Telegraph Quartet presents Second Viennese School of Music Festival at University of Michigan and in San Francisco - Free Concert Nov 6 in SF
Telegraph Quartet presents Second Viennese School of Music Festival at University of Michigan and in San Francisco - Free Concert Nov 6 in SF
Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
The Telegraph Quartet Presents Second Viennese Focus Festival
October 27-November 2: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
November 6-7: San Francisco, CA
Culminating in Side-by-Side Performance with University of Michigan Students:
Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:30pm
Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
Free Reservations & Information
“precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication” – The Strad
Ann Arbor, MI & San Francisco, CA – The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group The New York Times describes as “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. The ensemble is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and as part of their residency will present a two-part festival focused on the musical period that has long fascinated the group – the Second Viennese School, from early 20th century Vienna.
The Telegraph Quartet’s Second Viennese Focus Festival begins with a weeklong intensive from October 27-November 2, 2025 centered on the music of composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern at the The University of Michigan, culminating in performances by the Telegraph Quartet and their students on November 1 and 2, 2025 at the University. Then, the group will travel with five selected students to San Francisco, where the Telegraph was formerly based at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, to present two side-by-side performances on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:30pm at Noe Valley Ministry and Friday, November 7, 2025 at Maybeck Studio in Berkeley, CA.
While the Maybeck Studio performance has limited capacity, the concert at Noe Valley Ministry (1021 Sanchez Street, San Francisco, CA) on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:30pm is free and open to the public, with advance reservations. The program features tumultuously personal chamber music from the early 20th century – Webern’s Fünf Sätze for String Quartet, Op. 5 performed by a Telegraph Quartet member alongside the University of Michigan students, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 performed by the Telegraph, and Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht for String Sextet, Op. 4 performed by the Telegraph Quartet members with their students. All three of these masterworks express the unrest of the time period, as well as the personal unrest of the composers in their search for a new style of expression. Both Webern and Bartók’s early string quartets deal with dark material, from the former's mourning of his mother's passing to the latter's experiences of civilian life during World War I. Inspired by the then scandalous poetry of Richard Dehmel, Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht or Transfigured Night begins in despair and dread only to be utterly transformed by empathy and hope.
The University of Michigan students joining the Telegraph Quartet for these Bay Area performances are Frances Norton, Spencer Quarles, Adam Zeithamel, Katarina Elise, and Anna Sykes.
"We are thrilled to be working alongside and showcasing the hard work and creativity of these five students from the University of Michigan!” says the Telegraph Quartet. “We have been working with them throughout this semester to explore what for many is a new vocabulary of expression, something that at first might feel foreign and yet is full of expressivity. It's our joy to be able to share the fruits of this labor with our deeply supportive audiences in the Bay Area and bring these two communities together!"
About the Telegraph Quartet: The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. 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 is a previous recipient of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan. They have performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Town Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Music Tuesdays, Philharmonie de Paris, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, Interlochen Arts Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. Prior to their residency at the University of Michigan, the Telegraph was the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music between 2017-2024.
The Telegraph Quartet is releasing a three-album series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The first volume, Divergent Paths (2022), features Maurice Ravel’s Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 1. In August 2025, Telegraph released the second volume in the series, Edge of the Storm, featuring Grażyna Bacewicz’s Quartet No. 4, Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 1, and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Quartet No. 6. The series follows the quartet’s debut album, Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), which features a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten. In 2026, the Telegraph will release an album of the complete string quartets by composer Kenji Bunch on Phenotypic Records.
