Cassatt Quartet in Ossining, Hartford, and NYC

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Cassatt String Quartet November/December preview:

Concerts in Ossining, NYC, and West Hartford

Performances with Israeli-American trombonist Haim Avistur; pianists Doris Stevenson & Magdalena Baczewka

November 11 & 16 with Trombonist Haim Avistur

Fresh from the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork's Monuments for trombone and string quartet in Texas, the Cassatt String Quartet brings the work to the Northeast for performances in Ossining, NY (November 11 at Bethany Arts Community) and the Mandell JCC in West Hartford, CT (November 16). Monuments is a profound tribute to 9/11, and features Israeli-American trombonist Haim Avistur. The work is performed alongside music by Victoria Bond, Beethoven, and Joan Tower.

While in Hartford, the Cassatts give a masterclass at the Hartt School of Music on November 17 at 10 am.

November 30: Columbia University Residency

The quartet returns to Columbia University for a residency that culminates in a performance on November 30 with pianist Magdalena Stern-Baczewska. The program, presented by The Italian Academy at Columbia University, features works by Beethoven, Pultizer-prize winner Zhou Long, and Shostakovich. Reserve free tickets here.

December 3: Bargemusic

On December 3, the Cassatt String Quartet performs the world premiere of a piano quintet by Allen Shawn. They are joined by pianist Doris Stevenson, performing the work in a program that also features music by Zhou Long and Dorothy Rudd Moore.

Cassatt String Quartet Fall 2023 Season at a Glance

October 29 at 3 pm, Wagner Noël PAC (Midland, TX): World premiere by Adolphus Hailstork, plus music by L.V. Beethoven, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, Burleigh, Candillari, and Fanny Mendelssohn with guest artists pianist Shari Santorelli and trombonist David Jackson. Part of the Cassatt in the Basin residency in West Texas.

November 11 at 5 pm, Bethany Arts Community (Ossining, NY): Trombonist Haim Avistur joins the quartet for works by Joan Tower and Adolphus Hailstork, plus string quartets by Beethoven and Victoria Bond.

November 16 at 7 pm, Mandell JCC (West Hartford, CT): Works by Victoria Bond and L.V. Beethoven, plus music for trombone and string quartet by Joan Tower and Adolphus Hailstork with guest artist Haim Avistur.

November 17 at 10 am, Hartt School of Music (West Hartford, CT): Masterclass with students from the Hartt School of Music, open to the public.

November 19 at 5 pm, Hudson View Gardens (New York, NY): Works by Victoria Bond, L.V. Beethoven, and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.

November 30 at 7 pm, Italian Academy at Columbia University (New York, NY): Culmination of residency at Columbia University. Works by Beethoven, Zhou Long, and Shostakovich's Piano Quintet with pianist Magdalena Stern-Baczewska.

December 3 at 4 pm, Bargemusic (Brooklyn, NY): World premiere of Allen Shawn's Piano Quintet with pianist Doris Stevenson, plus works by Dorothy Rudd Moore and Zhou Long. 

December 10 at 4:45 pm, Music at the Mansion (Ridgefield, CT): Works by Beethoven, Victoria Bond, and Fanny Mendelssohn. Preceded by a wine and cheese reception at 4pm.

Artist Biography

Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for nearly four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The Quartet’s prolific discography – featured three times in Alex Ross’s “10 Best Classical Recordings” column in The New Yorker – includes over forty recordings, for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels.

The Cassatt Quartet’s 2023-2024 season includes performances and recordings of works by Tania León, Adolphus Hailstork, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, and Daniel S. Godfrey; their annual residencies at the Seal Bay Festival in Maine and Cassatt in the Basin! in West Texas; hometown concerts in the New York area, including at Symphony Space and Bargemusic; and appearances at Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Music Mountain.

The CSQ is named for the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Empire Wild at Baruch PAC-"a rich and vibrant experience"

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October 25 at 7 pm
Baruch Performing Arts Center presents

Empire Wild
Genre-bending trio performs its own arrangements of music from Bach, Schubert and Debussy to Swedish folk, Chick Corea and more

Empire Wild is a genre-bending crossover trio featuring Juilliard-trained classical musicians embodying a shared love of musical exploration. On Wednesday, October 25 at 7 pm Baruch Performing Arts Center presents the trio at Engelman Recital Hall. Tickets are $40 ($25 with Baruch ID). available here. The concert is part of the Freda and Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

The eclectic program at Baruch PAC features the group's unique sound and instrumentation (two cellos, piano and vocals) blending its signature mix of original music, inventive covers, and twists on the classical canon. Music by Schubert, Debussy and Bach are side by side with Swedish folk music, Chick Corea and original compositions, all arranged by the members of Empire Wild (cellists Ken Kubota and Mitch Lyon and pianist Jiyong Kim). Program details are below.

Empire Wild's performance at BPAC is part of a two day residency by Empire Wild in which they will lead classes and workshops with students in the Baruch department of Fine and Performing Arts. The group has just completed a 20-performance US tour. In 2020 Empire Wild was awarded an Ambassador Prize in the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. The group’s debut EP Paper Seasons highlights the trio’s unique sound and instrumentation in original compositions. Hi-res photos are at this link.

Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Avenue (enter on 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, on the south side of the street) in the heart of Manhattan. Praised for its superb acoustics, the Rosalyn and Irwin Engelman Recital Hall has been called "a perfect hall for chamber music" by Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times. 

CALENDAR LISTING

October 25, 2023 at 7 pm
Baruch Performing Arts Center presents:

Empire Wild
(Ken Kubota & Mitch Lyon, cellos; Jiyong Kim, piano)

Engelman Recital Hall at Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Ave., New York, NY (enter on 25th St. between 3rd and Lexington Aves)

Tickets are $40 ($25 with Baruch ID) available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu

This concert is part of the Freda and Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

Program

Taro Hakase: Jounetsu Tairiku
Franz Schubert: Impromptu No 3
Brandon Ilaw/Ethan Lewis: For Chiaki - North Beat
J.S. Bach: Courante in G Major
George Gershwin: ‘S Wonderful
Ji-Yong Kim: Piano Solo
Eugene Friesen: Shadowplay
Väsen: Bambodansarna
Chick Corea: Armando’s Rhumba
Empire Wild: Song for Claire
Jacob Collier: In Too Deep
Mark Summer: Julie-O (cello duo)
Claude Debussy: Children’s Corner I. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum
Jeremy Kittel: The Boxing Reels

Program is subject to change

Bass-baritone Joseph Parrish at Baruch PAC

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December 2 at 7:30 pm
Baruch Performing Arts Center presents

Bass-baritone Joseph Parrish

Program features recital favorites by Mahler, Wolf, Ravel, and more paired with works by Margaret Bonds, Charles Brown, H. Leslie Adams, and Harry Burleigh

On Saturday, December 2 at 7:30 pm, Baruch Performing Arts Center presents bass-baritone Joseph Parrish at Engelman Recital Hall. Tickets are $40 ($25 with Baruch ID), available here. The concert is part of the Freda and Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

Parrish is a rising star, having won the 2022 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. His program at Baruch PAC features Mahler's "Aus! Aus!", Ravel's "Don Quixote à Dulcinée", and Donizetti's "Sull'onda cheta e bruna". Concluding the program are works by four prominent Black American composers from the 20th century, Harry Burleigh, H. Leslie Adams, Charles Brown, and Margaret Bonds.

Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Avenue (enter on 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, on the south side of the street) in the heart of Manhattan. Praised for its superb acoustics, the Rosalyn and Irwin Engelman Recital Hall has been called "a perfect hall for chamber music" by Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times. 

COMING UP AT BARUCH PAC: November 6, 7 pm

BPAC is the New York State host of a nationwide reading of “Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence”. Featured are six plays penned by high students from around the country addressing this vital topic, selected through a competition, to be read by students from New York City schools who participate in the CAT Youth Theatre program.

Presented by Baruch in partnership with Creative Arts Team. Proceeds benefit Center for Justice Innovation.

Pay what you wish tickets here.

CALENDAR LISTING

December 2, 2023 at 7:30 pm

Baruch Performing Arts Center presents:
Joseph Parish, bass-baritone

Engelman Recital Hall at Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Ave., New York, NY (enter on 25th St. between 3rd and Lexington Aves)

Tickets are $40 ($25 with Baruch ID) available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu

This concert is part of the Freda and Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

PROGRAM

Gaetano Donizetti: Sull’onda cheta e bruna
Stefano Donaudy: Come l’allodoletta
Gaetano Donizetti: Amore e morte
Enrique Granados: El majo olvidado
Hugo Wolf: Der Tambour
Hugo Wolf: Fußreise
Gustav Mahler: Aus! Aus!
Sergei Rachmaninov: Morning
Sergei Rachmaninov: Love’s Flame
Sergei Rachmaninov: The Lilacs
Maurice Ravel: Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Harry Burleigh: Elysium
H. Leslie Adams: For You There Is No Song
Charles Brown: A Song Without Words
Margaret Bonds: Song to the Dark Virgin

Program is subject to change

About the Artist

Winner of the 2022 YCA Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, Joseph Parrish is a Baltimore native and holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School. Recent operatic credits include Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and Augure in Rossi’s L’Orfeo at Juilliard; Spinelloccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with Festival Napa Valley, Le Baron de Pictordu in the City Lyric Opera’s production of Viardot’s Cendrillon. Next season Joseph makes his Cincinnati Opera debut in Don Giovanni. In addition to opera, Mr. Parrish enjoys a robust concert career performing with orchestra and in recitals at such prestigious venues as The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Alice Tully Hall, St. Boniface Church in Brooklyn, and both Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Recent and upcoming performances co-presented by WPA, Newport Classical, Bridgehampton Chamber Festival, New York’s American Classical Orchestra, Caramoor’s Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, Death of Classical, Usedome Music Festival, Carnegie Hall Citywide Concerts, The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Denison University in Granville, OH, Sleepy Hollow Friends of Chamber Music, NYFOS, and in concert with Bay Atlantic Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Aiken Symphony, Princeton Pro Music, and the Ann Arbor Symphony. 

