2023 Summer Festival Program Magazine

SOMETHING EXCITING is coming to the Pearl

INDEPENDENT LIVING ASSISTED LIVING MEMORY CARE

NOW LEASING

Become a Founding Member of this extraordinary community by calling 503-205-3083 today.

An enclave of casual elegance where you can shape each day into a journey of your choosing.

With exceptional offerings for Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care, The Watermark at the Pearl features three gourmet restaurants, an on-site spa and salon, a vast fourth-floor green space, and awardwinning Watermark University classes.

503-205-3083 | watermarkthepearl.com

Leasing Gallery: 1411 NW Quimby Street #132

Portland, OR 97209 | Entrance on 14th Street

Community: 1540 NW 13th Avenue

Portland, OR 97209

WELCOME TO OUR 2023 SUMMER FESTIVAL!

Dear Friends of Chamber Music Northwest,

We are so excited to present this evocative and moving summer festival, Poetry in Music! Music and poetry are two of the greatest mediums for the expression of the human condition. They are inextricably linked, each inspiring one another throughout history. Poets and composers use common terms and ideas such as rhythm, meter, refrain, phrase, and affect to mold their works of art.

This summer you will be introduced to many living Oregon poets as we incorporate them in the concert experience. You will hear how poetry and music in past centuries came together as beautiful art songs. You will also get a glimpse into how poets and composers continue to collaborate today.

It is wonderful to be back together with you for another celebratory festival including recitals by the talented students of the Young Artist Institute, concerts at venues all around the Portland area, glorious pre-concert picnics, and performances by some of the greatest world-class musicians of today.

Thank you for your support, and we hope to meet you throughout the summer!

Gloria Chien & Soovin Kim Artistic Directors

CMNW’s summer home for more than three decades.

Ticket & Box Office Information

Chamber Music Northwest concert tickets are always available online at CMNW.org. Our Ticket Office is open from 10 am–4 pm, Monday through Friday for phone calls at 503-294-6400, or a visit to our new offices at 1201 SW 12th Ave., Suite 420. Tickets for upcoming events may also be purchased at the onsite box office one hour prior to start, and during most concert intermissions.

Donate Your Unused Tickets

If you are unable to use your tickets, please email or call ticket office to return them for resale. You will receive a tax deduction for the full value of the tickets in addition to giving another music lover the opportunity to attend!

ADA Services

Accessible seating and parking is available at all venues. Contact the Ticket Office in advance to arrange for your specific needs. We can provide special seating and additional accommodation information.

Picnics, Dining, and Refreshments

Picnics are a festival tradition before performances at Reed College. Bring your own picnic or purchase dinner, or drinks from Reed’s the on-site caterer Bon Appétit beginning at 6 pm. No outdoor catering will be available if the temperature exceeds 94 degrees.

No outside alcoholic beverages allowed—please purchase all wine and beer from caterer, Bon Appétit. No glass or china permitted for safety reasons.

Enjoy a meal and support local nearby restaurants before or after concerts at PSU, The Reser, Alberta Rose, and The Armory. Refreshments are available at intermission for most concerts.

CMNW Ticket Office: 503-294-6400

• tickets@cmnw.org

• cmnw.org

Alberta Rose Theatre

3000 NE Alberta St.

Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

SE 28th & Woodstock

Lincoln Performance Hall & Lincoln Recital Hall

Portland State University

SW Broadway & Market

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

12625 SW Crescent St., Beaverton

The Armory

(Portland Center Stage )

128 NW 11th Ave.

Community Concerts

Community Music Center 3350 SE Francis St.

Gresham Arts Plaza 401 NE 2nd St., Gresham

Leroy Haagen Memorial Park NE 9th St, Vancouver, WA

North Clackamas Park 5440 SE Kellogg Creek Dr, Milwaukie

Pilot House, University of Portland 5000 N Willamette Blvd.

The Old Church Concert Hall 1422 SW 11th Ave.

We respectfully acknowledge that the concerts of our festival sit on the ancestral lands and traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia (Wimahl) and Willamette (Whilamut) rivers, recognize the first peoples who made this region their home, and continue to live in this area.

Please silence all cell phones.

Food and beverages are not allowed in the concert hall. Personal water bottles are allowed. Cameras and recording devices are not permitted -- please do not take pictures or record our concerts.

In consideration of our patrons with scent sensitivities, we ask that patrons refrain from wearing products with strong fragrances, including colognes, perfumes, and essential oils.

In consideration of our audience and artists, parents are requested not to bring children under the age of 7 to CMNW concerts, except for designated performances.

Patrons with hearing aids should be aware that such devices may transmit a shrill tone. The wearer is not often conscious of this. House staff makes an effort to identify the wearer, but it is extremely helpful for audience members, musicians, and recording staff if nearby patrons kindly let the wearer know that such a sound is being produced. The wearer will be appreciative and take care of the problem.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

A week-by-week listing of our festival events

OUR FRIENDS & SUPPORTERS

Appreciation for our donors, sponsors and friends

COMMUNITY & EDUCATION EVENTS

Free events and educational experiences

YOUNG ARTIST INSTITUTE

Learn about our program for youth musicians

2023 PROTÉGÉ PROJECT

Learn about our 2023 Protégés here

PROGRAMS

Concert programs, and program notes for our performances

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Gain a little more insight into our festival artists

YOUNG ARTIST INSTITUTE PROFILES

Learn about staff, piano fellows, and young artists

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

One Week TWO Week THREE Week FOUR WEEK FIVE

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Opening Night: Poetry in Music

6:30pm Kaul Auditorium Young Artist Institute Prelude

8pm Kaul Auditorium

CMNW Presents the Oregon Bach Festival: Magnificat

4pm Lincoln Performance Hall

Voices of Schumann, Schubert & Brahms

12pm Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Masterclass: Zlatomir Fung, cello

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Voices of Schumann, Schubert & Brahms

6:30pm Kaul Auditorium Young Artist Institute Prelude

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Emerson Quartet Farewell with Gloria Chien

4pm Lincoln Performance Hall umama womama: Coleman, Lash & Ngwenyama

12pm Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Masterclass: Alexi Kenney, violin

8pm Kaul Auditorium

umama womama: Coleman, Lash & Ngwenyama

12pm Kaul Auditorium

Literary Conversation with David Ludwig, Katie Ford & Alicia Jo Rabins

7pm Kaul Auditorium

Prelude Performance: Alexis Zou & Hansen Berrett

8pm Kaul Auditorium

UNCOVERED Voices

7pm Kaul Auditorium

Prelude Performance: UO & Portland Music Students

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Viennese Revolutionaries

7pm Kaul Auditorium

Prelude Performance:

Hae-Jin Kim’s Violin Studio Students

8pm Kaul Auditorium

SATURDAY FESTIVAL FINALE: American Masterworks

10am Lincoln Hall 219, PSU

Masterclass: David Ludwig, composition

4pm Lincoln Performance Hall

David Ludwig’s The Anchoress

12pm Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Masterclass: Kenari Quartet, saxophone

8pm Kaul Auditorium

David Ludwig’s The Anchoress

4pm Lincoln Performance Hall Voices of the Soul featuring Fred Child

12pm Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Masterclass: Anton Nel, piano

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Voices of the Soul featuring Fred Child

Five weeks of extraordinary music ...and a summer-full of streaming!

All over Portland Young Artist Institute Pop-up Concerts

11am Kaul Auditorium

Open Rehearsal: Gabriel Fauré Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 45

6pm BG Food Cartel

BG Food Cartel Pop-up Performance

6:30pm The Reser

Young Artist Institute

Prelude

8pm The Reser

Schubert & Fauré: Masters of Lyricism

12pm The Old Church Young Artist Institute Showcase #2

All over Portland Young Artist Institute Pop-up Concerts

11am Kaul Auditorium

Open Rehearsal: Brahms Clarinet Quintet

7pm Alberta Rose Theatre

Happy Hour

8pm Alberta Rose Theatre

NEW@NIGHT: Tri-Angles

12pm

Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Spotlight Recital: Alexi Kenney & Soovin Kim

11am Kaul Auditorium

Open Rehearsal: Coleridge-Taylor

Clarinet Quintet

5pm The Armory

Happy Hour

6pm The Armory

NEW@NIGHT: McGill, Goodyear & Catalyst

6:30pm Kaul Auditorium

Young Artist Institute

Prelude

8pm Kaul Auditorium

Celebrating the Emerson Quartet with David Shifrin

7pm Pilot House, U of P Young Artist Institute Final Showcase

7pm The Reser

Prelude Performance: Cognizart’s Young Artist Debut! Winners

8pm The Reser

UNCOVERED Voices

4pm Sauvie Island Chamber Party: WindSync

7pm North Clackamas Park Community Concert with Kenari Quartet

12pm

Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Spotlight Recital: Très Coloré et Élégant

12pm Lincoln Recital Hall, PSU

Spotlight Recital: Viano Quartet

11am Kaul Auditorium

Open Rehearsal: Schoenberg Chamber

Symphony No. 1

5pm The Armory

Happy Hour

6pm The Armory

NEW@NIGHT: International Voices

11am Kaul Auditorium

Open Rehearsal: Chris

Rogerson World Premiere

5pm The Armory Happy Hour

6pm The Armory

NEW@NIGHT: Protégés United

7pm The Reser

Prelude Performance: Bridging Voices

8pm The Reser Viennese Revolutionaries

7pm Gresham Arts Plaza Community Concert with CMNW Protégé Artists

7pm The Reser

Prelude Performance: Union Bassoon Quartet, Natalie Alexander & Alexis Zou

8pm The Reser

FESTIVAL FINALE: American Masterworks

6pm Leroy Haagen Park Instrument Petting Zoo

7pm Leroy Haagen Park, Vancouver Community Concert with Columbia River Brass Quintet

AT-HOME Festival begins!

THANK YOU, FRIENDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC NORTHWEST

Acknowledgements & Gratitude

It takes many people beyond our board, donors, year-round staff and the festival staff, to bring our Summer Festival to life! We extend our gratitude to these many partners who have supported and enriched our work in a myriad of ways for this summer’s festival.

OUR FANTASTIC VENUE PARTNERS

Reed College—our festival home for more than 40 years

Portland State University—where we were founded 53 summers ago

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

Alberta Rose Theatre

Portland Center Stage at The Armory University of Portland

Our Chamber Party hosts for opening their homes to host intimate concerts

OUR FESTIVAL SUPPORTERS

Hyatt House Portland/Downtown

Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Don Boyer, Educational Music Services

Communications Northwest

Hollywood Lights

J&S Golf Cart Rentals

Barry Stewart—outstanding A/V assistance

Eric Leatha—pitch-perfect piano tuning services

Branic Howard—stellar concert audio recording

Steinway Portland—providing our Steinway concert grand piano

Portland Piano Company—providing our hotel rehearsal piano

Rick Vansant, B&B Print Source

Tom Emerson, Shawnte Sims & Liana Kramer—our festival photographers

Tim Neighbors & Ian Stout of Invisible Harness—our AT-HOME series producers

OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS

The City of Gresham

North Clackamas Parks & Recreation

The City of Vancouver

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Community Music Center

The Old Church Concert Hall

Literary Arts

Fear No Music

SoundsTruck NW

OUR MUSICAL FRIENDS

All Classical Portland

BRAVO Youth Orchestras

Cappella Romana

Fear No Music

45th Parallel Universe

Friends of Chamber Music

2023 Summer Festival Concert Sponsors

Chamber Music Northwest gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our concert sponsors. Each has contributed to help underwrite concerts, events and the production of our ATHOME concert series this summer. The sponsors are listed in order the number of years they have supported CMNW.

For more information on Chamber Music Northwest sponsorship opportunities, please contact Leslie Tuomi at 503-546-0184 or lesliet@cmnw.org

Metropolitan Youth Symphony

Opera in the Park

Oregon Bach Festival

Oregon Symphony

OrpheusPDX

Portland Baroque Orchestra

Portland Columbia Symphony

Portland Opera

Portland Youth Philharmonic

Resonance Ensemble

Third Angle New Music

Willamette Valley Chamber Music

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

OUR VOLUNTEERS make this festival happen! We extend a great amount gratitude to them, and know that we are so fortunate to benefit from their dedication and stalwart service to this organization, and to our audiences.

We thank all of the incredible contributors, funders, donors, and community partners who make the 2023 Summer Festival possible…and to YOU, our audiences, for coming back. We do not take you sitting right where you are and reading this lightly—we are grateful you are here!

2022/2023 Season Supporters

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions received from the following friends. This list reflects gifts received through May 1, 2023. If information needs to be corrected, please notify the Development department at 503-546-0184.

Corporations, Foundations, and Government

Artistic Director’s Circle

($25,000 and above)

Crescendo ($5,000–$9,999)

E. Nakamichi Foundation

Powell's Books

Reser Family Foundation

Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust

Marianne Steflik Irish Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation Wheeler Foundation

Brillante

($2,500-$4,999)

All Classical Portland+

Arnerich Massena & Associates

The Jackson Foundation

Nike, Inc.

Maestoso ($1,000-$2,499)

The Amphion Foundation

Fortissimo ($10,000–$24,999)

Cascadia Foundation

John S. Ettelson Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation Heritage Bank

Intel Corporation

Morgan Stanley Multnomah County

Cultural Coalition

Oregon ArtsWatch

OnPoint Community Credit Union

The Oregonian/OregonLive+

Allegro ($500-$999)

Columbia Sportswear Company

First Congregational United Church of Christ+

Fortissimo ($10,000-$24,999)

Carl Abbott & Margery Post Abbott

Carole Alexander

Kennett F. Burnes

Howard Pifer III & Ellen Macke

Marilyn Crilley & George Rowbottom

Jeff & Kathleen Rubin

Peter & Ann van Bever

Mark & Nancy van der Veer

Ravi Vedanayagam & Ursula Luckert

Anonymous Friend of CMNW

Crescendo ($5,000–$9,999)

Daniel H. Boyce & Lilla Cabot

Evelyn J. Brzezinski

Rick Caskey

Bill & Diana Dameron

Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

Yoko & Jonathan Greeney

Howard Greisler & Elizabeth Hudson

Jerome Guillen & Jeremy Gallagher

Robert & Janis Harrison

David C. & Maryanne Holman

Mary Dooly & Thomas W. Holman

Fund and Thomas W. Holman Jr. Memorial Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation

Janet & Larry Richards

Richard & Susan Rogers

Heidi Yorkshire & Joseph Anthony

Brillante ($2,500-$4,999)

Maestoso ($1,000-$2,499)

Acorn Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation

Scott & Margaret Arighi

William & Gail Bain

Arlena Barnes & William Kinsey

Chita Becker

Peter Bilotta & Shannon Bromenschenkel

Bruce Blank

Charles & Carol Ouchi Brunner

Gloria Chien & Soovin Kim

Colin Ma & Laurie Christensen

Linda S. Craig

Bruce Cronin

Marvin & Abby Dawson

William Dolan & Suzanne Bromschwig

Jon Feldhausen

Deborah & Larry Friedman

Dean & Susan Gisvold

David Greger

Bill Haden & Doris Huff

John & Judie Hammerstad

Ted Haskell & Mary Mears-Haskell

Diane M. Herrmann

Kirk Hirschfeld

Lynne Johnson & Larry Madson

James Kahan & Kathia Emery

Miyoung Kwak

Sally & Bob Landauer

Joan Levers & David Manhart

Wayne Litzenberger & Jane Patterson

Joseph & Linda Mandiberg

Linda & Ken Mantel

Lucinda Parker McCarthy

Judy McCraw

Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation

Goldy Family Designated Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation

Missionary Chocolates+ Oregon ArtsWatch+

Richard & Mary Rosenberg

Fund of OCF

Individuals

Artistic Director’s Circle

($25,000 & above)

Karen & Cliff Deveney

Betsy & Gregory Hatton

Paul L. King

Ronni Lacroute

Michael & Alice Powell

Slate & Davida Wilson

Nan & Greg Anderson

Paul & Pamela De Boni

Martha G. Dibblee

Marlene Burns & Jon Dickinson

Ann & Ken Edwards / Starseed Foundation+

Ed Gronke

Sonja L. Haugen

Leslie Hsu & Richard Lenon

Barbara & Bill Langley

Wilfried & Deanna Mueller-Crispin

Annie & Ernie Munch

Deborah & George Olsen

Norm & Barbara Sepenuk

Holly C. Silver

Susan Sokol Blosser

Anne Stevenson

Marc Therrien & Jena Rose

Nancy & Herb Zachow

Anonymous Friend of CMNW

Noreen Murdock & Grant Linsell

Beverly & Richard North

Rev. Dr. Rodney & Sandra Page

Robert & Rachel Papkin

David J. Pollock

Hugh Porter & Jill Soltero

Ellen Pullen

Patricia Reser

Woody & Rae Richen

Amy Richter

Charles & Selene Robinowitz

Karen & Norman Sade

Janet Schibel

Bill Scott & Kate Thompson

Jinny Shipman & Dick Kaiser

David Staehely

Mike & Judy Stoner

Leslie & Scott Tuomi

Joella Werlin

Mort & Audrey Zalutsky

Karen & Lawrence Zivin

Dorothea M. Lensch Fund

Allegro ($500-$999)

Ginny Adelsheim

Angela Allen & Jan van Santen

Julie Anderson & Ken Giles

Robin Bacon-Shone

Thomas Balmer & Mary

Louise McClintock

Elizabeth & J. Bruce Bell

Celia Brandt

Kay Bristow

Elizabeth Carnes

Joseph & Corinne Christy

Elaine & Arnold Cogan

Marian Creamer

Mary Dickson

Kay L. Doyle

Ralph Eccles & Carrie Ganong

Marco Escalante & Dongni Li

David & Beth Ferguson

Marc Fovinci & Ulrike Devoto

John Betonte & Carol Fredlund

Kit Gillem

Harold Goldstein & Carol Streeter

Caroline Greger

Scott & Tamara Grigsby

Thomas A. Hansen

Linda & John Hardham

Howard & Molly Harris

Albert Huang

Dennis C. Johnson

James Jones & Naomi Cytron

Dr. Howard Rosenbaum & Dr. Marcia Kahn

Dr. & Mrs. Peter J. Kane

Paula Kanarek & Ross Kaplan

Shelly Kappor

Nancy Kieburtz

Katherine King

Adela & Dick Knight

Timothy J. Lafolette

Susan & Robert Leeb

Allan & Joyce Leedy

Harvey & Ellen Leff

Carol Schnitzer Lewis Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation

Kate Lyons & Corey Milllard

Tess & George Marino

M. & L. Marks Family Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation

Becki Marsh & Wink Gross

Carol Martin & Marshall Stowe

Debra Meisinger & Barry Buchanan

Gregory & Sonya Morgansen

Patricia Morris-Rader

Randall Nelson

Kate Nicholson & Bill Ray

Kris Oliveira

Beverly Ormseth

Greg & Marie-Noelle Phillips

Jon & Suzanne Polich

Carole Douglass & William Pressly

Drs. Bonnie & Pete Reagan

Norma Reich

Betty & Jacob Reiss

Robert & Anne Richardson

Dave & Cheryl Richardson

Michael & Susan Richmond

Patricia Romines

Rosemarie Rosenfeld

William H. & Susan M. Sack

Meredith Savery

Dianne Sawyer & Richard Petersen

James B. & Julianne Sawyer

David & Judy Schiff

Janet Schwartz

Diana & Hal Scoggins

Sue Stegmiller & Bill Joy

Bradley Taylor & Virginia Lee

Susan & Patrick Troccolo

Herb Trubo & Steven Buchert

Hans & Dorene Tschersich

Matt & Anne Wand

Liz Wehrli

Sharon Weil

Cameron J. Wiley & Carey Whitt Wiley

Bruce & Susan Winthrop

Merri Souther Wyatt

Estin & Esther Yang

Anonymous Friend of CMNW

Cantabile

($250-$499)

Eleanor Adelman

Agoston & Maria Agoston

Greg & Susan Aldrich

Richard & Kristin Angell

Ruby Apsler

Elizabeth Arch

Barbara Backstrand

Dawn & Gary Banker

Lori & Todd Bauman

Deborah Zita & Maryka Biaggio

Robert & Gail Black

George & Annis Bleeke

Jerry Bobbe

Sandra & Ben Bole

Jerry & Amy Brem

Barbara Brooks

Monika Butcher

Cheryl & Stephen Campbell

John Carollo

Elinor & Martin Colman

Jerry & Jean Corn

Caroline & Adrian Harris Crowne

David & Marie Culpepper

Allen Dobbins

David & Wendy Doerner

Michelle Edwards

Stephen & Janet Elder

Arthur & Margianne Erickson

George W. Fabel

Eric & Elysa Foxman

Ben Frech

Freeman Family Foundation

Lucille Gauger

Andra Georges & Timothy Shepard

Sylvia Gray & Viktors Berstis

Ellen L. Green

Kirk Hall

Virginia Hancock

Irv & Gail Handelman

Scott Young & Carla Hansel

Ulrich H. Hardt & Karen Johnson

David Hattner & Kristie Leiser

Fred & Cookie Hegge

Victoria Hexter

Joan Hough

Mark Huey & Wayne Wiegand

Linda Hutchins & John Montague

Richard & Deanna Iltis

Ivan & Jeri Inger

Pamela Jacklin & Leonard Girard

Michael Johnson

Stephen Katz

Eugenia Keegan

Scott Kerman & Jill Speaker

Paul Lambertsen

Robert Lane & Tom Cantrell

Thad & Terry Langford

John & Stephanie Liu

Amelia Lukas

Peter & Elisabeth Lyon

Linda Magee

Jerome Magill

Kay Mannion

Lora Meyer

Gary Miller & Dell Ann Dyar

Jane Moore

Ann Morgan

Ralph Conrad Nelson

Susan Olson & Bill Nelson

Elsa Ostergaard

Charley Peterson & Susan Sater

Marcia & Robert Popper

Roger J. Porter

Scott Redeker & Gregg Williams

Carolyn Robb

Richard & Melvina Romanelli

Charlotte A. Rubin

Jean Rystrom

Robert & Judith Scholz

Donald & Roslyn Sutherland

Jeanette Swenson

Dennis Taylor & Mindy Campbell

Gudrun Taylor

Brad & Rebecca Todd

Dominique van de Stadt & Octavio Pajaro

Whiteman Family Foundation

Anne K. Woodbury

Jean Wu

Anonymous Friends of CMNW (3)

In Memoriam

Charlotte Beeman

Laura Bachman

Andrea Vannelli & David Bragdon

Dean & Susan Gisvold

Sally & Bob Landauer

Meredith Savery

Stephen R. McCarthy

Lucinda Parker McCarthy

Mary Feldhausen

Jon Feldhausen

Marjorie Gwilliam

Nancy Bragdon

Dr. Richard Kieburtz

Norman & Sherry Eder

Norma Leszt

Judy Rice

Leslie & Scott Tuomi

Grace Lungley

Paula Kanarek & Ross Kaplan

Barbara Ann Manildi

Vicci Martinazzi

Erik & Robin Skarstad

June McBey

Stephanie Ching

Alice Meyer

Anonymous

Kory Mueller

Elizabeth Glock

Michael & Laurie Smida

Henry Richmond

Anne & Ernest Munch

Stephen Ritchie

Elizabeth Carnes

Mayer Schwartz

Janet Schwartz

Per Sweetman

Lucille Gauger

Janet Schibel

David Tallman

Kay Bristow

Roger Tavares

David J. Pollock

In Honor of

Becky Anderson & Mika Sasaki

Scott Kerman & Jill Speaker

Robin Bacon-Shone

Heather Bacon-Shone

Barbara Brooks

Ellen Green

Christine Peterson

Sue Horn Caskey

Rick Caskey

Gloria Chien & Soovin Kim

Donald Aibel

Wilfried & Deanna Mueller-Crispin

CMNW Volunteers

Evelyn J. Brzezinski

Bill Dameron

Barbara Epstien & Julian Gray

Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

Norman & Elizabeth Duffett

Bill Haden

Jim & Anne Holtz

Sandra Jung

Thea Jung

David F. Keyes

Kris Oliveira

Leslie Lehmann, Clark Worth & Anne Stevenson

Merri Souther Wyatt

Linda Magee

Janet & Larry Richards

James & Judith Seubert

Karen & Norman Sade Anonymous

David Shifrin

Evelyn J. Brzezinski

Bob & Jane Ragen

Marc Therrien & Jena Rose

Teri & Allen Patapoff

Peter van Bever

James Jones & Naomi Cytron

Claire van Bever

Support the Commissioning of New Music

CMNW Commissioning Club seeks new members!

You don’t have to be a great composer to create great music. Join the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club and you will be a part of our commissioning work that brings new pieces of chamber music to life!

As a Commissioning Club member, you will become a part of a special group that selects and commissions a new work from one composer each year. You will then be able to follow its progress through its world premiere. You will have opportunities to learn about the music, the composer’s creative process, attend a rehearsal, and meet the composer. This year, the Commissioning Club is sponsoring Wang Jie with her new work, Blame the Obituary, which premieres July 23 and 24.

For information on how you can join the Commissioning Club, contact Leslie Tuomi at 503-546-0184 or email lesliet@cmnw.org

Commissioning Club

Carl & Margery Abbott

Greg & Susan Aldrich

Carole Alexander

Dawn & Gary Banker

Elizabeth Carnes

Joseph & Corinne Christy

Linda Craig

Bill & Diana Dameron

Mary Dickson

Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

David & Beth Ferguson

Kit Gillem

Harold Goldstein & Carol Streeter

Diane M. Hermann

Miyoung Kwak

Susan & Robert Leeb

Kay Mannion

Debra Meisinger & Barry Buchanan

Birgit Miranda

Martin & Lucy Miller Murray

George & Deborah Olsen

Ellen Pullen

Marilyn Crilley & George Rowbottom

Charlotte Rubin

Jeff & Kathleen Rubin

Karen & Norman Sade

Bill Scott & Kate Thompson

Mike & Judy Stoner

Jeanette Swenson

Peter & Ann van Bever

Anonymous Friend of CMNW

In Memoriam

With sadness, we note the passing of these CMNW family members over this past year. We will miss them, and we offer our sincere condolences to their families, and friends.

Named Endowment Funds

Charlotte Beeman

Mary Feldhausen

Clayton Hawkes

Bill Hetzelson

Anne Kniefel

Steve McCarthy

Nancie McGraw

Laurie Meigs

Alice Meyer

Stephen Ritchie

John Shipley

With deep gratitude we recognize the donors of the following Named Endowment Funds, which provide perpetual support for Chamber Music Northwest artists and programs. In this current 2022-2023 year, income from the following funds helped underwrite the activities shown below.

Bart Alexander Oboe Chair Fund

WindSync residency

Boyce/Cabot Emerging Artist Fund

Young Artist Institute

CMNW Commissioning Fund

New works by: Stewart Goodyear, Wang Jie, Kian Ravaei, Chris Rogerson

David Golub Piano Chair Fund

Stewart Goodyear residency

Ned & Sis Hayes Young Artist Fund

Protégé Pianist Zitong Wang

Mary-Claire King Flute Chair Fund

Valerie Coleman residency

Michael & Alice Powell Vocal Chair Fund

Susanna Phillips residency

David Shifrin Artistic Innovation Fund

David Serkin Ludwig’s The Anchoress

David Shifrin Honorary

Clarinet Chair Fund

Anthony McGill residency

Stephen Swerling New Ventures Fund

CMNW/Oregon Bach Festival Concert Partnership

Jean Vollum Piano Fund

Rental and stewardship of pianos from Steinway Pianos

Whitsell Cello Fund

Zlatomir Fung residency

Youth Orchestras string players, funded

part by Oregonians using the Cultural

Nautilus Circle

We are grateful to our Nautilus Circle members for their vision in creating a permanent endowment fund to ensure the future of Chamber Music Northwest. Nautilus Circle members are a special part of our CMNW family, and share the joy of ensuring the future of CMNW, and great music for our community.

We invite YOU to join the Nautilus Circle!

It’s simple to join the Nautilus Circle—include Chamber Music Northwest as part of your will or estate plan, and let us know when you do.

There are many ways to create your own musical legacy—through your will, a trust, naming us as a beneficiary of a retirement plan or life insurance policy, and many more. We can help with clear, simple guidance on how you can leave a meaningful gift for Chamber Music Northwest, as well as other charities you love. And, you can do so without opening your checkbook!

Please contact Leslie Tuomi at 503.546.0184 or lesliet@cmnw.org for further information, and consult your tax advisor, or financial planner, to discover how to shape your legacy.

NAUTILUS CIRCLE MEMBERS

The following generous friends have made provisions for CMNW in their estate plans and/or have made a major gift to the CMNW Endowment Fund:

Carl Abbott & Margery

Post Abbott

Carole Alexander

Scott & Margaret Arighi

Phoebe Atwood*

Laura L. Barber*

Peter J. Bilotta & Shannon M.

Bromenschenkel

Diane Boly

Daniel H. Boyce & Lilla Cabot

Theodore* & Celia Brandt

Evelyn J. Brzezinski

The Clark Foundation

Matthew A. & Roberta* Cohen

Maribeth Collins*

The Collins Foundation

Helen Corbett*

Bill Dameron

Nathan Davis

Karen & Cliff Deveney

Mary Dickson

William Dolan & Suzanne Bromschwig

Elaine Durst

Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

Barbara Engel*

Don H. Frank*

Don & Emilie Frisbee*

Doris S. Fulton*

Elizabeth & John Gray*

Susan & Jeffrey* Grayson

Dr. Howard P. Greisler

Marilyn & Harold Hanson*

Robert & Janis Harrison

Sonja Haugen

Ned & Sis Hayes*

Gary McDonald & Barbara Holisky

James Kahan & Kathia Emery

Paul L. King

Ronni Lacroute

Sally & Bob Landauer

Leslie Lehmann & Clark Worth

Dorothea Lensch*

Muriel D. Lezak*

Amelia Lukas

Leeanne G. MacColl*

Linda Magee

Steve* & Cindy McCarthy

Dr. Louis* & Judy McCraw

Nancie McGraw & McGraw

Family Foundation*

Betty A. Merten

William D. & Lois L. Miller

Wilfried & Deanna

Mueller-Crispin

Anne & Ernest Munch

Janice Orloff*

Dolores Young Owen*

Rev. Dr. Rodney & Sandra Page

Norma Pizza

Michael & Alice Powell

Judson Randall*

Paula P. Randall*

Konrad Reisner*

Janet & Larry Richards

George & Claire Rives*

Ruth Robinson

Laurens & Judith Ruben

Gilbert & Thelma Schnitzer*

Mayer* & Janet Schwartz

Bill Scott & Kate Thompson

David Shifrin

Joan & John Shipley*

Jinny Shipman & Dick Kaiser

Al Solheim

Anne Stevenson

Stephen Swerling*

Phyllis Swett*

Hall Templeton*

Harry Turtledove*

Peter & Ann van Bever

Ravi Vedanayagam & Ursula Luckert

Jean Vollum*

Larry & Dorie Vollum

Bruce Weber

Margaret (Peggy) & Robert Weil*

Judy Weinsoft*

Samuel C. Wheeler*/

Wheeler Foundation

William & Helen Jo Whitsell

Jane Williams*

Slate & Davida Wilson

Nancy & Herb Zachow

Anonymous Friends of CMNW (2)

*recognized posthumously

REVOLU TION15 ComingSoon...

a fifteenth anniversary season

THE CONCERTS AT THE BARN

JULY 26–AUGUST 3O

THE BUTLER BARN at HOFFMAN FARMS, BEAVERTON

An outdoor stage, VIP tables, sunsets, and wine. Your ultimate world class CHAMBER MUSIC EVENT!

JULY 26, 7:30 PM YOU HAD ME AT CELLO!

Oregon Symphony cellists

Marilyn DeOliveira, Trevor Fitzpatrick and Friends.

AUGUST 9, 7:30 PM

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MINUTES

Martha Long, Oregon Symphony

Principal Flute, with Maria Garcia, piano and special guest Zach Galatis!

AUGUST 23, 7:30 PM SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

Duo Pianists Yoko Greeney and Susan DeWitt Smith Music from West Side Story and A Midsummer Night’s Dream!

AUGUST 30, 6:30–9:15 PM

THE OUTDOOR SPECTACULAR DOUBLE CONCERT

6:30: Opera Arias AND 7:30 The Mel Brown B-3 Organ Group with vocalist Arietta Ward.

Picnic Lawn opens at 5:30 PM, Concerts are held on Wednesdays from 7:30–8:45. August 30 outdoor concert begins at 6:30 PM.