The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, the University of Maryland, Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, UT Austin's Butler School of Music, Brown 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 Center Stage Strings at the University of Michigan, 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. For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Concert details:
What: Second Viennese Focus Festival presented by the Telegraph Quartet
Who: Telegraph Quartet and Students from the University of Michigan
When: Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez Street, San Francisco, CA 94114 (November 6)
Tickets and information: www.ticketsource.com/telegraph-quartet/telegraph-quartet-uofm-on-tour/e-mqdjqk
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, a group “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), brings its Second Viennese Focus Festival to the Bay Area, performing alongside their students from the University of Michigan in a program featuring tumultuously personal chamber music from the early 20th century – Webern’s Fünf Sätze for String Quartet, Op. 5, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17, and Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht for String Sextet, Op. 4. All three of these masterworks express the unrest of the time period, as well as the personal unrest of the composers in their search for a new style of expression. Both Webern and Bartók’s early string quartets deal with dark material, from the former's mourning of his mother's passing to the latter's experiences of civilian life during World War I. Inspired by the then scandalous poetry of Richard Dehmel, Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht or Transfigured Night begins in despair and dread only to be utterly transformed by empathy and hope. This concert is the culmination of the Telegraph’s two-part festival focused on music from the Second Viennese School, which runs October 27-November 2, 2025 at The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, MI and November 6-7, 2025 in San Francisco and Berkeley, CA.
Nov. 9: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Placitas Artists Series – Featuring the Music of Derrick Skye, Béla Bartók, and Ludwig van Beethoven
Nov. 9: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Placitas Artists Series – Featuring the Music of Derrick Skye, Béla Bartók, and Ludwig van Beethoven
Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
Telegraph Quartet Presented by Placitas Artists Series
Featuring the Music of Derrick Skye, Béla Bartók, and Ludwig van Beethoven
Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 3pm
Las Placitas Presbyterian Church | 7 Paseo de San Antonio | Placitas, NM
Tickets and More Information
Telegraph Quartet’s New Album
20th Century Vantage Points Vol. 2: Edge of the Storm Out Now
Review downloads & CDs available upon request.
“precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication” – The Strad
Placitas, NM – On Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 3pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group The New York Times describes as “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented in concert by Placitas Artists Series. The performance will take place in Las Placitas Presbyterian Church (7 Paseo de San Antonio).
Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet bring their fluid synchronicity and refined artistry to a program titled From Countryside to Concert Hall – a concert program that showcases how these three composers adapted, adopted, or fully embodied folk music, bringing the rustic and unassuming spirit of that idiom into the bright light of the concert stage. The program includes Derrick Skye’s American Mirror, Part 1; Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2; and Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59 No. 1 – the first of his “Razumovsky” quartets, nicknamed for Prince Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna who commissioned Beethoven to write these pieces.
According to composer Derrick Skye, "American Mirror reflects on the coming together of cultures in our society, which consists of many generations and descendants of refugees, immigrants, and slaves, and how intercultural collaborations are essential to the well-being of American society.” The piece infuses influences from West African, North African, and Eastern European vocal techniques and ornamentations with open harmonies commonly found in Appalachian folk music. Bartók’s second quartet exhibits his immersion into what he called the “purest music” – that of the remote Hungarian countryside – a style he sought to absorb and recreate as a new form of highly complex concert music. The fourth movement of Beethoven's first "Razumovsky" quartet playfully features a theme from his patron's homeland fulfilling the patron’s request – that Beethoven include a Russian theme in each of the Quartets – in a cheeky fashion.
The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. 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.
Of this folk-oriented program, the Telegraph Quartet says:
“We're excited to be sharing three different centuries of classical composers who infused each of their chamber works with folk music. While Beethoven impishly transformed a slow somber Russian folk song into a light-hearted finale, Bartok fully absorbed the Hungarian folk idiom to create an "updated" and truly modernist composition reflecting the apprehension of its WWI context. Derrick Skye's American Mirror is a self-professed reflection of many musical cultures mixing together to create one distinctly new voice that nimbly glides between one and the other.”
In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, the first in a trilogy of recordings on Azica Records exploring the string quartets of the first half of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. Divergent Paths features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. The Quartet’s new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Edge of the Storm is out now on Azica Records. Read the press release online here. This second volume of the trilogy examines music from the turbulent war years of 1941-1951 and features a thoughtfully curated program of works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg.
More about Telegraph Quartet: 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, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.
Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.
Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. 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, National Taiwan Normal University, 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. In fall 2020, 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. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet in Countryside to Concert Hall
Presented by Placitas Artists Series
What: Music by Derrick Skye, Béla Bartók, and Ludwig van Beethoven
When: Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 3pm
Where: Las Placitas Presbyterian Church, 7 Paseo de San Antonio, Placitas, NM 87043
Tickets and information: https://placitasartistsseries.org/
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, a group “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented in concert by Placitas Artists Series. The ensemble will perform a lively concert program titled Countryside to Concert Hall, featuring American Mirror: Part I by Derrick Skye, Quartet No. 2 by Béla Bartók, and Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 “Razumovsky” by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Out Today: Clarice Jensen's "In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness" - Album Coverage from NPR, The Strad, and More
Clarice Jensen's "In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness" - Album Coverage from NPR, The Strad, and More
Album cover by DLT and press photos by Ebru Yildiz available here.
Clarice Jensen Releases New Album In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness
Out Today October 17, 2025 on FatCat/130701 Records
"With this album, Jensen reminds us how past and present can combine in potent, emotionally charged ways – how Bach's old school traditions and our new age of electronics can make arresting bedfellows." – Tom Huizenga, NPR Music
NPR Music Review
NPR All Songs Considered
A Closer Listen Review
Sounds Vegan Review
The Strad Interview
Rock Sound Interview
Opening for Suzanne Ciani Presented by Age of Reflections this Fall
Information
Downloads and CDs available to press on request
"The Zen clarity of her sound recalls masters like Phill Niblock, evoking universes by honing in on narrow ranges of frequency. But the way Jensen shifts her drones, building them gradually and then hard-cutting to completely new tones, feels singular." – Pitchfork
www.claricejensen.com | www.fatcat.online/130701
Composer and cellist Clarice Jensen releases her fourth solo album, In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness, today October 17, 2025 via FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint. The new album showcases Jensen’s distinctive compositional approach, in which she improvises and layers her cello through shifting loops and a chain of electronic effects, exploring a series of rich, drone-based sound fields. Pulsing, visceral and full of color, her work is deeply immersive, marked by a wonderful sense of restraint and an almost hallucinatory clarity. Jensen recorded In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness as part of the Visiting Artist Programme at Studio Richter Mahr, the creative space co-founded by Yulia Mahr and Max Richter in Oxfordshire, England.
Jensen’s live performance schedule takes her across the country this summer and fall. She recently joined My Chemical Romance on their Long Live The Black Parade tour, performing a solo set in addition to playing with the band. This fall, she opens for Suzanne Ciani presented by Age of Reflections in Denver on November 15, San Francisco on November 21, New York on December 6, and Los Angeles on December 13, 2025. This summer she performed a solo show at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City and with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Full concert schedule: www.claricejensen.com/events
Having made a solo move to the Berkshire Mountains in upstate New York in September 2020 after many years living in Brooklyn, Jensen found herself confronting and enjoying a newfound solitude as the non-stop movement and collaboration of city life as a musician had come to a standstill. The first LP she made post-move – Esthesis, released on 130701 in 2022 – is largely devoid of cello, synth heavy, and examines emotions in a self-conscious way from an isolated point of view that is nearly one-dimensional.
Jensen sets new parameters for In holiday clothing, placing the acoustic sound of the cello at the fore, and affecting the sound only through a few effects (octave displacement, delay, tremolo and looping). “It felt necessary to return to the rich acoustic sound of the cello that I've loved and produced for nearly my entire life, and to return to an expression of emotion that's multi-dimensional and sincere,” she notes.
As a soloist, Jensen endeavors to establish a new tradition of solo cello performance that integrates electronics with the storied and beloved performance practice intrinsic to the instrument. She places great importance on finding and working with effects pedals that integrate well with the cello (and avoids overt use of plugins or playback). Jensen considers the solo cello works of J.S. Bach as a central backdrop to this new album. Bach’s Solo Cello Suites display a rich range of voices created by one instrument. Having found ways to expand the sound and voice of the instrument through electronics, Jensen found it fitting to return to Bach's works – music she has played for many years – as a way to touch back in with the tradition of the instrument.