As a current artist diploma candidate in opera studies at The Juilliard School, Mr. Parrish is passionate about giving back to the various communities that have nurtured him. He is a Music Advancement Program chorus teaching fellow, Gluck Community Service Fellow, and Morse Teaching Artist. Mr. Parrish is also a member of the inaugural cohort of Shared Voices, an initiative designed to address diversity, equity, and inclusion through collaboration between Historically Black Colleges and Universities, top conservatories, and schools of music in the United States with the Denyce Graves Foundation. 

Cassatt String Quartet interview with violinist Dominique Valenzuela

Since 2005, the world-renowned Cassatt String Quartet has come to West Texas for a bi-annual residency. Cassatt in the Basin has enriched the lives of adults and students in the community through concerts, workshops and other music events across the region. On October 29 at 3 pm, the quartet performs at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center in Midland, Texas. Admission is free, details are here.

One of the alumni of Cassatt in the Basin programs, the violinist Dominique Valenzuela, recently conducted an interview with CSQ’s cellist Gwen Krosnick. The interview was for a community engagement class that is part of Valenzuela’s Master’s degree program at Juilliard. He gave the quartet permission to share the interview with the public.

Dominique Valenzuela wrote in an email to Gwen Krosnick, “As I was giving my presentation it made me realize the impact that the Cassatt has had on my life. To give a presentation on your quartet at the Juilliard School… I could have never imagined that it would be possible, and I am grateful beyond doubt. I am so grateful to have such wonderful role models in my life.”

Here is the interview, edited for context and clarity.

Dominique Valenzuela: What is the Cassatt String Quartet’s philosophy in presenting chamber music to the community?

Gwen Krosnick: Sharing what we do with different communities - from elementary schools to assisted-living communities and beyond - is centrally meaningful to the Cassatt Quartet! We treat these concerts with the respect and love that we bring to every concert we play. At each one we curate a program of music that we hope will allow these audiences to connect to this music we love.

DV: How does the Cassatt String Quartet see chamber music as a vehicle for social change?

GK: Chamber music is very literally an art form that hinges on our ability to connect with other people who have different backgrounds and different perspectives than our own - often wildly so! Our rehearsals and our concerts, and the way we interact with each other and the communities we play for, are a microcosm of listening to the ideas of others with generosity, thoughtfulness, and joy. For communities to engage with chamber music - which includes a great range of music across hundreds of years through today, gives us access to catharsis, meaning, and inspiration. This can only deepen the connections and strength of those community ties.

DV: What kinds of concerts does the CSQ present in the community?

GK: The Cassatt String Quartet has been on the roster of the New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA) for years. That funding and other major grants from sources throughout the states of New York, Maine and Texas (for which my colleagues brilliantly write applications!) allow us to focus our community partnerships in these areas.

These three states have special personal and professional meaning to us: New York is where the CSQ is based (the quartet itself, and all our members live in the greater NYC area). Maine is the site of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, at which the CSQ has been in residence every summer for 20 years. Texas is where Jennifer Leshnower, our second violinist, is from and where her non-profit organization, Cassatt in the Basin, brings us twice a year to work with string students in the Permian Basin.

In each of these areas - and very often at other series and residencies (such as through the Treetops Chamber Music Series in Stamford, CT, for instance) - we play concerts at assisted-living communities, schools, children's museums, community centers, and other venues that aren’t conventional spaces for live music-making.

DV: How do the Cassatts hope to impact communities in the future by building on your already-sturdy foundation?

GK: One thing I love about the CSQ is that we have built long-term relationships with the audiences and communities. I love playing for new audiences, too, in new places - we all do!

There is a real depth to the relationships built over time. This has been such an inspiration for me, both in West Texas with the string students and public school music teachers, and at retirement communities where the quartet plays every single summer in Maine. Returning again and again to places where the quartet has played for years has a deep resonance and opens a capacity for community-building that is even more meaningful.

DV: What is the Cassatt’s mission and hope for the world, especially given that the quartet is historically all-female?

GK: I'm not certain I can speak for the whole Cassatt String Quartet on a worldwide mission, given that I have been in the quartet for two years out of its forty! But I will say that my colleagues and I share a belief that art and music matter: that the arts provide something that the world and humanity need. The way music sparks conversation and gives us access to emotional places where we might not otherwise go is centrally and vitally important.

The fact that the Quartet, named for the 19th century American painter Mary Cassatt, has been comprised totally of women instrumentalists since 1985 is important to our story. We feel both a responsibility and a real pride in sharing music composed by a diverse range of American women. I hope that audiences will hear music by Dorothy Rudd Moore, Florence Price, Fanny Mendelssohn, Victoria Bond, Joan Tower, and Tania León (just a few of the women whose works we are performing this season!) and really understand that this art form of classical music, which has traditionally been so exclusionary and indeed prided itself on inaccessibility, in fact has the capacity to be wildly, celebratorily, and endlessly diverse. It is a living, breathing, ever-changing thing, chamber music!

The great music within the field of chamber music is made more profound by a wider and more diverse, passionate community of musicians, audiences, composers, and music lovers taking part in shaping its future.

DV: How do you curate a program for different audiences?

GK: For all our concerts, from our most convention and formal performances to outdoor parks and senior centers, we give our most passionate, personal playing. We offer repertoire that we cherish, including music that the audience may not have heard before, and we talk directly to audiences at each concert from the stage about what we love in the music we are about to share with them.

Sometimes presenters will ask for a specific piece, or for us to play with a specific collaborator, and of course that comes into our conversations about programming! But mainly we think about how different pieces of music will tell a story to an audience - an open-ended story so that each person can experience it in a different and personal way.

There are practical considerations, like how long is the concert at next week's assisted living community. How young are the kids at next month's childrens' concert - and therefore what are their attention spans? What works will be “in our fingers” for a given date, so that we can really play our best?. Once those factors are accounted for, we simply put together a program that we love, so that an audience member can feel the joy and love for this pouring off us and feel a connection to the music we share with them. I feel VERY strongly that this basic goal is not different for an elementary school audience or at the fanciest concert hall we play!

DV: How does engagement with audiences of various backgrounds further impact your greater mission as leader in the arts?

GK: In much the same way that we love playing chamber music BECAUSE of the access it gives us to different perspectives and different emotional places, it means a lot to us to play for audiences that show us – through their unique backgrounds and vantage points - new reactions, new insights, and new love for what we do and the music we play. For the Cassatt Quartet, getting to play for and connect with so many diverse kinds of audiences, each with its own energy, response, and chorus of reactions, makes us ever more motivated and committed to reflecting - in our programming, and in our mission - that diversity of energies, reactions, and voices. A musical field that reflects, echoes, and amplifies the communities for whom we play is more sustainable, more electrifying, and more profoundly meaningful as we step forward into the future.

Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio releases Beethoven set

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Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio releases complete set of Beethoven's piano trios 

Three-disc set includes “Ghost” and “Archduke” trios and Variations Op. 44 and Op. 121a

Released in the USA on November 3 (December 15 in UK) on Bridge Records

The internationally acclaimed Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio, praised by The Washington Post for its “great ensemble playing,” recorded all of Beethoven's piano trios. The three-disc set will be released on Bridge Records on November 3, 2023 in the USA (December 15 in the UK). 

Yael Weiss, the pianist of the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio, addresses the enduring nature of Beethoven's work. "His music feels so close to us, reflecting our daily realities and experiences of the present" she wrote in the album's liner notes. Mark Kaplan, the trio's violinist, speaks to the idea of recording every one of Beethoven's piano trios: "What could be more miraculous or visionary than a complete cycle of works by Beethoven?" 

Highlights of the set include the well-known "Ghost" and "Archduke" trios, as well as two sets of variations for piano trio: the "Kakadu Variations" Op. 121a, and Fourteen Variations in E-flat major Op. 44.

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of this recording.

Ludwig Van Beethoven: Complete Piano Trios

Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio
(Yael Weiss, piano; Mark Kaplan, violin; Peter Stumpf, cello)

Bridge Records (Bridge 9505A/C)

Release date: November 3, 2023 (released December 15, 2023 in the UK)

TRACKS

DISC A (77:30)
[01-03] Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 "Ghost" (28:53)
[04] "Kakadu Variations" in G Major, Op. 121a (17:51)
[05-08] Piano Trio in E-flat Marjo, Op. 1, No. 1 (30:39)

DISC B (76:20)
[01-04] Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2 (33:07)
[05-08] Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, "Archduke" (42:37)

DISC C (75:59)
[01-04] Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3 (30:38)
[05] Fourteen Variations in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (13:26)
[06-09] Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 70, No. 2 (31:50)

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Combining the talents of three award-winning soloists, the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio brings to each performance its distinctive fusion of authority and experience, energy, and passion. The trio embraces the music of the future while offering fresh insights into three centuries of masterworks. 