EDUCATION & COMMUNITY EVENTS

For Our Community

You are invited to enjoy these FREE music-infused events from Chamber Music Northwest throughout our Summer Festival.

Young Artist Institute Pop-ups!

June 27 & July 4 from 11am-2pm | All over Portland!

Students from CMNW’s Young Artist Institute will be doing short, “pop-up” performances on June 27 and July 4 at public sites all around Portland and beyond! You can find them at the Oregon Zoo, Oaks Park, Powell’s City of Books, OHSU Farmers Market, and so many more fun locations. Visit cmnw.org and our social media channels for all the details.

Young Artist Institute Showcases

June 23 @ Noon | Community Music Center

June 30 @ Noon | The Old Church Concert Hall

July 7 @ 7pm | Pilot House, University of Portland

Each week, we invite you to watch and support the incredible students of the Young Artist Institute. The first two showcases will highlight the solo repertoire they have been preparing, and the final showcase will feature the students in string quartets.

Outdoor Community Concerts

July 14 @ 7pm | North Clackamas Park featuring Kenari Saxophone Quartet

July 21 @ 7pm | Gresham Arts Plaza featuring Protégés Diana Adamyan (violin) and Zitong Wang (piano)

July 28 @ 7pm | Leroy Haagen Park (Vancouver) in partnership with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra featuring Columbia River Brass Quintet. Come early for an Instrument Petting Zoo with Beacock Music beginning at 6pm!

Pack a picnic and bring your own seats to enjoy these fun and family-friendly outdoor concerts! Each of these performances will feature BRAND NEW SoundsTruck NW, the Northwest’s premier mobile concert stage.

Prelude Performances

Arrive early on Thursdays and Saturdays for free performances featuring local young musicians or the students of our Young Artist Institute.

June 24 @ 6:30pm • Kaul Auditorium with Young Artist Institute soloists

June 29 @ 6:30pm • The Reser with Young Artist Institute soloists

July 1 @ 6:30pm • Kaul Auditorium with Young Artist Institute soloists

July 6 @6:30pm • Kaul Auditorium with Young Artist Institute quartets

July 8 @ 7pm • Kaul Auditorium with Young Artist Institute quartets

July 13 @ 7pm • The Reser with Cognizart’s Young Artists Debut! Winners

July 15 @ 7pm • Kaul Auditorium

with music for piano four hands featuring Alexis Zou & Hansen Berrett

July 20 @ 7pm • The Reser with Bridging Voices

July 22 @ 7pm • Kaul Auditorium

University of Oregon & Portland-area music students

July 27 @ 7pm • The Reser

Lobby: Union Bassoon Quartet, Natalie Alexander (solo bass clarinet) & Alexis Zou (piano) • Plaza: Portland Saxophone Ensemble

July 29 @ 7pm • Kaul Auditorium with students of Hae-Jin Kim's Violin Studio

Literary Connections

To highlight our theme of Poetry in Music, we have partnered with Literary Arts to offer enriching conversations and collaborations!

Young Artist Trifecta

July 7 @ 7pm | University of Portland, Pilot House

Young poets from Literary Arts and Fear No Music’s young composers pair up to write short poetry-inspired works that CMNW’s 2023 Young Artist Institute students will workshop and premier. These will be performed as part of the YAI Final Showcase.

Poetry in Music Conversation

July 15 @ Noon | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

The Anchoress composer David Serkin Ludwig and Portland-native poet Katie Ford explore their creative partnership in music and poetry. Moderated by Alicia Jo Rabins a Portland performer, musician, singer, composer, poet, writer, and Jewish scholar.

Weekly Educational Events

Masterclasses

Mondays: June 26 – July 24 @ Noon and streaming on cmnw.org

Each Monday during the summer festival, witness our 2023 Summer Festival artists coach the next generation of musicians in our community, including many from our Young Artist Institute! Can’t attend in person? These will be available to stream following the class in our online Masterclass Library at cmnw.org

Mago Hunt Recital Hall, University of Portland

June 26 @ Noon | Paul Neubauer, viola (with YAI students)

Lincoln Recital Hall, Rm. 75, Portland State University

July 3 @ Noon | Zlatomir Fung, cello (with YAI students)

July 10 @ Noon | Alexi Kenney, violin

July 17 @ Noon | Kenari Quartet, saxophone

July 24 @ Noon | Anton Nel, piano

Lincoln Hall, Rm. 219, Portland State University

July 16 @ 10am | David Ludwig, composition (with Fear No Music Young Composer Project)

Open Rehearsals

Wednesdays, June 28 – July 26 @ 11 am | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College Go behind the scenes and observe CMNW’s world-class musicians working together to put the finishing touches on music for upcoming performances. An informal Q&A follows the rehearsal.

June 28 | FAURÉ Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 45 with Gloria Chien (piano), Benjamin Beilman (violin), Paul Neubauer (viola), and Zlatomir Fung (cello)

July 5 | BRAHMS Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 with Emerson String Quartet and David Shifrin (clarinet)

July 12 | SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 with Anthony McGill (clarinet), and Catalyst Quartet

July 19 | SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 with Third Sound Ensemble

July 26 | CHRIS ROGERSON World Premiere for Soprano & String Quartet with Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano) and Viano Quartet

Open rehearsals are sponsored by George & Debbie Olsen.

Oregonians are generators of abundance. For 50 years, we’ve helped each other thrive. From safe shelter to art supplies, we’ve stepped up when someone needed support. Leaned in when they needed help. Dug deep when they needed food. Gave back, when given the chance. And we’re getting better at doing it all more equitably. The past few years have been some of our most challenging. And what did we do?

We helped each other. We marched, fought fires, dropped off groceries — and gave. We gave more than ever before. Which tells us that in our next 50 years, Oregonians helping Oregonians, through thick and thin, will continue to lift us all. The show must go on. And it will. Cheers to you, Oregon. As your statewide community foundation, we celebrate our 50th anniversary in honor of you.

OREGONIANS HELPING OREGONIANS SINCE 1973 SUPPORT THE ARTS | GET INSPIRED OREGONCF.ORG/50

david danzmayr, music director conrad tao

gil shaham beethoven’s fifth symphony kristin chenoweth

YOUNG ARTIST INSTITUTE

Chamber Music Northwest’s Young Artist Institute

Last year, CMNW launched the Young Artist Institute (YAI), a new intensive education program for 16 talented string players from around the world, ages 14-18. This year, the Portland community will once again get to enjoy the amazing virtuosity and precociousness of these musicians around the city.

Held on the University of Portland campus, these young musicians work with YAI faculty for three weeks, and have the unique opportunity to perform in dozens of free performances—on stages, lobbies, and at pop-up engagements—as soloists and in quartets throughout the community. The students will experience tremendous growth performing both solo works and string quartets for audiences large and small.

Institute Young Artists

Julianna Bramble (18) • Viola • Wellington, Florida

Rebecca Beato (16) • Violin • New York City, New York

Fiona Huang (15) • Cello • Saratoga, California*

Serge Kalinovsky (17) • Cello • Bloomington, Indiana

Fiona Khuong-Huu (16) • Violin • New York City, New York

Christy Kim (17) • Violin • Louisville, Kentucky

Joshua Kovác (16) • Cello • Johnson City, Tennessee*

Eleanor Markey (18) • Violin • Wayland, Massachusetts*

George Ng (18) • Viola • Hong Kong, China

Jiyu Oh (17) • Violin • Seoul, South Korea*

Songyeon Oh (17) • Viola • Daejeon, South Korea

Jonathan Okseniuk (17) • Violin • Mesa, Arizona

Kaia Selden (17) • Violin • Portland, Oregon

Minje Seo (17) • Violin • Sunchang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea

Caleb Sharp (15) • Cello • Wilton, Connecticut

Elijah Zacharia (17) • Viola • Portland, Oregon

*returning YAI student

Institute Faculty

Soovin Kim • Violin, Instructor

Jessica Lee • Violin, Instructor

Hanna Lee • Viola, Instructor

Edward Arron • Cello, Instructor

Alyssa Tong • Institute Manager

Katie Danforth • Resident & Production Assistant

Paul Kim • Resident & Production Assistant

Haig Hovsepian • Production Assistant

The violinists, violists, and cellists selected for the YAI program are among the top high school string players from North America and Asia. Students in the 2023 young artist cohort have been finalists in the most distinguished competitions in the world such as the Menuhin and Sphinx Competitions, and they hail from prestigious preparatory programs at the New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Colburn Academy, Juilliard School, Korea National University of the Arts, and Portland’s own Portland Youth Philharmonic.

Hand-in-hand with the YAI program is the CMNW Collaborative Piano Fellowship featuring the talents of two exceptional graduate-level pianists. Selected from major conservatories, Yu-Ting Peng and Kyunga Lee will rehearse, perform, and learn alongside our Young Artist to refine their skills in the challenging art of collaborative performance with a soloist.

“Supporting and educating Young Artist has been at the core of our work at Music@Menlo (where Gloria was institute director), and at the New England Conservatory and Yale School of Music (where Soovin teaches),” said Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, CMNW Artistic Directors. “This Young Artist Institute is a dream come true, and we know it is going to affect the lives of the extraordinary students and the CMNW audiences. Our hope is to inspire and invigorate the love of chamber music through these bright, shining musical talents!”

Collaborative Piano Fellowship

A critical person in a young string player’s development is the pianist they collaborate with for concertos, sonatas, and other pieces that include piano. The pianist provides the string player with a sense of rhythm, harmony, and texture. We are excited to create the CMNW Collaborative Piano Fellowship that brings two of the finest graduate student pianists to rehearse and perform with the Institute string players.

Sponsored by Yoko Greeney

Collaborative Piano Fellows

Yu-Ting Peng

Piano fellow

Taoyuan, Taiwan

Kyunga Lee

Piano fellow

Suwon, South Korea

CATCH THEIR FREE PERFORMANCES!

Young Artist Institute Performances

• SOLO SHOWCASE: June 23 @ Noon | Community Music Center

• PRE-CONCERT: June 24 @ 6:30pm | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

• POP-UP DAY: June 27 from 11am-2pm | All over Portland!

• POP-UP: June 29 @ 6pm | BG Food Cartel, Beaverton, near The Reser

• PRE-CONCERT: June 29 @ 6:30pm | Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

• SOLO SHOWCASE: June 30 @ Noon | The Old Church Concert Hall

• PRE-CONCERT: July 1 @ 6:30pm | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

• POP-UP DAY: July 4* @ 11am-2pm | All over Portland!

• PRE-CONCERT: July 6 @ 6:30pm | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

• FINALE SHOWCASE: July 7 @ 7pm | Pilot House, University of Portland

• PRE-CONCERT: July 8 @ 6:30pm | Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

*Multiple pop-up performances by YAI students, citywide, at public sites all around Portland and beyond such as: Oregon Zoo, Oaks Park, Powell’s City of Books, OHSU Farmers Market, and so many more. Exact times TBA, visit cmnw.org and our social media channels for details.

Young Artist Institute Circle

We’ve created the Young Artist Institute Circle as an opportunity for people who are passionate about music education to become closely involved in providing a unique training environment that helps prepare exceptionally talented young instrumentalists for a career in music. $10,000 per year is the cost for one student’s lessons, coaching, room and board, and transportation around Portland during the three-week Institute. Together, this group can fully fund student participation in this life-changing experience—everyone is invited to this effort!

Ronni Lacroute

Greg & Betsy Hatton

Carole Alexander

Daniel H. Boyce & Lilla Cabot

Brookby Foundation

Kennett F. Burnes

David Greger

Howard Greisler & Elizabeth Hudson

James Jones & Naomi Cytron

Anne & Ernest Munch

George Rowbottom

Peter & Ann van Bever

Ravi Vedanayagam & Ursula Luckert

Slate & Davida Wilson

Anonymous Friend of CMNW

JULIANNA BRAMBLE

JOSHUA KOVÁC V

KAIA SELDEN

GEORGE NG SONGYEON OH CALEB SHARP

FIONA KHUONG-HUU

FIONA HUANG

REBECCA BEATO

CHRISTY KIM MINJE SEO ELEANOR MARKEY

JONATHAN OKSENIUK JIYU OH

ELIJAH ZACHARIA SERGE KALINOVSKY

2023 PROTÉGÉ PROJECT & 2023 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

2023 Protégé Project Artists

Chamber Music Northwest’s Protégé Project is a world-class professional residency for emerging musicians that cultivates and encourages the growth of chamber music’s rising stars. Protégé Project artists are featured in Chamber Music Northwest concerts, and present music engagements in the community.

Since its founding in 2010, Chamber Music Northwest’s Protégé Project has played a key role in launching the professional careers of dozens of America’s finest young chamber musicians including the now internationally renowned ensembles Dover Quartet, Jasper String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, and last year’s Protégé Ensemble, Viano Quartet*, was just selected for Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “The Bowers Program.”

Individual artists have earned impressive accolades since their protégé time with us, such as: violinists Benjamin Beilman*, Nikki Chooi, Bella Hristova, and Anna Lee; pianists Yekwon Sunwoo, Yevgeny Yontov, and our own Artistic Director Gloria Chien*; cellist Zlatomir Fung*; composers Andy Akiho, Gabriella Smith, Chris Rogerson*, and Alistair Coleman*; and so many others.

The 2023 Summer Festival Protégé Project artists are violinist Diana Adamyan , pianist Zitong Wang, and composer Kian Ravaei

These incredible artists will be with us for several weeks during the summer festival, look out for their involvement in several concerts.

* See these returning Protégé Project artists back this summer

The Protégé Project is made possible through a special gift from Ronni Lacroute.

2023 Artists-in-Residence

Chamber Music Northwest’s Artists-in-Residence are featured in CMNW concerts for a full year, and present many free education and community music programs throughout the region. Since 2016, these CMNW Artists-in-Residence have served our community and audiences: Emerson String Quartet, Imani Winds, Dover Quartet, Miró Quartet, Edgar Meyer, Brentano Quartet, and now Catalyst Quartet.

2023 Artists-In-Residence: Catalyst Quartet

This highly talented, mission-driven, and dynamic ensemble are CMNW’s 2023 Artists-in-Residence. Catalyst Quartet joined us for the first part of their residency in April with their “UNCOVERED: Remarkable Women Composers” concert, and many engagements throughout the community such as: Portland Public School students at Roosevelt High School, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, and Blanchet House.

During the Summer Festival, Catalyst Quartet will perform two UNCOVERED pieces July 13-17: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet with Anthony McGill, and Florence Price’s Piano Quintet in A Minor with Stewart Goodyear. They will also present the 11 short pieces they commissioned from acclaimed composers—part of their project CQ Minute—for NEW@NIGHT, on July 12. They will back in the fall with more music, and community education events!

Diana Adamyan

Kian Ravaei

Zitong Wang

FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT featuring the 2023 Protégés Friday, 7/21 @ Gresham Arts Plaza

OCT NOV

Fauré Piano Quartet | Oct 9 & 10

Classic Series

Dalí Quartet | Nov 7

Not So Classic Series

Takács Quartet | Nov 13 & 14

Classic Series

DEC JAN

Pacifica Quartet | Dec 4 & 5

Classic Series

Chanticleer | Jan 19

Vocal Arts Series

Telegraph Quartet | Jan 22 & 23

Classic Series

FEB

Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano

Christopher Cano, piano | Feb 5

Vocal Arts Series

Harlem Quartet | Feb 18

Not So Classic Series

VOCES8 | Mar 6

Vocal Arts Series

Time for Three | Mar 12

Not So Classic Series

Neave Trio | Mar 18 & 19

Classic Series

Kronos Quartet | Apr 9

Not So Classic Series

- Oregon ArtsWatch, 2022

JOIN US IN SEASON 100 SUBSCRIPTIONS ON SALE NOW!

Presenting famous favorites and brand new works performed by inspiring young musicians

Season Opener: Nov 11, 2023 | 7:30 PM with Nolan Tu, pianist, winner of the 2023 PPI Concerto Competition

Concert-at-Christmas: Dec 26, 2023 | 7:30 PM

Winter Concert: Mar 2, 2024 | 7:30 PM with Imani Winds

Spring Concert: May 5, 2024 | 4:00 PM

Season 100 Finale: May 31, 2024 | 7:30 PM

“...PERHAPS THE MOST EXCITING ORCHESTRA IN OREGON...”

CELEBRATING POETRY IN MUSIC

by Peter J. Bilotta

The first piece in our final concert last summer was the opening string sextet of Richard Strauss’s opera, Capriccio, in which a poet and composer both court a countess who is asked to decide which she prefers: music or poetry. She cannot decide because each is essential and, when paired, they are equally interdependent and magical.

It is virtually impossible to separate music and poetry, for they have been intertwined for thousands of years. In antiquity, poems were often sung. The first lyric poets in ancient Greece performed their work to the accompaniment of the lyre, and the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry, the Shijing, was a collection of songs. In Europe’s Middle Ages the popularity of troubadour poets granted them unprecedented freedom of speech and social influence during that time, and their lyrical work went on to influence European music and poetry for centuries.

“If I had my life to live over again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

– Charles Darwin

“Poetry is the seed of every song ever written. Whether it's somebody rapping or singing or it being spoken, it's a poem there.”

– J. Ivy

How and why have poetry and music flourished in such an enduring marriage for centuries? Perhaps it is because many of the greatest poems ever written—which might otherwise have been lost under stacks of paper— were immortalized by composers like Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Brahms to be sung. Their transcendent songs give birth to a plethora of new meaning when expressed in both music and words by the human voice. The combination penetrates our souls and emotions in ways that mere words or notes alone cannot express. This summer, we’ll hear poetic song cycles not only from these masters, but also the world premieres of new voices Kian Ravaei, Wang Jie, and Chris Rogerson, all of which were commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest.

It could be that artists of both art forms have endlessly inspired each other to create. T. S. Eliot was moved to write The Wasteland after hearing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry inspired not only Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, but also Maurice Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Mallarmé. From Mozart’s operas and Beethoven’s symphonies, to Emily Dickinson’s alliterative style (still used by rappers today) and 2023 Grammy Awardwinning poet J. Ivy’s hip hop-inspired spoken word, composers and poets continually feed off of each other’s creative brilliance. Festival-goers this summer will experience this interplay firsthand with The Anchoress, collaboratively created by composer David Serkin Ludwig and Oregon-born poet Katie Ford. Maybe the enduring ballet between these art forms is just because poetry and music make perfect dance partners.

Antonio Vivaldi’s immensely popular set of violin concertos celebrating the Four Seasons were originally paired with four corresponding seasonal sonnets—and they may have been written by the composer himself! Fast forward to today and we can explore this same kind of perfect pairing in Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langston, with each of the six movements preceded by the Langston Hughes poem that inspired it. The relationship between music and poetry is so strong that it has survived the ages—and continues to thrive. Today’s composers and poets draw on the forms and rhythms of different musical and spoken word traditions, from classical to jazz, rap and hip hop, to folk and country music.

“Poetry is music for the human voice.

Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, IT has not come into its own.”

– Maya Angelou

The concerts and events celebrating Poetry in Music are made possible by your contributions, alongside other Oregonians', to the Oregon Cultural Trust.

Our thanks to the incredible musicians, composers, poets, and our wonderful partners at Literary Arts, as this summer we get to experience majestic music, exquisite poetry, and the magic of Poetry in Music.

POETRY INFUSION

A summer celebration of music and poetry takes more than Chamber Music Northwest to make it a party. That is why we are thrilled to be partnering with Literary Arts, Fear No Music, and leading poets from our community to bring both the music and poetry to life!

Poetry Preludes

Throughout the summer for selected concerts that feature poetry-inspired music, we will be joined by some of Oregon's best literary artists who will begin the concert with a "Poetry Prelude." These esteemed poets will read one of their own works, selected by them to compliment the music. You will have a chance to meet them as well, and learn more about their work, after the concert.

Poetry Prelude poets include: Kim Stafford, Irene Cooper, Katie Ford, Dr. S. Renee Mitchell, Daniela Naomi Molnar, Alicia Jo Rabins. *

* see concert program page for dates

Young Artist Trifecta

Young poets from Literary Arts’ “Bold New Voices” program are collaborating with four young composers from Fear No Music's “Young Composers Project” to create new poetry-inspired chamber works. These collaborative compositions will then be workshopped and premiered by the youth musicians of our Young Artist Institute as part of their final showcase performance.

July 7 @ 7pm | Pilot House, University of Portland

Poetry in Music Conversation

We’ve also partnered with Literary Arts for an entertaining and enlightening conversation with acclaimed composer David Serkin Ludwig, award-winning poet (and Oregon-native) Katie Ford, and moderated by Portland's own dynamic writer/poet/musician/composer/ filmmaker Alicia Jo Rabins. Attend this conversation to learn about their long creative partnership, and how they create music that brings together David's music and Katie's poetry.

July 15 @ Noon | Kaul Auditorium, Gray Lounge, Reed College

GRACE MIEDZIAK Young Composer

ROHAN SRINIVASAN Young Composer

ELAINA STUPPLER Young Composer

CHARLES MARTIN Young Composer

ALEXA BUCKLEY Young Poet

STELLA INSALACO Young Poet

BELEN MENDOZA CORTES Young Poet

SEBASTIAN EVENS Young Poet

DAVID SERKIN LUDWIG

KATIE FORD

ALICIA JO RABINS

Saturday, June 24

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Co-Sponsors: Anonymous Friends of CMNW

Prelude Performance | 6:30pm Young Artist Institute

AT-HOME Sponsor: Joella Werlin

Sunday, June 25

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm

Sponsors: Friends of CMNW, in honor of Linda Magee

Opening Night: Poetry in Music

Kim Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus

MOZART (1756-1791)

Duo for Violin & Viola in B-flat Major, K. 424 • (17’)

I. Adagio - Allegro

II. Andante cantabile

III. Tema con variazioni

KIAN RAVAEI (b. 1999) BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Gulistan • (15-20’)

CMNW COMMISSION • WORLD PREMIERE

I. Part 1 (Sari Gelin/Wildwood Flower)

II. Part 2 (Saye Chaman/Seeds of Love)

Zwei Gesänge (Two Songs), Op. 91 • (12’)

I. Gestillte Sehnsucht (Stilled longing)

II. Geistliches Wiegenlied (A sacred cradle-song)

INTERMISSION

BRAHMS

Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 26 • (48’)

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Poco adagio

III. Scherzo: Poco allegro

IV. Finale: Allegro

Benjamin Beilman, violin

Hsin-Yun Huang, viola

Fleur Barron , mezzo-soprano

Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė , piano

Peter Stumpf, cello

Fleur Barron , mezzo-soprano

Hsin-Yun Huang, viola

Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė , piano

Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė , piano

Benjamin Beilman , violin

Hsin-Yun Huang, viola

Peter Stumpf, cello

Kian Ravaei’s Gulistan was commissioned through the generous support of the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Fund.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart deliberately imitated both Michael and his brother Joseph Haydn’s musical style when he wrote the Duo for Violin and Viola No. 2 in B-flat Major, K. 424 as a favor for the ailing Michael, who could not complete the set of duos he promised their mutual employer, the unsympathetic and rigid Archbishop of Salzburg. According to an early bio of Michael Haydn by one of his students, Mozart submitted this and another duo to the Archbishop under Michael’s name, a generous gesture.

Stylistically, Mozart consciously adopted Haydn’s approach in the decorative trills and grace notes of the first movement, the elegance of the Adagio cantabile, and the particular theme-and-variations format of the final movement initially developed by Joseph Haydn, and which showcases the viola’s virtuosity.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In Gulistan, I bring together traditional songs from my Western and Middle Eastern heritage. The title comes from the thirteenth-century Persian poet, Sa'di, whose monumental work, Gulistan (“flower garden” in Persian), uses flowers as a metaphor for wisdom. Folk songs may be said to represent the collective wisdom of a culture, preserving generations of values and worldviews. Inspired by Sa'di, I chose folk songs that make reference to flowers, each with different metaphorical implications.

Part 1 combines the traditional Azerbaijani song, Sari Gelin, with the American folk song, Wildwood Flower. The former describes a man helplessly longing for his distant lover, while the latter tells the story of a heartbroken woman whose lover has abandoned her. I intertwine the songs, suggesting a dialogue between two inconsolable lovers, each pining for the other.

Part 2 unites two metaphorical commentaries on the nature of love: the traditional Iranian song, Saye Chaman, and the English folk song, Seeds of Love.

I set the Iranian melody in an American folk style, and the English melody in a style evoking Iranian classical music. The melodies are often presented in counterpoint—a kind of musical metaphor for the mixture of cultures in my own life.

This work was written expressly for mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, who shares in common with me a diverse heritage comprising Eastern and Western cultures.

—© Kian Ravaei

Johannes Brahms wrote the two songs of Op. 91—more accurately chamber works for mezzo-soprano, viola, and piano—for his good friends and colleagues Joseph and Amalie Joachim. In 1863, Brahms composed the cradle song, Geistliches Wiegenlied, (Sacred Lullaby) for the Joachims to celebrate the birth of their first child. The song, based on the opening bars of the German Christmas carol Josef lieber, Josef mein, features a gentle rocking movement that continues throughout, evoking the Virgin Mary singing to the baby Jesus asleep in her arms. Twenty years later, an altogether different set of circumstances prompted Brahms to compose Gestille Sehnsucht (Stilled Longing) for the Joachims. At this time, Joseph had become convinced— wrongly—of Amalie’s infidelity. In the hope of saving their troubled marriage, Brahms wrote a love song to a text by Friedrich Rückert. The poem uses recurring nature imagery, particularly soft wind in the trees, to soothe desire. It was Brahms’s hope that the Joachims would rediscover the fond feelings from their early years together in this song; Brahms even entertained the idea that the two might perform the song together. Unfortunately, the rift proved permanent, and the Joachims eventually divorced.

In both songs, the viola provides a second interpretive voice and partners equally with the mezzo. The similar range of both viola and mezzo provide an added richness and intimacy.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Throughout his life, Johannes Brahms displayed great facility for writing lyrical, singing melodies. In his early music, Brahms’s melodies seem to spill out in an endless stream. Brahms’s youthful style spotlights his preoccupation with melody and melodic development; as he matured, Brahms pivoted towards the use of short motivic fragments, which he then developed and amplified with great creativity and variety.

The Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26 is Brahms’s longest chamber work, as well as one of the lengthiest piano quartets in the chamber music repertoire. In this expansive music, Brahms demonstrates his debt to Franz Schubert, another melodic genius.

The rhythmic back-and-forth theme of the Allegro non troppo, first stated by the piano, forms the basis of the entire movement, where the bold vigor of this short idea dominates. In the nocturnal Poco adagio, Brahms pays homage to his friend Robert Schumann with rich arpeggiated piano writing that supports the liquid expressiveness of the understated theme. In the sunny effervescent Scherzo and Trio, piano and strings vie for prominence—who plays fatter octaves? In the closing Allegro, Brahms features off-beat accents and up-tempo exclamations. The writing for strings features thick-textured octaves, and Brahms uses dynamic contrasts to highlight contrasting interludes.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Thursday, June 29

The Reser | 8pm Sponsor:

Prelude Performance | 6:30pm Young Artist Institute

AT-HOME Sponsor: Leslie Hsu & Richard Lenon

Schubert & Fauré: Masters of Lyricism

SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Selections from Schwanengesang (Swan Song), D. 957 • (22’)

II. Kriegers Ahnung (Warrior’s Foreboding)

IV. Ständchen (Serenade)

V. Aufenthalt (Resting Place)

X. Das Fischermädchen (The Fisher-Maiden)

XIII. Der Doppelgänger (The Double)

XIV. Die Taubenpost (The Pigeon Post)

Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano

Gloria Chien, piano

SCHUBERT

Fantasy for Violin & Piano in C Major, D. 934 • (26’)

Benjamin Beilman, violin

Gloria Chien, piano

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 45 • (36’)

I. Allegro molto moderato

II. Allegro molto

III. Adagio non troppo

IV. Allegro molto

Gloria Chien, piano

Benjamin Beilman, violin

Paul Neubauer, viola

Zlatomir Fung, cello

In 1828, Franz Schubert’s six-year battle with syphilis began its final lethal phase. Despite his failing health, Schubert worked tirelessly to produce much of his finest music, including the collection of songs known as Schwanengesang (Swan Song).

Schubert never thought of Schwanengesang’s 14 songs as a cycle, nor did he intend to publish them together. Nonetheless, after Schubert’s death, publisher Tobias Haslinger issued the songs in one grouping with an absurdly romantic title, hoping to capitalize on the success of Schubert’s earlier works.

In the bleaker songs, Kriegers Ahnung and Aufenthalt, the piano’s weighty chords evoke anguish and despair. Ständchen, one of Schubert’s most popular songs, uses shifting minor-tomajor harmonies to express the lover’s half-painful, half-pleasurable longing for his beloved.

Heine’s poems inspired Schubert’s greatest efforts in textural interpretation. The text of Das Fischermädchen suggests a pleasing love song, but its many key changes hint at the hopeful lover’s unresolved inner turmoil. In Der Doppelgänger, a wraith torments a lover standing outside a house in which many years earlier his beloved had lived. The lover’s tortured memories are conveyed by the stark stillness of the melody. After such anguish, Schubert ends with a delightful image of the carrier pigeon carrying messages of love in Die Taubenpost

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In December 1827, Franz Schubert composed his final work for violin and piano, the Fantasy in C Major, D. 934 . The descriptor “fantasy” can be understood as “flight of fancy,” and it allowed Schubert freer rein to provide both violinist and pianist multiple opportunities to take listeners on extraordinarily elaborate virtuosic excursions.

Structurally, D. 934 can be heard as a sonata containing four movements in contrasting tempos. In the third section, Schubert features a theme

and variations on his 1821 song, Sei mir gegrüsst (I greet you), set to a poem by Friedrich Rückert. The slowly ascending melody of the opening Andante molto also derives from the song’s primary theme, and as D. 934 progresses, we realize the melody of Sei mir gegrüsst anchors the entire work.

Both piano and violin share equally in the technical demands of the music. At times one accompanies the other; in other instances, the two instruments enter into elaborate conversations with animated dialogues. The fantastical elements of the music lie primarily in Schubert’s signature treatment of harmony as a series of fleeting excursions into distant tonalities.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Before the year 1870, chamber music was rarely heard in public performances in France. Instead, it was performed privately for the aristocracy or, after the revolution, for the bourgeois class. For the best French composers, much more exposure and profit came from working in the world of opera.

Things changed when Camille SaintSaëns founded the “Société nationale de musique” in 1871. This concert series promoted the works of young composers, taking advantage of the low cost associated with chamber music to share opportunities with new musical voices. As one such composer, Gabriel Fauré, later recalled, “before 1870 I would never have dreamed of composing a sonata or a quartet.”

Many of Fauré’s most significant chamber works date to the period of 1877-87 and premiered at the Société nationale, including his highly successful First Violin Sonata and both of his piano quartets. The Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor premiered on January 22, 1887, with Fauré himself at the piano. Very little is known about the circumstances of its composition, but Fauré must have taken the quartet seriously, since it occupied him as his primary project from 1885-1886.

This quartet displays a broad, symphonic approach, inspired by composers like

César Franck, who had premiered his Piano Quintet at the Société nationale to an enthusiastic reception in 1880. Most prominently, Fauré employs Franck’s trademark “cyclic” form, in which melodies introduced early in the piece recur in later movements.

Fauré typically avoided writing program music, or music that references ideas or stories outside of the music itself. A poignant exception occurs in the second movement of this quartet. Fauré later remembered how, when writing the movement, “without really meaning to, I recalled a peal of bells we used to hear of an evening...whenever the wind blew from the West. Their sound gives rise to a vague reverie, which, like all vague reveries, is not translatable into words. It often happens, doesn’t it, that something plunges us into thoughts that are so imprecise...Perhaps it’s a desire for something beyond what actually exists; and there music is very much at home.”

