Competition Finals — April 24, 2022, 4PM

NOTE TIME CHANGE

Sunday, April 24, 2022, 4PM
First Presbyterian Church

Chamber Music in Yellow Springs’ Annual Competition for Emerging Professional Ensembles has been an integral part of our series since its foundation in 1985. Our unique competition offers ensembles the opportunity to choose their own repertoire to perform for in live concert as one of two finalists. Join us for this exciting concert! Ensembles TBA.

Judges

Neal Gittleman enjoys a career and reputation of international dimensions. With the historic merger of the Dayton Ballet, Dayton Opera and Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra into the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance in July 2012, his expanded conducting duties include frequent performances with the Ballet and Opera.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Neal Gittleman graduated from Yale University in 1975. He continued his musical studies with the eminent teachers Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonné in Paris, Hugh Ross at the Manhattan School of Music and Charles Bruck at both the Pierre Monteux Domaine School and the Hartt School of Music, where he was the recipient of the Karl Böhm Fellowship. In 1984, he was the Second Prize Winner of Geneva’s Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition, and, two years later, he was awarded Third Prize at the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York City. In 1989, he was selected for the American Conductors Program at the American Symphony Orchestra League’s annual conference in San Francisco. In May 2014, he was awarded a 2014 Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio.

Neal Gittleman inspires each listener’s imagination with his unique programming, in-depth comments, easygoing style and infectious enthusiasm for music. His focus is to make symphonic music readily available, as well as appreciated, by all musical tastes. Under his direction, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra has received the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music nine times. Neal Gittleman will celebrate his 25th season with the DPO in the 2019–2020 concert season.

Neal Gittleman and his wife, Lisa Fry, make their home in Dayton.

Noted for her “sensitive and imaginative” (New York Concert Review) playing, Korean-born pianist Sookkyung Cho has been captivating worldwide audiences with her personal, thoughtful expressionist style. She has appeared in venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Sarasota Opera House, Baltimore Museum of Art, Montreal Conservatory, Beaux concerts de la releve in Quebec, Château de Fontainebleau in France, and Zijingang Theater at Zhejiang University in China, among others, and was recently heard on Chicago’s WFMT.

A founding member of the New York-based Almava trio, Ms. Cho has also been featured in major music festivals including Yellow Barn, Norfolk, and Sarasota, and was a Performing Associate at Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine. As a sought-after pedagogue, She has been invited to adjudicate competitions and conduct masterclasses, most recently at New England Conservatory Preparatory School for its Concerto Competition Finals and Walnut Hill School for the Arts for its Honors Chamber Music Auditions. She has also taught as a piano instructor for the LINKS Signature Arts Program at The Juilliard School in New York and as piano and chamber music faculty at NEC Preparatory. An emerging performer-scholar, she was selected to present a lecture-recital at College Music Society for its biennial International Conference in Korea and has also taught music theory at Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Ms. Cho earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Juilliard, where she was honored with John Erskine Graduation prize, and a Master of Music degree from Peabody as a full graduate assistantship recipient, where she also received Grace Clagett Ranney Prize in Chamber Music. She earned her terminal degree, Doctor of Musical Arts, from Juilliard as a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow, where she also taught as a teaching fellow both in Piano Minor and Literature and Materials departments. Her teachers include Boris Slutsky, Julian Martin, Matti Raekallio, and Jonathan Bass. Associate Professor of Piano at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, she has also served on faculty at InterHarmony Music Festival in Italy, ESME String Virtual Camp, and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan during the summer.

Juliet White-Smith is an accomplished violist, an engaging and dynamic teacher, and an expert string pedagogue. With a career spanning nearly three decades, she has a particular passion for chamber music performance and is an advocate of music by Black composers, having most recently been interviewed on the topic by the Boston Globe and WBUR Boston. She recently presented on “Diversity and Social Justice” at Penn State University and “Diversity, Inclusion and Equality in Music” at the Juilliard School, and proudly serves on the Advisory Board of Music by Black Composers, a project of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.

White-Smith is an in-demand teacher and clinician, having presented master classes at premier music schools, festivals and conferences worldwide. She is a frequent adjudicator for competitions including Primrose International Viola Competition, and her views on pedagogy, talent and effective practice have been featured in publications such as The Strad, Strings, and American String Teacher. Additionally, she served as President of the American Viola Society from 2008–2011 and has been an Artist-Faculty at the Brevard Music Festival since 2018.

In addition to teaching, she enjoys an active performance career across the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. White-Smith records with Centaur Records. Her 2009 album Fashionably Late: Juliet White-Smith Debuts! features the premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker’s Viola Sonata (1989). Performance clips and teaching excerpts can be found on her YouTube channel.