Hailed as “three strong voices, locked in sequence” (The New York Times) the trio has earned widespread critical acclaim in performances throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East since its inception in 2001. Recital programs have been featured in major venues such as the Kennedy Center and Wigmore Hall, as well as at festivals including the Changwon and Jeju Island festivals in Korea, and the Festival of the Sound in Canada. The group’s commitment to Beethoven has included performances of his Triple Concerto in the United States and Europe, including a Prague Festival appearance praised for its “rare timbral refinement, nobility and virtuosic brilliance” (Lidove noviny, Prague). 

Committed to new music, the ensemble has commissioned large-scale works for trio and trio with orchestra from distinguished composers Lera Auerbach, Paul Chihara, Michael Gilbertson, Michael Hersch, and Paul Lansky, and they have recorded these works and others by American composer Fred Lerdahl, Chen Yi, Clancy Newman and Paul Schoenfeld.

Insider Interview with Georgina Rossi

The new album by violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng is saturated with Brazil’s rich musical heritage. CHORINHO (Navona NV6537, released August 11, 2023) presents a slew of alluring yet under-recognized works for viola, including world-premiere recordings of works by João de Souza Lima, Lindembergue Cardoso, and Ernani Aguiar. We spoke with the violist about the recently released album, Brazilian music, and more.

The title of your album is Chorinho. What does it mean and why did you choose it?

The Choro (very roughly, lament) is a musical form that was developed organically in the streets of Rio in 19th century Brazil as musicians would gather to make music and improvise. They would draw on their own musical background and traditions but also were processing and stylizing multiple contemporary imported genres – waltz, tango, polka, ragtime. The choro’s character is usually melancholy, and improvisation is very key to its definition.

I chose the title Chorinho (little lament – after Souza Lima’s sole work for viola), because I wanted to clearly state “this is an album of viola music!”. We are so often the receivers of melancholia in music. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

You represent seven different Brazilian composers on this album. What similarities do you notice among their styles? What, if anything, in their music collectively demonstrates a “Brazilian sound”?

Brazilian modernists were very conscientious and determined in their efforts to develop a distinct Brazilian sound and style. They were intellectuals and saw their work as a vital patriotic service. Curiously (to us today) modernism and nationalism went hand in hand for the Brazilian Nationalist School, at the center of which was Osvaldo Lacerda’s composition teacher, M. Camargo Guarnieri, who in turn was mentored by the revered Mario de Andrade.

The nationalist school was very successful, and you can certainly hear that on this record – not a single one of the pieces strays far from that path. However, it is important to mention that the work of the Second Viennese School did have a big impact on the project of modernism in Brazil. In fact, the tension was such between the two ideologies of composition that a feud, manifested in published letters, was carried out in the 1950’s. Insults abounded and the two camps of composition clearly divided!

Villa-Lobos’s massive global success of course strengthened the nationalist school’s campaign.

Some listeners are familiar with Heitor Villa-Lobos, but most of the other names in this collection are unfamiliar to North American audiences. Which of these Brazilian composers are well known in their home country? Which do you feel deserve wider recognition?

Brazil has very strong cultural institutions and does excellent work of archiving and celebrating the work it produces, so most composers on the record have been recognized and celebrated in their home. I would mention that Brenno Blauth is a bit of an outsider. He was never quite in the scene, and worked full time as a doctor for his entire life. I’m proud to have recorded his magnificent and very challenging viola sonata! As did the fabulous Barbara Westphal before me.

The final selection on the album is a song by Chiquinha Gonzaga, arranged by you and Silvie Cheng. What is significant about her, and why did you decide to include this particular song, Lua branca?

Chiquinha Gonzaga was a courageous musician in hostile circumstances– she abandoned an arranged marriage that threatened to forbid her musical activity and was disowned entirely by her family. But she was fearless and hard working and insanely talented. Her music–and she wrote a lot of it– was wildly successful, and with her financial success she fought for the abolitionist cause and worked to found the first artists copyright society.

Your previous recording with Silvie Cheng featured the music of Chile, this one Brazil. What’s next?

I have my eye on Argentina– and I want to focus more on contemporary works. I love the 20th century, but I’m very curious about what’s being written today for the viola in Buenos Aires.

New from Ulysses Quartet

Award-winning Ulysses Quartet releases SHADES OF ROMANI FOLKLORE on October 13, 2023

Album on Navona includes Janáček's "Intimate Letters," an early Beethoven quartet and Rhapsody by American composer Paul Frucht

"the kind of chemistry many quartets long for, but rarely achieve." — The Strad

The Ulysses Quartet fuses the power of Beethoven, the raw emotion of Janáček, and the exoticism of Paul Frucht into SHADES OF ROMANI FOLKLORE. The album is released on Navona Records (NV6567) on October 13, 2023.

The contrasting works on this album are connected by the influence of the rich and vibrant tradition of Romani music-making. Each composer drew on this wellspring of inspiration in a unique way, creating music that is deeply personal yet informed by Romani style and spirit.

String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters” is one of Leoš Janáček’s most mature and powerful works. Its title refers to his tumultuous and mysterious relationship with a much younger woman and the hundreds of letters he wrote to her. Janáček’s tormented, obsessive passion and the full spectrum of his raw emotion permeates the piece.

Paul Frucht’s Rhapsody, written in 2018, was inspired by Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, a masterpiece of musical exoticism of a century earlier. Frucht uses the inventiveness of Tzigane as a jumping-off point, incorporating elements of jazz and other popular American idioms.

One of Beethoven's early quartets, Op. 18 No. 4, lays the foundation for the profound breadth of his later works. The composition is at turns tempestuous, tender, and tongue-in-cheek, and culminates in a rip-roaring finale with a distinctly Romani flavor. 

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical or digital copy of this recording.

"avid enthusiasm...[with] chops to back up their passion." — San Diego Story

SHADES OF ROMANI FOLKLORE

Ulysses Quartet

Christina Bouey & Rhiannon Banerdt, violins; 
Colin Brookes, viola; Grace Ho, cello

Navona Records NV6567
Release date: October 13, 2023

TRACK LISTING

Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4
[01] I. Allegro ma non tanto 8:21
[02] II. Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto 7:23
[03] III. Menuetto: Allegretto 3:23
[04] IV. Allegro – Prestissimo 4:18

Paul Frucht
[05] Rhapsody 11:17

Leoš Janáček
String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters”
[06] I. Andante – Con moto – Allegro 6:12
[07] II. Adagio – Vivace 6:12
[08] III. Moderato – Andante – Adagio 5:19
[09] IV. Allegro – Andante – Adagio 7:45

ABOUT THE ARTIST

The Ulysses Quartet has been praised for their “textural versatility,” “grave beauty” and “the kind of chemistry many quartets long for, but rarely achieve” (The Strad). 

From 2019 to 2022, Ulysses was The Juilliard School's Graduate Resident String Quartet (Lisa Arnhold Fellows). The group won top prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, The American Prize, Schoenfeld International String Competition and the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, and a career development grant at Banff International String Quartet Competition.

The Ulysses Quartet has performed at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Jordan Hall, and the Taiwan National Recital Hall, and on the series at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Basel Kammermusik, Premiere Performances Hong Kong, National Arts Centre and Música UNAM in Mexico City among others.

The members of Ulysses hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory and University of North Texas. They perform on instruments and bows graciously on loan from the Maestro Foundation and private donors. Ulysses Quartet is an ambassador for Shar Music's Young Strings of America.

Momenta Quartet Insider Interview - Momenta Festival VIII

On September 30-October 5 the Momenta Quartet presents the eighth edition of their annual Momenta Festival. Over four nights, each member curates a diverse chamber music program blending the old and new. In this insider interview, we spoke with each member of the quartet about highlights of the upcoming festival and what gets them excited about each of their programs.

“Looking Back” Curated by Michael Haas
September 30, 2023

Michael, your program is a collection of works that was inspired by the past. How does each piece achieve this?

The idea for this program came about last season when Momenta joined forces with composer Han Lash for a residency at the Eastman School of Music’s Institute for Music Leadership.

When we performed Han Lash’s Suite Remembered and Imagined last year, I was struck by how Lash uses their own 21st-century musical language to modernize a Baroque dance suite. I immediately saw a connection with a piece already in Momenta’s repertoire, More Venerable Canons by Matthew Greenbaum. In that piece, I have always seen parallels between its structure and that of suites by J. S. Bach.

Living composers are not the only ones who look back in time for inspiration! Haydn’s string quartet Op.  20 No. 5, while groundbreaking, concludes with a grand fugue, a style of writing that was no longer fashionable in Haydn’s lifetime.

The program concludes with Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, a composition which resulted from a burst of inspiration after he studied scores of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

“Earth and Ether” Curated by Emilie-Anne Gendron
October 1, 2023

Emilie, your program features the world premiere of a piece by Elizabeth Brown. Did you commission the work? How did this come about, and what would you like audiences to know about it in advance of the October 1 concert?