—© Ethan Allred

Saturday, July 1

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Sponsor:

Prelude Performance | 6:30pm Young Artist Institute

CMNW Presents the Oregon Bach Festival: Magnificat

TELEMANN (1681-1767) GRAUPNER (1683-1760)

Selections from Hamburger Admiralitätsmusik, TWV 24:1 • (8’)

I. Overture in D Major

II. Unschätzbarer Vorwurf erkenntlicher Sinnen!

Cantata: Aus der Tiefen rufen wir, GWV 1113/23a • (14’)

I. Aus der Tiefen rufen wir

II. Wenn Aber Kommt Einmal

III. Brunnquell der Gnaden

J. S. BACH (1685-1750)

Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, BWV 22 • (18’)

I. Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe

II. Mein Jesu, ziehe mich nach dir

III. Mein Jesu, ziehe mich, so werd ich laufen

IV. Mein alles in allem, mein ewiges Gut

V. Ertöt uns durch dein Güte

INTERMISSION

J. S. BACH

Magnificat in D Major, BWV 243 • (29’)

I. Magnificat anima mea

II. Et exultavit

III. Quia respexit

IV. Omnes generationes

V. Quia fecit mihi magna

VI. Et misericordia

VII. Fecit potentiam

VIII. Deposuit

IX. Esurientes

X. Suscepit Israel

XI. Sicut locutus est

XII. Gloria Patri

OBF Chorus

OBF Period Orchestra

Jos van Veldhoven, conductor

MaryRuth Miller, soprano

Sylvia Leith, alto

Steven Soph, tenor

Edmund Milly, bass

Rhianna Cockrell, alto

Steven Soph, tenor

Edmund Milly, bass

MaryRuth Miller, soprano

Olivia Miller, soprano

Corey Shotwell, tenor

Harrison Hintzsche, bass

In 1723, Georg Philipp Telemann was asked to compose a celebratory cantata to mark the 100th anniversary of the city of Hamburg’s Admiralty. The resulting work, Hamburger Admiralitätsmusik, was performed at an all-night gathering of city officials, naval officers, and ordinary citizens. The jubilation of the occasion is clearly reflected in the glorious, majestic sweep of the Overture, and the florid prose provided by local author and professor Michael Richey: “O all—surpassing subject! Flaming tinder for a joyous beginning! O peace of many years! May this observance be accompanied with shouts of joy; enthuse our words, inspire our strings, lift up our voices, quicken our hands!”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

places, alternate with solo sections. Harmonically, Graupner’s setting features specifically modal rather than tonal moments, as in the setting of the word “Tiefen,” that recall earlier music.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Johann Sebastian Bach submitted Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe as one of his two audition cantatas for the post of Kantor in Leipzig; it was written to be performed on the final Sunday before Lent. The text describes Jesus summoning his disciples for the fateful journey to Jerusalem, while the disciples, unaware of the coming events, faithfully follow Jesus onward. The tone of the music moves from one of prophetic sorrow to a redemptive joy, as Christians rejoice in the certainty of salvation.

sections so it could be used throughout the church year, and lowering the key to D Major, a more trumpet-friendly key.

The Magnificat showcases Bach’s unparalleled ability to write spiritually uplifting music that can also create an experience of sacred intimacy. The expansive musical forces include a five-part choir, five vocal soloists, and a substantial orchestra with three trumpets, pairs of flutes and oboes, continuo, and strings. Trumpets herald the joyful news sung by the chorus: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Bach uses the chorus for the declarative extroverted sections, like Omnes gentes (All people), and scores the more introspective texts for solos and duets.

Fun Fact!

Graupner was a humble Lutheran, and would not allow his portrait to be painted.

Fate played a dirty trick on Christoph Graupner. In 1723, he applied for and was awarded the position of Cantor in Leipzig, but Graupner’s patron, Landgrave Ernst Ludwig, refused to release the talented composer from the remainder of his contract. A contemporary of Graupner’s, one J. S. Bach, took the job in Leipzig instead.

Best known for his 1,450 surviving cantatas, Graupner composed approximately 2,000 works in virtually every genre, including operas, religious works, and a large body of instrumental music. Graupner’s music was well regarded by his contemporaries, including Bach and Telemann, but after his death his music languished in obscurity, due in large part to a legal dispute regarding ownership of his manuscripts. Beginning in the 1920s, scholars and historians began researching and rediscovering this overlooked Baroque master.

Graupner’s cantata Aus der tiefen rufen wir (Out of the Deep We Call to Thee) served as his audition piece for the Leipzig cantor’s position, and it was first presented there on the second Sunday after Epiphany in 1723. Expansive choral passages, enhanced by brass in some

The music includes the standard elements of a Bach cantata: choruses, solos, chorale settings, virtuoso instrumental writing, and careful attention to presenting the texts so that the meaning of the words is amplified, rather than obscured, by the music.

In 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach secured a position as Kantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig; he remained in that post until his death in 1750. Leipzig’s considerable musical resources and the busy church calendar afforded Bach the opportunity to compose his greatest choral works, including both the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in B Minor, the Christmas Oratorio, more than 250 church cantatas, and the Magnificat.

The Magnificat is part of the Vesper service, and takes its text from the Gospel of Luke. After Mary is informed by the Angel Gabriel that she will bear the Son of God, she declares, “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Aside from the words of the Mass itself, the Magnificat has been set to music more often than any other liturgical text.

Bach wrote his Magnificat for the 1723 Christmas Vespers service. The original version, in the key of E-flat major, included Christmas-specific texts as well as the standard Magnificat liturgy. About ten years later, Bach revised the Magnificat, removing the Christmas

Bach indulged his penchant for text painting in several places: for example, the soprano soloist’s rising arpeggio on the words Et exultavit (Rejoicing), and the agitated downward spiral of the tenor soloist’s Deposuit (He has Put Down). In the closing verse, “Sicut erat in principio…Amen” (As it was in the beginning), Bach sets the text to the same music as the opening Magnificat anima mea, a musical pun for the attentive listener.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Sunday, July 2

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm Sponsor: Rick Caskey, in honor of Sue Horn Caskey

Voices of Schumann, Schubert & Brahms

Monday, July 3

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Sponsors: Bill & Diana Dameron

R. SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures), Op. 113 • (16’)

I. Nicht schnell

II. Lebhaft

III. Rasch

IV. Langsam, mit melancholischen Ausdruck

Paul Neubauer, viola

Jeewon Park , piano

WILLIAM BOLCOM (b. 1938) SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Let Evening Come (1994) • (15’)

I. Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, & Mayfield

II. ‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so

III. Interlude

IV. Let Evening Come

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock), D. 965 • (12’)

INTERMISSION

Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 • (25’)

I. Allegro

II. Adagio

III. Andantino grazioso

IV. Allegro

Susanna Phillips , soprano

Paul Neubauer, viola

Jeewon Park , piano

Susanna Phillips, soprano

David Shifrin, clarinet

Jeewon Park, piano

David Shifrin, clarinet

Zlatomir Fung, cello

Zitong Wang, piano

Over the course of his life, Robert Schumann experienced several periods of heightened creative productivity, during which he wrote music with amazing speed. Schumann’s final creative burst began in 1850 and spilled over into 1851, coinciding with his move to Düsseldorf to conduct the Düsseldorf Music Society. In a matter of months Schumann wrote his Rhenish Symphony, the Cello Concerto, and several chamber works, including the Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) for Viola and Piano, Op. 113.

Op. 113 is a series of miniatures for viola and piano played without pause; each features different tonalities and moods. The restless melancholy of the opening Nicht schnell (Not Fast) features a dialogue between the two instruments. Lebhaft (Lively) offers a cheerful contrast to the first movement, which Rasch (Quickly) amplifies with its galloping triplets in the viola. A brief calm interlude offers breathing space before both viola and piano resume their race. The final Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck (Slow, with Melancholy Expression) features the viola’s resonant tone singing a calm, serene lullaby.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In 1993, William Bolcom was asked to write a duet for mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos and soprano Benita Valente; at the time, both singers were major stars with the Metropolitan Opera. “We discussed possible texts, and then very unexpectedly Tatiana died, a blow to all of us,” Bolcom recalled. “I was then approached by the sponsors of the commission: Would I write a duo anyway, with… [soprano, piano, and viola], the violist in some way representing the departed Tatiana? The present cantata is the result.”

Let Evening Come features three contrasting poems by Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Kenyon; each text grapples with the impact of death on the living.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

One month before his death, Franz Schubert completed Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, one of his last two songs, to fulfill a request from Berlin opera diva, Anna Milder-Hauptman, for a concert aria. Today, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is a popular showpiece for sopranos and clarinetists alike; it requires the utmost virtuosity from both musicians, along with a wellsupported tone to properly execute Schubert’s lyrical phrases.

For the text, Schubert turned to a familiar poet, Wilhelm Müller, whose poems he had used in the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. Schubert combined Müller’s words with a poem by Wilhelmine von Chézy; in 1823, Schubert provided incidental music for her play Rosamunde

The themes of Der Hirt auf dem Felsen ecstatic paeans to nature, beautiful landscapes, absent lovers longing for one another—were familiar territory for Schubert. Rather than write a typical lied for voice and piano, Schubert added a solo clarinet to the mix. The inclusion of the clarinet created a dialogue between singer and instrumentalist, and allowed Schubert to more fully explore the deeper emotions of the middle section.

The song begins with a shepherd perched high on a mountain singing to his lover below; the clarinet echoes back up the slope. The second section, in a melancholy minor tonality, expresses sorrow and uncertainty about the future, but joyful enthusiasm abounds in the final section, a celebration of spring’s awakening.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In December 1890, in failing health and grappling with writer’s block, Johannes Brahms sent his publisher a quintet for viola, which he intended as his final opus.

Brahms wrote, “With this letter you can bid farewell to my music because it is certainly time to leave off...” A few months later, Brahms visited the court of Meiningen, where he met the court orchestra’s Principal Clarinet, Richard Mühlfeld. Intrigued by both the clarinet and Mühlfeld’s virtuosity, Brahms was newly inspired, abandoning his “retirement” to write a trio, quintet, and two sonatas for clarinet.

The overall mood of the Trio for Piano, Clarinet, and Cello in A Minor, Op. 114 is deeply autumnal. Brahms’s enthusiasm for the clarinet notwithstanding, he was still aging and physically unwell. The opening Allegro deftly employs the dusky, covered quality of the clarinet’s chalumeau register, and the overall mood is one of deep weariness. The Adagio suggests retrospection, even a kind of resignation. Here the clarinet is Brahms’s own voice, which carries into the Andantino grazioso. The clarinet introduces the graceful primary theme, which the other instruments explore and elaborate; Brahms also inserts fragments of Viennese waltzes in the trio section. The closing Allegro returns us unequivocally to A minor and the tempestuous Romantic passion typical of Brahms’s earlier music.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Photography by Brian Simcoe

Wednesday, July 5

Alberta Rose Theatre | 8pm

NEW@NIGHT: Tri-Angles

HAN LASH (b. 1981)

R. MURRAY SCHAFER (1933-2021)

VALERIE COLEMAN (b. 1971)

umama womama

Valerie Coleman, flute

Jessica Lee, violin

Hanna Lee, viola

Edward Arron, cello

Valerie Coleman, flute

Jessica Lee, violin

Edward Arron, cello

Three Shades Without Angles is a piece that plays with the idea of transformation of musical shapes. All material in the piece is derived from a single idea or motive whose shape changes as the piece unfolds. This motive is tightly coiled in the beginning of the piece, disposed in closely related and concentrated iterations in the three instruments. At the midpoint of the piece, the material relaxes and is disposed melodically in the flute and viola, while the harp lays a harmonic groundwork that has also been informed by the intervallic shapes of the horizontal motive pervading the entire piece. Although the texture that began the piece returns, the unfurling that happened at the piece’s center never retracts, but rather we hear spaciousness, melodiousness within a busy musical texture. The harp’s figuration slows at the end of the piece, and the harp and viola sustain their final pitches, an A-flat and a G.

When writing this piece, I was inspired by Rodin’s sculpture The Three Shades, a detail sitting atop the sculptor’s work, The Gates of Hell, depicting a scene from Dante’s The Inferno. Although my music is not representative or depictive of Dante or an image of hell, I was deeply drawn to the sinewy character of Rodin’s work, its intensity, muscularity, consistency, and the way in which movement and energy are represented in his shapes.

—© Han Lash

R. Murray Schafer, widely regarded as Canada’s foremost living composer until his death two years ago, was a groundbreaking, eclectic, and prolific creative voice. Schafer wrote in numerous genres, including his many works for chamber string ensembles.

In 2006, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music commissioned Schafer to write a String Trio. In his own program notes, Schafer wrote, “While a trio may seem to be a more balanced ensemble than the top-heavy string quartet, it has never proved to be as popular. In fact, there is something unsettling about a trio, like a marriage plus one—a triad of tensions— or at least that is the way I found myself thinking about it when I began to write the piece. Everything moves smoothly at the beginning…but after a few bars the mood becomes more agitated. It is this mood, aside from a few quiet intervals, that is sustained through most of this single movement work. The climax is reached with a powerful descending scale in the cello…followed by a surprising modulation into a Gustav Mahler adagio. This leads back to the gentle opening theme to bring the work to a peaceful close.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Maombi Asante

Valerie Coleman refers to this piece as A Prayer of Thanksgiving. It was commissioned by Blackledge Music, Inc.

—© Valerie Coleman

Thursday, July 6

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Co-Sponsors:

Joseph Anthony & Heidi Yorkshire

Ellen Macke & Howard Pifer

Prelude Performance | 6:30pm Young Artist Institute

Celebrating the Emerson Quartet with David Shifrin

Emerson String Quartet

Eugene Drucker, violin I

(b. 1973)

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)

String Quartet No. 2, Sz. 67 • (27’)

I. Moderato

II. Allegro molto capriccioso

III. Lento

Philip Setzer, violin II

Lawrence Dutton, viola

Paul Watkins, cello

Emerson String Quartet

Philip Setzer, violin I

Eugene Drucker, violin II

Lawrence Dutton, viola

Paul Watkins, cello

BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 • (37’)

I. Allegro

II. Adagio

III. Andantino

IV. Con moto

David Shifrin, clarinet

Emerson String Quartet

Philip Setzer, violin I

Eugene Drucker, violin II

Lawrence Dutton, viola

Paul Watkins, cello

Drink the Wild Ayre is my second string quartet. I wrote my first over twenty years ago while poring over recordings by the Emerson String Quartet. At that time, I was new to composition and bought every CD of theirs I could find, obsessively studying counterpoint and voiceleading via their recordings. Their performances became my benchmark for the masterpieces they recorded; their sounds became synonymous, in my mind, with the composer’s intent. For me, theirs was the definitive interpretation of all the great string quartets in history. So, when the invitation to write this piece came in—the Emerson’s final commission, to be performed during this, their final season—I nearly fell off my chair. I am still awestruck and humbled to have written this piece for some of my earliest heroes.

The title is a playful nod to one of the most famous quotes by their transcendentalist namesake, essayist/ philosopher/poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity.” An ayre is a song-like, lyrical piece. The title seemed an apt reference not only to the lilting, asymmetrical rhythms of the music’s melodic narrative but also to the questing spirit, sense of adventure, and full-hearted passion with which the Emersons have thrown themselves into everything they have done for the past 47 years. Here’s to the singular magic of these artistic giants and the new adventures that await them.

—© Sarah Kirkland Snider

“The question is, what are the ways in which peasant [folk] music is taken over and becomes transmuted into modern music?” asked

Béla Bartók in 1920. He provided three answers: arrange existing folk melodies, or write original melodies using folk idioms. “There is yet a third way in which the influence of peasant music can be traced in a composer’s work,” Bartók continued. “Neither peasant melodies nor imitations of

peasant melodies can be found in his music, but it is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music.”

Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 , which he composed between 1915-17, as WWI raged across Europe, epitomizes the third solution. The war curtailed Bartók’s ethnomusicological field work, which he had pursued, along with his good friend and colleague, Zoltán Kodály, for the better part of the previous decade. Instead, Bartók organized the material he had already collected. The second string quartet, one of only two original works Bartók wrote during these years, reflects the synthesis of folk idioms into contemporary concert hall language. Each of its three movements feature concentrated distillations of the raw vibrancy Bartók found in folk music, transmuted into classical forms.

Kodály described the three movements as “1. A quiet life. 2. Joy. 3. Sorrow.” He continued, “What emerges from the successive movements is not a series of different moods, but the continual evolution of a single, coherent, spiritual process. The impression conveyed by the work as a whole, though it is from the musical point of view formally perfect, is that of a spontaneous experience.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Johannes Brahms had retired from composing by the time he heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, but was so inspired by his playing that he came out of retirement expressly to write for the clarinet. The resulting chamber music includes the Clarinet Trio, two Clarinet Sonatas, and the poignant Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 , all some of his final, most mature works. Written as they were in the twilight of Brahms’s life, these works have a reflective quality, highly emotional, but experienced from the remove of memory.

The Clarinet Quintet seems to straddle two opposing sides of a coin. The conspicuous lack of tonic in the violins’ opening gesture creates a momentary ambiguity between B minor and D major, an early herald of the duality that will

outline the work’s affective trajectory. The three-note motive that the clarinet sings in the Adagio is the same that forms the pillars of the movement’s rhapsodic middle section. The third movement is similarly constructed on two contrasting sections—a melancholic scherzo in B minor between the pastoral spaciousness of the D major Andantino areas—both mosaicked with the same two motives. Even the fourth movement sources its opening material from the Andantino, but this time the turbulent B minor casts a shadow of malaise on the sunny repose that ended the third movement. The final variation’s collision with reprised music from the first movement signifies a sort of communion, a coming full circle that seems to acknowledge this material as the bookends of a unified story. The realization of this goal allows the piece to finally come to rest, but not before the final upset of the forte penultimate chord: Brahms’s harrowing last gasp right as the curtain falls.

—©

Graeme Steele Johnson

Saturday, July 8

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Co-Sponsors:

Anne & Ernie Munch

Barbara & Bill Langley

Prelude Performance | 6:30pm

Young Artist Institute

Emerson Quartet Farewell with Gloria Chien

String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 • (39')

I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo

II. Allegro molto vivace

III. Allegro moderato

IV. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile

V. Presto

VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante

VII. Allegro

INTERMISSION

R. SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 • (33')

I. Allegro brillante

II. In modo d'una marcia

III. Scherzo: Molto vivace

IV. Allegro ma non troppo

Emerson String Quartet

Philip Setzer, violin I

Eugene Drucker, violin II

Lawrence Dutton, viola

Paul Watkins, cello

Gloria Chien, piano

Emerson String Quartet

Eugene Drucker, violin I

Philip Setzer, violin II

Lawrence Dutton, viola

Paul Watkins, cello

Audience members are invited to join us for a special farewell celebration in the lobby following the concert.

This program is made possible, in part, by a grant from the E. Nakamichi Foundation.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 dates to 182526. Like all of his late quartets, Opus 131 pushes the string quartet’s boundaries to previously unimaginable places. It is officially in seven movements, but it might be more constructive to consider it as a single vast movement, as there is no true break between them.

Beethoven’s publisher had asked him to send an “original” work, and so Beethoven included the comment “Assembled together with pilferings from one thing and another” with his completed score. The publisher didn’t get the joke, and Beethoven had to assure him that it was indeed an original work. And original it is.

The opening Adagio is an austere but expressive fugue reflecting Beethoven’s intensive study of Johann Sebastian Bach’s counterpoint. Beethoven pushes the boundaries of tonality, taking the listed key of C-sharp minor only as a brief starting point and transitioning subtly but frequently through related and unrelated key areas.

The Allegro molto vivace is a dance movement with a light, folklike theme that seems to constantly ascend.

The severe third movement emulates recitative and allows for a transition in key and character to the graceful theme of the fourth movement theme and variations. By this point, Beethoven’s theme and variations were integrated, unpredictable, and wideranging, building out in all directions from the original theme in often idiosyncratic ways.

The fifth movement, Presto, breaks out from a sudden staccato cello motif based around an E major triad. Scherzo -like in character but in duple meter, the flow is often interrupted.

The minor-mode sixth movement provides a solemn transition to the sonata form seventh movement, Allegro, back in C-sharp minor. The abrupt, angular first theme fades into a more lyrical second theme that seems to descend into the earth. In a vast development of the themes, the two ideas trade back and forth at a rapidfire pace, with other unrelated ideas occasionally finding their way in.

—© Ethan Allred

In its time, Robert Schumann proposed an idea that seems obvious—combining the piano and the string quartet—but had never been tried. In the space of only a few weeks, Schumann wrote a legendary and unprecedented piece of music that influenced countless followers, including Brahms and Dvořák.

Schumann dedicated the quintet to its intended pianist, his wife Clara, and the piano is central to this work. Clara did not play in the first performance, however, as she fell ill and their friend Felix Mendelssohn stepped in at the last minute.

The Allegro brillante begins dramatically, with a chordal theme sounding like Mozart. The development is very dark, foreshadowing the second movement’s funeral march and eventually arriving at a minor-mode version of the first theme.

The second movement begins as a halting funeral march, departing from choppy phrases only briefly for legato piano lines. A carefully restrained cello and violin duet follows, over a blurry, arpeggiated accompaniment. After a return to the march, an agitated section pits staccato arpeggios in the piano against sharp chords in the strings. A violin tremolo adds to the agitation, before the violin and cello duet returns and the movement closes with a final funeral march.

The third movement, Scherzo, uses incessant scales to maintain its constant energy, transitioning into a trio that uses several arpeggios (and a canon between violin and viola) to subtly move between key areas. After a return to the Scherzo, the furious second trio repeats a short motive in different ranges, instruments, and pitches, before closing with the Scherzo once more.

The fourth movement, Allegro ma non troppo, begins with an accented theme in the piano. Typically for Schumann, he moves suddenly between different sections, allowing for striking juxtapositions. He closes the Quintet by bringing back the first movement’s main theme (described as Mozartean above) in a double fugue with the main theme of the last movement. Schumann connects the themes skillfully, bringing the tone of the two movements together and meeting somewhere in the middle.

—© Ethan Allred

Sunday, July 9

Monday, July 10

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Sponsor:

umama womama: Coleman, Lash & Ngwenyama

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm Sponsor: ZOLTÁN KODÁLY (1882-1967)

Serenade for Two Violins & Viola, Op. 12 • (20’)

I. Allegramente

II. Lento ma non troppo

III. Vivo

umama womama

NOKUTHULA NGWENYAMA (b. 1976)

HAN LASH (b. 1981)

VALERIE COLEMAN (b. 1971)

R. MURRAY SCHAFER (1933-2021) SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)

Three Pieces for Flute, Viola & Harp (2022) • (18')

CMNW CO-COMMISSION • WEST COAST PREMIERE

Down

Alexi Kenney, violin I

Jessica Lee, violin II

Hanna Lee, viola

umama womama

Valerie Coleman, flute

Nokuthula Ngwenyama, viola Han Lash, harp

Music in Cold Aja

INTERMISSION

Trio for Flute, Viola & Harp (2010) • (15')

I. Freely Flowing

II. Slowly, Calmly

III. Rhythmic

Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36 • (21')

I. Allegro agitato

II. Non allegro—Lento

III. Allegro molto

umama womama

Valerie Coleman, flute

Nokuthula Ngwenyama, viola Han Lash, harp

Zitong Wang, piano

umama womama’s Three Pieces for Flute, Viola & Harp was commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, with the generous support of Carl and Margery Post Abbott. This work is co-commissioned with Phoenix Chamber Music Society and Clarion Concerts.

In 1905-06, Zoltán Kodály traveled to the far corners of Hungary collecting and recording folk music. During this time, Kodály became acquainted with Béla Bartók and taught Bartók his methods for collecting and preserving their country’s indigenous music. This ethnomusicological work impacted each man’s music: Bartók tended to write original folk-inflected music, while Kodály typically combined a mixture of preexisting folk tunes.

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved after WWI, Hungary emerged as an independent country riven by governmental upheaval. In the ensuing harsh political climate, Kodály was denounced as a Bolshevist and his music was banned from public performance from 1921-23. The Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 12 is the only work he wrote during this time.

In 1921, Bartók, attempting to restore Kodály’s reputation, wrote a glowing review of Op. 12: “This composition, in spite of its unusual chord combinations and surprising originality, is firmly based on tonality…the choice of instruments and the superb richness of instrumental effects achieved despite the economy of the work merit great attention in themselves…It reveals a personality with something entirely new to say and one who is capable of communicating this content in a masterful and concentrated fashion. The work is extraordinarily rich in melodies.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Three Pieces for Flute, Viola, and Harp is a collaborative work made possible by a joint commission between Chamber Music Northwest, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, and Clarion Concerts.

It was created by the members of umama womama to commemorate the debut of their ensemble. Each movement was created by a different member of the ensemble as short pieces that stand alone, reflecting the experiences and interests of the artists as creators in both music and motherhood.

The first movement, Down, explores a sense of foreboding through downward melodic and harmonic motion. Written before and during the pandemic, it also inserts protein sequences of the SARSCoV-2 sequences (CGA and U with U being wild) and variant gestures like P1 as unisons (Gamma) and B 1.1.529 (Omicron). Being “down” with a situation means accepting and being okay with it. Down gives us an opportunity to go into deeper sounds and discover that what goes down inevitably goes up.

—© Nokuthula Ngwenyama

Music in Cold feels prescient in some ways—I wrote it before the pandemic, and on some level I must have been anticipating the iciness of isolation into which we were all plunged about two or three months after I drew the double bar. It features each instrument as its own entity and yet perhaps mostly the blend of the three, their mixture of timbres creating a new instrument.

—© Han Lash

The final movement, Aja, is inspired by the Orisha goddess of the same name who is known as the Orisha of woodlands, healing, herbs, and animals. Through verdant textures and sounds of the forest, the work weaves a portrait in virtuosity to highlight the members of the ensemble while warm melodies in both viola and flute depict the nurturing of motherhood within the forest’s fauna. The arpeggiated and rhythmic sounds of kalimba (thumb piano) are between the instruments, invoking a dance to celebrate life.

—© Valerie Coleman

Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp set the standard by which all subsequent works written for that instrumental configuration are measured. R. Murray Schafer’s Trio for Flute, Viola, and Harp, commissioned in 2010 by Trio Verlaine, deliberately complements Debussy’s Sonata. To achieve this, Schafer abandoned his usual atmospheric soundscapes in favor of music in which melodies— tuneful, engaging melodies at that— predominate. Each movement’s title aptly describes its particular sound: fluid, lissome cascades of highly coloristic melodies; the “hymnlike,” reverent quality of the second movement, a refuge or sanctuary; and the irresistible dancing energy of the finale.

In 1913, while vacationing in Rome, Sergei Rachmaninoff began writing two works: a massive choral symphony based on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells, and the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 36

Within its three movements, Op. 36 is highly cohesive, thanks to Rachmaninoff’s use of recurring and related themes. Poe’s bells ring throughout, and crashing chords evoke the massive sound of Russian Orthodox church bells. The second movement suggests the languid, harmonically rich sound of French piano music, particularly that of Erik Satie. Here Rachmaninoff ventures briefly into jazz with a series of bluesy harmonies.

In 1931, Rachmaninoff decided to revise Op. 36. “I look at my early works and see how much superfluous material is there,” he said. “Even in this Sonata, too many voices are moving simultaneously, and it is too long. Chopin’s sonata lasts 19 minutes and all is said.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Tuesday, July 11

Lincoln Recital Hall | 12pm

SPOTLIGHT RECITAL: Alexi Kenney & Soovin Kim

J. S. BACH (1685-1750)

Violin & Keyboard Sonata in E Major, BWV 1016 • (20’)

I. Adagio

II. Allegro

III. Adagio ma non tanto

IV. Allegro

Alexi Kenney, violin

Zitong Wang , piano

SALINA FISHER (b. 1993)

EUGÈNE YSAYE (1858-1931)

Hikari (2023) • (7’)

Sonata for Two Violins, IEY. 20 (1915) • (30’)

I. Poco lento, maestoso: Allegro fermo

II. Allegretto poco lento

III. Allegro vivo e con fuoco

Alexi Kenney, violin

Soovin Kim, violin

Alexi Kenney, violin

During the lifetime of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the trio sonata was one of the most important multi-movement chamber music forms.

Trio sonatas typically included two melodic instruments and a continuo, or the instrument(s) that would provide the harmonic and rhythmic backbone in Baroque music. Despite their name, trio sonatas were generally performed by four musicians, for instance two violinists, a harpsichordist, and a cellist.

Although Bach did write some trio sonatas, he generally preferred to write sonatas for only one melodic instrument and continuo. Rather than including the second melodic instrument, he preferred to notate a full melodic line for the keyboardist to play with their right hand above the rhythmic and harmonic bass line provided by their left hand. By doing so, Bach helped elevate the importance of the keyboard from the background to the foreground and arguably created the template for instrumental sonata composers ever since.

Bach structured his Sonata for Violin & Keyboard in E Major, BWV 1016, in an old-fashioned Italian style known as the “sonata de chiesa,” or church sonata. Church sonatas typically consisted of four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. In this sonata’s opening Adagio, the violin offers the primary melodic material, while the keyboard provides the bass line as well as a gently flowing treble countermelody. In the second movement, the keyboard introduces a dancelike theme, soon imitated by the violin then repeated in three-part dialogue between the violin, keyboard right hand, and keyboard left hand. The third movement, Adagio ma non troppo, is a mesmerizing duet that unfolds slowly into a series of elegant exchanges between violin and keyboard right hand. Bach ends the sonata with a jubilant Allegro dance, showcasing the virtuosity of violinist and keyboardist alike in an ecstatic yet carefully-crafted finale.

—© Ethan Allred

Hikari, by Salina Fisher, was commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust on behalf of Alexi Kenney. Salina Fisher writes: “‘Hikari,’ meaning light, brightness, or radiance, leans into the violin’s natural resonance and brilliance. Its musical language integrates the instrument’s expressive warmth and lyricism with more transparent timbres, in a constant search for light. The featured open string-crossing is an homage to Bach’s Chaconne, a work that is both central to this recital and to my own relationship with the violin.”

—© Princeton University Concerts

A contemporary of Claude Debussy and César Franck, Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) arguably made just as great an impact on European music history as those better-known composers. Born into a family of artisans and musicians, Ysaÿe studied in Liège and Brussels before heading to Paris, where he studied with fellow Belgian composer/violinist Henry Vieuxtemps. By the 1880s, Ysaÿe had established his reputation as a top violin virtuoso, cited especially for his expressiveness and extensive use of vibrato. Highly respected by his peers, he gave the world premieres of many masterworks, including Franck’s Violin Sonata (1886) and Debussy’s String Quartet (1893). Ysaÿe also played a role in the development of musical culture in the United States, first touring the country in 1894 and serving as conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1918-22.

Ysaÿe’s 1915 Sonata for Two Violins exists at the pinnacle of the repertoire for unaccompanied violin duet. He dedicated the sonata to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, who also happened to be his student. The Queen was a skilled musician, though we do not know whether she ever performed the duet with her teacher. The sonata combines the soundscape of Ysaÿe’s musical environment—that is, the

impressionism of Debussy and late Romanticism of Franck—with his own intimate knowledge of violin technique. Incredibly dense in its texture, the sonata often sounds more like a trio or quartet than a duet, owing to Ysaÿe’s use of double stops, arpeggios, and other imaginative compositional methods.

—© Ethan Allred

Classical Music Festivals of the West 2023

CALIFORNIA

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music cabrillomusic.org

Santa Cruz, CA

July 30-August 13

Carmel Bach Festival bachfestival.org

Carmel, CA

July 15-29

La Jolla Music Society SummerFest

TheConrad.org

La Jolla, CA

July 28-August 26

Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festival

mainlymozart.org

San Diego, CA

June 15-24

Music@Menlo musicatmenlo.org

Atherton, CA

July 14-August 5

COLORADO

Aspen Music Festival and School

aspenmusicfestival.com

Aspen, CO

June 29-August 20

Bravo! Vail Music Festival bravovail.org

Vail, CO

June 22-August 3

Colorado Music Festival

coloradomusicfestival.org

Boulder, CO

June 29-August 6

Strings Music Festival stringsmusicfestival.com

Steamboat Springs, CO

June 24-August 23

IDAHO

Sun Valley Music Festival

svmusicfestival.org

Sun Valley, ID

July 30-August 24

NEW MEXICO

Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

santafechambermusic.org

Santa Fe, NM

July 16-August 21

OREGON

Chamber Music

Northwest Summer Festival cmnw.org

Portland, OR

June 24-July 29

Oregon Bach Festival

oregonbachfestival.org

Eugene, OR

June 30-July 16

WASHINGTON

Seattle Chamber Music Society

Summer Festival

seattlechambermusic.org

Seattle, WA

July 3-29

WYOMING

Grand Teton Music Festival gtmf.org

Jackson, WY

June 30-August 19

Photo: Jenna Poppe

Photo: Chris Lee

Photo: Tomas Cohen

Photo: Daniel Kelley

Photo: Steven Ovitsky

Photo: Lovethearts

Photo: Tom Emerson

By Octavio Solis

William Shakespeare

Book & Lyrics by Gerome Ragni & James Rado Music by Galt MacDermot

Wednesday, July 12

The Armory | 6pm

Sponsor: Marilyn Crilley & George Rowbottom

NEW@NIGHT: McGill, Goodyear & Catalyst

I premiered my piano sonata, composed when I was 18, at my graduation piano recital at the Curtis Institute of Music. As my Callaloo suite for piano and orchestra was composed in response to my first Carnival, the piano sonata was inspired by my high school prom and the music of my age group. As this was a teenage work, my youthful exuberance also wanted to pull out all the stops and create the most difficult piano work ever composed. This sonata is therefore a combination of piano virtuosity, a paean to the sonata form, and the popular music I heard in 1996. The first movement, sonata-allegro, combines tonality and atonality, 12-tone techniques, and techno music. The slow second movement is another ballad, this time inspired by the smooth pop music I heard while slow-dancing with my date. The third movement, Rondo, is a celebration of Toronto, and incorporates rock, Canadian folk song, Indian singing, and Latin-infused music.