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, White-Smith joined The Ohio State University School of Music in 2012, having previously held positions at the University of Northern Colorado and Western Michigan University.

Shanghai Quartet — March 27, 2022, 4PM

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Sunday, March 27, 2022, 4PM
First Presbyterian Church 

There will NOT be a pre-concert lecture for this performance, but a Q&A with performers will follow immediately afterward.

Program:

Beethoven: Op. 18, No. 6
Penderecki: Quartet No. 3
Dvorak: Quartet in E flat major, Op. 51

Over the past thirty-seven years the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The Shanghai’s elegant style, impressive technique, and emotional breadth allows the group to move seamlessly between masterpieces of Western music, traditional Chinese folk music, and cutting-edge contemporary works. Formed at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1983, soon after the end of China’s harrowing Cultural Revolution, the group came to the United States to complete its studies; since then the members have been based in the U.S. while maintaining a robust touring schedule at leading chamber-music series throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Recent performance highlights include performances at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery (Washington, D.C.), and the Festival Pablo Casals in France, and Beethoven cycles for the Brevard Music Center, the Beethoven Festival in Poland, and throughout China. The Quartet also frequently performs at Wigmore Hall, the Budapest Spring Festival, Suntory Hall, and has collaborations with the NCPA and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras. Upcoming highlights include the premiere of a new work by Marcos Balter for the Quartet and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo for the Phillips Collection, return performances for Maverick Concerts and the Taos School of Music, and engagements in Los Angeles, Syracuse, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City.

Among innumberable collaborations with eminent artists, they have performed with the Tokyo, Juilliard, and Guarneri Quartets; cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell; pianists Menahem Pressler, Peter Serkin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Yuja Wang; pipa virtuoso Wu Man; and the vocal ensemble Chanticleer. The Shanghai Quartet appears regularly at many of North America’s most prominent chamber-music festival, including annual performances for Maverick Concerts, the Brevard Music Center, and Music Mountain.

The Shanghai Quartet has a long history of championing new music, with a special interest in works that juxtapose the traditions of Eastern and Western music. The Quartet has commissioned works from an encyclopedic list of the most important composers of our time, including William Bolcom, Sebastian Currier, David Del Tredici, Tan Dun, Vivian Fung, Lowell Lieberman, Zhou Long, Marc Neikrug, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and Du Yun. The Quartet had a particularly close relationship with Krzysztof Penderecki; they premiered his third quartet – Leaves From an Unwritten Diary – at the composer’s 75th birthday concert and repeated it again at both his 80th and 85th birthday celebrations. Forthcoming and recent commissions include new works from Judith Weir, Tan Dun, and Wang Lei, in addition to a new work from Penderecki.

The Shanghai Quartet has an extensive discography of more than thirty recordings, ranging from Schumann and Dvorak piano quintets with Rudolf Buchbinder to Zhou Long’s Poems from Tang for string quartet and orchestra with the Singapore Symphony. The Quartet has recorded the complete Beethoven string quartets and is currently recording the complete Bartók quartets.

A diverse array of media projects run the gamut from a cameo appearance playing Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 in Woody Allen’s film Melinda and Melinda to PBS television’s Great Performances series. Violinist Weigang Li appeared in the documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, and the family of cellist Nicholas Tzavaras was the subject of the film Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep. The Shanghai Quartet is the subject of a full-length

Serving as Quartet-in-Residence at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University since 2002, the Shanghai Quartet will also join The Tianjin (China) Juilliard School in fall 2020 as resident faculty members. The Quartet also is the Ensemble-in-Residence with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and visiting guest professors of the Shanghai Conservatory and Central Conservatory in Beijing. They are proudly sponsored by Thomastik-Infeld Strings and BAM Cases.

Telegraph Quartet — November 21, 2021, 4PM

NOTE TIME CHANGE

Sunday, November 21, 4PM
First Presbyterian Church

There will NOT be a pre-concert lecture for this performance, but a Q&A with performers will follow immediately afterward.

PROGRAM:
Grażyna Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 4
Korngold: String Quartet No. 3
Britten: String Quartet No. 2 in C Major, Op. 36

The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Interlochen Arts Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet co-commissioned John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6 and gave its West Coast premiere in the fall of 2017 on San Francisco State University’s Morrison Artists Series. The Telegraph Quartet premiered Richard Festinger’s third string quartet, Icarus in Flight, a musical representation of climate change data from the year 1880 to projected simulations of 2080. The Quartet gave the world premiere of Robert Sirota’s String Quartet No. 3, Wave Upon Wave at Weill Recital Hall for its Carnegie Hall debut in 2018, sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation. In fall 2021, the Telegraph will premiere a new work with soprano Abigail Fischer by composer Robert Sirota and librettist Stevan Cavalier, commissioned by Sierra Chamber Music Society.