The formidably gifted and versatile composer-performer Elizabeth Brown is a longtime friend of Momenta, not to mention a Momenta Festival alumna as both a composer and performer. She is a professional flutist as well as a master of the shakuhachi, theremin, and dan bau; she teaches shakuhachi at Columbia University and Bard College, where she also teaches theremin.

I am excited to be giving the world premiere of her new solo violin work, "Firmament", on October 1. The piece came about a year ago when Elizabeth offered to write me a piece, as she had been mulling over several ideas by that point. Of course I was delighted and honored to be the recipient, and I knew just the right festival for the premiere.

Brown's musical inspiration often comes from literary sources, and this piece draws on two dystopian modern novels: The Wall (1963), by Austrian author Marlen Haushofer, in which a woman awakens while journeying in the wilderness to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall; and Good Morning, Midnight (2016) by American writer Lily Brooks-Dalton, tracing in parallel the paths of an Arctic researcher and an astronaut, for both of whom external communication has been cut off. Brown envisions the violin’s voice as the protagonist navigating these new, suspended realities--aware of both its solitude as well as the firmament eternally surrounding our world.

Not only is the piece beautifully written for the violin, but it shows the composer's mastery of every nuance of texture, mood, and atmosphere. I’d like to add that the composer and critic Kyle Gann described Elizabeth's music as “elegant, quiet, thoughtful, well-crafted...and as bizarre as hell." I can think of no better fit for a Momenta program!

Tell us about the other works on your program.

I titled my program "Earth and Ether", and the other pieces also explore, in their own ways, the joy and pain of the human experience while also contemplating what lies around us and beyond. In addition to Brown’s premiere, I'll be giving the New York premiere of a fiery solo violin work, "Another Prayer" (2012), by the British composer Julian Anderson, inspired by the colors and timbres of Eastern European folk music. The remainder of the program features the entire Momenta Quartet. Jeffrey Mumford's newest quartet, the vividly imagined ...amid still and floating depths (2019) was composed for a consortium of quartets including Momenta; and the Mexican composer Julián Carrillo's String Quartet No. 2 "à Debussy" (1926). It’s an epic journey!

“Momenta à la Mode” Curated by Stephanie Griffin
October 4 2023

Why did you decide to base an entire program on the concept of scales? How does the music of Julián Carrillo fit into that theme?

The impetus behind my Momenta Festival concert was to build a program around Robert Morris’ monumental Carnatic String Quartet (2020), which is based on all 72 melakarta scales in the Carnatic musical tradition of Southern India. Momenta premiered it last year, and this will be its first performance in New York City. I decided to present it in the context of other works in which scales are not simply building blocks, but are truly thematic. 

Interestingly, Morris warns against any attempt of the performers to make the piece sound "Indian," although he acknowledges that some sections definitely have a more "Eastern" sound and feel. The greatness of his music comes from the level of imagination he applies to making original and unexpected music within these modes and his ability to spin them into a cohesive whole. 

No program centered around scales would be complete without the music of Julián Carrillo (1875 - 1965), the Mexican composer, conductor, violinist, music theorist, and microtonal music pioneer. His music figures prominently in Momenta's repertoire as we recently embarked on the project to record all 13 of his string quartets for Naxos!

I presented an all-Carrillo program on last year's Momenta Festival, about which I wrote, “Carrillo’s most distinguishing characteristic is his absolute obsession with scales. They are not just sets of pitches from which to build melodies; they are the melodies themselves!” This is especially true of his String Quartet No. 12, in which he builds an entire four-movement piece from a single six-note scale, which is literally the main melody of this monothematic work. It is a testament to Carrillo's great skill and imagination that he can evoke such a rich variety of colors and emotions through such simple means.

This past summer, the Momenta Quartet was in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute alongside my friends Arun Ramamurthy and Trina Basu, two Carnatic and avant-jazz violinists. They were working on a new piece based on raga Hemavathi, which is the 58th melakarta scale and forms the basis of a section of Robert Morris' string quartet. I hadn’t originally planned to present Morris' quartet in a specifically Indian context, it’s a special treat to join Arun and Trina in the world premiere of a new trio version of their piece on my Momenta Festival program!

"Szene am Bach" Curated by Alex Shiozaki
October 5, 2023

Alex, your program centers around nature. How does Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18, No. 6 fit into the evening?

I had to give credit to Beethoven for providing me with the title to my evening: Szene am Bach, or “Scene by the Brook”. This phrase comes from the Sixth Symphony, where it is the title to the second movement. I already had two pieces in mind that painted the scene: Ileana Perez Velazquez's River of Life, and Somei Satoh's A White Heron. Also enjoying the “Bach” “bruch” play on words, I chose a violin solo that quotes a Bach partita: Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 2. 

Thus Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 6 Quartet was last to the party, added on to the program to pay homage to the composer who graced us with this title. That said, it fits the bill. The exuberant first movement captures a scene full of life, and the many grace notes could be interpreted as the chirping of all sorts of birds. The tranquil second movement is closest in character to the symphonic Pastoral slow movement whose title we borrowed. The third movement is a scherzo with a real-world pulse, giving the illusion of steadiness while constantly skipping a beat from excitement--or panic! And the finale of the quartet--as well as of the evening and the entire Momenta Festival itself--begins with the famed “La Malinconia” (melancholy): a slow introduction that teases you with both sweetly consonant horn fifths and unexpected twists and turns of harmony. This brook moves both fast and slow, populated with small rapids and tranquil pools, with nature flitting and diving over and through its Classical waters. 

Yvonne Lam Insider Interview

Grammy Award-winner and former Eighth Blackbird violinist Yvonne Lam’s debut solo album features works for solo violin with electronics by six remarkable women. Released July 28, 2023 on Blue Griffin Recording, Watch Over Us has been praised for its “dazzling virtuosity and kaleidoscopic colors.” In our latest Insider Interview, we spoke with Lam about the recently released album and more.

You are best known for your work in the ensemble 8th Blackbird. How does that chamber ensemble experience compare with performing solo with electronic tape? How did it prepare you for this project?

It’s like apples and oranges. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears invested into the music and business of running Eighth Blackbird. Working with five other musicians so closely for eight years was like being in a very intense family. Indeed, we saw more of each than we did our own families, and we got to know each other so well on many levels. We could adjust on the fly and almost knew what others were going to do musically before they did.

Performing solo with electronic tape is a little bit like trying to play with someone who can’t hear you. There’s zero “give” with fixed media, so you have to learn to adjust to it, to know where you have space and where you don’t. I was introduced to playing with tape during my time with Eighth Blackbird. That prepared me by helping me realize how much I didn’t know about the tech! Performing solo with tape live is always stressful because things can go wrong with the tech, but that’s not an issue when recording.

You specifically chose music by women for this collection. Were there other works by women that you had to leave out, for stylistic considerations, practical reasons, or time constraints?

I didn’t intentionally set out to choose only women composers. If you had asked me ten years ago to picture a composer who writes electronic music, it wouldn’t have been a woman. But in the process of discovering works, I kept running across fabulous composers who happened to be women. And then I had enough for an album.  

Were there one or more compositions by men that you considered including?

Oh, sure. There are so many great pieces out there! Maybe for the next album…

Tell us about your collaborations outside of classical music. For instance, your work with the jazz bassist and composer Matt Ulery, and with the exper­imental performance group Every House Has A Door.

Matt Ulery is a unique musician and a joy to collaborate with. I am not a jazz musician, not in the slightest, and working with Matt gave me such insight to just how different his skill set is. I keep telling myself that one day I will actually take lessons, but I do know that jazz is learned by doing, so I’ll have to commit myself to some serious doing.

Working with artists who aren’t musicians is illuminating. I love seeing performance through their eyes, which is often more holistic than the way musicians think. We don’t scrutinize our extra-musical movement, for example, or think about the intention our facial expression or eye focus projects. We also don’t place much importance on what happens in-between pieces, either, even though that’s still an integral part of the experience we shape for our audiences.

This fascinates me: When you first started playing violin as a young child, you thought it was a guitar. Why? And why was your interest in guitar so keen? Did you ever get to learn to play that instrument?

I wish I remembered what I was thinking at that age! My mother used to schlep me to my older sister’s piano lessons at a music store. While we waited for her, I would stare at the display cases, and my guess is I saw the violin but didn’t know the word “violin”. Or maybe I genuinely thought it was a guitar, since I had likely seen one on TV. No one near me played either instrument. In any case, I bugged her for a year (or so she says) before she finally gave in and found a teacher for me.

My husband, who is also a violinist, taught himself electric guitar before he started violin. So we have a couple of guitars in the house. I never learned to play, but not for lack of trying. I can play a few chords, but anything beyond that and my brain ties itself into knots.

At Baruch PAC: "The City Without Jews" silent film with live accompaniment

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October 3, 2023 at 7:30 pm

Baruch Performing Arts Center presents

The City Without Jews

1924 German-Jewish silent film newly restored

Featuring original music performed live by klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent film pianist Donald Sosin

On October 3, 2023 at 7:30 pm Baruch Performing Arts Center presents the screening of a rare, rediscovered European film that imagined the impact of antisemitism a decade before its events became all too real. The silent film is accompanied by live music, composed and performed by the world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals (founding member of the Klezmatics) and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin.