James Lee III was born in Michigan in 1975. His major composition teachers include William Bolcom, Susan Botti, and James Aikman. He was a composition fellow at Tanglewood Music Center in the summer of 2002, where he studied with Osvaldo Golijov and Kaija Saariaho. Mr. Lee’s works have been performed by orchestras including The National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Lee, who earned a DMA in composition at the University of Michigan in 2005, is a Professor of Music at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

This beautiful composition, Ad Anah? means “How Long?” It is based on a Hebrew prayer, and in the words of Anthony McGill before a recent performance, this short song reflects “... what we’re going through in this time... the struggle.”

—© Friends of Chamber Music, Denver

A recent work from 2011, The Blue Bag was composed for no less a light in the clarinet world than Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinet of the New York Philharmonic. Says Hailstork, "In the back of my mind, I carried the images and musicmaking of four classysassy ladies of song: Nancy Wilson, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin."

The Catalyst Quartet believes that art can thrive in the digital age, and be a continued source of inspiration and innovation. In commemoration of our 10th anniversary we commissioned nine diverse composers and held a national competition focused on promoting new and emerging talent. The submissions were so good that we picked two winners, in the spirit of looking ahead. These pieces exist both as stand-alone compositions and as a collective, and will be featured as 10 individually unique music videos comprising one video album—better representing the way most people experience music today. The CQ Minute collection is presented in a full-length program that celebrates the String Quartet and the journey of our first decade together, and features the works of Papa Haydn, Terry Riley, Anton Webern, and John Cage.

—© Catalyst Quartet

—© Stewart Goodyear

—© Adolphus Hailstork

Thursday, July 13

The Reser | 8pm Sponsor: Anonymous Friends of CMNW

Prelude Performance | 7pm Cognizart’s Young Artist Debut! Winners

UNCOVERED Voices

BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Saturday, July 15

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Sponsor: Karen & Cliff Deveney

Prelude Performance | 7pm Music for piano four hands with Alexis Zou & Hansen Berrett

STEWART GOODYEAR (b. 1978)

Clarinet Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 • (24’)

I. Allegro appassionato

II. Andante un poco adagio

III. Allegretto grazioso

IV. Vivace

The Torment of Marsyas (2023) • (20’) CMNW COMMISSION • WORLD PREMIERE

INTERMISSION

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)

Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 • (34’)

I. Allegro energico

II. Larghetto affettuoso

III. Scherzo: Allegro leggiero

IV. Finale: Allegro agitato

Anthony McGill, clarinet

Gloria Chien, piano

Amelia Lukas, flute Stewart Goodyear, piano

Anthony McGill , clarinet Catalyst Quartet

Karla Donehew Perez , violin

Abi Fayette, violin

Paul Laraia, viola

Karlos Rodriguez, cello

Stewart Goodyear’s The Torment of Marsyas was commissioned with the generous support of the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Fund.

In the winter of 1891, Johannes Brahms was on the verge of retiring from composition. He was unwell, depressed, and suffering from writer’s block. A visit to the court of Meiningen a few months later changed everything; there Brahms met virtuoso clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, who played in the court orchestra. Mühlfeld’s artistry, and the rich expressive sound of the clarinet itself, reanimated Brahms, who went on to compose several significant chamber works, all featuring the clarinet.

In 1894, Brahms once again reached a low creative point, and once again Mühlfeld and his clarinet came to Brahms’s rescue. While vacationing in Bad Ischl that summer, Brahms composed the two clarinet sonatas of Op. 120. Biographer Karl Geiringer wrote of the “wonderful exploitation of the possibilities of the clarinet, especially in the effective change from the higher to the lower registers…a tender melancholy…and a splendid perfection of form in all the movements.”

The Clarinet Sonata in F Minor’s four movements contrast the introspection and wistfulness of the first two movements with exuberance and lighthearted whimsy in the final two; by the closing Vivace the mood is so transformed as to end in a sunny F major rather than the brooding echoes of the original F minor tonality.

Brahms recognized Mühlfeld’s central role when he included the following dedication in the published score of Op. 120: “To Richard Mühlfeld, the master of his beautiful instrument, in sincerely grateful remembrance.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

This work plays out like a virtuosic symphonic poem for flute and piano, a battle of wits, musicianship, and virtuosity. I was intrigued by the musical competition that the satyr Marsyas had with Apollo, and how Apollo triumphed over him. Duels of Liszt and Moscheles came to mind, as well as Mozart and Clementi, and I began writing furiously. Instead of parts, or movements, I thought of the individual sections within the work as “rounds.” Writing most of this work has been one of the most pleasurable experiences ever...but I must admit, writing the ending gave me goosebumps. I have never written a work with such a vivid, stark, and harrowing ending, and, admittedly, this ending took the longest to write.

—© Stewart Goodyear

British composer Samuel ColeridgeTaylor, son of a medical student from Sierra Leone and a white English woman, revealed his prodigious musical talent early. He began playing violin at five and entered London’s Royal College of Music at 15; his classmates included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. ColeridgeTaylor quickly attracted favorable attention from his teachers, including his composition teacher, Sir Charles Stanford. When a racist fellow student insulted Coleridge-Taylor, Stanford retorted that Coleridge-Taylor had “more music in his little finger than [the abuser] did in the whole of his body.” Edward Elgar concurred, saying Coleridge-Taylor was “far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men.”

The Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 emerged as the result of a challenge from Charles Stanford to his students in 1895. After attending a performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, Stanford reportedly claimed no subsequent clarinet quintets could be written without reflecting Brahms’s influence. Two months later, the 20-yearold Samuel Coleridge-Taylor presented

Stanford with his own clarinet quintet, which not only fully refuted Stanford’s assertion, but stands as a monumental achievement on its own terms.

The Allegro energico opens with the clarinet singing in its chalumeau register, emphasizing the sunlight-andshadow quality of the F-sharp minor tonality. Howsoever Coleridge-Taylor presents his musical ideas, he never lets us lose track of the basic motifs that anchor this movement. The exquisite languor of the opening theme of the Larghetto affettuoso recalls momentarily the composer’s setting of “Deep River.” The strings assume the central thematic role, while the clarinet serves in a supportive capacity until more than halfway through the movement, when the instruments reverse their roles. In the sunny Scherzo, playful rhythmic ideas abound. Coleridge-Taylor’s love for Dvořák shows itself most clearly in this delightful mercurial music. The closing Allegro agitato features a bracing thematic idea, first sounded by the clarinet, then strings. The constant interplay between F-sharp minor and A major (the related major key) keeps both musicians and listeners alert to sudden changes of mood, key, and tempo.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Sunday, July 16

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm Sponsor: Ellen Macke & Howard Pifer

David Serkin Ludwig’s The Anchoress

Poetry Prelude Katie Ford

MISCHA ZUPKO (b. 1971)

Quantum Shift (2022) • (8’)

Monday, July 17

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Sponsor:

FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)

Piano Quintet in A Minor (1936) • (28’)

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Andante con moto

III. Juba: Allegro

IV. Scherzo: Allegro

INTERMISSION

DAVID SERKIN LUDWIG (b. 1974)

The Anchoress (2018) • (34’)

I. What Is My Life?

II. Once a Woman Went Down the Hill

III. What Are We to Make of Visions Lit?

IV. This Is the Four Burns of the Soul

V. One Night in Particular

VI. A Woman of the Village

VII. Be Not Assured

VIII. When I Woke Up Sighing

Kenari Saxophone Quartet

Bob Eason , soprano saxophone

Kyle Baldwin , alto saxophone

Corey Dundee , tenor saxophone

Gabriel Piqué, baritone saxophone

Stewart Goodyear, piano Catalyst Quartet

Karla Donehew Perez , violin

Abi Fayette, violin

Paul Laraia, viola

Karlos Rodriguez, cello

Poetry by Katie Ford

Hyunah Yu , soprano

Zitong Wang, keyboard

Kenari Saxophone Quartet

Bob Eason , soprano saxophone

Kyle Baldwin, alto saxophone

Corey Dundee , tenor saxophone

Gabriel Piqué, baritone saxophone

WindSync Wind Quintet

Garrett Hudson , flute

Emily Tsai, oboe

Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet

Remy Taghavi , bassoon

Anni Hochhalter, horn

“Quantum Shift is inspired by a component of quantum theory in physics, where electrons within an atom can quickly jump between discrete energy levels, i.e. orbits, surrounding the atom’s nucleus. While the scientific details of this phenomenon might be tough for the layman to understand, the music of Quantum Shift takes this basic concept and translates it into a high-velocity work for saxophone quartet, characterized by sprightly oscillating motifs that constantly transition between varying states of texture, dynamic, tempo, and gesture. Put simply, the piece can be thought of as a window into the sporadic lives of four electrons—in this case, the ‘Kenari Electrons’—interacting ceaselessly amongst one another in their subatomic world.” Mischa Zupko is an awardwinning Chicago-based composer, pianist, and Professor of Music at Chicago’s DePaul University.

—© Mischa Zupko

Florence Price, the first Black female American composer to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, enjoyed considerable renown during her lifetime. Her compositional skill and fame notwithstanding, the entrenched institutional racism and sexism of the white male classical music establishment effectively erased Price and her music from general awareness for decades after her death in 1953. In 2009, a large collection of scores and unpublished manuscripts by Price were discovered in a house in rural Illinois. Since then, many ensembles and individual musicians have begun including Price’s music in concerts, and audiences everywhere are discovering her distinctive, polished body of work

The daughter of a musical mother, Price was a prodigy, giving her first recital at age four and publishing her first composition at 11. At age 16, Price won admittance to New England Conservatory (she opted to “pass” as Mexican to circumvent prevailing racial bias against Black people), where she double majored in organ performance and piano pedagogy.

Price’s Quintet in A Minor for Piano & Strings was unknown until its discovery, along with other Price manuscripts, in 2009. Its date of composition is unknown, but like Price’s other piano quintet in E minor, it was probably written in the mid1930s. The A Minor Quintet’s musical language combines neo-Romantic 20th century classical music vocabulary with American vernacular idioms, rhythms, and blue-note melodies. The Allegro non troppo, the longest of the Quintet’s four movements, juxtaposes an expressionistic first theme with a lyrical counter-theme featuring bent notes (flatted thirds) often found in blues melodies. The energy of this movement comes from the creative tension generated by these two contrasting music traditions. The Andante con moto, a rondo, begins with a serene quasi-hymn theme in A major; several unsettled counter-themes suggest underlying disquiet. The A major theme recurs several times, as if to soothe anxieties generated by the contrasting episodes. The Juba, also known as the hambone, was brought to America by enslaved people; the dance generates its own rhythm with hand claps, foot stamps, and body slaps. “In all of my works which have been done in the sonata form with Negroid idiom, I have incorporated a juba as one of the several movements,” Price observed, “because it seems to me to be no more impossible to conceive of Negroid music devoid of the spiritualistic theme on the one hand than strongly syncopated rhythms of the juba on the other.”

The Quintet concludes with a brief, vivacious Scherzo.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

The Anchoress is a monodrama set to original texts by Katie Ford written originally for singer Hyunah Yu, the PRISM Quartet, and Piffaro, The

Katie, and being able to set into music both voices of poet and character has been a provocative and inspiring journey for me. My goal was to bring these words to musical life with the sounds of a single vocalist set in a sonic landscape meant to evoke both the ancient and modern.

Anchorites (from the Greek anachōréō meaning “to withdraw”) were Christians who chose a life in extreme confinement in a quest for spiritual perfection; a practice that grew in popularity in late medieval Europe—particularly among women. A church would create a small cell looking into the sanctuary, and the anchorite would enter into it with no possessions other than coarse clothing and a Bible, and perhaps a few other texts. Then a priest would administer last rites for the anchoress living inside.

Ford writes: “The anchoritic life is one of the earliest forms of Christian monastic living. However, an anchoress was not a part of a monastic community. Instead, she lived in an enclosed cell, an ‘anchorhold,’ attached to a church. She had one small window through which to speak to townspeople coming to her for guidance. She has withdrawn and chosen a form of death, which, in the eyes of the Church, transformed her into a ‘living saint.’” Many anchorites experienced otherworldly visions, and they were often consulted by visitors looking to glean guidance from their mystic spiritual reflections. The austere anchoritic lifestyle feels so extreme from our modern vantage point, yet its greater aspirations to find solace and meaning are deeply relevant to our frenetic digital lives. I wrote this piece well before the pandemic, but close enough that it felt inextricably linked to that time. In our world of quarantine and isolation many of us asked “where and what is my community” as we felt ever more intensely disconnected from society writ large.

Our Anchoress has chosen to withdraw from her world to comment as a witness. She defiantly speaks her truth—a mighty voice from within a small cell.

—© David Serkin Ludwig

Renaissance Wind Band (the version you are hearing now has been rescored for modern wind quintet with saxophones). The anchoress persona, her words, her visions, and her message—all come from

Tuesday, July 18

Lincoln Recital Hall | 12pm

SPOTLIGHT RECITAL: Très Coloré et Élégant

DAVID SERKIN LUDWIG (b. 1974)

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

Our Long War (2012) • (10’)

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Selected Songs • (9’)

I. Mandoline, Op. 58, No. 1

II. Green, Op. 58, No. 3

III. Soir, Op. 83, No. 2

IV. Notre amour, Op. 23, No. 2

Sonata for Violin & Cello, M. 73 • (20’)

I. Allegro

II. Très vif

III. Lent

IV. Vif, avec entrain

Poetry by Katie Ford

Hyunah Yu, soprano

Diana Adamyan, violin

Zitong Wang , piano

Hyunah Yu, soprano

Zitong Wang , piano

Soovin Kim, violin

Efe Baltacigil, cello

Composers keep poetry around in their brains like those important parts to appliances that you have to keep in a safe place where you won’t forget them, even though you might not use them every day. The poem has to be there waiting for just when you need it; if you’ve misplaced it in the cupboards and drawers of your mind you’ll miss out on that perfect text that speaks for your piece. So we composers scour through books and the internet and make little mental notes to ourselves...when the commission for a song comes up, we have to reach into that storage space where all of the wonderful poetry we've encountered lives, and then find what text resonates most for that moment.

Around the time I got the commission to write a song cycle for the Lake Champlain Festival, a mutual friend introduced me to the extraordinary work of Katie Ford. I knew right away the quality of her poetry embodied what I have been looking to create in my music. To me, it is elegant and clear and incredibly expressive, like so many of the best works of art that hit us in the gut and we don’t have to reason through why. I read through several of her books, but it was the poem she brought to a coffee meeting one day that focused my thoughts and feelings. Ford's “Our Long War” will bring to mind the work of other wartime poets, but it is absolutely contemporary in its call to feel the effects of our many ongoing wars where there is enormous sacrifice in the midst of our relative comfort miles away. It’s a powerful message, and one that hit me in the gut the first time I read it and every time thereafter. I want my music to be another vehicle to convey the poet's meaning; more like a frame to the poem than any interpretation of my own.

I would like to thank Katie Ford for allowing me to set her moving words to music and the Lake Champlain Festival for the opportunity to do so as the commissioner of Our Long War.

—© David Serkin Ludwig

Gabriel Fauré ’s mélodies infuse texts with rich coloristic harmonies and a seemingly effortless flow of melody. His piano accompaniments are essentially French, emphasizing color rather than the direct forward motion of a German lied.

Mandoline, and Green, from Fauré’s 1891 Cinq Mélodies de Venise, set texts of Paul Verlaine, one of France’s greatest Symbolist poets. Fauré was drawn to the inherent musicality of Verlaine’s poems, and Verlaine in turn was inspired by the paintings of Watteau. Fauré dedicated the Cinq Mélodies to Winnaretta Singer, aka the Princess de Polignac, the American heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, who became an important patron for French musicians in late 19th-century Paris.

The gentle arpeggiated accompaniment of Mandoline suggests the sound of that instrument, while the passionate flowing accompaniment of Green enhances the ardor of the lover’s breathless declarations to his sweetheart. Soir, based on a poem by Albert Samain, and Notre amour, (Armand Silvestre) continue the lovers’ experiences from Green, as delicately buoyant piano figurations support the long soaring melodies. “[Fauré’s] music is like water flowing,” remarked soprano Barbara Hendricks. “You have to keep the flow, you have to keep going toward the end of the phrase, or you just sort of destroy the entire architecture of it.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In 1920, Henry Prunières, a French musicologist and acquaintance of Maurice Ravel , founded a music magazine named Revue Musicale. To inaugurate it, Prunières commissioned ten well-known composers to write short works in tribute to the recently deceased Claude Debussy. For his contribution, Ravel wrote a short duo for violin and cello, which later became the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (completed in 1922).

Apparently, the first full performance of the Sonata was a “massacre,” though Ravel was not in attendance. The violinist, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, explained when she jokingly complained to Ravel that he expected the musicians “to play the flute on the violin and the drum on the cello.”

Ravel eventually came to see the sonata as a crucial turning point in his career, writing, “The music is stripped down to the bone. The allure of harmony is rejected, and increasingly the emphasis returns to the melody.” In writing such sparse, melodic music, Ravel was keeping up with the times, adapting the stripped-down style Debussy explored in his later years. The sonata’s four compact movements make the most of the atypical combination of instruments, approaching the sound of a string quartet at times and at others relishing the sparseness created by half a quartet. The music is atypically brash and dissonant for Ravel, perhaps suggesting that the trying years of World War I left him a changed person.

—© Ethan Allred

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The Armory | 6pm

NEW@NIGHT: International Voices

Third Sound

Laura Cocks,

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Karen Kim, violin

Michael Nicolas, cello

Steven Beck, piano

Diana Adamyan, violin

Zitong Wang, piano

When my dear friend Jennifer Howard asked me, in February 2020, to compose a piano trio to celebrate her forthcoming sixtieth birthday, we had only the vaguest notion of how completely our societal norms would soon be upended.

Over subsequent months, a mysterious virus escalated into a global pandemic, the murder of George Floyd prompted a national reckoning over race relations, and a presidency that had already tested the strength of democratic institutions would be punctuated by an insurrection. Yet against the backdrop of such existential uncertainty, we deepened our friendships and familial bonds—even if remotely, while sheltering in place; we trimmed the cosmetic trifles from our daily lives, retaining those virtues and practices we most valued; and we cared for and celebrated one another.

Ephemera, my birthday present to Jennifer, while toasting a dear friend, likewise ponders the ephemerality of life and the fragility of its scaffolding. Though acknowledging our mortality, the work does not mean simply to take a fatalistic view; rather, its composer modestly hopes to prompt the listener to cherish those things that hold the deepest significance—our friendships, our liberty, our habitat—and which, inevitably, are fleeting.

—© Patrick Castillo

Stories From My Grandmother is a twomovement suite excerpted from a 50-minute documentary oratorio called And Then I Remember

The oratorio weaves recorded interviews that I conducted with my grandmother with music performed by a soprano soloist, small chorus, solo double bass, and chamber ensemble. The piece follows the story of my grandmother, Taimi Lepasaar, who was born in Estonia in 1922 and survived both the Russian and German occupations of Estonia during World War II before escaping the country near the end of the war, eventually making it to the United States. The two movements of Stories

From My Grandmother are instrumental

reflections on my grandmother’s stories. The first movement, It was like a, like a lightning, tries to capture the visceral energy, fear, and mournful sadness of one particular story, a portion of which I am including below:

And then, was the summer 1940 and I was in Alatskivi with my grandparents. In the evening, there was a dance. About 6’o’clock we left the farm and we went to the castle to dance together. It was about 9:30…the music stopped…and the announcement came that the Russian troops have come over Lake Peipsi; the Russian army is coming towards this castle, towards us. We ask you all to take your bicycles and go home. And then was Estonia was conquered. 1940, that summer. It was like a, like a lightning, like somebody had hit you on the back. And then we all rode quietly, it was a…June night. The moon was lighting the road, but the hearts were heavy. And we drove home and went to the farm, but the farm was far away from the highway up on the hill. Next morning we were all standing there on the fence under the big linden trees, watching how the Russian army, marched along that highway towards Tartu, towards our city, and this moment we shared together. You know, it seemed that all the dreams were broken. The second movement, Slow Memory, was not inspired by a speci fic story but is instead a meditation on memory and my grandmother’s way of storytelling. It tries to capture the mix of emotion and matter-of-factness within her voice; the moments of gentle lilt and the moments of struggle, in which a feeling of sadness seems to break through the veil of her words.

—© Lembit Beecher

Edvard Baghdasaryan (1922-88) was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, shortly after the country became a part of the Soviet Union. Baghdasaryan split his student years between Yerevan and Moscow. A pianist as well as a composer, his works for piano demonstrate particular mastery, including the 24 Preludes (1951-58) for piano and Piano Concerto (1970). Baghdasaryan’s career spanned many genres, from the classical stage to

theatre, ballet, radio, pop music, and film. He even composed the score for the first movie shot in the Western Armenian language: Tjvjik , a depiction of Armenia under Ottoman rule in the 19th century.

Baghdasaryan’s 1958 Rhapsody for Violin & Piano, which also exists in an arrangement for violin and orchestra, explores Armenian musical themes in a dramatic, free-flowing fashion. Having previously spent time collecting and studying folk songs from the Sisiansky region, Baghdasaryan incorporated aspects of Armenian folk music throughout the rhapsody, particularly in its heavily ornamented melodies and use of traditional Armenian modal scales. The rhapsody unfolds in a series of clearly delineated sections, ranging from darkly expressive to pensively interior to ecstatic. A final solo cadenza erupts into a wary repeated octave in the violin, underscored by a mysterious whole tone scale in the piano for a restrained, reflective conclusion.

—© Ethan Allred

Neither Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, nor Brahms took on the challenge of writing for a single, solitary violin. Without the contribution of other instruments to provide more texture and harmony to the music, most of the greatest solo violin repertoire was written by the composers who were most familiar with the instrument in their hands—masters such as Bach, Paganini, and Ysaÿe.

Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg is not a violinist, making his brilliant Caprice an even more impressive compositional feat. He seamlessly integrates drone tones, double-stop trills, and even a particularly ghostly ponticello (played on the bridge) harmonic tremelo—as well as countless other effects. The piece is elegantly constructed upon the first five notes, a simple descending scale, which Lindberg develops wildly. There are two main sections, the first a bit freer and more rhetorical, the second more of a perpetual motion that hurtles to a climax before fading off at the end.

—© Soovin Kim

Thursday, July 20

The Reser | 8pm

Co-Sponsors: Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

Joseph Anthony & Heidi Yorkshire

Prelude Performance | 7pm Bridging Voices

Viennese Revolutionaries

MOZART (1756-1791)

Violin Sonata in G Major, G. 379 • (17’)

I. Adagio

II. Andantino cantabile

III. Allegretto

JENNIFER HIGDON (b. 1962)

Saturday, July 22

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Prelude Performance | 7pm University of Oregon & Portland-area music students

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)

Smash (2005) • (6’)

MOZART

Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 • (22’)

Arr. Anton Webern

I. Sonata: Allegro

II. Scherzo

III. Development

IV. Adagio

V. Recapitulation & Finale

INTERMISSION

Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414 • (26’)

I. Allegro

II. Andante

III. Allegretto

Soovin Kim , violin

Zitong Wang, piano

Third Sound

Laura Cocks, flute

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Karen Kim, violin

Michael Nicolas, cello

Steven Beck, piano

Third Sound

Gloria Chien, piano

Soovin Kim, violin

Diana Adamyan, violin

Jessica Bodner, viola

Efe Baltacigil, cello

Braizahn Jones, bass

Shortly after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) moved from his hometown, Salzburg, to the much larger city of Vienna, he published a collection of violin sonatas, his Opus 2 (1781). He selected these sonatas for publication not only because of their quality but also their commercial appeal, hoping they would help spread his reputation as a composer in his new home.

Mozart described the composition of the Violin Sonata in G Major, K. 379, in a letter to his father. “I composed it yesterday night between eleven and twelve,” he wrote, “but in order to finish it, I wrote out only the accompaniment part for Brunetti [the violinist] and remembered my own part.”

Despite its hasty composition, K. 379 counts among Mozart’s finest contributions to the repertoire for violin and piano. Structured in only two movements, it begins with a lengthy, pensive Adagio introduction, followed by a peppy Allegro that fosters a sense of spontaneity with unexpected pauses and contrasting musical textures. The gentle melody that begins the second movement kicks off a theme and variations, which provides bountiful opportunities for both the violinist and pianist to explore the theme’s subtle intricacies.

—© Ethan Allred

Smash comes at the beginning of the 21st century, where speed often seems to be our goal. This image fits well the instruments in this ensemble, because these are some of the fastest-moving instruments in terms of their technical prowess. Each individual plays an equal part in the ensemble, contributing to the intensity and forward momentum, as the music dashes from beginning to end, smashing forward in momentum.

—© Jennifer Higdon

“Now I have established my style. Now I know how I have to compose,” Arnold Schoenberg declared in 1906, after completing his Kammersymphonie No. 1 . This work is a fulcrum between Schoenberg’s earlier music, reflective of post-Romantic and early Expressionist Viennese/ German trends, and the distinctive originality of his later compositions. Schoenberg was a musical autodidact, which left him free to innovate and establish a unique methodology. Op. 9 reflects one of Schoenberg’s earliest moves away from standard Western tonality based on the triad, a three-note chord comprised of two stacked thirds. Instead, Schoenberg uses the interval of the fourth (to hear what this sounds like, hum the opening notes of the original Star Trek theme).

The Kammersymphonie’s single movement has five distinct sections played without pause, Schoenberg labeled them Exposition, Scherzo, Development, Adagio, and Reprise. Some sections, like the Scherzo, are so short they fly by before we realize it. Just after Op. 9 begins, a solo horn intones a “motto” of quickly rising fourths, which recurs throughout the work. “As a clarinetist, I am struck by how extreme the emotions are in this piece,” observes Matthew Griffith. “There are luscious, resonant melodies next to march-like drives forward. No time is wasted dwelling on any one idea because another is just around the corner.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major in the fall of 1782, shortly after moving to Vienna. It is one of three concertos he wrote at that time to make money through a Lenten performance series, following on the heels of his success with The Abduction from the Seraglio. To make them marketable in a published form, he wrote them to be playable two ways—with strings, oboes, and horns, or with only a string quartet (or quintet), known as a quattro. He wrote to his father that these concertos are a happy medium between too easy and too difficult: “they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” Yet he noted “There are also occasional passages from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction.”

The Allegro first movement begins with a graceful first theme and a more playful second, elaborated by the piano. Mozart wrote a total of eight piano cadenzas for the concerto in its published edition, giving two options for each of four locations, though he improvised his own cadenzas in performance. The slow movement, a stately Andante, begins with a sincere solo in the first violin, setting the tone for a serene and lyrical exchange between strings and piano. Mozart quotes a theme by Johann Christian Bach, his mentor, who had recently passed away. The final Allegretto rondo uses a compact and cheerful melody to finish off his “pleasing” concerto with lighthearted ease.

—© Ethan Allred

Sunday, July 23

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm

Voices of the Soul featuring Fred Child

Monday, July 24

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Sponsor: Anonymous Friends of CMNW

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872-1915) WANG JIE (b. 1980)

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 23 • (20’)

I. Drammàtico

II. Allegretto

III. Andante

IV. Presto con fuoco

Blame the Obituary • (15-20’)

CMNW CO-COMMISSION - WORLD PREMIERE

INTERMISSION

KOMITAS VARDAPET (1869-1935) RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Three Armenian Folk Songs for Violin & Piano • (10’)

I. Chinar es

II. Qeler, Tsoler

III. Krunk

Sonata for Violin & Piano • (28’)

I. Allegro, ma non troppo

II. Improvisation: Andante cantabile

III. Andante: Allegro

Zitong Wang, piano

Fred Child, narrator

Third Sound

Laura Cocks, flute

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Karen Kim, violin

Michael Nicolas, cello

Steven Beck, piano

Diana Adamyan, violin

Zitong Wang, piano

Wang Jie’s Blame the Obituary was co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the La Jolla Music Society.

Poetry Prelude

Alicia Jo Rabins

“

According to several contemporary accounts, Alexander Scriabin’s egotism knew no bounds. He esteemed his own music with as much arrogance as his neartotal contempt for almost every other composer’s work, Tchaikovsky, whose music, Scriabin claimed, “made him ill.” This dismissive attitude also applied to Scriabin’s assessment of his contemporaries, both within and outside Russia.

Unlike most of Scriabin’s sonatas, which feature a single movement, the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp minor, Op. 23 has four. Over time, Scriabin appended several titles to this sonata, including “Gothic” and, some years later, “États d’âme” (States of the Soul). Scriabin also provided a programmatic description of each of the four movements:

Drammàtico: The soul, free and wild, thrown into the whirlpool of suffering and strife.

Allegretto: Apparent momentary and illusory respite; tired from suffering the soul wants to forget, wants to sing and flourish, in spite of everything. But the light rhythm, the fragrant harmonies are just a cover through which gleams the restless and languishing soul.

Andante : A sea of feelings, tender and sorrowful; love, sorrow, vague desires, inexplicable thoughts, illusions of a delicate dream.

Presto con fuoco: From the depth of being rises the fearsome voice of creative man whose victorious song resounds triumphantly. But too weak yet to reach the acme he plunges, temporarily defeated, into the abyss of non-being.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

A 20-minute Kafka-esque piece for narrator and quintet: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Not a theater piece, but chamber music with a dash of theatrical flair. A musical picture of life during these trying last few years. At times whimsical and comical, at times devastatingly bleak, our narrator takes us on a journey into his lonely soul, writing his own obituary while engaging in lively conversation with the things around his small, bare living space. A virtuosic quintet plays Wang Jie's evocative music, while narrator Fred Child (host of America's most-listened-to classical music radio show, Performance Today) narrates with pathos and selfdeprecating humor. Creative conception and text by American screenwriter Charlie Peters ( 5 Flights Up, My One and Only). By the end, the audience will have memorable tunes and delicious harmonic passages in mind, and will have reflected on the meaning of their own loves, losses, and choices during these uniquely trying passages of life.

—© Wang Jie

The story of Armenian composer Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935) contains both inspiration and tragedy. An ordained priest, Komitas spent his early career collecting folk melodies in the Armenian countryside. He used what he learned to help foster a national musical culture in the Armenian diaspora by arranging, publishing, performing, and composing music based on traditional melodies. Like so many others, however, Komitas’s creative potential was cut short by the mental toll of the Armenian genocide (1915-17), and he spent his remaining years in a mental hospital outside of Paris.

Despite the questions of what might have been, Komitas left behind a diverse and exceptional musical output. The majority of his songs are arrangements of folk melodies that combine Armenian musical elements with the Western classical tradition, which Komitas

studied extensively in Berlin. Together, they present a profoundly impactful portrait of Armenia’s folklore, its past, and the perseverance of its culture to the present.

—© Ethan Allred

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) made his name as a musical disruptor. Preferring free-flowing, narrative “tone poems” to traditional symphonies and sonatas, he helped transition German music from the formal rigidity that governed composers from Bach to Brahms to a more open-minded approach to structure. As he once proclaimed, “What was for Beethoven a ‘form’ absolutely in congruity with the highest, most glorious content, is now, after 60 years, used as a formula…”

Early in his career, however, Strauss did experiment with several traditional forms, including the string quartet, the piano sonata, the piano quartet, and, finally, his splendid Violin Sonata (1887). Only 23 years old at the time of the sonata’s composition, Strauss was already a skilled instrumentalist with a thorough understanding of both the violin and the piano. The sonata’s first movement combines Strauss’s already burgeoning sense of dramatic energy with his lyricism, both of which would come to the fore in his later operatic career. The Improvisation movement, indeed, is often described as a “song without words,” starkly emotive and free-flowing in its harmonic continuum. The Finale is especially well-crafted structurally, demonstrating how Strauss always paid close attention to structure despite his aversion to preexisting forms.