As a composer, Jensen insists that the programmatic elements of her albums align and ring true. This album’s title is taken from the quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, “… what steps forth, in holiday clothing, out of the great darkness." She writes, “the quote from Rilke had been bouncing around my mind for many years; the visualisation of musical ideas being born and echoing inside a ‘great darkness,’ then emerging ‘in holiday clothing’ felt very beautiful and tangible, and this essay, which to me is a manifesto in celebration of solitude, depicts what so many artists and composers experience when they endeavor solitary work. This album reflects a personal and conceptual exploration of what solo means.”
Previous Albums
The new album adds to Jensen’s growing discography. Her striking debut album For This From That Will Be Filled was released in April 2018 on the Berlin-based label Miasmah and followed in September 2019 by the "Drone Studies" EP, a cassette release via Geographic North. Signing to FatCat’s 130701 imprint in 2019, her sophomore album The experience of repetition as death was released April 2020. Naming it among the top 50 albums of 2020, NPR remarked "This collection of requiems for a dying mother ranks among the great ambient albums of the 21st century." Her album Esthesis was released in October 2022 and NPR ranked it among the Best Experimental Albums of the Year. Boomkat stated, “Jensen finds a fine line between in-the-moment, tactile precision and lingering hallucinatory afterimages that emerge from her improv/compositional system. The pieces betray an exquisite depth of feeling in Jensen’s diffractive rendering of shimmering layers and gently transitory movements,” with Magnetic Magazine reporting, “There is no doubt this album will impact people profoundly.”
Film Scores
Clarice Jensen’s music is a natural fit for film and she is increasingly in demand as a film and television composer. Her recent scores include Amber Sealey's No Man of God starring Elijah Wood which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival; Takeshi Fukunaga's Ainu Mosir, which premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival; Fernanda Valadez's 2020 Sundance Film Festival award-winner Sin Señas Particulares (Identifying Features), for which Jensen was nominated for a 2021 Ariel Award for Best Original Music by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences; Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas (2024), a four-part Netflix documentary on femicide in Mexico from Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez; and A Want in Her, a documentary film from Myrid Carten which premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2024.
Collaborators
A versatile collaborator, Jensen has recorded and performed with a host of stellar artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Björk, Stars of the Lid, Dustin O’Halloran, Nico Muhly, Taylor Swift, Michael Stipe, the National and many others. In her role as the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), she has helped bring to life some of the most revered works of modern classical music, including pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, and more.
Clarice Jensen: In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness
FatCat Records/130701 | October 17, 2025
1. In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness - Part 1 [12:56]
2. From a to b [5:35]
3. 2,1 [4:11]
4. 1,2 [4:08]
5. In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness - Part 2 [8:35]
6. Unity [5:29]
Recorded at Studio Richter Mahr by Rupert Coulson, 30 October - 1 November 2024
Mastered by Alan Douches
Photography by Ebru Yildiz
Album art by DLT
Nov. 14: The Jupiter String Quartet Presented by Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series
Nov. 14: The Jupiter String Quartet Presented by Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series
Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/jupiter-string
The Jupiter String Quartet Presented by
Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series
Performing Music by
Franz Joseph Haydn, Salina Fisher, Florence Price, and Robert Schumann
Friday, November 14, 2025 at 7:30pm
Wellin Hall at Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts
198 College Hill Road | Clinton, NY
Tickets and Information
“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker
Clinton, NY – On Friday, November 14, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Jupiter String Quartet – internationally acclaimed winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) – will be presented in concert by the Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series in Wellin Hall at Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts (198 College Hill Road).
Based at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Mélanie Clapiès and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Founded in 2001, the ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous.