Based on the controversial and best-selling novel by Hugo Bettauer, H.K. Breslauer’s 1924 film adaptation of The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden) is darkly comedic in tone, and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism. The film contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as the shots of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city.

“In the 1920s, when The City Without Jews was released, it was a satire of something unimaginable,” said Howard Sherman, managing director of the Baruch Performing Arts Center. “Now, the film stands as a reminder of how, without vigilance, social imagination can become harrowing reality. We’re very pleased to welcome Alicia and Donald to perform their evocative and emotional score with this film, connecting the past with the present.”

This screening of The City Without Jews is presented with live original music by Alicia Svigals, violinist and Donald Sosin, pianist at 7:30 PM on October 3, 2023 at Baruch PAC. This program is made possible thanks the support of The Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. Tickets are $22.50 general admission ($12.50 for students with Baruch ID), and are available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu.

Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Avenue (enter on 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, on the south side of the street) in the heart of Manhattan. Praised for its superb acoustics, the Rosalyn and Irwin Engelman Recital Hall has been called "a perfect hall for chamber music" by Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times. 

CALENDAR LISTING

October 3, 2023 at 7:30 pm
Baruch Performing Arts Center presents:

The City Without Jews (1924)

With original music performed live by klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent film pianist Donald Sosin

Composers & performers: Donald Sosin, piano; Alicia Svigals, violin
Director: H. K. Breslauer
Screenplay: H.K. Breslauer and Ida Jenbach, from the novel by Hugo Bettauer

Baruch Performing Arts Center (55 Lexington Avenue (enter on 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues) in Manhattan

Tickets are $22.50 for general admission ($12.50 for students with Baruch ID) and are available here

Artist Bios

Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin have been bringing audiences to their feet throughout the US and Europe with their unique and stirring violin and piano scores for Jewish-themed silent films.

Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals is the world's leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy award-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, and has worked with the the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. In May 2023, Svigals was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by the Jewish Theological Seminary for “extraordinary contributions to the arts and Jewish life.” Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film The Yellow Ticket, and is a MacDowell fellow. Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined, with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer—an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Donald Sosin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival, and the Best Original Film Score award by the 2022 Mystic Film Festival. He has performed his scores for silent films, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery, and at dozens of film festivals and colleges around the world. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley and European labels, and has had commissions from MoMA, Deutsche Kinemathek, the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Coming Up at Baruch PAC

Here are a few unmissable events coming up at Baruch Performing Arts Center this fall. Announcements about additional performances coming soon.

• October 3, 2023: The City Without Jews

• October 11-22: Reflex

• October 25: Empire Wild
  

Sept. 22: Cassatt SQ in Boston and more

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Cassatt String Quartet performs world premiere in Boston on Sept. 22

Concert at Northeastern University includes Daniel S. Godfrey’s Toward Light with guitarist Eliot Fisk and the world premiere of Passion's Continuum by Anthony Paul De Ritis

"an extraordinary quartet" – New York Times

On September 22 at 7:30 pm the Cassatt String Quartet performs in recital at Northeastern University in Boston. The concert features Toward Light with guitarist Eliot Fisk by Daniel S. Godfrey and the world premiere of Passion's Continuum by Anthony Paul De Ritis. The performance is at Fenway Hall (77 Saint Stephen Street in Boston). Admission is free and tickets are not required.

The following week, the CSQ and Eliot Fisk head to Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA to record Godfrey’s Quintet, produced by multi-GRAMMY award-winning producer Judith Sherman.

This is one of several appearances of the Cassatt String Quartet in New England this year. On November 16, the quartet is joined by trombonist Haim Avistur for a program of music by Joan Tower, Victoria Bond, Adolphus Hailstork, and Beethoven in West Hartford, CT, and on December 10 they appear in Ridgefield, CT performing music by Beethoven, Victoria Bond, and Fanny Mendelssohn. Details are below.

Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for nearly four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The Quartet’s prolific discography – featured three times in Alex Ross’s “10 Best Classical Recordings” column in The New Yorker – includes over forty recordings, for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels.

The Cassatt Quartet’s 2023-2024 season includes performances and recordings of works by Tania León, Adolphus Hailstork, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, and Daniel S. Godfrey; their annual residencies at the Seal Bay Festival in Maine and Cassatt in the Basin! in West Texas; hometown concerts in the New York area, including at Symphony Space and Bargemusic; and appearances at Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Music Mountain.

The CSQ is named for the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Cassatt String Quartet: Upcoming Concerts in New England

September 22 at 7:30 pm: Northeastern University with guitarist Eliot Fisk

Fenway Center at Northeastern University (77 St Stephen St, Boston, MA)

Program:
Zhou Long: Song of the Ch’in
Anthony Paul De Ritis: Passion's Continuum for String Quartet World Premiere
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Cadenza from the concerto for Guitar and Orchestra
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Prelude # 5 In D major
Daniel Strong Godfrey: Toward Light

November 16 at 7 pm: West Hartford, CT

Mandell JCC (335 Bloomfield Ave, West Hartford, CT)

Program:
Joan Tower : Elegy for Trombone Quintet 
Victoria Bond: Blue & Green Music
Adolphus Hailstork: Monuments for Trombone and String Quartet 
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet Op. 18, no. 1

with trombonist Haim Avitsur

November 17: Masterclass at Hartt School of Music

Hartt School of Music (200 Bloomfield Avenue West Hartford, CT)

Following their November 16 performance in West Hartford, the Cassatt String Quartet gives a masterclass to students of the Hartt School of Music. The event if free and open to the public.

December 10 at 4:45 pm: Music at the Mansion (Ridgefield, CT)

Lounsbury House (316 Main St, Ridgefield, CT)
Program:
Beethoven: String Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Bond: Blue and Green Music
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-flat major

Concert preceded by a wine and cheese reception at 4 pm

Funding for programs that include contemporary music are made possible in part by: The Aaron Copland Music Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund, and Amphion Foundation

Defiant Requiem performance in Bismarck, ND

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"We were hungry, we were tired, we were sick. But we had something to live for." *

October 20 & 21 in Bismarck, ND
at Belle Mehus Auditorium,
presented by Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra

Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín

Complete live performance of Verdi's Requiem (arranged for chamber ensemble), interspersed with historic film, testimony from survivors and narration tells the moving story of courageous performances by prisoners in a WWII concentration camp

* Quote at top by Edgar Krasa, Terezin survivor and chorus member

Praised by The New York Times as "Poignant...a monument to the courage of one man to foster hope among prisoners with little other solace," Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín will be performed in Bismarck, ND at the Belle Mehus Auditorium (201 N 6th St, Bismarck, ND) on Friday, October 20 & Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 7:30 pm. Complete details below.

The "extraordinarily beautiful and moving" concert/drama commemorates the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp during World War II who performed Verdi's Requiem 16 times, as an act of defiance and resistance to their Nazi captors. Defiant Requiem is a complete live performance of Verdi's Requiem interspersed with historic film, testimony from survivors and narration that tells this tale of audacious bravery. This is the first time Defiant Requiem is being performed in North Dakota.

Note: The performances on October 20 and 21 are of a specially-created chamber arrangement.

Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín was created by Murry Sidlin who will lead the performance in a special chamber arrangement. It features soprano Korliss Uecker, mezzo-soprano Tammy Hensrud, tenor Emerson Eads, and bass Jason Thoms; the Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus led by Tom Porter; pianist Arlene Shrut, violinist Maureen Murchie, and cellist Abbie Eads; and actors Dan Bielinski and Beverley Everett.

Ticketing information and more for Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín is available in the calendar listing below.

The Defiant Requiem Foundation also produced an Emmy-nominated documentary film narrated by Bebe Neuwirth that has been praised as a "gripping documentary" (Examiner.com), with "a very powerful message" (CNN). On October 17, the Bismark-Mandan Symphony Orchestra presents a screening of the film at the Belle Mehus Auditorium (201 N 6th St Bismarck, ND), followed by a Q & A. Admission is free thanks to sponsorship from Humanities North Dakota.

CALENDAR LISTING
Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín

October 20 & 21 at 7:30 pm

Belle Mehus Auditorium
201 N 6th St, Bismarck, ND 58501

Tickets are $29-$44 ($18 students; $24-$34 seniors) and available at this link:
bismarckmandansymphony.org/events/DefiantRequiemVerdiatTerezin

Murry Sidlin, creator & conductor

Korliss Uecker, soprano
Tammy Hensrud, mezzo-soprano
Emerson Eads, tenor
Jason Thoms, bass

Arlene Shrut, piano
Maureen Murchie, violin
Abbie Eads, cello

Dan Bielinski & Beverley Everett, narrators
Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus
Dr. Tom Porter, choir director

Presented by the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra

Defiant Requiem Foundation: Fall 2023 Performances and Events

Live-streamed ~ conversation with the author

October 1, 2023: Washington, DC | Rescue and Resistance: The Remarkable Village of Le Chambon

Join author Maggie Paxson as she speaks with Holocaust survivor Peter Feigl, who was rescued from the Nazis as a young boy in France. From 1940 to 1944, the citizens of the small French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon provided refuge for an estimated 5,000 people. Maggie Paxson, author of The Plateau delves into the fascinating question of why and how the villagers of Le Chambon resisted the Nazis.

Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C. In person and livestreamed. REGISTER

First performance in North Dakota

October 20-21, 2023: Bismarck, ND | Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín (chamber version)

The "extraordinarily beautiful and moving" concert/drama commemorates the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp during World War II who performed Verdi's Requiem 16 times, as an act of defiance and resistance to their Nazi captors. Defiant Requiem is a complete live performance of Verdi's Requiem interspersed with historic film, testimony from survivors and narration that tells this tale of audacious bravery.

Belle Mehus Auditorium, Bismarck, ND. TICKETS

Live-streamed ~ world premiere

October 25, 2023: New York City | they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes

Ghosts of the past weave their way into our present and future in Menachem Z. Rosensaft's book Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen. Composer Gerald Cohen has brought Rosensaft's words to the concert stage in his settings of these poems. Mezzo soprano Leah Wool and baritone David Kravitz are featured performers in the world premiere of Cohen's song cycle, they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes. 

The program also includes selections from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and music by composers who were imprisoned at the concentration camp at Terezín during WWII.

Hebrew Union College, Manhattan. Admission is free; reservations are required. In person and live-streamed. REGISTER

Sept 30-Oct 5: Momenta Festival VIII

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Momenta Quartet presents:

Momenta Festival VIII
September 30 - October 5

Concerts curated by each member of Momenta Quartet

Momenta Quartet presents its annual Momenta Festival September 30 and October 1 at Broadway Presbyterian Church (601 West 114th St) and October 4 and 5 at Americas Society (680 Park Ave). Admission to all concerts is free.

The eighth edition of the festival features four diverse chamber music programs each curated by a member of the quartet. With programs that blend the old and new, the "intriguing programming" (The New York Times) and "striking originality" (I Care If You Listen) of the Momenta Festival have been acclaimed by critics and fans alike.

Highlights include a diverse range of composers from Haydn to Han Lash, a world premiere, New York premieres and a performance with guest artist, pianist Amy Yang. Details are below.

"We founded this festival in 2015 as an artistic outlet for each of our individual musical interests," says Momenta violist Stephanie Griffin. "I continue to be surprised to discover new pieces and composers that my Momenta colleagues introduce me to through this festival."

Admission to all concerts is free. Programs are subject to change.

Momenta Quartet's 2023 Momenta Festival

Saturday, September 30, 7 pm & Sunday, October 1, 7 pm
Broadway Presbyterian Church
601 West 114th Street, Manhattan
Admission Free; no reservations needed
Donations to Music for Food benefit Broadway Community

Wednesday, October 4, 7 pm & Thursday, October 5, 7 pm
Americas Society
680 Park Ave, Manhattan
Admission Free, reservations required  

SEPTEMBER 30 / Broadway Presbyterian Church: Looking Back — curated by Michael Haas, cello

Works spanning three centuries in which each composer was inspired by musical traditions of the past
Guest artist: Amy Yang, piano

Program:
Han Lash: Suite Remembered and Imagined
Matthew Greenbaum: More Venerable Canons
Franz Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20 No. 5
Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44

OCTOBER 1 / Broadway Presbyterian Church: Earth and Ether — curated by Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin

Music that articulates the joy and pain of the human experience while also contemplating what lies beyond

Program:
Elizabeth Brown: Firmament for solo violin ^
Jeffrey Mumford: …amid still and floating depths for string quartet
Julian Anderson: Another Prayer for solo violin*
Julián Carrillo: String Quartet No. 2

^world premiere, written for Emilie-Anne Gendron
*NY premiere

OCTOBER 4 / Americas Society: Momenta à la Mode — curated by Stephanie Griffin, viola

Celebrating composers for whom modes are a veritable obsession, moving beyond building blocks to be the actual subject matter of their compositions.

Program:
Pietro Cerone: Enigma de la escala (transcribed by Sebastian Zubieta)
Julián Carrillo: String Quartet no. 12
Julián Carrillo: Capricho Para Viola
Robert Morris: Carnatic String Quartet

OCTOBER 5 / Americas Society: Szene am Bach — curated by Alex Shiozaki, violin

A nature-themed program, ”Scene by the Brook”

Program:
Eugène Ysaÿe: Sonata No. 2
Ileana Perez Velázquez: River of Life
Somei Satoh: A White Heron
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet Op. 18 No. 6

Momenta Quartet
Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin
Alex Shiozaki, violin
Stephanie Griffin, viola
Michael Haas, cello

Momenta: the plural of momentum – four individuals in motion towards a common goal. This is the idea behind the Momenta Quartet, whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the recent and distant past. The New York City-based quartet has premiered over 150 works, collaborated with over 200 living composers and was praised by The New York Times for its “diligence, curiosity and excellence.” In the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “few American players assume Haydn’s idiom with such ease.”

Momenta has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery, Rubin Museum, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Washington University in St. Louis, Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic, and at the internationally renowned Cervantino Festival in Mexico. Momenta has recorded for Centaur Records, Furious Artisans, PARMA, New World Records, and Albany Records; and has been broadcast on WQXR, Q2 Music, Austria's Oe1, and Vermont Public Radio.

The Momenta Quartet’s 2023-2024 season is made possible through the generous support of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Amphion Foundation, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The 2023 Momenta Festival is supported by The Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund and through the generosity of many individual donors.

New from pianist Bruce Levingston

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Bruce Levingston’s new album “Without Words” highlights lyrical color in Felix Mendelssohn’s works for solo piano

Also: A world premiere by Price Walden inspired by Mendelssohn, commissioned by Levingston

Release date September 22, 2023 on Sono Luminus

"exquisite...heart-wrenching vulnerability and tenderness…extraordinarily nuanced" — The New York Times

“Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words are meant to enchant rather than dazzle,” writes pianist Bruce Levingston in the liner notes of his new recording, “Without Words”. “Like entries in a personal diary, they reveal the composer’s innermost reflections.” Levingston's recording of 14 of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, paired with a new set that he commissioned from Price Walden, is released on Sono Luminus on September 22, 2023. “Without Words” is Levingston’s tenth studio recording. 

Levingston hears a myriad of colors within Mendelssohn’s work, and believes that the composer understood how to evoke emotion through color. “A superb watercolorist,” writes Levingston, “Mendelssohn displays his mastery of line and color throughout these exquisite tone poems.”

When Levingston was asked by a friend to create a new work relevant to our own era, he turned to fellow Mississippian, composer Price Walden, commissioning from him a new set of “Songs without Words” that reflects upon today’s uncertain times. Most of Walden’s seven titles are evocative of their sentiment: Love Song, Elegy, Protest, and Lullaby. Levingston wrote that “Walden’s cycle ventures beyond its source to imagine a new and inspired tonal canvas.” 

The order of the selections on this recording – a set of seven Songs without Words by Mendelssohn followed by Walden’s seven new works, and concluding with seven more of Mendelssohn's songs - creates a moving dialogue between these composers that eloquently bridges the two centuries between them.

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of this recording. For more information about pianist Bruce Levingston, including his extensive discography, visit brucelevingston.com.

"a force for new music" — The New Yorker

Without Words
Bruce Levingston, piano

Sono Luminus (DSL-92269)
Release date: September 22, 2023

TRACKS

Felix Mendelssohn
[01] Song without Words Op. 102-No. 4 in G minor 2:14
[02] Song without Words Op. 67-No. 3 in B-flat major 3:26
[03] Song without Words Op. 38 No. 2 in C minor 2:29
[04] Song without Words Op. 38 No. 6 in A-flat Major Duetto 4:35
[05] Song without Words Op. 102-No. 3 in C major 1:40
[06] Song without Words Op. 53-No. 1 in A-flat major 3:56
[07] Song without Words Op. 30-No. 6 in F-sharp minor 4:29
Venetianisches Gondellied

Price Walden
[08] Song without Words No. 1 Prelude 3:37
[09] Song without Words No. 2 for the left hand 2:33
[10] Song without Words No. 3 Love Song - Duet 4:03
[11] Song without Words No. 4 Berceuse 3:08
[12] Song without Words No. 5 Elegy 4:47
[13] Song without Words No. 6 Protest 4:36
[14] Song without Words No. 7 Lullaby 3:21

Felix Mendelssohn
[15] Song without Words Op. 19-No. 2 in A minor 2:43
[16] Song without Words Op. 19-No. 1 in E major 4:11
[17] Song without Words Op. 19-No. 5 in F-sharp minor 3:46
[18] Song without Words Op. 19-No. 6 in G minor Venetianische Gondellied 2:41
[19] Song without Words Op. 62-No. 1 in G major 3:39
[20] Song without Words Op. 67-No. 5 in B minor 3:03
[21] Song without Words Op. 85-No. 4 in D major 3:25

Artist Biography

The American concert pianist Bruce Levingston is acclaimed for his “mastery of color and nuance” (The New York Times), and by The New Yorker as “a force for new music.” With over 18 million plays on Spotify and Apple Music, Levingston is one of today's most frequently streamed classical artists. His 2023 release “Without Words”, music by Felix Mendelssohn and Price Walden on Sono Luminus, is his tenth solo recording. 

Levingston has performed often in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. A longtime champion of living artists and composers, he has commissioned and premiered more than 75 works and collaborated with American Ballet Theatre, BAM, MoMA and the Whitney Museum to present new works. He is a native of the Mississippi Delta and lifelong advocate of human, civil and animal rights. He was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2006, and named to the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame. He is Artist in Residence and holder of the Fant Endowed Chair at the University of Mississippi. 