—© Ethan Allred

Tuesday, July 25

Lincoln Recital Hall | 12pm

SPOTLIGHT RECITAL: Viano Quartet

KIAN RAVAEI (b. 1999)

The Little Things (2023)

CMNW CO-COMMISSION - WORLD PREMIERE

I. I'll Tell You How the Sun Rose

II. High From the Earth I Heard a Bird

III. Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon

IV. A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

V. The Moon Was but a Chin of Gold

VI. A Spider Sewed at Night

VII. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

Viano Quartet

Lucy Wang, violin

Hao Zhou, violin

Aiden Kane, viola

Tate Zawadiuk, cello

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)

SMETANA (1824-1884)

String Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85 (1927) • (16')

I. Moderato

II. Allegro

III. Moderato

IV. Allegro molto

String Quartet No. 1 “From My Life” • (28')

I. Allegro vivo appassionato

II. Allegro moderato á la Polka

III. Largo sostenuto

IV. Vivace

Kian Ravaei’s The Little Things has been co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Detroit’s Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

All seven titles which comprise The Little Things come from Emily Dickinson, who never fails to direct our attention toward nature’s easily overlooked wonders. Movements II, III, IV, and VI evoke various animal life, while I and V portray the sun and moon respectively. The order of the movements suggests the cyclic journey of all living things from morning to night to a new morning. In the final movement, we hear the voice of Nature singing Dickinson’s famous lines:

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

—© Kian Ravaei

When Béla Bartók wrote his String Quartet No. 3 in the fall of 1927, ten years had passed since he had finished another quartet. His previous quartet (No. 2) abounded with music influenced by his study of Eastern European folk songs. In the case of his third quartet, it has been suggested that a 1926 performance of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite inspired Bartók to put pen to paper. Whether that particular concert played a role or not, Bartók’s third quartet certainly echoes the expressionist, twelve-tone sounds of Berg and his circle.

Shortly after finishing the quartet, Bartók embarked on a ten-week tour of the United States, where, among other appearances, he debuted as a pianist with the New York Philharmonic. He also heard about a composition contest sponsored by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia. To Bartók’s surprise, his Third String Quartet went on to win the $6,000 prize—equivalent to roughly $100,000 in 2023 dollars. “You can hardly imagine the sensation this caused in Budapest,” he wrote to a friend. “Six thousand dollars! I told everybody, from the very outset, that it

couldn’t be as much as that—but to no effect; it is by now common knowledge that I have won $6,000.” The Musical Fund Society were not alone in their admiration for Bartók’s Third Quartet; Theodor Adorno, for example, described it as “unquestionably the best of the Hungarian’s works to date.”

Although Bartók divided this extremely concentrated quartet (his shortest) into two parts, its structure more closely resembles a single movement with two primary thematic sections. The first section darts between sparse, interjecting melodic fragments, while the second oscillates between rapid-fire scales and sharp rhythmic outbursts. Bartók then revisits both sections, first recapitulating excerpts from the first, then evoking the second’s rancorous energy in a final coda.

A particular point of interest is Bartók’s use of extended techniques, or nontraditional ways of playing the instruments. Examples include glissandi (slides), sul ponticello (playing very close to the bridge), and col legno (playing with the wooden back side of the bow), each drawing new sounds from traditional instruments.

—© Ethan Allred

Bedřich Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 , subtitled “From My Life,” chronicles the composer’s grief over the loss of several family members, as well as his own failing health.

The turbulence of the Allegro vivo eloquently expresses both the tragedies of Smetana’s personal life and the heightened Romanticism of his youth. “The first movement depicts my youthful leanings towards art, the Romantic atmosphere, the inexpressible yearning for something I could neither express nor define, also a kind of premonition of my future misfortune,” wrote Smetana. “The long, insistent note in the finale…is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which, in 1874, came to herald my deafness.”

The energetic polka in the second movement “recalls the joyful days of my youth when I composed dance tunes and was known everywhere as a passionate lover of dancing,” Smetana

wrote. The Largo embodies Smetana’s love for his first wife, Kateřina, and foreshadows her untimely death. In the Vivace, Smetana celebrates his Czech heritage, “the discovery that I could treat national elements in music and my joy in following this path.” Partway through, the sigh motif from the first movement returns, signaling, in Smetana’s words, “the catastrophe of the onset of my deafness, the outlook into the sad future, the tiny rays of hope of recovery; but, remembering all the promise of my early career, a feeling of painful regret.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

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TWO WEEKENDS OF MUSIC IN BEAUTIFUL PORT ANGELES, WASHINGTON

AUGUST 19-27, 2023

A world-class festival founded in 2018 celebrating chamber music in the singularly beautiful environment of Olympic National Park and the Strait of Juan de Fuca—only a four-hour drive from Portland!

WEEKEND ONE

August 19: Opening Night with Garrick Ohlsson

August 20: The Takács Quartet in Concert

WEEKEND TWO

August 25: Grieg’s String Quartet

August 26: Jeremy Denk in Recital

August 27: Jeremy Denk performs Brahms

FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION, VISIT MUSICONTHESTRAIT.COM

FIELD ARTS AND EVENTS HALL, OPENING THIS SUMMER!

Wednesday, July 26

The Armory | 6pm

NEW@NIGHT: Protégés United

ALISTAIR COLEMAN (b. 1998)

AIDEN KANE (b. 1996)

KIAN RAVAEI (b. 1999)

Descendants (2023)

WEST COAST PREMIERE

Triptych for Solo Viola (2018)

WEST COAST PREMIERE

The Little Things (2023)

CMNW CO-COMMISSION - WORLD PREMIERE

I. I'll Tell You How the Sun Rose

II. High From the Earth I Heard a Bird

III. Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon

IV. A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

V. The Moon Was but a Chin of Gold

VI. A Spider Sewed at Night

VII. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

New@ Night

Tate Zawadiuk, cello

Anton Nel, piano

Aiden Kane, viola

Viano Quartet

Lucy Wang, violin

Hao Zhou, violin

Aiden Kane, viola

Tate Zawadiuk, cello

Kian Ravaei’s The Little Things was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Detroit’s Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Descendants is written for cello and piano and was commissioned by pianist Zhu Wang for his graduation recital at Curtis Institute of Music, where we both attended. When Zhu and I first met to talk about this piece, he spoke to me about the importance of his family in getting him into music. I learned about how Zhu’s grandfather, who lives in China and worked in a factory his entire life, loved music and was the Music Director at his church. Thousands of miles away, my own grandfather worked in a coat factory in central Pennsylvania but sang in his church choir, and passed on a love of music to my mom. It was amazing to discover how our two grandfathers, who would never know each other, lived such similar experiences and had an impact on bringing Zhu and I together through music. This piece is a reflection on that coincidence. It begins with a lot of mechanical material, but over time a melody slowly reveals itself and takes over in the cello accompanied by rich piano harmonies. Framed as a tribute, this compositional choice is based on my belief that a musical melody can be evocative of a love for music that both our grandfathers shared.

—© Alistair Coleman

During a summer festival in 2017, I heard a performance of Thurídur Jónsdóttir’s INNI - Musica da Camera, and fell in love with the sound of the trilled harmonics— these bell-like tones fluttering through grounded solid notes like sunlight filtering through a canopy of leaves on a windy day. After toying with that particular texture far too often, I finally ended up writing a short work titled Meditation, mostly so I could keep summoning that windy green oasis and claim I was actually practicing something.

At the time, I was studying at the Colburn Conservatory, and during a particularly busy week I (for lack of actual preparation) brought Meditation into my lesson. My teacher, Paul Coletti, was incredibly supportive, and encouraged me to continue composing. Rather than jumping into something entirely new, I decided to stay in the same musical neighborhood. Using ideas from Meditation, I wrote two other movements— Cadenza, inspired by practice room improvisations, and Perpetual Motion, embracing the liberation of broken chords—and ended up with Triptych

—© Aiden Kane

All seven titles which comprise The Little Things come from Emily Dickinson, who never fails to direct our attention toward nature’s easily overlooked wonders. Movements II, III, IV, and VI evoke various animal life, while I and V portray the sun and moon respectively. The order of the movements suggests the cyclic journey of all living things from morning to night to a new morning. In the final movement, we hear the voice of Nature singing Dickinson’s famous lines:

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

—© Kian Ravaei

Thursday, July 27

The Reser | 8pm

Sponsor: David & Maryanne Holman

Prelude Performance | 7pm

Lobby: Union Bassoon Quartet, Natalie Alexander (solo bass clarinet) & Alexis Zou (piano) • Plaza: Portland Saxophone Ensemble

Saturday, July 29

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Sponsor:

Prelude Performance | 7pm Students of Hae-Jin Kim’s Violin Studio

FESTIVAL FINALE: American Masterworks

Poetry Prelude

Daniela Naomi Molnar

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ANTONÍN DVORÁK (1841-1904)

CHRIS ROGERSON (b. 1988)

CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)

String Quartet No. 12, Op. 96 “American” • (25’)

I. Allegro ma non troppo

II. Lento

III. Molto vivace

IV. Vivace ma non troppo

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt • (15-20’)

CMNW COMMISSION - WORLD PREMIERE

INTERMISSION

Selections from 114 Songs (1922) • (14’)

66. The Light That is Felt

56. The Circus Band

51. Tom Sails Away

49. In Flanders Field

101. My Native Land

45. At the River

AMY BEACH (1867-1944)

Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67 • (27’)

I. Adagio: Allegro moderato

II. Adagio espressivo

III. Allegro agitato: Presto

Viano Quartet

Lucy Wang, violin

Hao Zhou, violin

Aiden Kane, viola

Tate Zawadiuk, cello

Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano

Viano Quartet

Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano

Anton Nel , piano

Anton Nel, piano

Viano Quartet

Chris Rogerson’s Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt was made possible through the generous support of the CMNW Commissioning Fund.

All fans of Dvořák ’s “American” music owe a debt of gratitude to Josef Kovařík. If Dvořák had not met and befriended the young Czech-American violinist, he would not have written the String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, or the String Quintet, Op. 97 (both nicknamed “American”), nor would the summer of 1893, when Dvořák and his family spent the summer in a small town in northeastern Iowa, prove to be one of the most significant periods in the composer’s life.

Kovařík grew up in Spillville, Iowa, a small farming community settled by Czech and German immigrants, and he served as Dvořák’s personal assistant from 1892-95, while Dvořák headed the National Conservatory in New York City. Understanding Dvořák’s dislike of city life and his need for the slower pace and quiet of the countryside, Kovařík invited the composer and his family to leave behind the hustle and bustle of New York City and live in Spillville during the summer of 1893.

Spillville clearly agreed with Dvořák; within three days of his arrival, he began work on Op. 96. Dvořák wrote quickly, as was his wont, and finished the quartet two weeks later. Eager to hear his new work, Dvořák performed the first violin part, with members of the Kovařík family playing the other instruments, in the first performance in the music room of the Spillville school.

Dvořák crafted many of the melodies from pentatonic scales, with basic, understated harmonic accompaniments. The unadorned melodies and ready accessibility of Op. 96 appealed to audiences, and are part of the reason Op. 96 remains one of Dvořák’s most popular chamber works.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

I am right-handed in nearly everything I do except for baseball, a sport my father taught me as a left-hander himself. I grew up playing wiffle ball in my backyard, my own “rough diamond,” begging my dad to play game after game.

Of course I wanted to crush the ball out of the park, but my father taught me to focus on the little things, like how to track

down a fly ball in center field. I idolized ruthless competitors like Barry Bonds; my father taught me a game of quietude.

So when my former teacher Martin Bresnick introduced me to the poem “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt" by David Bottoms, I was drawn to it and hoped to set it one day. I rediscovered it recently when Bottoms passed away. To me, this beautiful poem embodies the unique relationship between many fathers and their children. Have I ever learned “what you were laying down” (a clever reference to the bunt itself)? In particular, I find it moving that the poem itself is a personal sign to the poet's father: “Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap / Let this be the sign / I'm getting a grip on the sacrifice.”

In Sign for My Father, I try to capture an elegiac feeling of childhood, as well as the uniquely American nostalgia for the pastime of baseball. This work is dedicated to my father.

—© Chris Rogerson

In the mid-1940s, Aaron Copland wrote of Charles Ives, “It will be a long time before we take the full measure of Charles Ives.” A man who spent his days selling life insurance, and who composed in virtual obscurity, isolated from almost all the prevailing musical influences of his time, Ives wrote iconoclastic music. He was a mixture of paradoxes; his oldfashioned values hardly seem like the likely impetus for his forward-looking music, and the privacy he craved in his personal life hampered his need for a public audience.

Ives wrote songs throughout his career; their subjects include idyllic New England evocations of Americana, nature, children, hymns, and WWI. The calm beauty of The Light That is Felt, based on Whittier’s poem, expresses Ives’s recurring desire to recreate a child’s sense of security. Ives’s words and boisterous musical “noise” capture a boy’s excitement at seeing and hearing The Circus Band. Ives’s text to Tom Sails Away relives childhood memories of Tom and his family; the music reflects Ives’s attitude to the war and its devastating impact. In Flanders Field sets John McCrae’s famous poem; the bitter music includes mordant quotes from well-

known nationalistic tunes. My Native Land, an English translation of a Heine poem, brims with nostalgia. Ives gives the well-known hymn At the River an off-kilter setting; the melody falls away, returns to its original setting, and ends on an ambiguous question.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Amy Beach , who published under her married name, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, was the most famous and well-regarded American woman composer of her time. Beach grew up in a wealthy Boston family, and her musical ability declared itself early. “She played the piano at four years, memorizing everything that she heard correctly,” wrote Beach’s mother, herself a gifted pianist and singer. “Her gift for composition showed itself in babyhood before two years of age. Beach’s prodigal piano skills led to her debut with the Boston Symphony at 16. Two years later, after her marriage to 43-year-old Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, Beach largely withdrew from public performance, at his insistence. Dr. Beach allowed his wife to continue composing, but did not want her learning composition from a teacher. Other than one year of formal compositional lessons when she was 14, Beach was a composing autodidact; she studied scores and read everything she could find pertaining to harmony, theory, counterpoint, fugue, and instrumentation. Beach wrote in many genres, and a number of her works, like the Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67, have entered the standard repertoire.

Beach displayed both her composing and performing skills when she premiered Opus 67 with the Hoffman Quartet in Boston’s Potter Hall on February 27, 1908. Critics took note of the Brahmsian influences in Beach’s writing, which were not accidental. Beach had performed Brahms’s Opus 34 in 1900; when she began writing her own piano quintet in 1907, she transformed a theme from Opus 34’s final movement into the primary melodic material for all three movements of her Opus 67. Beach’s style combines the lush Romanticism of Brahms with contemporary harmonies and a vibrant, distinctly American energy.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

2023 ARTISTS & COMPOSERS

Diana Adamyan

Diana Adamyan is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of her generation’s most outstanding violinists. After winning the First Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition, the world’s most prestigious prize for young violinists, she went on to receive First Prize in the 2020 Khachaturian Violin Competition.

In summer 2022, Ms. Adamyan made her debut at the Aspen Festival performing Dvořák with Lionel Bringuier, and with the Boston Pops Orchestra performing Mendelssohn at Boston Symphony Hall. This season, she returns to the Göttinger Symphonieorchester to perform Beethoven, and the Niederbayerische Philharmonie in Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. She will also make her debut performing Sibelius with the Staatsorchester Darmstadt, and performing Beethoven with the Bruckner Orchester Linz in Munich’s Prinzregententheater, and will return once more to the Göttinger Symphonie with Dvořák. Recent and upcoming engagements also include recitals in Tokyo and France, and her debut with the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester at the Philharmonie in Berlin.

Since winning First Prize at the Menuhin Competition, Ms. Adamyan has received numerous proposals to participate in the concerts around the world, from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, to the Seiji Ozawa Academy in Switzerland, and the Matsumoto International Music Festival in Japan. Following an invitation from Maestro Pinchas Zukerman to participate under his guidance in summer masterclasses of the Ottawa National Arts Center,

Ms. Adamyan was invited to appear as a soloist in Gala Concert of NAC, alongside Mr. Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Jessica Linnebach, and other renowned musicians. Later, she also appeared alongside Mr. Zukerman playing the Bach Double Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic at Cadogan Hall in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Born in 2000 in Yerevan, Armenia, into a family of musicians, Ms. Adamyan currently studies at the Munich University of Performing Arts with world-renowned teacher, Professor Ana Chumachenco, whose distinguished students have included Lisa Batiashvili, Julia Fischer, and Veronika Eberle. Previously, she studied at the Tchaikovsky School of Music (Yerevan) with Professor Petros Haykazyan and at Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory with Professor Eduard Tadevosyan.

Ms. Adamyan is the recipient of a scholarship from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and under the patronage of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) and "YerazArt" organization in Boston. She performed on a violin crafted by Urs Mächler for the Menuhin Competition, and now performs on an instrument made by Nicolò Gagliano in 1760, generously on loan from the Henri Moerel Foundation.

Edward Arron

YAI faculty, festival artist

Cellist Edward Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since that

time, he has appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. The 2022-23 season marks Mr. Arron’s 10th season as the Co-Artistic Director of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In the May of 2022, he stepped down after 15 years as the Artistic Director of the acclaimed Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. In 2013, he completed a ten-year residency as the Artistic Director of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert. Mr. Arron tours and records as a member of the renowned Ehnes String Quartet, and is a regular guest with the Boston and Seattle Chamber Music Societies, as well as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His performances are frequently broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today. In 2021, Mr. Arron’s recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano with pianist Jeewon Park was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label, and in 2022, his recordings of Beethoven’s Late String Quartets with the Ehnes Quartet were released on the Onyx Record Label. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Arron has served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2016.

Kyle Baldwin (Kenari Saxophone Quartet)

2nd Summer

Kyle Baldwin is currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is teaching a small studio of students and continues performing with the Kenari Quartet. In the summer of 2016, Kyle graduated from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance. There he studied with Dr. Otis Murphy and

CMNW 2023 Protégé Artist

Professor Tom Walsh. Originally from Fresno, California, he has also studied with Dr. Alan Durst at Fresno State University and Professor Larry Honda at Fresno City College. He is a recipient of the Premier Young Artist Award Scholarship, a very honorable award given in the Jacobs School of Music, as well as the Marcel Mule Scholarship. Much of Kyle’s college career was devoted to premiering new works for saxophone. He has collaborated with several composers in the Fresno State composition department where he has worked with Joey Bohigian, Dr. Benjamine Boone, and Dr. Kenneth Froelich. Kyle enjoys experimenting with new approaches to classical music through unique instrumentation and new performance concepts.

Efe Baltacigil

2nd Summer Turkish cellist Efe Baltacigil finished his undergraduate studies in Istanbul, Turkey, before attending the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During his last year of study, at the age of 23, he won the Associate Principal Cello position at the famous Philadelphia Orchestra.

Since 2011, he has held the position of Principal Cellist at the Seattle Symphony, and has appeared as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony. Efe has had recital and concerto debuts in Carnegie Hall and has been a senior member of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont since 2017.

Efe performed as a soloist for Seattle Symphony’s 2022 Opening Night Gala and will play Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto with them in October 2023. Besides music and his family, Efe enjoys windsurfing, sailing, drawing, and volleypong.

Fleur Barron

2nd Summer Hailed as “a knockout performer” by The Times, Singaporean-British mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron was awarded the 2022 Schubert Prize alongside Brigitte Fassbender by the Schubertíada. She has been chosen by Het Concertgebouw as a “Hemelsbestormer” (Skystormer) for the 2022-23 season, and has been designated an Artistic Partner of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Oviedo for several seasons beginning in 2022-23, for which she will curate and perform multiple projects each year. A passionate interpreter of opera, chamber music, and concert works ranging from the baroque to the contemporary, Fleur is mentored by Barbara Hannigan.

In the 2022-23 season, Fleur made orchestral debuts with Orchestre de Paris, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Göteborgs Symfoniker on tour in Sweden and at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Slovenian Philharmonic, and Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias. On the operatic stage, Fleur makes her debut with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in the title role of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. She also sings the title role in Hasse’s Marc Antonio e Cleopatra with the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover, the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with La Nuova Musica for a recording on the Pentatone label, alto soloist in a new, staged production of Mozart’s Requiem at the Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Bersi in Andrea Chénier and Mallika in Lakmé for Opéra de Monte-Carlo, reprising Lakmé at Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. This season’s recital projects include concerts with Julius Drake at Het Concertgebouw, MiTO Festival in Milan and Turin, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and at Spivey Hall in Atlanta. She also joins duo partner Kunal Lahiry for recitals at Wigmore Hall and Oxford Lieder Festival, and teams up with Malcolm Martineau for an all-Britten recital at Snape Maltings.

Steven Beck (Third Sound)

A New York concert by pianist Steven Beck was described as “exemplary” and “deeply satisfying” by Anthony

Tommasini in The New York Times

He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where his teachers were Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin, and Bruce Brubaker.

Mr. Beck made his concerto debut with the National Symphony Orchestra, and has toured Japan as soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. His annual Christmas Eve performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Bargemusic has become a New York institution. He has performed as soloist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and Miller Theater, on WNYC, and summer appearances at the Aspen Music Festival and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. He has performed as a musician with the New York City Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and as an orchestral musician he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Orpheus.

Mr. Beck is an experienced performer of new music, having worked with Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Wuorinen, George Crumb, George Perle, and Fred Lerdahl. He is a member of the Knights, the Talea Ensemble, Quattro Mani, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. His discography includes George Walker’s piano sonatas on Bridge Records, and Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto on Albany Records. He is a Steinway Artist, and is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as the Colorado College Summer Music Festival and the Sewanee Music Center.

Benjamin Beilman

3rd Summer

Benjamin Beilman has won significant international praise both for his passionate performances and deep rich tone which The Washington Post called “mightily impressive,” and The New York Times described as “muscular with a glint of violence.” The Times has also praised his “handsome technique, burnished sound, and quiet confidence,” and The Strad described his playing as “pure poetry.”

Beilman’s 2022-23 season includes his debuts performing Prokofiev 1 with Trondheim Symphony and Hamburg Symphoniker, Barber with the Oslo Philharmonic, and Tchaikovsky with the Taipei Symphony. He will also return to the Detroit Symphony to perform Mendelssohn under Matthias Pintscher, and on tour across Australasia, appearing with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Tasmania Symphony. In recital, he will premiere a new work by Gabriella Smith, commissioned by the Schubert Club in St. Paul, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In April 2022, he became one of the youngest artists to be appointed to the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music.

In past seasons, Beilman has performed with many major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Zurich Tonhalle, Sydney Symphony, Houston Symphony, and Minnesota Orchestra. Conductors with whom he works include Yannick NézetSéguin, Cristian Măcelaru, Lahav Shani, Ryan Bancroft, Karina Canellakis, Edward Gardner, Juraj Valčuha, Han-Na Chang, Elim Chan, Osmo Vänskä, and Giancarlo Guerrero.

In recital and chamber music, Beilman performs regularly at the major halls across the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Kölner Philharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Louvre (Paris), Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo) and at festivals he has performed at Verbier, Aix-en-Provence Easter, Prague Dvorak, Robeco Summer Concerts (Amsterdam), Music@Menlo, Marlboro

and Seattle Chamber Music, amongst others. In early 2018 he premiered a new work dedicated to the political activist Angela Davis written by Frederic Rzewski and commissioned by Music Accord which he has performed extensively across the US. He also acts as Artistic Advisor to the Lobero Theatre Chamber Music Project in Santa Barbara, California.

Beilman studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and has received many prestigious accolades including a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a London Music Masters Award. He has recorded works by Stravinsky, Janáček, and Schubert for Warner Classics, and plays the "Ysaÿe" Guarneri del Gesù from 1740, generously on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

Jessica Bodner

2nd Summer Jessica Bodner, described by The New York Times as a “soulful soloist,” is the violist of the Grammy Awardwinning Parker Quartet. A native of Houston, Texas, Jessica began her musical studies on the violin at the age of two, she then switched to the viola at 12 because of her love of the deeper sonority.

Ms. Bodner has recently appeared at venues such as Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Library of Congress, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Wigmore Hall (London), Musikverein (Vienna), Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Seoul Arts Center. As well, she recently has appeared at festivals including Chamber Music Northwest, Chamberfest Cleveland, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn, Perigord Noir (France), Monte Carlo Spring Arts Festival, San Miguel de Allende, Istanbul’s Cemal Recit Rey, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hitzacker, and Heidelberg String Quartet Festival. As a member of the Parker Quartet, she has recorded for ECM, Zig-Zag Territoires, Nimbus, and Naxos.

Jessica's recent collaborators include mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, clarinetists Charles Neidich and Jörg Widmann, pianists Menahem Pressler,

Shai Wosner, Gloria Chien, and Orion Weiss, violinists Soovin Kim and Donald Weilerstein, violists Kim Kashkashian and Roger Tapping, cellists Deborah Pae, Marcy Rosen, Natasha Brofsky, and Paul Katz, and percussionist

Ian Rosenbaum.

Jessica is a faculty member of Harvard University's Department of Music as Professor of the Practice in conjunction with the Parker Quartet's appointment as Blodgett Quartet-in-Residence. She has held visiting faculty positions at the New England Conservatory and Longy School of Music, served as faculty at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Yellow Barn Festival, and has given masterclasses at institutions such as Eastman School of Music, San Francisco Conservatory, Amherst College, University of Minnesota, and at the El Sistema program in Venezuela. Outside of music, Jessica enjoys cooking, running, practicing yoga, and hiking with her husband, violinist Daniel Chong, their son, Cole, and their vizsla, Bodie.

Patrick Castillo

CMNW world premiere composer

Patrick Castillo leads a multifaceted career as a composer, performer, writer, and educator. His music has been described as “restrained and reflective but brimming with a variety of texture and sound that draws you into its world” (I Care If You Listen) and has been presented at festivals and venues throughout the United States and internationally, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Schubert Club, Birdfoot Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, June in Buffalo, the Santa Fe New Music Festival, Queens New Music Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, National Sawdust, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Bavarian Academy of Music (Munich), the Nuremberg Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Havana Contemporary Music Festival.

Recent season highlights include commissions and premieres by the Jasper String Quartet, Areon Flutes, the Experiential Orchestra, Apex Concerts (Reno, NV), Emerald City Music (Seattle, WA), String Theory at the Hunter (Chattanooga, TN), and the

Manhattan Choral Ensemble, as well as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center premiere of Incident for violin and piano, performed by Alexander Sitkovetsky and Wu Qian. In 2017 and 2019, Patrick Castillo appeared as Composer-in-Residence at the Birdfoot Festival (New Orleans, LA). The 2020-21 season featured premieres by violinist Jennifer Koh, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, the Delphi Trio, flutist Jill Heinke, and others.

Patrick Castillo is variously active as an explicator of music to a wide range of listeners. He has written for New Music Box, Q2 Music, Minnesota Public Radio, and other publications, and provided program and liner notes for numerous concert series and recording companies. He has been a guest lecturer at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (for whose Late Night Rose series he serves as host), Fordham University, the University of Georgia, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass (Kentucky), String Theory at the Hunter (Chattanooga, TN), and ChamberFest Cleveland. From 2010 to 2013, he served as Senior Director of Artistic Planning of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He is the Founding Composer and Managing Director of the "forward-looking, expert ensemble" Third Sound (The New Yorker), and he is the Executive Director of the contemporary music collective Hotel Elefant. In 2021, he was appointed Vice President of Artistic Planning of the New York Philharmonic.

Patrick Castillo holds degrees in composition and sociology from Vassar College, where his teachers included Lois V Vierk, Annea Lockwood, and Richard Wilson. He has also participated in masterclasses with John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen. While at Vassar, Patrick Castillo served as Composerin-Residence for the Mahagonny Ensemble, a collective of performers specializing in twentieth-century music. His requiem, aeternam, for mixed chorus and chamber ensemble, composed for the Mahagonny, was awarded the 2001 Jean Slater Edson Prize. He has also been the recipient of the Brian M. Israel Prize, awarded by the Society for New Music for his chamber work, Lola

The Quality of Mercy, an album of Patrick Castillo’s vocal chamber music featuring mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer, has been praised as “affecting

and sensitively orchestrated… [a] gorgeous, masterfully crafted canvas” (Cleveland Classical ), and is available on innova Recordings.

Catalyst Quartet

Hailed by The New York Times at its Carnegie Hall debut as “invariably energetic and finely burnished… playing with earthy vigor,” the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet was founded by the Sphinx Organization in 2010.

The ensemble (Karla Donehew Perez, violin; Abi Fayette, violin; Paul Laraia, viola; and Karlos Rodriguez, cello) believes in the unity that can be achieved through music and imagine their programs and projects with this in mind, redefining and reimagining the classical music experience.

Catalyst Quartet has toured widely throughout the United States and abroad, including sold-out performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Chicago’s Harris Theater, Miami’s New World Center, and Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The Quartet has been guest artists with the Cincinnati Symphony, New Haven Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, and served as principal players and featured ensemble with the Sphinx Virtuosi on six national tours. They have been invited to perform by prominent music festivals ranging from Mainly Mozart in San Diego, to the Sitka Music Festival and Juneau Jazz and Classics in Alaska, and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where they appear annually. Catalyst Quartet was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Vail Dance Festival in 2016. In 2014, they opened the Festival del Sole in Napa, California, performing with Joshua Bell, and as part of the Aldeburgh Music Foundation String Quartet Residency gave two performances in the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh, UK.

International engagements have brought them to Russia, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, along with regular concert tours throughout the United States and Canada. Residents of New York City, the ensemble has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they were named Quartet-in-Residence for the MetLiveArts 2022-23 Season, City Center, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, The New School (for Schneider Concerts), and Lincoln Center. They played six concerts with jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for Jazz at Lincoln Center. The subsequent album recording "Dreams and Daggers" won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. They are 2023 Artists-in-Residence with Chamber Music Northwest.

Recent programs and collaborations have included Encuentros with cellist Gabriel Cabezas; (im)igration, with the Imani Winds; and CQ Minute, 11 miniature string quartets commissioned for the quartet’s 10th anniversary, including works by Billy Childs, Paquito D’Rivera, Jessie Montgomery, Kevin Puts, Caroline Shaw, and Joan Tower. UNCOVERED, a multi-CD project for Azica Records celebrates important works by composers sidelined because of their race or gender. Volume 1 with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Stewart Goodyear includes music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Volume 2 with pianist Michelle Cann features music of Florence Price; it was nominated for “Recording of the Year 2022” by Limelight Magazine, Australia. Volume 3, released in February 2023 features music of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, and William Grant Still. Uncovered is also the focus of live concerts performed throughout the US including Uncovered series with San Francisco Performances in 2021-22 and their Pivot festival in 2023.

Catalyst Quartet’s other recordings span the ensemble’s scope of interests and artistry. The Bach/Gould Project pairs the Quartet’s arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations with Glenn Gould’s String Quartet Op. 1. Strum is the debut album of composer Jessie Montgomery, former Catalyst Quartet violinist. Bandaneon y cuerdas features tango-inspired music for string quartet and bandoneon by JP Jofre.

KARLA DONEHEW-PEREZ violin

ABI FAYETTE violin

PAUL LARAIA viola

KARLOS RODRIGUEZ cello

Catalyst Quartet combines a serious commitment to diversity and education with a passion for contemporary works. The ensemble serves as principal faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Curtis Institute of Music. Catalyst Quartet’s ongoing residencies include interactive performance presentations and workshops with Native American student composers at the Grand Canyon Music Festival and the Sphinx Organization’s Overture program, which delivers access to music education in Detroit and Flint, Michigan. Past residencies have included concerts and masterclasses at the University of Michigan, University of Washington, Rice University, Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts, Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music, The Virginia Arts Festival, Pennsylvania State University, the In Harmony Project in England, University of South Africa, and The Teatro De Bellas Artes in Cali, Colombia. The ensemble’s residency in Havana, Cuba, for the Cuban American Youth Orchestra in January 2019, was the first by an American string quartet since the revolution.

Catalyst Quartet members hold degrees from The Cleveland Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, The Curtis Institute of Music, and New England Conservatory. Catalyst Quartet is a Sphinx ensemble and proudly endorses Pirastro strings. Learn more at www.catalystquartet.com.

Gloria Chien

CMNW Artistic Director, festival artist

6th Summer Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Phillips

Collection, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. Chien studied extensively at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She, with Kim, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music.