In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The San Francisco Chronicle praised the album, saying, “Just five years after forming, the Bay Area’s Telegraph Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of serious depth and versatility, and the group’s terrific debut recording only serves to reinforce that judgment.” AllMusic acclaimed, “An impressive beginning for an adventurous group, this 2018 release puts the Telegraph Quartet on the map.”

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. In the fall of 2017, the Quartet traveled to communities and schools in Maine with Yellow Barn’s Music Haul, a mobile performance stage that brings music outside of the concert hall to communities across the U.S. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. ChamberFEAST! featured two concerts by the Telegraph at Eslite Concert Hall, a week-long chamber music intensive with students from Taiwanese schools and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and masterclasses and coachings at high schools and universities across Taiwan.

The Telegraph Quartet has adapted to these challenging times and remains strongly committed to sharing its music. Recent and upcoming livestream concerts include performances presented by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Crowden Chamber Music Workshop, Noe Music, Noontime Concerts, Music in Corrales, and Intermusic SF. For Earth Day 2020 (the 50th anniversary of Earth Day), the National Academy of Science in collaboration with the ClimateMusic Project hosted a virtual performance by the Telegraph Quartet of Richard Festinger’s Icarus in Flight. Amid the ongoing COVD-19 pandemic, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. TeleLab draws the listener deeper into how those components fit together and evolve over the course of the piece while giving the audience the time and space to deepen their experience of music.

While the Telegraph Quartet is indebted to numerous mentors and teachers, the group’s primary musical guidance and support has come from Mark Sokol, Bonnie Hampton, and Ian Swensen at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The Telegraph Quartet is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Imani Winds — September 26, 2021, 4 PM

NOTE TIME CHANGE!

Sunday, September 26, 4PM
First Presbyterian Church
314 Xenia Ave, Yellow Springs

MASKS REQUIRED to attend performance. This concert will be livestreamed.

There will NOT be a pre-concert lecture or post-concert dinner for this performance, but a Q&A with performers will follow immediately afterward.

Program:

South African National Anthem
Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel
Quartet No. 8, Op. 110 by Shostakovich
Gift of Life from Wanderings by Bermel
Wind Quintet, Op. 10 by Pavel Haas
Wapango by Paquito D’Rivera

Celebrating over two decades of music making, the Grammy nominated Imani Winds has led both a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet through their dynamic playing, adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations and outreach endeavors that have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

The ensemble’s playlist embraces traditional chamber music repertoire, and as a 21st century group, Imani Winds is devoutly committed to expanding the wind quintet repertoire by commissioning music from new voices that reflect historical events and the times in which we currently live.

Present and future season performances include a Jessie Montgomery composition inspired by her great-grandfather’s migration from the American south to the north, as well as socially conscious music by Andy Akiho, designed to be performed both on the concert stage and in front of immigrant detention centers throughout the country.

Imani Winds regularly performs in prominent international concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall and the Kimmel Center. Their touring schedule has taken them throughout the Asian continent, Brazil, Australia, England, New Zealand and across Europe. Their national and international presence include performances at chamber music series in Boston, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Philadelphia and Houston. Festival performances include Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival, Chautauqua, Banff Centre and Angel Fire.

Imani Winds’ travels through the jazz world are highlighted by their association with saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, woodwind artist and composer Paquito D’Rivera and pianist and composer Jason Moran. Their ambitious project, “Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot!” featured chanteuse René Marie in performances that brought the house down in New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

Imani Winds’ commitment to education runs deep. The group participates in residencies throughout the U.S., giving performances and master classes to thousands of students each year. Academic and institutional residencies include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Duke University, the University of Chicago, Curtis Institute of Music, the University of Michigan, Da Camera of Houston and numerous others across the country.

The ensemble launched its annual Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2010, bringing together young instrumentalists and composers from across North America and abroad for exploration and performance of the standard repertoire and newly composed  chamber music. Festival participants also take part in workshops devoted to entrepreneurial and outreach opportunities, with the goal of creating the complete musician and global citizen.

In 2021, Imani Winds released their latest album, “Bruits” on Bright Shiny Things Records. Grammophone states, “the ensemble’s hot rapport churns with conviction throughout…”

Imani Winds has six albums on Koch International Classics and E1 Music, including their Grammy Award nominated recording, The Classical Underground. They have also recorded for Naxos and Blue Note and released Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” on Warner Classics. Imani Winds is regularly heard on all media platforms including NPR, American Public Media, the BBC, SiriusXM, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In 2016, Imani Winds received their greatest accolade in their 20 years of music making: a permanent presence in the classical music section of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.