October 25: World premiere of “they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes”

The Defiant Requiem Foundation presents the world premiere of they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes by Gerald Cohen 

Song cycle is a setting of texts from Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen by Menachem Z. Rosensaft

Featured performers: Mezzo soprano Leah Wool and baritone David Kravitz

October 25, 7 pm at Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College in NYC and live-streamed worldwide

“[Gerald Cohen’s music] reveals a very personal modernism that...offers great emotional rewards.” - Gramophone

Ghosts of the past weave their way into our present and future in Menachem Z. Rosensaft's book Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen. Composer Gerald Cohen has brought Rosensaft's words to the concert stage in his settings of these poems. Mezzo soprano Leah Wool and baritone David Kravitz are featured performers in the world premiere of Cohen's song cycle, they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes.

The composition, commissioned and presented by The Defiant Requiem Foundation, will be performed on Wednesday, October 25, 2023, at 7 pm at The Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College (One West Fourth Street in Manhattan). In-person and live-streamed attendance is free, reservations (at www.defiantrequiem.org/Oct25 beginning in late August) are required.

The program also includes music by composers who were imprisoned at the concentration camp at Terezín during WWII, including Viktor Ullmann, James Simon and Robert Dauber; as well as selections from Olivier Messiaen’s seminal Quartet for the End of Time. Instrumentalists include clarinetist Jon Manasse and cellist Julian Schwarz. Program details are below.

A post-performance discussion with the poet and composer will be moderated by Murry Sidlin, President and Artistic Director of The Defiant Requiem Foundation. The audience is invited to a reception following the program.

Calendar listing

Wednesday, October 25, 2023, 7 pm

The Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College
One West Fourth Street in Manhattan

World premiere of they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes by Gerald Cohen on poetry by Menachem Z. Rosensaft; and other chamber works

Post-performance discussion led by Murry Sidlin, President and Artistic Director of The Defiant Requiem Foundation

In-person and live-stream admission is free, reservations (at www.defiantrequiem.org/Oct25 beginning in late August) are required.

PROGRAM

Gerald Cohen: they burn, the fires of the night: lamentations from the ashes (world premiere)
Viktor Ullmann: Variations and Fugue on a Hebrew Folksong from Piano Sonata No. 7
James Simon: Arioso for Unaccompanied Cello
Robert Dauber: Serenade for Violin and Piano
Olivier Messiaen: The Abyss of the Bird & Praise to The Eternity of Jesus
from Quartet for the End of Time

PERFORMERS
Herbert Greenberg, Violin
Jon Manasse, Clarinet
Julian Schwarz, Cello
Marika Bournaki, Piano
Leah Wool, Mezzo Soprano
David Kravitz, Baritone

The performance is underwritten by the House of Julius Meinl

Sept 6 & 9: Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival

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Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival launches its 27th season in September

Sept. 6: violinist Miranda Cuckson, and Cleveland Orchestra musicians violist Eliesha Nelson and cellist Brian Thornton play works by Bond, Mumford, Mazzoli, Velasquez, Barzegar, and Arissian

Sept. 9 (co-presented by The Village Trip): Baritone Michael Kelly and pianist Bradley Moore perform works by Bond, Cage, Carter, Corigliano, Piazzolla and more

World and regional premieres featured on both programs

"a gift to New Yorkers thirsty for new sounds" – Time Out New York

Composer Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival to celebrate, support and promote the work of living composers. The festival launches its 27th season with two concerts in September. 

On Wednesday, September 6, 2023 at 7:30 pm, Cleveland Orchestra musicians violist Eliesha Nelson and cellist Brian Thornton with violinist Miranda Cuckson perform music by Missy Mazzoli, Ileana Perez Velasquez, Nina Barzegar, Mina Arissian, Jeffrey Mumford, and Victoria Bond, including world and regional premieres. Program details are below. The performance is at Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (2537 Broadway, Manhattan). Tickets are $20 in advance, $30 at the door; ticket link will be live in mid-August. 

On Saturday, September 9 at 7 pm, Cutting Edge Concerts and The Village Trip Festival co-present a program of songs by Greenwich Village composers and poets with baritone Michael Kelly and pianist Bradley Moore. Featured are the world premieres of two song cycles by Victoria Bond and John Glover. Works by John Cage, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, John Musto and Astor Piazzolla are also on the program. The performance is at the Salgamundi Club (47 Fifth Ave, Manhattan). Tickets are $30, available here.

The 2023-24 season of Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival continues on March 12, 2024 with the Cassatt String Quartet and pianist Ursula Oppens at Symphony Space.

Calendar Listing

CUTTING EDGE CONCERTS NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

The Road Not Taken

Wednesday, September 6, 2023, 7:30 pm

Symphony Space (2537 Broadway, Manhattan)

Miranda Cuckson, violin; Eliesha Nelson, viola; Brian Thorton, cello

Tickets: $20 advance (ticket link available mid-August); $30 at the door

PROGRAM

Victoria Bond Jasmine Flower
Eliesha Nelson, viola

Missy Mazzoli Tooth and Nail
Eliesha Nelson, viola

Jeffrey Mumford . . . becoming clear
I. Molto sonoro ed espressivo
II. Lontano ha ne

Eliesha Nelson
(NY Premiere)

Mumford fleeting cycles of layered air
Miranda Cuckson, violin

Ileana Perez Velasquez The road not taken
Miranda Cuckson, violin
(NY Premiere)

Nina Barzegar Vulnerable
Brian Thornton, cello

Mina Arissian Cello Sonata
Brian Thornton, cello
(World Premiere)

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CUTTING EDGE CONCERTS NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL,
co-presented by The Village Trip

Neighbors, Lovers, and Friends

Saturday, September 9, 2023, 7:30 pm

Salmagundi Club (47 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan)

Michael Kelly, baritone
Bradley Moore, piano

Tickets: $30 available here

Music by Victoria Bond, John Cage, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, John Glover, John Musto, & Astor Piazzolla

About Cutting Edge Concerts
Inspired by Pierre Boulez's series, "Perspective Encounters", the composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts in 1998. With 26 years of concerts, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented over 300 new works by more than 200 composers. Each program highlights the music of living composers, all of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers.

About Victoria Bond

A major force in 21st century music, composer Victoria Bond is known for her melodic gift and dramatic flair. Her works for orchestra, chamber ensemble and opera have been lauded by The New York Times as "powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding." Her compositions have been performed by the New York City Opera, Shanghai, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, American Ballet Theater and the Cassatt and Audubon Quartets.  Ms. Bond is also an acclaimed conductor, and is the principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, and has held conducting positions with Pittsburgh Symphony, New York City Opera, Roanoke Symphony, and Bel Canto and Harrisburg Operas.

"CHORINHO" - violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng

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New from violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng: music by Brazilian composers

“CHORINHO” includes a work by Villa-Lobos, world premiere recordings by João de Souza Lima, Lindembergue Cardoso, and Ernani Aguiar; and a special arrangement of “Lua Branca”

Released August 11, 2023 on Navona Records

"[violist Georgina Rossi] shot through with eloquence..." — Fanfare Magazine

The new album by violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng is saturated with Brazil’s rich musical heritage. CHORINHO (Navona NV6537, released August 11, 2023) presents a slew of alluring yet under-recognized works for viola, including world-premiere recordings of works by João de Souza Lima, Lindembergue Cardoso, and Ernani Aguiar. 

A solo piano interlude honors Heitor Villa-Lobos, the titan of Brazil’s 20th century musical scene. The concluding track, an arrangement of Chiquinha Gonzaga’s song Lua Branca by the two soloists themselves, hangs over the collection like a light. Vibrant, soulful, and expressive, CHORINHO offers a spectacular glimpse into a little-known area of Brazilian contemporary music.

Cheng and Rossi's previously collaborated on "MOBILI: Music for viola and piano from Chile" (New Focus, 2020). Critics praised the duo for their "excellent performances" (CineMusical), calling the album a "very accomplished listen" (Take Effect Reviews).

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical or digital copy of this recording.

“CHORINHO: Music for Viola and Piano from Brazil”

Georgina Rossi, viola
Silvie Cheng, piano 

Navona Records NV6537
Release date: August 11, 2023

Tracks
[01] João de Souza Lima: Chorinho for viola and piano 7:09 

Osvaldo Lacerda: Appassionato, Cantilena, e Toccata for viola and piano
[02] I. Appassionato 5:06
[03] II. Catilena 5:09
[04] III. Toccata 2:50 

Ernani Aguair: Meloritmias No. 5 for solo viola
[05] I. Ponteando 3:08
[06] II. Resposta ao bilhete do jorgralrrapeixe 4:07
[07] III. Convite ao amigo Cristiano Ribeiro 4:03

[08] Heitor Villa-Lobos: Valsa da dor for solo piano 5:39

[09] Lindembergue Cardoso: Pequeno Estudio, Op. 78 for solo piano 8:06 

Brenno Blauth: Sonata for viola and piano
[10] I. Dramático 7:20
[11] II. Evocativo 7:12
[12] III. Agitado 6:25

[13] Chiquinha Gonzaga (arr. Silvie Cheng, Georgina Rossi): Lua branca (from the operetta: O Forrobodó) 1:56

Artist Biographies

Chilean-American violist Georgina Isabel Rossi. enjoys a varied career as soloist and chamber musician in North and South America. Recent highlights include appearances with Orquesta Sinfónica Universidad La Serena (OSULS), Orquesta Sinfónica Uncuyo in Mendoza, and Orquestade Cámara de Chile. Her debut album, Mobili: Music for Viola and Piano from Chile (New Focus Recordings), was praised by WQXR as “expertly played” and named one of the “Favorite Albums of the Year” on Classical California KUSC. In 2023 she releases CHORINHO: Music for Viola and Piano from Brazil (Navona Records), both with the pianist Silvie Cheng.