Chien is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist. Chien received her B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music as a student of Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun.

Fred Child

Fred Child is an Emmy Awardwinning classical music media host and personality. He’s Host and Senior Editor of the most listened-to classical music radio program in America, APM’s Performance Today.

He’s also Commentator and Announcer for Live from Lincoln Center on PBS. And he hosts musical events on stages across the country and around the world, enlightening and inspiring classical music audiences of all ages and backgrounds. While growing up in Portland, Oregon, Fred studied classical piano, and he has a remarkably wide range of musical experience. He dabbles in guitar, percussion, and bagpipes. One of his bands once opened for the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum. He has narrated musical works at festivals around the country. He leads annual

international musical tours. His acting debut came in a feature-length video commissioned for the Partita for Solo Violin by Philip Glass.

Fred loves baseball (throws right, bats left) and soccer (he's a fan of North London's Tottenham Hotspur). He's an avid rock climber, a licensed private pilot, and certified scuba diver. His better half is composer Wang Jie. They make their musical home in New York City, with a musical Sealyham Terrier named Pilot.

Laura Cocks (Third Sound)

Laura Cocks is a flutist with “febrile instrumental prowess” (The New York Times), who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music and “creates intricate, spellbinding works that have a visceral physicality to them” (Foxy Digitalis).

Laura is the Executive Director and flutist of TAK ensemble, “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen) with whom Laura makes musics "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” ( WIRE Magazine).

Laura performs regularly as a soloist, an improviser, and with ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in NYC and abroad. They can be heard on labels such as ECM, Denovali Records, TAK editions, Tripticks Tapes, Carrier Records, Chambray Records, Double Whammy Whammy, New Focus Records, Sound American, Orange Mountain Music, Amplify, Winspear, Supertrain, Gold Bolus, Centaur Records, Infrequent Seams, and Sideband Records. Their recent solo album, field anatomies (Carrier Records), noted as one of Stereogum’s top-ten experimental releases of the year, was praised for its “superhuman physicality” and “disciplined patience” (Bandcamp Best Contemporary Release and Experimental Release). Laura has been in residence at institutions such as Harvard

University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, The Delian Academy for New Music, and many others, and have given masterclasses and taught seminars in performance practice, composition, professional development, and applied critical theory at institutions such as DePaul University, Williams College, Oberlin Conservatory, University of California San Diego, Bowling Green State University, California Institute of the Arts, and many others.

Valerie Coleman (umama womama)

CMNW co-commissioned composer 6th Summer Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as both a composer and Grammynominated flutist, and an entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, and her works have garnered many awards.

Coleman’s commissions include works for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Library of Congress, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and many others. Coleman has also been named to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works dual commissioning program. Her work, Umoja, was chosen by Chamber Music America as one of the “Top 101 Great American Ensemble Works.”

As a performer, Coleman has appeared at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center and with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Bravo! Vail. Valerie has appeared in a host of multidisciplinary residencies, including Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chamber Music Northwest, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, and University of Michigan. As a chamber musician, Coleman has performed alongside the Dover Quartet, Orion String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Ani and Ida Kavafian, and Anne-Marie McDermott, along with jazz legends Paquito D’Rivera, Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, René Marie, and

Wayne Shorter. She also recently cofounded and currently performs as flutist of the performer-composer trio, umama womama.

Former flutist of the Imani Winds, Coleman is the creator and founder of this acclaimed ensemble whose 25-year legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Coleman is currently on the Mannes School of Music Flute and Composition faculty and will also join the Manhattan School of Music faculty in 2023-24.

Coleman’s compositions are published by Theodore Presser, and her own company VColeman Music.

Eugene Drucker (Emerson String Quartet)

13th Summer

Violinist Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet in 1976, is also an active soloist. He has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Hartford, Richmond, Omaha, Jerusalem, and the RhinelandPalatinate, as well as with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Chamber Symphony, and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Oscar Shumsky, Mr. Drucker was Concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, with which he appeared as soloist several times. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Mr. Drucker has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach for Parnassus Records and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók for Biddulph Recordings.

Since 2017, Eugene Drucker has been the Music Director of Berkshire Bach Society’s “Bach at New Year’s” concerts.

With the Emerson String Quartet, Eugene Drucker plays about 70 concerts per year in North America, Europe, and Asia. The quartet’s discography features a repertoire embracing the entire history of the string quartet from Haydn to contemporary works, and has been awarded nine Grammy Awards, and

three Gramophone Magazine Awards. Mr. Drucker's first novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007, and appeared in a German translation called Wintersonate. His second novel, Yearning, was published in the fall of 2021.

Mr. Drucker's compositional debut, a setting of four sonnets by Shakespeare, was premiered by baritone Andrew Nolen and the Escher String Quartet at Stony Brook in 2008; the songs have appeared as part of a two CD release called Stony Brook Soundings issued by Bridge Recordings in the spring of 2010. Subsequent works include Series of Twelve (a suite for string quartet, scheduled for several performances by the Escher Quartet this season); Madness and the Death of Ophelia, a musical adaptation of four scenes from Hamlet ; and two song cycles based on the poetry of Denise Levertov, for high voice and strings.

Eugene Drucker's Violins: Antonius Stradivarius (Cremona, 1686), Ryan Soltis (Idaho, 2015)

Corey Dundee (Kenari Saxophone Quartet)

2nd Summer Corey Dundee is an Ann Arborbased composer and saxophonist whose work has been described as “trippy dream music” (casual university acquaintance) and “falling down a black rabbit hole” (six-yearold concert-goer in Norfolk, CT). A recipient of Chamber Music America's 2016 Classical Commissioning Grant, Corey was recently named Honorable Mention for MTNA’s 2018 Distinguished Composer of the Year Award, as well as a Finalist for the 2018 Cortona Prize. Corey has undertaken an Artist Residency at the Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, and he has received commissions from the Michigan Music Teachers Association, the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, Front Porch, the Spatial Forces Duo, Taos Chamber Music Group, the UNCSAx ensemble, and saxophonist Shawna Pennock. As a performer, Corey has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony, among others.

Lawrence Dutton (Emerson String Quartet)

14th Summer

Lawrence Dutton, violist of the ninetime Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Sir Paul McCartney, Renee Fleming, Sir James Galway, Andre Previn, Menahem Pressler, Walter Trampler, Rudolf Firkusny, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, and Elmar Oliveira, among others. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous chamber music ensembles such as the Juilliard and Guarneri Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Since 2001, Mr. Dutton has been the Artistic Advisor of the Hoch Chamber Music Series, presenting three concerts at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. He has been featured on three albums with the Grammy-winning jazz bassist John Patitucci on the Concord Jazz label, and with the Beaux Arts Trio recorded the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57 and the Fauré G Minor Piano Quartet, Op. 45 on the Philips label. His Aspen Music Festival recording with Jan DeGaetani for Bridge records was nominated for a Grammy Award. Mr. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras, including those of Germany, Belgium, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, among others. He has also appeared as guest artist at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Ravinia, La Jolla, the Heifetz Institute, the Great Mountains Festival in Korea, Chamber Music Northwest, the Rome Chamber Music Festival, and the Great Lakes Festival. With the late Isaac Stern he had collaborated in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University and at the Robert McDuffie School for Strings at Mercer University in Georgia, Mr. Dutton began violin studies with Margaret Pardee and on viola with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs, and has received Honorary Doctorates from Middlebury College in Vermont, The College of Wooster in Ohio, Bard College in New York, and The Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. Mr.

Dutton and the other members of the Emerson Quartet were presented the 2015 Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award from Chamber Music America and were recipients of the Avery Fisher Award in 2004. They were also inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2010 and were Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2000. Mr. Dutton resides in Bronxville, NY with his wife, violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, and their three sons Luke, Jesse, and Samuel.

Mr. Dutton exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings. Viola: Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2003).

Bob Eason (Kenari Saxophone Quartet)

2nd Summer Hailed by Fanfare magazine for his “exceptional feel for elegance, wit, and tonal beauty,” Bob Eason is an Indianapolisbased saxophonist, music educator, and clinician. Having recently performed as a guest artist with SaxoBang Ensemble in Taipei, Taiwan, Bob actively concertizes as a soloist and chamber musician. Bob is the founder of the Young Saxophonist’s Institute, an organization of summer programs that has educated over 700 saxophonists since its beginning in 2007. Bob holds a Master’s degree in Saxophone Performance from Indiana University and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from the University of Houston, and his primary teachers include Otis Murphy, Dan Gelok, Valerie Vidal, Karen Wylie, Chris Patterson, and Theron Sharp.

Emerson String Quartet

one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles. “With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.” The Quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. As part of their larger mission to keep the string quartet form alive and relevant, they have commissioned and premiered works from some of today’s most esteemed composers, and have partnered in performance with leading soloists such as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yefim Bronfman, James Galway, Edgar Meyer, Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher, André Previn, and Isaac Stern, to name a few.

In its final season, the Quartet will give farewell performances across North America and Europe, including San Francisco’s Herbst Theater, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, Vienna’s Musikverein, Prague’s Rudolfinum, and London’s Southbank Centre for the completion of its acclaimed cycle of Shostakovich quartets, and more, before coming home to New York City for its final series there with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in a trio of programs entitled Emerson Dimensions where the Quartet will perform some of its most storied repertoire. They will give several performances of André Previn’s Penelope with Renée Fleming and Uma Thurman, including at the Los Angeles Opera, and they will appear at Carnegie Hall with Evgeny Kissin to perform the Dvořák Quintet as part of a benefit concert for the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. The final performance as the Emerson String Quartet will take place in October 2023 in New York City, and will be filmed for a planned documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook.

13th Summer

The Emerson String Quartet will have its final season of concerts in 202223, disbanding after more than four decades as

The Quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartók, Webern, and Shostakovich, as well as multi-CD sets of the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Dvořák. In its final season, the Quartet will record Schoenberg’s Second Quartet with Barbara Hannigan for release in 2023, with the session’s video documented by Mathieu Amalric for a

EUGENE DRUCKER violin

PHILIP SETZER violin

LAWRENCE DUTTON viola

PAUL WATKINS cello

short film. Deutsche Grammophon will also reissue its box set of the Emerson String Quartet Complete Recordings on the label, with two new additions. In October 2020, the group released a recording of Robert Schumann’s three string quartets for the Pentatone label. In the preceding year, the Quartet joined forces with Grammy-winning pianist Evgeny Kissin to release a collaborative album for Deutsche Grammophon, recorded live at a soldout Carnegie Hall concert in 2018.

Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson String Quartet was one of the first quartets whose violinists alternate in the first violin position. The Quartet, which takes its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, balances busy performing careers with a commitment to teaching, and serves as Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. In 2013, cellist Paul Watkins—a distinguished soloist, award-winning conductor, and devoted chamber musician—joined the original members of the Quartet to form today’s group.

In the spring of 2016, the State University of New York awarded fulltime Stony Brook faculty members Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton the status of Distinguished Professor, and conferred the title of Honorary Distinguished Professor on part-time faculty members Eugene Drucker and Paul Watkins. The Quartet’s members also hold Honorary Doctorates from Middlebury College, the College of Wooster, Bard College, and the University of Hartford. In January of 2015, the Quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field.

The Emerson String Quartet enthusiastically endorses Thomastik strings.

Abi Fayette (Catalyst Quartet)

Violinist Abi Fayette’s performances have taken her all over the world, spanning the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is a member of the

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she has performed with Jonathan Biss, Brett Dean, Gary Hoffman, Kim Kashkashian, Ida Kavafian, Joseph Silverstein, Steven Tenenbom, Jörg Widmann, and Peter Wiley. She has performed at Kneisel Hall, Music from Angel Fire, The Taos School of Music, and the Marlboro Music Festival. She began appearing with the Catalyst Quartet during the 2019-20 season.

Raised in a musical family, her violin studies began at age three. She was enrolled in the Juilliard School’s PreCollege Division and studied with Shirley Givens, Ann Setzer, KyungWha Chung, and Joseph Silverstein. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory. During the 2019-20 season, Fayette was a Community Artist fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music working in the Philadelphia School District on music education programs.

Abi performs on a violin made in 1860 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, generously on loan from Marlboro Music.

Katie Ford

Katie Ford is the author of four books of poems: Deposition; Colosseum; Blood Lyrics ; and If You Have to Go, all published by Graywolf Press.

Blood Lyrics was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Colosseum was named among the “Best Books of 2008” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review and led to a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Prize. Ford's international invitations to read and lecture include festivals in Tunis, Morocco, Oslo, and Stockholm.

She completed graduate work in theology and poetry at Harvard University, and, following that, received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, and the Norton Introduction to Literature. She serves as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Zlatomir Fung

2nd Summer

The first American in four decades and youngest musician ever to win First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky

Competition Cello Division, Zlatomir Fung is poised to become one of the preeminent cellists of our time. A recipient of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship 2022 and a 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Fung’s impeccable technique demonstrates a mastery of the canon and an exceptional insight into the depths of contemporary repertoire. A winner of the 2017 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2017 Astral National Auditions, Fung has taken the top prizes at numerous competitions and was selected as a 2016 U.S. Presidential Scholar for the Arts.

Recent summer festival appearances include Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Slatkin, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, and Verbier. As a soloist, Fung has appeared with the BBC Philharmonic, Detroit, Kansas City, Seattle, and Asheville Symphonies, among many others. Past recital highlights include his Carnegie Hall Weill Recital Hall debut. Upcoming engagements include a recital debut at Wigmore Hall, debuts with the Dallas, Milwaukee, and Rochester Symphonies, and recital tours in the US and Europe.

Of Bulgarian-Chinese heritage, Zlatomir Fung began playing cello at age three and earned fellowships at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Heifetz International Music Institute, MusicAlp, and the Aspen Music Festival and School. Fung studied at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Richard Aaron and Timothy Eddy. Fung has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today and has appeared on From the Top six times.

Stewart Goodyear

CMNW commissioned composer

Proclaimed "a phenomenon" by the Los Angeles Times and "one of the best pianists of his generation" by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished concert pianist, improviser, and composer. Mr. Goodyear has performed with, and has been commissioned by, many of the major orchestras and chamber music organizations around the world.

Last year, Orchid Classics released Mr. Goodyear's recording of his suite for piano and orchestra, Callaloo, and his Piano Sonata. His recent commissions include a Piano Quintet for the Penderecki String Quartet, and a piano work for the Honens Piano Competition.

Mr. Goodyear's discography includes the complete sonatas and piano concertos of Beethoven, as well as concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Rachmaninov, an album of Ravel piano works, and an album entitled For Glenn Gould, which combines repertoire from Mr. Gould's US and Montreal debuts. His Rachmaninov recording received a Juno nomination for Best Classical Album for Soloist and Large Ensemble Accompaniment. Mr. Goodyear's recording of his own transcription of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Complete Ballet), was chosen by The New York Times as one of the best classical music recordings of 2015. His discography is released on the Marquis Classics, Orchid Classics, Bright Shiny Things, and Steinway and Sons labels. His newest recording, Adolphus Hailstork's Piano Concerto with the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta, was released in March 2023 on the Naxos label. His composition for solo cello and piano, The Kapok , was recorded by Inbal Negev and Mr. Goodyear on Avie Records, and his suite for solo violin, Solo, was commissioned and recorded by Miranda Cuskson for the Urlicht Audiovisual label.

Highlights of the 2022-23 season were his return to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Southbank Centre (UK), and a North American tour with the Chineke! Orchestra. This summer, he

returns to the Grank Park and Rockport Music Festivals, and he will be performing his suite, Callaloo, with the Chineke! Orchestra at Southbank Centre (UK) and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.

Anni Hochhalter (WindSync)

Born in California and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Anni is an active musician and innovator in the arts field. Specializing in chamber music, she has launched an exciting career as a recitalist, instructor, and social entrepreneur. Anni graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Music degree in French horn performance, studying with leading studio and orchestral musicians Rick Todd, James Thatcher, and Kristy Morrell, along with summers under Roger Kaza as a fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival and Texas Music Festival. In 2009, Anni won first prize in the Yen Liang Young Artist Competition and performed Richard Strauss’ First Horn Concerto in E-flat Major with the Diablo Symphony. As a touring musician, she has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles across North America, Europe, and Asia, and performs each summer as principal horn of the McCall Music Festival in McCall, Idaho. Anni is based in San Francisco, California and enjoys trail running and backpacking whenever possible. During the summer of 2020 she backpacked over 250 miles, including a 75 mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington, and in the last year has run two marathons. Anni currently serves as Executive Director and musician chair of WindSync.

Hsin-Yun Huang

8 th Summer

Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career as one of the leading violists of her generation, performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Ms. Huang has been soloist with the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Bogotá Philharmonic,

the NCPA Orchestra in Beijing, Zagreb Soloists, International Contemporary Ensemble, the London Sinfonia, and the Brazil Youth Orchestra, and has performed the complete Hindemith viola concertos with the Taipei City Symphony. She is a regular presence at festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Rome, Spoleto USA, Moritzburg, Music@Menlo, and the Seoul Spring Festival, among many others. She tours extensively with the Brentano String Quartet, most notably including performances of the complete Mozart string quintets at Carnegie Hall.

Inspired by authentic folk elements from around the globe, the program Strings of Soul is the focus and highlight of Ms. Huang’s 2022-23 season. Delving into her cultural roots, Ms. Huang co-commissioned Grawemeyer Award-winner Lei Liang to curate the program for pipa virtuoso, Wu Man, and viola. Additional performances of the season include chamber and solo recitals in New York City, Philadelphia, Athens (GA), and more.

Since the pandemic, Ms. Huang has found ways to reimagine the next stage. Highlights in 2021 included her multidisciplinary collaborations incorporating choreography by Ashkenazy Ballet based on her solo viola project, FantaC, which was chosen to air on Sky Classica, the Italian Premiere Arts Channel. She started a hybrid educational space VivaViola! with missions to expand the viola repertoire while preserving musical values and history through her dialogues with esteemed musicians of today.

Other recent highlights include concerto performances under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota, and appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She is also the first solo violist to be presented at the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing. She is a regular guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the 92nd Street Y, and the Seoul Spring Festival. The 2014-15 season featured a series of three chamber concerts curated by Ms. Huang and presented by the 92nd Street Y.

Ms. Huang has in recent years embarked on a series of major commissioning projects for solo viola

and chamber ensemble. To date, these works include compositions from ShihHui Chen (Shu Shon Key, which Ms. Chen also arranged for orchestra) and Steven Mackey (Groundswell ), which premiered at the Aspen Festival. Ms. Huang’s 2012 recording, Viola Viola, for Bridge Records, included those works along with compositions by Elliott Carter, Poul Ruders, and George Benjamin; the CD has won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her most recent release is the complete Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach, in partnership with violist Misha Amory.

A native of Taiwan and an alumna of Young Concert Artists, Ms. Huang received degrees from The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. She has given masterclasses at the Guildhall School in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the San Francisco Conservatory, Yong Sie Tow Conservatory in Singapore, and the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. She served on the jury of the 2011 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the 2022 Tokyo International Viola Competition, and will be a juror for the 2023 Melbourne Chamber Music Competition.

Ms. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist and the youngest competitor in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993 she was the top prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich, and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. Ms. Huang was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet from 1994 to 2000.

She is currently on the Viola Faculty at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music and most grateful for her teachers David Takeno, Peter Norris, Michael Tree, and Samuel Rhodes. She is married to Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano String Quartet. They live in New York City and have two children, Lucas and Leah. She plays on a 1735 Testore Viola.

Garrett Hudson (WindSync)

Recognized by the Winnipeg Free Press for “shaking up the classical music world,” Garrett Hudson is known for his charismatic stage presence and highly personal voice on the flute. His roots lie in Winnipeg, Manitoba where he emerged at the age of 16 in a solo debut with the Winnipeg Symphony. Before embarking upon a dynamic career as an international soloist, instructor, and orchestral and chamber musician, Mr. Hudson held positions in North America's leading professional training orchestras including the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Montreal, Quebec, and participated in other world-class training programs such as the Young Artist Program through Ottawa's National Arts Center. Mr. Hudson completed a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of British Columbia, studying under Scottish flutist Lorna McGhee and earned his Master of Music degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music under the tutelage of renowned flute pedagogue Leone Buyse. Since 2009 he has served as flutist with WindSync, an ensemble considered to be one of North America’s foremost emerging chamber forces and a recent Gold Medalist in the National Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and winner of the Concert Artists Guild international competition for artist management. Mr. Hudson currently serves as adjunct faculty of flute at Lonestar College in Houston, Texas.

Wang Jie

CMNW co-commissioned composer

Wang Jie's stylistic versatility is a rare trait among today's composers. One day she spins a few notes into a large symphony, the next she conjures a malevolent singing rat onto the opera stage. Unveiling beauty in this world and paving new paths for lasting public engagement with classical music are at the heart of her artistry.

For the past three years running, Jie's Symphony No. 1 has been the mostbroadcast work on the most-listened-to classical music show on public radio. A popular concert opener, her Symphonic Overture - America the Beautiful is adored by tens of thousands of live audiences across the United States. During previous seasons, you might have heard about her pioneering opera, It Rained on Shakopee, based on her mentoring experience at the Minnesota state prison. Her career is made possible by trailblazers at The League of American Orchestras, American Composers Orchestra, Opera America, and the Toulmin Foundation, to name a few. She is a frequent collaborator with organizations that vitalize the beauty of classical music as relevant today as ever, such as the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Colorado Music Festival, Musica Sacra, The App, etc. She received degrees from Manhattan School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and holds a PhD from NYU. Co-founder of the Emerging Composers Intensive in CA and a serious instrumentalist herself, Jie tirelessly mentors young composers with a focus on collaborative, musicianshipbased approach in creativity. Born in Shanghai, Jie now considers herself a New Yorker.

Graeme Steele Johnson (WindSync)

Praised for his “elegant and rounded sound” and “gentle lyricism” ( Albany TimesUnion), Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility. Winner of the Hellam Young Artist’ Competition and the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, he has established a multifaceted career as a clarinetist, writer, and arranger. His diverse artistic endeavors range from a TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, to his reconstruction of a forgotten 125-year-old work by Charles Martin Loeffler, to his performances of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on a rare elongated clarinet that he commissioned. He has appeared in recital at The Kennedy Center and Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess series, and as a chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, and Yellow Barn. His concerto appearances include the Vienna

International Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Caroga Lake and Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestras, and the CME Chamber Orchestra.

Johnson has performed his original chamber arrangements around the country with such artists as Valerie Coleman, the Miró Quartet, and Han Lash. He holds graduate degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he was twice awarded the Alumni Association Prize; other recent accolades include the Saint Botolph Club Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award and the inaugural Lee Memorial Scholarship from the Center for Musical Excellence. His major teachers include David Shifrin, Nathan Williams, and Ricardo Morales. He is doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center under the mentorship of Charles Neidich.

Ieva Jokubaviciute

Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė's powerfully and intricately crafted performances have led critics to describe her as possessing "razorsharp intelligence and wit" (The Washington Post) and as "an artist of commanding technique, refined temperament and persuasive insight" (The New York Times). In 2006, she was honored as a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

In 2021, Sono Luminus released Ms. Jokūbavičiūtė’s latest recording, Northscapes, which features works by twenty-first century composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe. Gramophone magazine described it as “a fascinating, wellbalanced programme, played with engrossingly undemonstrative virtuosity . . . Jokūbavičiūtė navigates the contrasting demands of each work with hugely impressive skill.”

Jokūbavičiūtė’s recital programs and recording projects bring her to stages in major cities in the US and in Europe. She made her orchestral debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and has since performed concerti with orchestras in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Montevideo, Uruguay; Washington, DC; and Fargo, North Dakota.

A much sought-after chamber musician and collaborator, notably with violinist Midori, Ms. Jokūbavičiūtė's chamber music endeavors have brought her to major stages throughout North America and extensive touring in Europe, Japan, India, and South America. She also regularly appears at international music festivals and has established herself as a mentoring artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and Kneisel Hall in Maine. She was a founding member of the Naumburg International Chamber Music Competition winner, Trio Cavatina.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music, Ms. Jokūbavičiūtė is currently Associate Professor of Piano at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Braizahn Jones

3rd Summer Braizahn Jones is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer. Braizahn studied with Paul Firak (Principal Bass, Las Vegas Philharmonic) in his hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada before attending the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University where he studied with Jeffrey Weisner before transferring to Curtis in 2014. Since then, Braizahn has gone on to perform and tour with both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony before joining the Oregon Symphony as Assistant Principal Bass in 2018. With his time away from the orchestra he also performs chamber music with worldrenowned artists at Portland's Chamber Music Northwest and the Jackson Hole Chamber Music festival. A passionate teacher, Braizahn serves as part of the double bass faculty at the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland. He has served as guest faculty at the Pacific Music Institute in Honolulu, as well as various other festivals and youth orchestras locally, nationally, and internationally, and joined the double bass faculty at Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2022.

Aiden Kane (Viano Quartet)

2nd Summer American violist

Aiden Kane has performed in North America, Europe, and Asia as a current member of the Viano Quartet, who are First Prize Laureates of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

After leaving violin for the dark side, Aiden fi rst studied viola with Daniel Foster through the National Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Fellowship Program. She subsequently earned a Bachelor’s and two Master’s degrees (in Viola Performance and Chamber Music Studies, respectively) at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Paul Coletti. During her undergraduate years at Colburn, Aiden discovered her love for quartet life as the violist of the Calla Quartet, which received the silver medal at the 2015 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and presented Colburn’s inaugural Musical Encounters outreach program. Since she joined the Viano Quartet, Viano has won prizes, weathered a pandemic, moved from one coast to another, and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in the Nina von Maltzahn Graduate String Quartet-inResidence Program—and Aiden loves quartet life even more for it all.

This summer, Aiden is traveling with her Viano colleagues to music festivals across three countries. She is looking forward to spending time with a cornucopia of repertoire, plenty of hiking, and some pretty awesome people.

Kenari Saxophone Quartet

Bixby Kennedy (Third Sound)

2nd Summer Applauded for their “flat-out amazing” performances and “stunning virtuosity” (Cleveland Classical ), the highly acclaimed Kenari Quartet delivers inspiring performances that transform the perception of the saxophone. The quartet aims to highlight the instrument’s remarkable versatility by presenting meticulously crafted repertoire from all periods of classical and contemporary music.

The Kenari Quartet has found a home performing on many of the premiere chamber music series in the United States, often serving as the first ensemble of its kind to be presented. Recent engagements include appearances at Chamber Music Northwest, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and Chamber Music Tulsa. Advocating passionately for the music of living composers, Kenari has given world premieres of new works by Mischa Zupko, Joel Love, and David Salleras, and in 2016 the quartet received a Classical Commissioning Grant from Chamber Music America that allowed them to commission a new work from Corey Dundee, Kenari’s very own tenor saxophonist. The quartet has also collaborated with the Imani Winds, presenting the world premiere of J.P. Redmond’s 9x9: Nine Pieces for Nonet in 2018.

Kenari Quartet’s name is derived from the Malay word “kenari,” which may be translated as “songbird.” Expanding on the age-old idea that birds communicate through song, the Kenari Quartet seeks to exemplify this concept through concert hall performances. By not only connecting with their audiences via song, but also through physical movement, Kenari amplifies the standard concert experience with their striking visual communication and powerful stage presence. The Kenari Quartet is represented by Jean Schreiber Management.

Admired for his “marvelous ringing tone” (Joseph Dalton, Albany Times Union) Bixby Kennedy is one of the most versatile clarinetists of his generation. He has performed concerti with orchestras including the Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and New Haven Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Bixby has performed throughout the US and Europe in venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, Marlboro Music Festival, and is the clarinetist for the "explosive" New York City-based chamber ensemble, Frisson. He has appeared as a guest artist with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and The Knights. As an orchestral musician, Bixby has performed with the MET Opera and NY Philharmonic in addition to regular engagements with the Albany and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. On period instruments, Bixby has performed classical repertoire on original and replica instruments throughout the US with Grand Harmonie Orchestra. He is a former member of Ensemble Connect and works as a teaching artist throughout the US. As an arranger, his works have been performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Schumann, Frisson, Ensemble Connect, and Symphony in C. He loves traveling, trying new foods, laughing, hiking, and playing tennis. Bixby performs exclusively on Backun instruments.

Alexi Kenney

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Indianapolis Symphony, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among many others, in recital at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, 92NY, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

In 2023, he debuts Shifting Ground, a solo violin recital that interweaves Bach with contemporary works (including two commissioned compositions by Salina Fisher and Angélica Negrón), at Cal Performances, Celebrity Series Boston, Princeton University Concerts, and the Phillips Collection.

A sought-after chamber musician, Alexi regularly performs at festivals including Chamber Music Northwest, ChamberFest Cleveland, La Jolla, Marlboro, Ojai, Seattle, and Spoleto, and as a member of the new quartet collective, Owls, alongside violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist/composer Paul Wiancko.

Alexi is an alum of the Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Alexi is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust

Award, and winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Born in 1994 in Palo Alto, California, Alexi received his Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. He plays a violin made by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by François-Nicolas Voirin. Outside of music, Alexi enjoys searching for great food and coffee, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

Karen

2nd Summer

Violinist Alexi

Kenney is forging a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras in the USA and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time.

He has appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony,

(Third Sound)

Grammy Awardwinning violinist

Karen Kim is widely hailed for her sensitive musicianship and passionate commitment to chamber and contemporary music. Her performances have been described as “compellingly structured and intimately detailed” (Cleveland Classical ), “muscular and gripping” (New York Classical Review), and having “a clarity that felt

Kim

BOB EASON

soprano saxophone

KYLE BALDWIN tenor saxophone

COREY DUNDEE alto saxophone

GABRIEL PIQUÉ baritone saxophone (filling in for Steven Banks)

personal, even warmly sincere” (The New York Times). She has performed in such prestigious venues and series as Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium and Zankel and Weill Recital Halls; the Celebrity Series of Boston; the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; the Vienna Musikverein; London’s Wigmore Hall; the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; the Seoul Arts Center; and Angel Place in Sydney, Australia. She received the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2011 for her recordings of the complete quartets of György Ligeti.

Esteemed for her versatility across a broad spectrum of musical idioms and artistic disciplines, Ms. Kim has collaborated with artists ranging from Kim Kashkashian, Jörg Widmann, and Shai Wosner to Questlove & The Roots and the James Sewell Ballet. She is a member of the Jasper String Quartet, winners of Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award and the Professional Quartet-inResidence at Temple University's Center for Gifted Young Musicians. She is also a member of the critically acclaimed Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Échappé, and Deviant Septet, and she is a founding member of the “forward-looking, expert ensemble” Third Sound (The New Yorker).

Ms. Kim received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Violin Performance, as well as a Master’s degree in Chamber Music from the New England Conservatory, where she worked with Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Paul Katz, and Dominique Eade. She is a supporter of the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

Soovin Kim

CMNW Artistic Director, YAI faculty, festival artist

5th Summer

Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist

of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices, and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.

Kim is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became Artistic Directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.

Paul Laraia (Catalyst Quartet)

Praised by The Strad for "eloquent” and "vibrant" playing, violist Paul Laraia enjoys a multifaceted career as soloist, chamber musician, and advocate for new music. He has appeared as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Nashville Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Filharmonica De Bogata, at festivals including the Yellow Barn, Sarasota, Vail International Dance, Festival Del Sole, Incheon Music Hic Et Nunc!, Hong Kong Generation Next Arts, Sitka, Banff, Grand Canyon, and Cornell’s Mayfest. He has performed chamber music with Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Jorg Widmann, Vadim Repin, Edgar Meyer, Donald Weilerstein, Cho-Liang Lin, Roger Tapping, Anthony Marwood, Daniel Phillips, and Paul Huang. Laraia recently recorded a solo debut album of Bach, Reger, Hindemith, and Henze for the White Pine label.

The New Jersey native first studied viola with Brynina Socolofsk, and later with Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was First Prize Winner of the 2011 Sphinx Competition, and in 2019, won First Prize in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition under whose auspices he made his recital debut at Wigmore Hall in London in 2020.

Paul Laraia is Associate Professor of Viola at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He performs on a Hiroshi Iizuka viola in the “viola d’amore” style, and a Belgian bow by Pierre Guillaume awarded by the Bishops Strings Shop in London.

