin solo in the soundtrack to Jordan Peele’s 2019 psychological thriller Us.
Ms. White is a founding member of New York-based Harlem Quartet, where since 2006 her passion and artistry have contributed to performances that have been hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent” (Cincinnati Enquirer). Together with Harlem Quartet she has worked with such classical-music luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Ida Kavakian, Paul Katz, and Anthony McGill; appeared in many of the country’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center; and performed throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
In fall 2020 Ms. White joins the Music Artist Faculty at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
A native of Michigan, she holds performance degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried. Her current instrument, “Matilda,” was commissioned as part of a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant in 2014 by the American violin maker Ryan Soltis.
In addition to her musical career, Ms. White has enjoyed practicing various styles of yoga for more than a decade, and completed training in both Vinyasa and Ashtanga at Sampoorna Yoga School in Goa, India. She is the co-founder of Intermission, a ground-breaking program that unites body, mind, breath, and music-making through yoga and meditation. Intermission comprises sessions for students, retreats for professionals, and an app for everyone.
Violist Jan Grüning is an internationally renowned Chamber Musician and Recitalist, and a member of the Award winning Ariel String Quartet. He serves as Professor of Viola and Chamber Music …
Violist Jan Grüning is an internationally renowned Chamber Musician and Recitalist, and a member of the Award winning Ariel String Quartet. He serves as Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the University of Cincinnati’s distinguished College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), which named the ensemble its official Quartet in Residence in 2012.
Born in Munich, Germany, Mr. Grüning received his education at the Musikhochschule Lübeck with Barbara Westphal and at the New England Conservatory of Music with Kim Kashkashian. Mr. Grüning regularly collaborates with artists such as Menahem Pressler, Itzhak Perlman and Alisa Weilerstein, and participates in the most established music festivals such as the Verbier Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival and the Great Lakes Festival.
An avid recitalist, Mr. Grüning frequently appears in venues such as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, and concerts of his have been broadcast by international Television and Radio stations throughout Asia, Europe, North- and South America.
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, cellist Estelle Choi has garnered top prizes as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has gained international recognition as a founding member of the Calidore String Quartet …
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, cellist Estelle Choi has garnered top prizes as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has gained international recognition as a founding member of the Calidore String Quartet, an ensemble that celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2020. Praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” the Calidore won the Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition.
As a member of the Calidore, Choi is an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, recipient of the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award, BBC 3 New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust recipient. Choi and the Calidore are members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and alumni of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). Choi’s artistry with the Calidore has been broadly praised by critics like Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times who wrote that “her tone is rich, deep and powerful, giving the impression that music and the room are a single living being.”
Choi studied with John Kadz in Calgary, Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music and Ronald Leonard at the Colburn Conservatory. She instructs cello performance and chamber music at the University of Houston. With the Calidore, Choi teaches and performs at the University of Delaware and the University of Toronto.
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