Ms. Rossi is on the music faculty of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where she is a member of the resident string quartet and contemporary ensemble. She holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Roger Tapping, and a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a student of Karen Dreyfus and Daniel Avshalomov. Georgina Rossi plays a 2014 viola made by Leonardo Anderi in Buenos Aires and a bow by Carl Wilhelm Knopf. In addition to her musical talents, she is also a visual artist and focuses on draftsmanship. 

Lauded for her “extraordinarily varied palette” (WholeNote Magazine) and “purely magical” playing (New York Concert Review), Tokyo-born Chinese-Canadian pianist Silvie Cheng illuminates musical works with her exquisite touch at the keyboard. Since her Carnegie Hall solo debut in 2011, she has performed internationally as a recitalist, collaborative pianist, and soloist including at Steinway Hall and Merkin Hall in New York; Flagey Hall in Brussels; Poly Theatre in Shanghai; and Alpensia Concert Hall in South Korea, among many other acclaimed venues. She has appeared as soloist with Symphony Nova Scotia, New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. Her awards include top prizes at the Thousand Islands and Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition, the Canadian Music Competition National Finals, the Ontario Music Federation Association Competition, and the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition.

Works for solo violin by Mazzoli, Clyne, Joachim

Grammy award-winner and former Eighth Blackbird violinist Yvonne Lam releases first solo album, “Watch Over Us” 

Works for violin and electronics includes music by Anna Clyne, Eve Beglarian, Kate Moore, Katherine Balch, Missy Mazzoli and the world premiere recording of a work by Nathalie Joachim

Released July 28, 2023 on Blue Griffin Records

The Grammy award-winner and former Eighth Blackbird violinist Yvonne Lam releases her first solo album on July 28, 2023 (Blue Griffin BGR 647). “Watch Over Us” includes compositions for solo violin and electronics by some of the most accomplished women alive today. Featured is the world premiere recording of “Watch Over Us” by Nathalie Joachim (written for Lam) and the transcription for violin of Missy Mazzoli's "Tooth and Nail". Also on the collection, music by Katherine Balch, Anna Clyne, Eve Beglarian, and Kate Moore. 

“Even though I am the only live performer in each piece, it never feels like a solo,” writes Lam in the liner notes. “I actually feel that I am in a way per­forming with the composer, who created the fixed media part exactly to their taste. Over time, performing with these tapes felt akin to playing with a longtime chamber music partner whose intentions you can divine with your gut and whose sounds combine with yours to become something larger than the sum of its parts.”

The recording’s title composition, “Watch Over Us” by Yvonne Lam’s Eighth Blackbird colleague Nathalie Joachim, was originally intended as a documentary film score. Though the film itself never materialized, Lam said her premiere performance of the work, along with “other works for solo violin and electronics by remarkable women” inspired this album.

“I’ve been a fan of Anna Clyne’s music for well over a decade,” writes Lam. “Rest These Hands" is technically acoustic but I included it because of the poignant poem written by her mother that is read over the solo violin.” Lam says she’s been eager to play Kate Moore’s "Syn­aesthesia Suite" since she first learned of its existence. “I love the kaleidoscope of colors created by the track, and the vast arc of the musical journey Kate takes us on.”

Yvonne Lam was violinist and Co-Artistic Director of Eighth Blackbird from 2011-2019, winning a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for the album Filament with the venerable ensemble. As a youngster, she began playing violin by mistake: she thought she was learning to play guitar. She ultimately went on to earn degrees in violin at Juilliard and Curtis. 

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of this recording.

Watch Over Us

Yvonne Lam, violin

Blue Griffin Recording (BGR 647)
Release date: July 28, 2023

TRACKS

[01] Missy Mazzoli: Tooth and Nail (10:02)

[02] Katherine Balch: Apartment Sounds (03:08)

[03] Nathalie Joachim: Watch Over Us (08:01) (world premiere recording)

[04] Anna Clyne: Rest These Hands (09:11)

[05] Eve Beglarian: Well-Spent (04:52)

[06] Kate Moore: Synaesthesia Suite (17:43)

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Grammy Award-winning violinist Yvonne Lam has appeared as soloist with such renowned orchestras as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the American Youth Symphony. She was the violinist/violist and Co-Artistic Director of contemporary super-ensemble Eighth Blackbird for eight years, and commissioned and premiered major works by composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang, Nico Muhly, and Bryce Dessner. In addition to winning top prizes at international competitions including the Michael Hill World Violin Competition, the Liana Issakadze Violin Competition, and the Holland-America Music Society Competition, Ms. Lam served three seasons as Assistant Concertmaster of the Washington National Opera Orchestra. Ms. Lam is an Assistant Professor of Violin and Coordinator of Chamber Music at Michigan State University. She received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music and her Master of Music from the Juilliard School.  

Cassatt SQ performs Gerald Cohen on innova

Cassatt String Quartet is featured on new release of music by Gerald Cohen

Cohen’s Voyagers album includes world premiere recordings of 21st century works for string quartet, clarinet and trombone 

Released July 21, 2023 on innova Records

“[Gerald Cohen’s music] reveals a very personal modernism that...offers great emotional rewards.” Gramophone

For over a decade, the Cassatt String Quartet has collaborated with the composer Gerald Cohen. On July 21, 2023, innova Recordings releases “Voyagers” (innova 090); music by Gerald Cohen performed by the Cassatt String Quartet and guest artists. 

“Telling stories through music is central to all I do as a composer and performer – most explicitly in my operas and vocal works, but also in purely instrumental works such as those on this album,” said Gerald Cohen. “This album is the culmination of the voyage I have taken with the Cassatt String Quartet during the past decade. I will always be grateful for the collaboration with these wonderful colleagues.”

The title work is inspired by the Voyager spacecraft that carried the Golden Record, an audio time capsule intended to give extra-terrestrial beings an impression of human culture on Planet Earth. The performance also features Narek Arutyunian on clarinet and bass clarinet.

Playing for Our Lives is a contemporary memorial and tribute to the musical life of the Nazi concentration camp Terezín (Theresienstadt), near Prague. The work uses elements from from the Yiddish folk song Beryozkele, Hans Krasa’s opera Brundibar, and Verdi’s Requiem. Both Voyagers and Playing for Our Lives were written for the Cassatt String Quartet. The album concludes with Preludes and Debka, featuring trombonist Colin Williams. 

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of this recording.

"an extraordinary quartet" – The New York Times

Gerald Cohen: Voyagers

Cassatt String Quartet
(Muneko Otani & Jennifer Leshnower, violins; Ah Ling Neu, viola; Elizabeth Anderson, cello)

Narek Arutyunian, clarinet & bass clarinet
Colin Williams, trombone

innova Recordings (innova 090)
Release date: July 21, 2023

TRACKS

Voyagers
[01] Cavatina (9:31)
[02] Bhairavi (6:57)
[03] Galliard (5:39)
[04] Beyond the Heliosphere (7:15)

Cassatt String Quartet
Narek Arutyunian, clarinet and bass clarinet

Playing for our lives
[05] Beryozkele (7:29)
[06] Brundibar (6:15)
[07] Dies Irae (8:40)

Cassatt String Quartet

[08] Preludes and Debka (13:01)

Cassatt String Quartet
Colin Williams, trombone

Biographies

Composer Gerald Cohen has been praised for his “linguistic fluidity and melodic gift,” (Gramophone Magazine); his music “is filled with vibrant melody, rhythmic clarity, drive and compositional mastery” (Gapplegate Review). His past discography includes Generations (New World Records, 2001) and Sea of Reeds (Navona, 2014). In addition to Voyagers (innova, 2023), a studio recording of the opera Steal a Pencil for Me is being released in 2024.

Cohen is a noted synagogue cantor and baritone; his experience as a singer informs his dramatic, lyrical compositions. His opera Steal a Pencil for Me received its world premiere production by Opera Colorado in January 2018, and his chamber and choral works have been performed in important venues in the United States and internationally. Recognition of Cohen's body of work includes commissioning grants from Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and American Composers Forum.

Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the Cassatt String Quartet has performed to critical acclaim across the world since its founding in 1985, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Tanglewood Music Center, the Kennedy Center, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Centro National de las Artes, Maeda Hall, and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The group’s discography includes over forty recordings, including three discs that were named “10 Best Classical Recordings” in The New Yorker. The CSQ, comprised of Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violins; Rosemary Nelis, viola; and Gwen Krosnick, cello, is named for the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violist Ah Ling Neu and cellist Elizabeth Anderson are the members of the CSQ performing on the “Voyagers" album.