Han Lash (umama womama)

CMNW co-commissioned composer 2nd Summer Han Lash’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, the Times Center in Manhattan, the Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, and The Aspen Music Festival & School, among others. In 2016, Lash was honored with a Composer Portrait Concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, which included commissioned works for pianist Lisa Moore and loadbang. In the 2017-2018 season, Lash's Piano Concerto No. 1 “In Pursuit of Flying” was premiered by Jeremy Denk and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra debuted Facets of Motion for orchestra, and Music for Nine, Ringing was performed at the Music Academy of the West School and Festival. Paul Appleby and Natalia Katyukova premiered Songs of Imagined Love, a song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall, in 2018, and in 2019, Lash's chamber opera, Desire, premiered at Miller Theatre to great acclaim. Lash's Double Concerto for piano and harp was premiered by the Naples Philharmonic, and Forestallings, a musical response to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, was premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Lash’s double harp concerto, The Peril of Dreams, was premiered by the Seattle Symphony in November 2021, with the composer as one of the featured soloists. Han Lash's music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).

Hanna Lee

YAI faculty, festival artist

Violist Hanna Lee has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Kimmel Center, Jordan Hall, Suntory Hall, and Seoul Arts Center. Ms. Lee has appeared as a soloist with the KBS Symphony Orchestra, Korean Symphony, Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Jungen Symphony Orchestra, and the Sungnam City Orchestra. As an avid chamber musician, she was invited to perform at Ravinia, Verbier, Kronberg, and Marlboro Festivals. As a member of the Kallaci String Quartet, she has performed complete string quartet works by Shostakovich and Beethoven and has toured in Korea and abroad. As a recitalist, she has appeared at Kumho Cultural Foundation and Seoul Arts Center Series. A recipient of many honors and prizes, Ms. Lee's awards include major prizes at the International Young Artist Competition (USA) and the Osaka International Competition (Japan). She is a graduate of Korean National University of Arts, Curtis Institute of Music, New England Conservatory, and Kronberg Academy. She has been invited to festivals worldwide, such as Music Alp Festival, Seoul Spring Festival, Pyeongchang Music Festival, and Seoul International Music Festival. Also, she is a member of Kallaci String Quartet, Kumho Soloists, Ensemble Opus, and is guest principal violist at Australian Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Lee is currently on faculty at Korean National University of Arts, Yonsei University, and Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts.

Jessica Lee

one should make a special effort to hear, wherever she plays.” Her international appearances include solo performances with the Plzen Philharmonic, Gangnam Symphony, Malaysia Festival Orchestra, and at the Rudolfinum in Prague. At home, she has appeared with orchestras such as the Houston, Grand Rapids, and Spokane symphonies.

Jessica has performed in recital at venues including Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Ravinia “Rising Stars,” the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the Kennedy Center.

A long-time member of the Johannes Quartet as well as of the The Bowers Program (formerly the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two), Jessica has also toured frequently with Musicians from Marlboro, including appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Gardner Museum, and with the Guarneri Quartet in their farewell season. Her chamber music festival appearances include Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, Seoul Spring, Caramoor, Olympic, and Music@Menlo. She also put together a six-video chamber music series during the pandemic which was a collaboration between the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Clinic to bring chamber music from iconic spaces in Cleveland to the greater Cleveland community.

Jessica has always had a passion for teaching and has served on the faculties of Vassar College and Oberlin College, and now is on violin faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age fourteen following studies with Weigang Li, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree under Robert Mann and Ida Kavafian. She completed her studies for a Master’s degree at the Juilliard School.

David Serkin Ludwig

3rd Summer

David Serkin

2nd Summer

Violinist Jessica Lee has built a multifaceted career as soloist, chamber musician, and now as Assistant Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra since 2016. She was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2005 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and has been hailed as "a soloist which

Ludwig’s first musical memory was singing Beatles songs with his sister; his second was hearing his grandfather

perform at Carnegie Hall —and a diverse career collaborating with many of today’s leading musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, and writers was to follow. His choral work

The New Colossus, opened the private

prayer service for President Obama’s second inauguration; in the next year NPR Music named him in the world’s “Top 100 Composers Under Forty.” Ludwig holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. A recipient of numerous awards and honors, he recently received the prestigious 2018 Pew Center for the Arts and Heritage Fellowship.

David lives in Philadelphia with his wife, acclaimed violinist Bella Hristova, and their four beloved cats.

Amelia Lukas

4th Summer

Known for her especially pure tone, flexible technique, and passionate performances” ( Artslandia), flutist Amelia Lukas performs with “a fine balance of virtuosity and poetry” (The New York Times). A Powell Flutes Artist and Portland resident, she “excels at bringing drama and fire to hypermodernist works with challenging extended techniques” (Oregon ArtsWatch). In addition to her solo show “Natural Homeland: Honoring Ukraine” at the Alberta Rose Theatre and throughout Washington and Hawaii, her recent engagements include solo appearances for United for Ukraine, Fear No Music, Makrokosmos Project, Kenny Endo, March Music Moderne, Portland Taiko, the Astoria Music Festival, Music in the Woods, Cascadia Composers, and for All Classical Portland’s live radio broadcasts, with additional performances for the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Portland Piano International, TedX Portland, Friends of Chamber Music, 45th Parallel, and Oregon Music Festival. Lukas's career includes founding and directing the “truly original . . . impeccably curated” (Time Out New York) multimedia chamber series “Ear Heart Music,” membership in the American Modern Ensemble, and performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Stone, Bargemusic, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and New Music New York Festival. She holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music (London), where she received three prizes for musical excellence, and from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was an inaugural class member for the Master's degree in Contemporary

YAI faculty, festival artist

Performance. Amelia is a Chamber Music Northwest Board Member and offers creative strategy and public relations services as the Principal and Founder of Aligned Artistry. amelialukas.com

Anthony McGill

Hailed for his “trademark brilliance, penetrating sound, and rich character”

(The New York Times), clarinetist Anthony McGill enjoys a dynamic international solo and chamber music career and is principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic—the first African American principal player in the organization's history. He is the recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize, which is one of classical music’s most significant awards.

McGill appears as a soloist with top orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. He performed alongside Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriela Montero at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, premiering a piece by John Williams. As a chamber musician, McGill is a collaborator of the Brentano, Daedalus, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, Shanghai, Takács, and Tokyo Quartets, and performs with leading artists including Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang.

He serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School and is the Artistic Director for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. He holds the William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2020, McGill’s #TakeTwoKnees campaign protesting the death of George Floyd and historic racial injustice went viral.

Anton Nel

Anton Nel, winner of the fi rst prize in the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, continues to enjoy a remarkable and multifaceted career that has taken him to North and South America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. Following an auspicious debut at the age of twelve with Beethoven’s C Major Concerto after only two years of study, the Johannesburg native captured fi rst prizes in all the major South African competitions while still in his teens, toured his native country extensively, and became a well-known radio and television personality. A student of Adolph Hallis, he made his European debut in France in 1982, and in the same year graduated with the highest distinction from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He came to the United States in 1983, attending the University of Cincinnati, where he pursued his Master's and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees under Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. In addition to garnering many awards from his alma mater during this threeyear period, he was a prizewinner at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition in England and won several fi rst prizes at the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition in Palm Desert in 1986.

Highlights of Mr. Nel’s four decades of concertizing include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the symphonies of Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, and London, among many others. (He has an active repertoire of more than 100 works for piano and orchestra). An acclaimed Beethoven interpreter, Anton Nel has performed the concerto cycle several times, most notably on two consecutive evenings with the Cape Philharmonic in 2005. Additionally, he has performed all-Beethoven solo recitals, complete cycles of the violin and cello works, and most recently, a highly successful run of the Diabelli Variations as part of Moises Kaufman’s play, 33 Variations. He was also chosen to give the North American premiere of the newly discovered Piano Concerto No. 3 in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn in 1992. Two noteworthy world premieres of works by living composers include Virtuoso Alice by David Del Tredici (dedicated to, and performed by, Mr. Nel at his Lincoln

Center debut in 1988) as well as Stephen Paulus's Piano Concerto also written for Mr. Nel; the acclaimed world premiere took place in New York in 2003.

As a recitalist, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, the Frick Collection in New York, the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Davies Hall in San Francisco, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Internationally, he has performed recitals in major concert halls in Canada, England (Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls in London), France, Holland (Concertgebouw in Amsterdam), Japan (Suntory Hall in Tokyo), Korea, China, and South Africa.

A favorite at summer festivals, he has performed at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as at the music festivals of Aspen and Ravinia (where he is on the artist-faculties), Vancouver, Cartagena, and Stellenbosch, among many others. Possessing encyclopedic chamber music and vocal repertoire, he has, over the years, regularly collaborated with many of the world's foremost string quartets, instrumental soloists, and singers. With acclaimed violinist Sarah Chang he completed a highly successful tour of Japan as well as appearing at a special benefit concert for Live Music Now in London, hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales.

Eager to pursue dual careers in teaching and performing, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in his early twenties, followed by professorships at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, where he was chairman of the piano department. In September 2000, Anton Nel was appointed as the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches an international class of students and heads the Division of Keyboard Studies. Since his return, he has also been the recipient of two Austin-American Statesman Critics Circle Awards, as well as the University Cooperative Society/College of Fine Arts award for extra-curricular achievement. In 2001, he was appointed Visiting "Extraordinary" Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and continues to teach masterclasses worldwide. In January 2010, he became the fi rst holder of the new Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Piano at the

University of Texas at Austin. Since 2015, he has been presenting an annual series of masterclasses in piano and chamber music at the Manhattan School of Music in New York as Visiting Professor and also teaches regularly at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto.

Mr. Nel is also an acclaimed harpsichordist and fortepianist. In recent seasons he has performed annual recitals on both instruments, concertos by the Bach family, Haydn, and Mozart with La Follia Austin Baroque as well as the Poulenc Harpsichord Concerto (Concert champêtre) with the Austin Symphony.

His recordings include four solo CDs, several chamber music recordings (including the complete Beethoven Piano and Cello Sonatas and Variations, and the Brahms Sonatas with Bion Tsang), and works for piano and orchestra by Franck, Fauré, and SaintSaens. His latest release features premiere recordings of all the works for piano and orchestra of Edward Burlingame Hill with the Austin Symphony conducted by Peter Bay.

Anton Nel became a citizen of the United States of America on September 11, 2003, and is a Steinway Artist.

Paul Neubauer

39th Summer Violist Paul Neubauer's exceptional musicality and effortless playing led The New York Times to call him “a master musician.” He recently made his Chicago Symphony subscription debut with conductor Riccardo Muti and his Mariinsky Orchestra debut with conductor Valery Gergiev. He also gave the U.S. Premiere of the newly discovered Impromptu for viola and piano by Shostakovich with pianist Wu Han. In addition, his recording of the Aaron Kernis Viola Concerto with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, was released on Signum Records and his recording of the complete viola and piano music by Ernest Bloch with pianist Margo Garrett was released on Delos.

Appointed Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21, he has appeared as soloist with over 100 orchestras including the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki philharmonics;

National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth symphonies; and Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle orchestras. He has premiered viola concertos by Bartók (revised version of the Viola Concerto), Friedman, Glière, Jacob, Kernis, Lazarof, Müller-Siemens, Ott, Penderecki, Picker, Suter, and Tower and has been featured on CBS's Sunday Morning, A Prairie Home Companion, and in Strad, Strings, and People magazines. A two-time Grammy nominee, he has recorded on numerous labels including Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Red Seal, and Sony Classical. Mr. Neubauer performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is the artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Mannes College.

Nokuthula Ngwenyama (umama womama)

CMNW co-commissioned composer

5th Summer

“Mother of Peace” and “Lion” in Zulu, Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s performances as orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician garner great attention. Gramophone proclaims her as “providing solidly shaped music of bold mesmerizing character.” As a composer, she was profiled by UPTOWN Magazine in its “A Poet of Sound” feature.

Ms. Ngwenyama gained international prominence winning the Primrose International Viola Competition at 16. The following year she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, which led to debuts at the Kennedy Center and the 92nd Street Y. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, she has performed with orchestras and as recitalist the world over.

This 2022-23 season Ms. Ngwenyama joined Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and Anna Polansky for piano quartets including Elegy written for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Supported in memory of Carole and Harry Hoffheimer and world premiered last season with the Linton Chamber Series, co-commissioned summer performances at Brattleboro Music Center, Hudson Valley Chamber Music

Circle, and Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival were received with much acclaim. The premiere tour continued with Arizona Friends of Music, Chamber Music Monterrey Bay, Chamber Music Northwest, the Kennedy Center, Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Phoenix Chamber Music Society.

As a member of the group umama womama, Ms. Ngwenyama joins fellow instrumentalists and composers Valerie Coleman and Han Lash on the New School Concerts performing their jointly written trio commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, and Clarion Concerts. Ms. Ngwenyama appears with Ms. Coleman, the Elixir Piano Trio, and the Phoenix Boys Choir on Composers’ Choice, an annual coproduction of Phoenix Chamber Music Society, ASU Kerr Cultural Center, and Peace Mama Productions she curates, performing Arizona Duets for violin and viola and the world premiere of Finding the Dream, commissioned by John Clements and the Phoenix Boys Choir. Primal Message, an homage to the Arecibo message that received its orchestral world premiere with Maestro Xian Zhang and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2020, continues to receive performances worldwide, including with the London Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra virtual broadcast.

Ms. Ngwenyama has performed at the White House and testified before Congress on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). An avid educator, she served as Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She also served as director of the Primrose International Viola Competition and is past president of the American Viola Society.

Born in Los Angeles, California of Zimbabwean-Japanese parentage, Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama (No-gooTOO-lah EN-doh En-gwen-YAH-mah) studied theory and counterpoint with Mary Ann Cummins, Warren Spaeth, and Dr. Herbert Zipper at the Crossroads School. She also appeared on Sylvia Kunin’s Emmy-nominated A Musical Encounter series with host Lynn Harrell and was orchestral soloist in the American Film Foundation documentary Never Give Up: The 20th

Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper. She is an alumna of the Colburn School for the Performing Arts (now the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts) and the Curtis Institute of Music, where her theory and counterpoint teachers were Edward Aldwell, Jennifer Higdon, and David Loeb. As a Fulbright Scholar she attended the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and received a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School. She is the first Composer-in-Residence of the Phoenix Chamber Music Society and plays on a 1597 Antonius and Hieronymus Amati viola from the Biggs Collection.

Michael Nicolas (Third Sound)

2nd Summer

A “long-admired figure on the New York scene,” (The New Yorker), cellist Michael Nicolas enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and improvisor. He is the cellist of the intrepid and genredefying string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which has drawn praise from classical, world music, and rock critics alike. As a member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), he has worked with countless composers from around the world, premiering and recording dozens of new works. Another group, Third Sound, which Michael helped found, made its debut with an historic residency at the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival in Cuba. Earlier in his career, he played with the wildly popular South Korean chamber group Ensemble Ditto, and also held a post as Associate Principal Cellist of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. His solo album, Transitions, is available on the Sono Luminus record label.

Of mixed French-Canadian and Taiwanese heritage, Michael was born in Canada, and currently resides in New York City. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

Oregon Bach Festival Chorus

Jeewon Park

When Royce Saltzman and Helmuth Rilling founded the “Summer Festival of Music” in 1971, one of their first programming choices was Bach’s St. John Passion. Knowing they’d need a chorus, Saltzman and Rilling set out to find the most talented voices in the community. Over the course of five decades, the Festival Chorus grew and evolved into the pinnacle of choral music performance. In 2001, Rilling and the OBF Chorus received the Grammy Award for their recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo —a piece of epic size and sound that will hold its 25th anniversary celebratory performance during the 2023 Festival. The current chorus, led by Kathy Saltzman Romey, ranges from 15 to 54 musicians and features top-tier vocalists from prominent choruses and all four corners of the country.

Oregon Bach Festival Period Orchestra

Formed in 2015 in alignment with Oregon Bach Festival’s newly launched Berwick Academy for Historically Informed Performance, the OBF Period Orchestra is comprised of the world’s best baroque and classical instrumentalists. The orchestra varies in size, based on the annual needs of the festival, and many of the musicians serve as faculty members of the prestigious Berwick Academy. Violinist Marc Destrube leads the select group, which includes performers from top symphonies and orchestras. The 2023 presentation of Bach’s Magnificat features two dozen members of the Period Orchestra who will perform the piece on back-to-back nights in Eugene (June 30) and Portland (July 1).

Praised for her “deeply reflective playing” (Indianapolis Star) and “infectious exuberance” (The New York Times), pianist Jeewon Park has garnered the attention of audiences for her dazzling technique and poetic lyricism. Since making her debut at the age of 12, performing Chopin’s First Concerto with the Korean Symphony Orchestra, Jeewon Park has performed as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician in prestigious venues worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, 92nd Street Y, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Seoul Arts Center. Ms. Park is a frequent performer at Bargemusic and Caramoor International Music Festival where she was named a Rising Star in 2007. A passionate chamber musician, she has appeared at prominent festivals throughout the world, including Seattle Chamber Music Society, Spoleto USA, Bridgehampton, Lake Champlain, Manchester, Seoul Spring, Great Mountains (Korea), Tucson, Appalachian Summer, Taos, Eastern Music Festival, Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Music Alp in Courchevel (France), and Kusatsu Summer Music (Japan). The 2022-2023 season marks the 10th season for her as the co-artistic director, along with her husband, Edward Arron, of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute. In 2021, Ms. Park’s recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano with cellist Edward Arron was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label. Subsequently, they received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award from the Classical Recording Foundation. She came to the US in 2002 after winning all major competitions in Korea. Park is a graduate of Yonsei University, The Juilliard School, Yale University, and SUNY Stony Brook where she earned her DMA.

Karla Donehew Perez (Catalyst Quartet)

A founding member of the Catalyst Quartet, Karla Donehew Perez maintains a busy performance schedule throughout the United States and around the world. In addition to her work with the Catalyst Quartet, she has been a featured soloist with the Berkeley Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, and the New World Symphony. She has performed with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and collaborated with Joshua Bell, Zuill Bailey, Awadagin Pratt, Anthony McGill, Stewart Goodyear, Fredericka Von Stade, Garry Karr, and members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Takács quartets. Donehew Perez has been Guest Concertmaster at the Tucson Symphony and spent two years as a fellow at the New World Symphony, often as Concertmaster or Principal Second Violin.

Born in Puerto Rico, Donehew Perez began playing the violin at age three. She made her solo debut with the Puerto Rico Symphony when she was nine. After moving to California she studied with Anne Crowden of The Crowden School. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Paul Kantor, David Cerone, and William Preucil. She is on the faculty of the Longy School of Music at Bard College.

Donehew Perez performs on a violin made in 2013 by renowned German luthier Stefan Peter Grenier, supported in part by a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant, and a violin bow by Victor Fetique on loan from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.

Susanna Phillips

Alabama-native soprano Susanna Phillips continues to establish herself as one of today’s most sought-after singing actors and recitalists. Ms. Phillips is a recipient of the prestigious Met Opera 2010 Beverly Sills Artist Award. She has sung at the Metropolitan Opera for 12 consecutive seasons in roles including Musetta and Countess Almaviva. Role highlights include Fiordigili, which The New York Times called a “breakthrough night,” and Clémence in the company’s premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin

Last season saw Ms. Phillips’s return to her native Huntsville, engagements with OSNY and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Celebrity Boston Series, Bravo! Vail, and a world premiere of Picker’s Awakenings at OTSL. Desired by the world’s most renowned orchestras, Ms. Phillips opened the Oregon Symphony’s 125th Anniversary season performing Mahler’s Second Symphony. She has appeared with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Philadelphia Orchestra. She is dedicated to oratorio works with credits including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the Fauré and Mozart Requiems. Other career highlights include Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare and the title role of Agrippina with Boston Baroque, Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Renée Fleming, and Birdie in Blitzstein’s Regina.

Gabriel Piqué (Kenari Saxophone Quartet)

Gabriel Piqué is an assistant professor of saxophone and jazz studies at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music.

As a soloist and active performer, Piqué has presented concerts all over the world, including: Las Vegas, Croatia, Moscow, Strasbourg, Beijing, Shanghai, and Thailand. In 2020, he was the featured concerto soloist at the North American Saxophone Alliance conference in Tempe, AZ and was named first prize winner of the North American Saxophone Alliance Solo Competition in 2016. He is the

baritone saxophonist of the awardwinning Fuego Quartet, which was the gold medal winner of the 2017 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the 2017 Plowman Chamber Music Competition. Fuego Quartet recently released its debut album, Migration, through the Parma Recordings label. Piqué also plays alto in the critically acclaimed touring saxophone sextet, The Moanin’ Frogs. In 2018, Gabriel established the University of Illinois Saxophone Ensemble. As director Piqué has arranged and premiered numerous original transcriptions for large saxophone ensemble at the North American Saxophone Alliance regional conference.

Piqué has studied jazz saxophone with Dave D’Angelo of the Buddy Rich Orchestra and Ron Bridgewater of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. His primary classical teachers have included Debra Richtmeyer, ChienKwan Lin, and Connie Frigo. Piqué is a Vandoren and Selmer Artist. Among his numerous academic and merit-based awards, Piqué has been named a Presser Scholar and is a recipient of Eastman’s prestigious Performer’s Certificate.

Kian Ravaei

CMNW 2023 Protégé Artist

CMNW commissioned and cocommissioned composer

Whether composing piano preludes inspired by mythical creatures, flute melodies that mimic the songs of endangered birds, or a string quartet that draws from the Iranian music of his ancestral heritage, composer Kian Ravaei (b. 1999) takes listeners on a spellbinding tour of humanity’s most deeply felt emotions.

Ravaei has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Eliot Fisk, Bella Hristova, Salastina, and Juventas New Music Ensemble, and has served as a Copland House CULTIVATE Fellow and a Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Composer Teaching Artist Fellow. In recent months, Ravaei was featured on an episode of Performance Today, America’s most popular classical music radio program. His string quartet, Family Photos, has garnered numerous awards, including First Prize in the Spectrum Chamber Music Composition Competition, Second Prize in the instrumental chamber music division of the American Prize, and Honorable

Mention in the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition. DJs know Ravaei as the go-to person for creating orchestral versions of dance songs, including Wooli & Codeko’s Crazy feat. Casey Cook (Orchestral)

Ravaei counts celebrated composers Richard Danielpour, Derek Bermel, and Tarik O’Regan among his teachers. He is an alumnus of UCLA and the Curtis Institute of Music Young Artist Summer Program.

Karlos Rodriguez (Catalyst Quartet)

A founding member of the Catalyst Quartet, CubanAmerican cellist Karlos Rodriguez is a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, clinician, recording artist, writer, and administrator.

The winner of competitions and prizes, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The New World Center, and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center. Rodriguez has also been honored to work with numerous distinguished artists such as the Beaux Arts Trio, the American, Cavani, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Juilliard, Miami, Orion, Tokyo and Vermeer String Quartets; Janos Starker, Lynn Harrell, Zuill Bailey, Pieter Wispelway, Rachel Barton-Pine, Awadagin Pratt, Joshua Bell, Anthony McGill, Paul Neubauer, and Steven Isserlis.

A love of dance led to collaborations with the Thomas/Ortiz Dance Company, Freefall, Mark Morris Dance Group, Vail International Dance Festival, and Chita Rivera. Rodriguez has attended and been a guest artist at the Encore School for Strings; the Sarasota, Strings, Aspen, Grand Canyon, Great Lakes and Kneisel Hall chamber music festivals; the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, Philadelphia Orchestra Chamber Music Society, and Napa’s Festival Del Sole. As an educator, Rodriguez is the Director of Artistic Affairs for the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Curtis Institute of Music, and the Juilliard School, and has given masterclasses domestically and abroad.

Rodriguez has worked on commercials and films, collaborated with pop artists such as Shakira, John Legend, and Pink Martini, and contributed to numerous Broadway musicals. He is a member of the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra and past Principal Cellist of the Florida Grand Opera Orchestra. Rodriguez is also the author of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life-Music, published by Intellect Books UK. His teachers have included Richard Aaron, Peter Wiley, and David Soyer.

Karlos Rodriguez plays on a cello by award-winning luthier Michael Doran made possible through a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant.

Chris Rogerson

CMNW commissioned composer Hailed as a “confident new musical voice” (The New York Times), a “big discovery” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and a “fully-grown composing talent” (The Washington Post), Chris Rogerson’s music has been praised for its “haunting beauty” and “virtuosic exuberance” (The New York Times). Rogerson’s music is often characterized by its lyricism: recent notable works include Of Simple Grace, for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, his violin concerto, for Benjamin Beilman and the Kansas City Symphony, and Dream Sequence, for Anne-Marie McDermott and the Dover Quartet. Rogerson’s music has been programmed at venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London, Prague’s Rudolfinum, Radio France, and the Musikverein in Vienna.

An avid traveler who has visited over 90 countries around the world, Rogerson's work is frequently evocative of a sense of place: Four Autumn Landscapes, a clarinet concerto written for Anthony McGill, is a portrait of his childhood home in Buffalo, New York; String Quartet No. 4, commissioned for the Escher Quartet, draws from his experience in a remote corner of Afghanistan; and his piano concerto, Samaa', commissioned by Bravo! Vail for Anne-Marie McDermott and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, is inspired by a recent trip to Yemen.

Rogerson also regularly collaborates with artists in other disciplines: recent

examples include Sacred Earth, for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges with video by Emmy-nominated director and National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski, and Azaan, a play written for the Oregon Symphony in collaboration with Dipika Guha. His work has been featured in a variety of mediums, from comedian Joe Pera’s web series “How to Make It in USA” to ballet by choreographer Claudia Schreier.

Other recent commissions and performances have come from the Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New World, and San Francisco symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. This season, Mr. Rogerson also continues as Composer-in-Residence of the Allentown Symphony, which premieres a new orchestral work, as well as Artistic Advisor of the Amarillo Symphony.

Born in 1988, Mr. Rogerson studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, Yale School of Music, and Princeton University with Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, and Steve Mackey. He is represented by Young Concert Artists, Inc. and served as YCA Composer-in-Residence from 2010-2012. He also is one of two composers on the roster of Manhattan Chamber Players. In 2012, he co-founded Kettle Corn New Music, a new music presenting organization in New York City, and currently serves as its CoArtistic Director. In 2016, Mr. Rogerson joined the Musical Studies Faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he lives full-time.

Philip Setzer (Emerson String Quartet)

16th Summer

Violinist Philip Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and later at the Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. In 1967, Mr. Setzer won second prize at the Marjorie Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, DC, and in 1976 received a Bronze Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels. He has appeared with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony (David Robertson, conductor), Memphis Symphony (Michael Stern), New Mexico and Puerto Rico Symphonies (Guillermo

Figueroa), Omaha and Anchorage Symphonies (David Loebel), and on several occasions with the Cleveland Orchestra (Louis Lane). He has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival. In April of 1989, Mr. Setzer premiered Paul Epstein's Matinee Concerto. This piece, dedicated to, and written for, Mr. Setzer, has since been performed by him in Hartford, New York, Cleveland, Boston, and Aspen.

Currently serving as the Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook and Visiting Faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Mr. Setzer has given masterclasses at schools around the world, including the Curtis Institute of Music, London's Royal Academy of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, UCLA, and the Mannes School. Mr. Setzer is also the Director of the Shouse Institute, the teaching division of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. Mr. Setzer has also been a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center, and his article about those workshops appeared in The New York Times on the occasion of Isaac Stern's 80th birthday celebration.

A versatile musician with innovative vision and dedication to keep the art form of the string quartet alive and relevant, Mr. Setzer is the mastermind behind the Emerson’s two, highly praised collaborative theater productions: The Noise of Time, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2001 and directed by Simon McBurney, is a multi-media production about the life of Shostakovich and has given about 60 performances throughout the world; in 2016, Mr. Setzer teamed up with writer-director James Glossman and co-created the Emerson’s latest music/theater project, Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy Premiered at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Black Monk has been performed at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Princeton University, Wolf Trap, Ravinia Festival, and Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, South Korea. Mr. Setzer has also been touring and recording the piano trio repertoire with David Finckel and Wu Han.

Philip Setzer exclusively uses Thomastik Dominant and Vision strings. Violin: Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2011)

David Shifrin

CMNW Artistic Director Emeritus

46th Summer Clarinetist David Shifrin graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1967 and the Curtis Institute in 1971. He made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra having won the Orchestra’s Student Competition in 1969. He went on to receive numerous prizes and awards worldwide, including the Geneva and Munich International Competitions, the Concert Artists Guild auditions, and both the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000).

Shifrin received Yale University’s Cultural Leadership Citation in 2014 and is currently the Samuel S. Sanford Professor in the Practice of Clarinet at the Yale School of Music where he teaches a studio of graduate-level clarinetists and coaches chamber music ensembles. He is also the artistic director of Yale’s Oneppo Chamber Music Society and the Yale in New York concert series. Shifrin previously served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii.

Shifrin served as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1992 to 2004 and Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon from 1981 to 2020. He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras in the United States and abroad and has served as Principal Clarinet with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestras of New Haven, Honolulu, and Dallas. Shifrin also continues to broaden the clarinet repertoire by commissioning and championing more than 100 works of 20th and 21st century American composers. Shifrin’s recordings have consistently garnered praise and awards including three Grammy nominations and “Record of the Year” from Stereo Review

Shifrin is represented by CM Artists in New York and performs on Backun cocobolo clarinets and Légère synthetic reeds.

Peter Stumpf

2nd Summer

Peter Stumpf is professor of cello at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Prior to his appointment, he was Principal Cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Stumpf's tenure in Los Angeles followed 12 years as Associate Principal Cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His professional orchestral career began at the age of 16 when he joined the cello section of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He received a Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and an Artist's Diploma from the New England Conservatory.

A dedicated chamber music musician, he is a member of the Johannes String Quartet and has appeared on the chamber music series at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, the Boston Celebrity Series, the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Casals Hall in Tokyo, and at the concert halls of Cologne. He has performed with the chamber music societies of Boston and Philadelphia and at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico as well as the Festivals of Marlboro, Santa Fe, Bridgehampton, Ottawa, Great Lakes, Ojai, Spoleto, and Aspen. He has toured with Music from Marlboro, the Casals Hall Ensemble in Japan, and with pianist Mitsuko Uchida in performances of the complete Mozart Piano Trios. He has collaborated with pianists Leif Ove Andsnes, Emmanuel Ax, Jorge Bolet, Yefim Bronfman, Radu Lupu, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Andras Schiff, Jean Yves Thibaudet, Mitsuko Uchida, and with the Emerson and Guarneri String Quartets. Most recently, the Johannes Quartet has collaborated with the Guarneri Quartet on tour in performances including commissions from composers William Bolcom and Esa Pekka Salonen.

Concerto appearances have been with the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Virginia Symphony, the Vermont Symphony, the Connecticut String Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay, the American Youth Symphony, and at the Aspen Music Festival. As a recitalist, he has performed at the Universities of

Hartford, Syracuse, and Delaware, at Jordan Hall in Boston, and at the Philips and Corcoran Galleries in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he performed the Six Suites for Solo Cello by J. S. Bach on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society Series and on the Chamber Music in Historic Sites Series in Los Angeles. His awards include first prize in the Washington International Competition, the Graham-Stahl Competition, and the Aspen Concerto Competition and second prize in the Evian International String Quartet Competition.

As a former member of the Boston Musica Viva, he has explored extended techniques, including microtonal compositions and numerous premieres. As a teacher, he has served on the cello faculty of the University of Southern California, Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, the New England Conservatory, and guest artist faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music as well as at the Yellow Barn Music Festival and the Musicorda Summer String Program. He has conducted master classes at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Manhattan and Mannes Schools of Music, Iowa and Pennsylvania State Universities, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Seoul National University, Temple University, and at the Universities of Delaware and Michigan.

Rémy Taghavi (WindSync)

Rémy Taghavi is a highly sought-after bassoonist and educator based in the Northeast.

Rémy is Principal Bassoon of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra New England, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and the Cape and Princeton Symphonies, among others. He is a Founder and Artistic Director of the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, a member of the New York-based chamber ensembles Frisson and SoundMind, and an alumnus of Carnegie Hall’s teaching artist and chamber music program, Ensemble Connect. Mr. Taghavi is Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also serves as the Woodwind Chamber Music Coordinator, and faculty at the Rocky Ridge Music Center’s Young

Artist Seminar (Colorado). He completed degrees at the University of Southern California, the Juilliard School, and Stony Brook University. His primary teachers include Frank Morelli, Judith Farmer, and Norbert Nielubowski.

Third Sound

Composers Forum. I Care If You Listen wrote of the ensemble’s festival performance, “Third Sound played with a level of commitment, joy, and ensemble cohesion that belies the short time they have worked together.” The ensemble has also appeared at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University (New York), National Sawdust (Brooklyn), Bard Music West (San Francisco), the Schubert Club (St. Paul, MN), and elsewhere.

Emily Tsai (WindSync)

BIXBY

KAREN

PATRICK

“Forward-looking, expert ensemble Third Sound” (The New Yorker) is a collective of virtuoso performers drawn from New York City's finest chamber musicians. The ensemble musicians—flutist Sooyun Kim, clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois, violinist Karen Kim, cellist Michael Nicolas, and composer Patrick Castillo—have appeared on the most prestigious series and stages around the world and garnered myriad honors, including the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Georg Solti Foundation Career Grant, and the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, among many others. Conceived from a desire to present the complete literature as a rich and dynamic continuum, Third Sound brings together an accomplished group of musicians equally skilled in—and equally passionate about—the work of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as that of composers ranging from Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Messiaen; Carter, Wuorinen, Adams, and Reich; to emerging composers of the early twenty-first century.

Third Sound recorded the title track of Wang Lu's portrait album, Urban Inventory (New Focus Recordings), which was named one of The New Yorker's Notable Performances and Recordings of 2018. In 2020, innova Recordings released the ensemble's debut album, Heard in Havana

Third Sound made its debut in November 2015 at the Festival de Música Contemporánea de La Habana (Havana, Cuba), presenting a program of contemporary American music in partnership with the American

Quoted by DMV Classical as having “a consistently lovely tone and [taking] her melodic twists and turns with stylish assurance,” Emily Tsai began her musical studies at the age of four on the violin and started the oboe when she was ten. Based in the Washington, DC area, she is the Assistant Principal Oboe of the Washington National Opera and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. Along with her position at the Kennedy Center, Emily has also performed with the National Philharmonic, Maryland Lyric Opera, Allentown Symphony Orchestra, Alexandria Symphony and others in the DC area. She has made solo appearances with the Alba Music Festival Orchestra, the Amadeus Orchestra, the Paragon Philharmonia, and the Washington Asian Philharmonic among others. Emily is the adjunct oboe professor at St. Mary's College in Maryland and holds a robust private studio in the DC area. Her main teachers include Mark Hill, Richard Killmer, and Malcolm Smith. She received her Bachelor of Music degree in Oboe Performance from the Eastman School of Music with a Performer’s Certificate and the Chamber Music Award, and her Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Rochester graduating Magna Cum Laude. She received her Master of Music from the University of Maryland where she was part of the Graduate Fellowship Quintet. In her downtime, Emily has completed a number of half marathons, a full marathon, an Olympic triathlon, and a Tough Mudder, and loves to go on various outdoor adventures with her husband, Karl. Inside, she can be found playing video games and spoiling her two adorable cats, Xenia and Perch.

LAURA COCKS flute

KENNEDY clarinet

KIM violin

MICHAEL NICOLAS cello

STEVEN BECK piano

CASTILLO composer

Flutist Valerie Coleman, Violist Nokuthula

Ngwenyama and Harpist Han Lash joined forces in 2019 to create an all-star ensemble whose mission is to celebrate motherhood and champion the performer-composer hybrid artist model, while expanding the Debussy trio combination of flute, viola, and harp through the creativity of its members. The name umama womama is a rhythmic play of the word ‘mother’ in Zulu, said in the singular and plural. It speaks to the complex responsibilities of its members, whose artistry as performers and composers is informed by their related experiences. Delayed by pandemic for two years, this ensemble makes its anticipated debut with the Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Clarion Concerts, and Chamber Music Northwest in the 2022 spring and 2023 summer seasons.

Viano Quartet

in residence at the Curtis Institute of Music as well as Meadows School of Music at the Southern Methodist University through the 2022-23 season.

Summer of 2022 brought re-invitations to Great Lakes and Rockport Music Festivals, as well as performances at Chamber Music Northwest (Protégé Project 3-week residency), Tannery Pond under the auspice of Capitol Region Classical, Victoria Summer Music Festival, and Bard Music Festival, finishing with a residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In the fall Viano made their Lucerne Festival and Wigmore Hall debuts followed by performances in Oklahoma, California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Delaware, Tennessee, Washington, DC, and Canada. March 2023 marked the beginning of their three-year residency with Music in the Morning in Vancouver where they create programming to include artist collaborations, extensive community engagement, and masterclasses.

Recent highlights include performances on three continents, including debuts in Berlin, Paris, Bremen, Brussels, Vancouver, and Beijing, among other cities. They have collaborated with world-class musicians such as pianists Emanuel Ax, Marc-André Hamelin, and Elisso Virsaladze, violists Paul Coletti and Paul Neubauer, violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, vocalist Hila Plitmann, and clarinetist David Shifrin.

The quartet achieved incredible success in their formative years, with an unbroken streak of top prizes at Osaka, Fischoff, Wigmore Hall, Yellow Springs, and ENKOR chamber music competitions.

2nd Summer

Praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention”

(The Boston Globe), the Viano Quartet are First Prize winners of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Formed in 2015 at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where they were Ensemble-inResidence through the 2020-21 season, the quartet has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Place Flagey, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The quartet is

The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “V” and, like a piano, all four string instruments together play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument called the “Viano.”

Jos van Veldhoven (Oregon Bach Festival)

Jos van Veldhoven was Artistic Director of the Netherlands Bach Society for more than 35 years. He developed this company into a leading, world-class ensemble. Under his leadership an impressive CD series was created, and he made many concert tours in the Netherlands, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Not only the music of Bach and his contemporaries sounded, but also often “new” repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries. In his programming, Jos van Veldhoven knows how to connect tradition and adventure over and over again. He is also the initiator of All of Bach, an unprecedented project in which the Netherlands Bach Society performs, records, and publishes all of Bach's works online. More than 20 million followers worldwide now enjoy the recordings on YouTube and the Netherlands Bach Society's own channel, and they have received large acclaim all over the world.

Jos van Veldhoven often attracts attention with performances of “new” repertoire within the early music genre. There have been some remarkable performances of oratorios by Telemann and Graun, vespers by Gastoldi, reconstructions of Bach’s St. Mark Passion, the Köthener Trauer-Music, and many lesser known seventeenthcentury oratorios and dialogues. He has also conducted a large number of modern premieres of Baroque operas by composers such as Mattheson, Keiser, Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. Jos van Veldhoven is in great demand as a guest conductor, and has conducted, among others, the Dutch Chamber Choir, the Netherlands Radio Choir, the Flemish Radio Choir, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Robert Schumann Philharmonic, the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many of the Dutch symphony orchestras. Between 2001 and 2010, Jos van Veldhoven worked with director Dietrich Hilsdorf on a cycle of staged Handel oratorios in the opera houses of Bonn and Essen.

Jos van Veldhoven has been associated with the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague as a teacher

umama womama

CMNW co-commissioned composers

COLEMAN flute

NGWENYAMA viola

KANE viola

ZAWADIUK cello

of choral conducting for more than 30 years. In 2007, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion for his groundbreaking work in early music.

Lucy Wang (Viano Quartet)

2nd Summer

Canadian violinist Lucy Wang has garnered praise as an artist whose “technical prowess, tonal mastery, and stage presence can come as no surprise to anyone who has seen her work” (Peace Arch News). A native of Vancouver, she is a founding member of the Viano Quartet, First Prize Laureates of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition and recent graduates of the Nina von Maltzahn Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence Program at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Lucy obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Colburn Conservatory and has performed as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician in venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Izumi Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Konzerthaus Berlin. During the summer of 2023, Lucy will give recitals with the Viano Quartet at Hong Kong’s Intimacy of Creativity Festival, the Banff International String Quartet Festival, Bravo!Vail Festival, Ottawa Chamberfest, and Minnesota Beethoven Festival, among others.

In addition to touring with the Viano Quartet, Lucy maintains an active individual presence on social media, with over 50 million views on her videos and over 600,000 followers across various platforms. Reaching people across six continents, Lucy aims to craft a unique path as an artist that builds bridges across different musical and cultural communities

Zitong Wang

CMNW 2023 Protégé Artist

23-year-old Chinese pianist Zitong Wang made her solo recital debut at age 13 in Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. She has performed at such venues as the Steinway Hall in New York, Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, Severance Hall in Cleveland, etc. She has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Galicia Symphony Orchestra, Hangzhou Philharmonic, etc. She has worked with conductors Jahja Ling, Xian Zhang, Lina Gonzalez-Granados, José Trigueros, and Yang Yang.

Among others, she is a first prize winner of the Rosalyn Tureck International Bach Competition and Virginia Waring International Concerto Competition, second prize in the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, and first prize in Princeton Festival Competition and France Music Competition. She most recently won first prize and “Nelson Freire Prize” in the XXXIII Ferrol International Piano Competition in 2022. A devoted chamber musician, Zitong has played alongside with Meng-Chieh Liu, Don Liuzzi, Vera Quartet, Zora Quartet, etc. She has toured with Roberto Díaz and musicians from Curtis. As an active member of Curtis 20/21 ensemble, she has worked with composers Unsuk Chin, Bright Sheng, David Ludwig, and Alvin Singleton. In 2019, she participated in the Intimacy of Creativity conference for composers in Hong Kong as a guest pianist.

Born in Inner Mongolia, China, Zitong began piano lessons at age three and previously studied with Hua Chang and Yuan Sheng at the Central Conservatory of Music Affiliated Middle School in Beijing. At age thirteen, she entered the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Meng-Chieh Liu and Eleanor Sokoloff. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree at New England Conservatory with Dang Thai Son.

Paul Watkins (Emerson String Quartet)

6th Summer

Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician, and conductor. Born in 1970, he studied with William Pleeth, Melissa Phelps, and Johannes Goritzki, and at the age of 20 was appointed Principal Cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. During his solo career he has collaborated with worldrenowned conductors including Sakari Oramo, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Mark Elder, Andris Nelsons, Sir Andrew Davis, and Sir Charles Mackerras. He performs regularly with all the major British orchestras and others further afield, including with the Norwegian Radio, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, and Queensland Orchestras. He has also made eight concerto appearances at the BBC Proms, most recently with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of the cello concerto composed for him by his brother, Huw Watkins, and premiered (and was the dedicatee of) Mark-Anthony Turnage’s cello concerto. Highlights of recent seasons include concerto appearances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, and the BBC Symphony under Semyon Bychkov, a tour with the European Union Youth Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink, and his US concerto debut with the Colorado Symphony. A dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, and joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. He is a regular guest artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and Music@Menlo, and in 2014 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. Watkins also maintains a busy career as a conductor and, since winning the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, has conducted all the major British orchestras. Further afield he has conducted the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Prague Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, and the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras. Paul Watkins is an exclusive recording artist with Chandos Records and his recent releases include Britten’s Cello Symphony, the Delius, Elgar, Lutoslawski and Walton cello

concertos, and discs of British and American music for cello and piano with Huw Watkins. His first recording as a conductor, of the Berg and Britten violin concertos with Daniel Hope, received a Grammy nomination.

Cello: Domenico Montagnana and Matteo Goffriller in Venice, c.1730.

WindSync

WindSync has established itself as a vibrant chamber ensemble performing wind quintet masterworks, adapting beloved music to their instrumentation, and championing new works by today’s composers. The quintet often eliminates the "fourth wall" between musicians and audience by performing from memory, creating an intimate connection. This personal performance style, combined with the ensemble’s three-pronged mission of artistry, education, and community-building, lends WindSync its reputation as ”a group of virtuosos who are also wonderful people, too" (Alison Young, Classical MPR).

WindSync launched an international touring career after winning the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In 2018, they were finalists at the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. WindSync has appeared in recital at the Library of Congress, Ravinia, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Their commissions and premieres include The Cosmos, a concerto for wind quintet and orchestra by Pulitzer finalist Michael Gilbertson, and recent works by Ivan Trevino, Marc Mellits, Erberk Eryilmaz, and Akshaya Avril Tucker. Their album, All Worlds, All Times, was released on Bright Shiny Things in 2022, debuting at no. 2 on the Billboard Traditional Classical charts.

WindSync’s thematic programming responds to the people and places where they work. In their artistic hometown of Houston, they curate a four-concert season and present the Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival each April, spotlighting everyday public spaces as gathering places for culture. The ensemble's educational work includes tour stops at public schools and ongoing collaborations with the social music programs Sistema Ravinia and Houston Youth Symphony Coda Music Program. WindSync has been featured in educational concerts presented by the Seattle Symphony, the Hobby Center, and Orli Shaham's Bach Yard, and the ensemble’s concerts for young people reach over 5,000 students per year. In recognition of this work, they are the winners of the 2022 Ann Divine Fischoff Educator Award.

The members of WindSync have led masterclasses at New World Symphony, Eastman School of Music, Florida State University, and Northwestern University, among others. The quintet has also served as Ensemble-inResidence for the Nevada Chamber Music Festival, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington (KY), the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Hyunah Yu

5th Summer Applauded for her absolutely captivating voice with exceptional style and effortless lyrical grace (The Washington Post), Soprano Hyunah Yu has garnered acclaim for her versatility in concert and opera roles of several centuries, for her work in chamber music, for her support of new music written by contemporary composers, and for her recorded and broadcast performances. Known particularly for her performances of the music of J.S. Bach, Hyunah has appeared regularly with esteemed conductors, festivals, and orchestras throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. An avid chamber musician and recitalist, Ms. Yu has enjoyed re-engagements with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall Concert Series, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Vancouver Recital Society, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Musicians from Marlboro, and many others. A highlight of Ms. Yu’s opera

career was singing the title role in Peter Sellar’s new production of Mozart’s Zaide in the joint production of the Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Barbican Centre, and the Wiener Festwochen played in New York, London, and Vienna. She has recorded Bach and Mozart arias on EMI’s Debut Series and solo recitals broadcast for the BBC Voices program. Hyunah was a prizewinner at the Walter Naumburg International Competition and a finalist in both the Dutch International Vocal and Concert Artist Guild International competitions. Upon the nomination of the pianist Mitsuko Uchida, she received the coveted Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Ms. Yu also holds a degree in molecular biology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Tate Zawadiuk (Viano Quartet)

2nd Summer Canadian cellist Tate Zawadiuk is both an engaging soloist and founding member of the Viano Quartet. The ensemble won fi rst prize at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition and has performed internationally in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Flagey, and Bremen Die Glocke. As a soloist, Tate has performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vancouver Philharmonic, New Westminster Symphony, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with world-renowned artists such as Emanuel Ax, James Ehnes, Marc-André Hamelin, Inon Barnatan, Clive Greensmith, Scott St. John, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Ida Kava fi an, Steven Tenenbom, and Johannes Moser.

Tate is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music as a member of the Nina von Maltzahn Graduate String Quartet-inResidence. He holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Clive Greensmith and Ronald Leonard.

GARRETT HUDSON flute

EMILY TSAI oboe

GRAEME STEELE JOHNSON clarinet

RÉMY TAGHAVI bassoon

ANNI HOCHHALTER horn

Hao Zhou (Viano Quartet)

2nd Summer

"Personal, impassioned, courageous, and unostentatiously brilliant” (Musical America), American violinist Hao Zhou rose to international acclaim as both the Grand Laureate and Audience Favorite of the 2019 Concours Musical International de Montréal and a First Prize winner of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

An accomplished soloist and chamber musician, Hao made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 12. He made solo appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Downey Symphony Orchestra, and Peninsula Symphony Orchestra, alongside conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alexander Shelley, and Thierry Fischer. Hao is a founding member of the awardwinning Viano Quartet and has performed worldwide alongside such internationally distinguished artists as Emanuel Ax, Roberto Diaz, James Ehnes, Noah Bendix-Balgley, and Marc André-Hamelin. In 2023-24, Hao will be performing recitals all over the world in cities such as New York, Hong Kong, Nova Scotia, Buffalo, and Banff.

Hao is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music as a member of the Nina von Maltzhan Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence. He has been invited to perform at the Kronberg Academy Festival, Bravo!Vail, Bard Music Festival, and Chamber Music Northwest. He was the fi rst recipient of the Frances Rosen Violin Prize at the Colburn Conservatory, where he studied with Martin Beaver and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

Hao plays on a 1783 Joseph and Antonio Gagliano violin, on generous loan from the Aftergood Family.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Il Re Pastore)

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MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES AT REED COLLEGE

Artistic & Executive Directors Kenji Bunch & Monica Ohuchi

& WORLD PREMIERE COMPOSERS

Stewart Goodyear

The Torment of Marsyas

World Premiere

CMNW commission by the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club

Wang Jie

Blame the Obituary

World Premiere

CMNW co-commission by the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the La Jolla Music Society

Kian Ravaei

Gulistan

World Premiere

CMNW commission by the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club

The Little Things

World Premiere

CMNW co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Detroit’s Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Seattle Chamber Music Society

Chris Rogerson

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

World Premiere

CMNW commission by the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Club

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Three Pieces for Flute, Viola & Harp

Down by Nokuthula Ngwenyama

Music in Cold by Han Lash

Aja by Valerie Coleman

West Coast Premiere

CMNW co-commission, with the generous support of Carl and Margery Post Abbott, and with Chamber Music Society, and Clarion Concerts

To learn more about these composers, please see their biography listings in the Festival Artists & Composers section of this program

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YOUNG ARTIST INSTITUTE

Institute Faculty

Institute Staff

Alyssa Tong Institute Manager

2nd Summer Alyssa Tong studies violin under Simon James at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She formerly studied under Nelson Lee of the Jupiter String Quartet at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign School of Music. Alyssa has participated in masterclasses for artists such as Rachel Barton Pine, Ani Kavafian, Laurie Smukler, Zach DePue, Daniel Hope, and Alexi Kenney. An avid chamber musician, she has performed in chamber masterclasses with YoYo Ma, the Cavani, Parker, Catalyst, JACK, Telegraph Quartets, Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Michael Brown. Her other violin mentors include Paul Kantor, Charles Castleman, and Soovin Kim. She has spent recent summers at Bowdoin International Music Festival, ENCORE Chamber Music, LyricaFest, and the Castleman Quartet Program. During the pandemic, Alyssa launched the first online summer music festival to great success, providing instruction for over 100 students with faculty from the country’s most prestigious music schools. Faculty members Ani Kavafian, Paul Katz, Paul Kantor, Soovin Kim, Ettore Causa, and more, praised her work that filled the gap left by the canceled in-person festivals. The festival, the Online Solo Strings Intensive, continued and is on its fifth iteration. She also started an in-person offshoot, which has hosted the Verona and Rolston Quartets, and she manages the Young Artist Institute at Chamber Music Northwest. She is passionate about increasing accessibility to classical music, which includes revitalizing the concert stage, providing quality music education to youth, and opening conversations around careers, and holistic musicianship.

Katie Danforth

Resident & Production Assistant

2nd Summer

Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, Katie Danforth currently attends the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University where she is pursuing a Master of Music degree in Oboe Performance under the instruction of Robert Atherholt. Previously, she studied with Robert Walters at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Oboe Performance in 2021. As an orchestral musician, Katie has performed as an extra musician with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Akron Symphony Orchestra, and the New Texas Sinfonia. She was also a member of the 2020 National Academy Orchestra of Canada and a member of the 2022 Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Paul Kim

Resident & Production Assistant

2nd Summer Colorado-native

Paul Kim is a recent transplant to the Bay Area where he is an active performer and teacher. He has just recently finished his Master’s degree with Cordula Merks at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is pursuing a Performance Certificate with Ms. Merks next fall. Previously, he studied with Charles Wetherbee of the Carpe Diem String Quartet at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music. In his free time, Paul enjoys baking bread and hiking with friends.

Haig Hovsepian Production Assistant

ArmenianAmerican violinist, Haig Hovsepian began his musical journey at a very young age. At four, he was already playing violin, at eight, the Sh'vi (Armenian fipple flute), and at 11, the saxophone. Those instruments became the means of his musical expression reflecting his upbringing that’s deeply rooted in traditional classical training, his Armenian heritage, and American jazz. At 11, Hovsepian won his first international competition, "Classival" (Canada), followed by "Young Promise" (USA), "Renaissance" (Armenia), and an array of Concerto Competition wins launched his orchestral debuts with Waltham Philharmonic, Nashua Chamber, Concord Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of New England Conservatory, and Boston Pops Orchestra. At 24, he is enjoying a multifaceted career that has taken him across the U.S., to Canada, Norway, Iceland, Armenia, and to Carnegie Hall, Koussevitzky Music Shed, Jordan Hall, Slosberg Hall, and Killian Hall, among others. As a saxophone player, he has appeared in various jazz clubs, Mechanics Hall, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. A Max Reger Ambassador prize winner at New England Conservatory's Preparatory division, he received several scholarship awards there and graduated with his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, studying under one of the world's most outstanding violin personalities, Ilya Kaler. Hovsepian has appeared on NPR’s From the Top. He has dedicated performances to many fundraising events such as: Belmont Media's "Gifts of Hope" Telethon, Joslin Diabetes Center, “Armenian Music for Peace,” “5pm Series,” and others.

Soovin Kim (violin) • Jessica Lee (violin) • Hanna Lee (viola) • Edward Arron (cello) Please see their biography listings in the Festival Artists & Composers section of this program

2023 Collaborative Piano Fellows

Yu-Ting Peng

Piano

Hometown: Taoyuan, Taiwan

Yu-Ting Peng holds a BM from National Taiwan University of Arts, and a MM from at California State University Northridge.

Current program: DMA in Keyboard Collaborative Arts at University of Southern California

My favorite piece of music: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2

Yu-Ting Peng is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Keyboard Collaborative Arts with Kevin Fitz-Gerald at the USC Thornton School of Music. She completed her Master’s degree in Piano Performance as a teaching assistant at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). During her studies at CSUN, she received several awards and scholarships including the Outstanding Student award, Jakob Gimpel scholarship, and first prize of the concerto competition at CSUN, allowing her to perform with the orchestra. Throughout her musical career, she has trained under well-known professors including John Perry, Dmitry Rachmanov, Alan Smith, and Bernadene Blaha. She has studied in masterclasses with Yuan Sheng, Meng-Chieh Lui, Daniel Shapiro, and more. As a collaborative pianist, Peng frequently performs in recitals including recitals with Bing Wang, Catherine Karoly, and Taeguk Mun. Peng attends summer festivals regularly including Music Academy of the West, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Montecito International Music Festival, and the John Perry Academy of Music. She most recently was awarded grand prize in the Duo Competition at the Music Academy in Summer 2022. She is currently working as a collaborative pianist at Thornton School of Music.

Kyunga Lee Piano

Young Artists

Julianna Bramble (18)

Hometown: Suwon, South Korea

Kyunga Lee holds a BM from The Juilliard School, a MM and GD from New England Conservatory.

Current program: Collaborative piano fellowship program at Yale School of Music

My favorite piece of music: I like to play and try new music with my favorite musician friends. I like Brahms’s music and am also a big fan of French music in the 1800s.

Korean pianist Kyunga Lee is a recipient of numerous international awards and prizes including the FEBC-Korea Far East PK scholarship, From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award, and First Prize in the GMMFS Concerto Competition in South Korea performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto. Kyunga has been invited to perform at festivals around the world including Great Mountains International Music Festival and School, Aspen Music Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Seoul Spring Chamber Music Festival, and the Collaborative Piano Institute at LSU. She has participated in masterclasses with Augustin Hadelich, Hilary Hahn, Tai Murray, Graham Johnson, Margo Garrett, Julia Bullock, Warren Jones, Marin Katz, Ana Maria Otamendi, Rita Sloan, Darryl Taylor, and Thomas Hampson, and has worked closely with distinguished professors including Laurence Lesser, Donald Weilerstein, Catherine Cho, Yeesun Kim, Lluís Claret, and William Short. Kyunga is currently working at Yale School of Music as a Collaborative Piano Fellow. Kyunga pursued a Graduate Diploma in Collaborative Piano from the New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Cameron Stowe and Vivian Weilerstein. She holds a Master of Music in Collaborative Piano from New England Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from The Juilliard School and is a recipient of the prestigious Susan W. Rose Piano Fellowship. Her previous instructors include Matti Raekallio, Julian Martin, and Yoheved Kaplinsky.

Viola

Hometown: Wellington, Florida

My favorite pieces of music: Beethoven Violin Concerto, Brahms B-Flat Sextet, and more!

When not playing music: Read, listen to music, and hang out with friends.

Rebecca Beato (16) Violin

Hometown: New York City, New York

My favorite pieces of music: Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet, Act I:19/21; Bizet Carmen Act II: “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”

When not playing music: Listen to Lamp, Ichiko Aoba, Eydie Gormé, and beabadoobee. I also like to draw, crochet, and talk and watch K-Dramas with my friends.

Fiona Huang (15) Cello

2nd Summer Hometown: Saratoga, California

My favorite pieces of music: Arensky String Quartet No. 2, Schubert Piano Trio No. 2 - Andante con Moto, and more!

When not playing music: Play soccer, read, and watch C-Dramas with my family.

Serge Kalinovsky (17) Cello

Hometown: Bloomington, Indiana

My favorite pieces of music: Schubert String Quartet No. 15, Schubert Cello Quintet, and more!

When not playing music: Play a lot of chess.

Fiona Khuong-Huu (16)

Violin

Hometown: New York City, New York

My favorite pieces of music: Ysaÿe Poème élégiaque, Suk Píseň Lásky (Song of Love), and more!

When not playing music: Listen to music, draw, read, and walk outside (with and without friends).

Christy Kim (17)

Violin

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky

My favorite pieces of music: Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98, and more!

When not playing music: Listen to music, read books, and play with friends.

Joshua Kovác (16)

Cello

2nd Summer Hometown: Johnson City, Tennessee

My favorite pieces of music: Dvorák Cello Concerto, Dvorák Piano Quintet No. 2

When not playing music: Play chess, compose music, swim competitively, and hang out with friends.

Eleanor Markey (18)

Violin

2nd Summer Hometown: Wayland, Massachusetts

My favorite pieces of music: Felix Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, Shostakovich Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, and more!

When not playing music: Sing, act, read, write, and hang out with my friends, my three little brothers, and any little kid ever.

George Ng (18)

Viola

Hometown: Hong Kong, China

My favorite piece of music: Bach Cello Suites

When not playing music: Dress up, hang out with friends, and spend time with family.

Jiyu Oh (17)

Violin

2nd Summer Hometown: Seoul, South Korea

My favorite pieces of music: Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 –Adagio, Amy Beach Romance, and more!

When not playing music: Visit art galleries and museums, browse bookstores, read, DIYs, and analyze everything with MBTI personality types.

Songyeon Oh (17)

Viola

Hometown: Daejeon, South Korea

My favorite pieces of music: Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, Chopin Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 53, and more!

When not playing music: Shop and appreciate music.

Jonathan Okseniuk (17)

Violin

Hometown: Mesa, Arizona

My favorite piece of music: Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

When not playing music: I love to play soccer/sports with friends, hiking and mountain biking.

Kaia Selden (17)

Violin

Hometown: Portland, Oregon

My favorite pieces of music: My favorite pieces of music: Suk Písen Lásky (Song of Love), Arensky

Piano Trio No. 1.

When not playing music: Read books, draw, bake and eat desserts, and spend time with friends.

Minje Seo (17)

Violin

Hometown: Sunchang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea

My favorite pieces of music: R. Schumann Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 47, Schubert Erlkönig String Quartet, and more!

When not playing music: Tour downtown, read books, play with friends, and visit art galleries and bookstores.

Caleb Sharp (15)

Cello

Hometown: Wilton, Connecticut

My favorite pieces of music: Debussy La cathédrale engloutie, Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante.

When not playing music: Read biology textbooks, learn about space, and spend time with my twin brother.

Elijah Zacharia (17)

Viola

Hometown: Portland, Oregon

My favorite pieces of music: Dvořák Hussite Overture, Beethoven String Quartet Op. 18, No. 4, and more!

When not playing music: I love to hike in the forest, watch soccer, and play games with my family.

WORLD’S LARGEST CHAMBER MUSIC PARTY

SUMMER FESTIVAL 2023

JULY 3 - 28

JAMES EHNES Artistic Director

Can’t join in-person? Watch on the Virtual Concert Hall! Features include:

— Produced by award winning producer Simon Kiln

— 6 HD Camera Angles

— Behind the scenes content & commentary from the musicians

— All concerts available live and On-Demand until August 30

CREATIVITY THRIVES HERE

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World class chamber music in Oregon

Wine Country

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August 5-20 2023

Dynamic performances in iconic Oregon wineries, featuring beloved favorites by Beethoven, Mozart & Dvorak, alongside the cutting edge from Kenji Bunch, Caroline Shaw & Hawa Diabaté

And welcoming 2023 Composer-in-Residence Kareem Roustom.

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Live from Archery Summit, Sokol Blosser & J. Christopher Wineries

WVchambermusic.org

We do what we do... so you can do what you love.

ABOUT CMNW

Now in its 53rd season, Chamber Music Northwest serves more than 50,000 people in Oregon and SW Washington with exceptional chamber music through over 100 events annually, including our flagship Summer Festival, year-round concerts, community activities, educational programs, broadcasts, and innovative collaborations with other arts groups.

CMNW is the only chamber music festival of its kind in the Northwest and one of the most diverse classical music experiences in the nation, virtually unparalleled in comparable communities.

As one of the leading chamber music producers in the country, CMNW enriches our community by showcasing the world’s greatest musicians and composers. From world-renowned artists and exceptional local musicians to the rising young stars of our Protégé Project, they perform beloved classics and hidden masterpieces, contemporary works, and collaborations with other artists. Committed to sharing their music in fun and accessible ways, our artists participate in extensive community outreach, including free concerts, conversations, and education programs.

Board of Directors

Davida Wilson President

Ravi Vedanayagam Vice-President

Marc Therrien Treasurer

Yoko Greeney Secretary

Staff

Gloria Chien & Soovin Kim

Artistic Directors

Peter J. Bilotta Executive Director

Leslie Tuomi Development Director

Dan Boyce Member at Large

Karen Deveney Member at Large

David Greger Member at Large

Carl Abbott

Lori Irish Bauman

Evelyn Brzezinski

Ronnie-Gail Emden

Howard Greisler

Amelia Lukas

Kate Lyons

Hugh Porter

Richard Rogers

ADVISORY

BOARD

Sonja Haugen

Ivan Inger

Barbara Langley

Leslie Lehmann

William Scott

Anne Stevenson

Peter van Bever

Jaren Hillard Artistic Operations Director

Nicole Lane

Marketing & Communictions Director

Barbara Bailey

Finance & Administration Director

Lauren Watt

Artistic & Community Programs Manager

Young Artist Institute Staff

Alyssa Tong Institute Manager

Katie Danforth

Paul Kim Resident & Production Assistants

Jessie Bodell

Marketing & Communications Coordinator

Benjamin Rosenthal

Ticketing & Data Manager

Jen McIntosh

Patron Services Coordinator

Haig Hovsepian

Production Assistant

Festival Staff

Happiness Yi Production Manager

Megan Thorpe

Stage Manager

Steph Landtiser

Stage Manager

Conor Eifler

Production Assistant

Charlotte Ostrov

Artistic Operations Intern

Eric Leatha

Piano Tuner

Annie Bedford

Development Intern

Yasamin Mehdian Rad

Marketing & Merchandising Intern

Jessica Wallenfels

Marketing Consultant & Audience Services Associate

Sawyer VanVactor-Lee

Audience Services Associate

Micki Selvitella

Lead House & Volunteer Manager

Jonathan Villegas

House Manager

Genevieve Larson House Manager

Branic Howard Recording Engineer

Barry Stewart

Audio/Visual Engineer (Kaul Auditorium)

Tim Neighbors, Invisible Harness

Video Producer

Ian Stout, Invisible Harness

Video Producer

CMNW also invests in the future of chamber music. Our Protégé Project artists perform and learn from veteran festival artists and work with young musicians in our community. 2022 launched CMNW’s Young Artist Institute (YAI), an intensive education program for 16 talented string players from around the world, ages 14-17. CMNW commissions and presents 4–6 new works annually, primarily by American composers. A recipient of the Governor’s Arts Award, Chamber Music Northwest is among our region’s most acclaimed arts organizations, and is proud to have balanced its budget in each of the past 42 years. This program book was produced by Chamber Music Northwest.

Jeff Hayes

Brand & Publications Designer

Elizabeth Schwartz

Chief Program Annotator

Ethan Allred

Program Annotator

Tom Emerson Photographer, Education Videographer

Shawnte Sims

Photographer

Liana Kramer Photographer