The Jupiter Quartet brings its well-honed musical chemistry to three works shaped by bold musicality and deeply meaningful thematic inspirations, written between the late 18th century and the present day, including String Quartet in C Major, Op. 33 No. 3 “The Bird” by Franz Joseph Haydn; Heal by Salina Fisher; Selections from Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price; and Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 by Robert Schumann.
Of performing together with Mélanie and bringing this program to Hamilton College’s Performing Arts Series:
The “Bird” is one of the most popular of Haydn’s six Opus 33 string quartets. It is filled with joy and playfulness, often imitating the sprightly and singsong qualities of birds (hence the nickname). Haydn’s good-natured creativity is on full display here, throughout the vivacity of the opening and closing movements, the quirky scherzo, and the wonderfully lyrical slow movement.
Salina Fisher is an award-winning New Zealand composer who draws from her background as a multi-instrumentalist of mixed Japanese heritage. Her highly evocative music often involves collaborations, notably with taonga pūoro practitioners.
Of the inspiration behind her 2021 work Heal Fisher says:
“During a year of collective and personal challenges, I became interested in the process of healing and its relation to music making,’ says Fisher. ‘Can composing be part of a healing process? What does it mean to share physical space and sound? This piece is a reflection on these kinds of questions and seems to find space for breath and unity’.”
Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint stems from historically meaningful folk tunes and spirituals written or made popular throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Four of the five movements are based on the following songs: “Calvary,” “My Darling Clementine,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The fifth is a blending of various folk songs in one. Initially, Price only composed three movements, before adding two more around 1950. Each movement embraces sophisticated and precise contrapuntal phrasing, transforming the familiar form of each folksong but keeping each theme intact.
Composed in the summer of 1842, Robert Schumann’s Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 is dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn, along with the two other string quartets of Opus 41. He wrote it while studying the contrapuntal style of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. —. The work opens with a bittersweetly beautiful Ándante espressivo, which finally transforms into a more dance-like Allegro. The Scherzo that follows is full of energetically galloping rhythms. The third movement is a beautiful set of Adagio variations, full of the dramatic lyricism that Schumann invokes so well. The work closes with a flashy Presto, with all four musicians’ fingers flying to keep up with the energetic pace.
More About Jupiter String Quartet: The Jupiter Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.
Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two.
The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert.
The quartet's latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by Grammy-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The Arts Fuse acclaimed, “This joint album from the Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet is striking for its backstory but really memorable for its smart program and fine execution.” The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon. In fall 2024, the Jupiter Quartet will record their next album with Judith Sherman, featuring the world premiere recordings of Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Stephen Taylor’s Chaconne/Labyrinth, and Kati Agócs's Imprimatur, which were all composed for the Jupiters.
The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.
For more information, visit www.jupiterquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, described by The New Yorker as having “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” is presented in concert by Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series. The award-winning ensemble will perform a program blending the emotive and image-driven melodies of traditional works with purpose-driven music from the present day. The concert program will include: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 33 No. 3 “The Bird” by Franz Joseph Haydn; Heal by Salina Fisher; Selections from Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price; and Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 by Robert Schumann.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Hamilton College's Performing Arts Series
What: Music by Franz Joseph Haydn, Salina Fisher, Florence Price, and Robert Schumann
When: Friday, November 14, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Wellin Hall at Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323
Tickets and information: www.hamilton.edu/campuslife/arts-at-hamilton/performingarts
Nov. 7-9: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik is Featured Soloist in Three Concerts with the Phoenix Symphony Conducted by Andrew Litton
Nov. 7-9: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik is Featured Soloist in Three Concerts with the Phoenix Symphony Conducted by Andrew Litton
Photo of Yevgeny Kutik by Griffin Harrington available in hi-resolution here.
Violinist Yevgeny Kutik is Featured Soloist in Three Concerts
with the Phoenix Symphony
Performing Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77
by Dimitri Shostakovich
Conducted by Andrew Litton
Friday, November 7, 2025 at 11am
Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 2pm
Symphony Hall | 75 North 2nd Street | Phoenix, AZ
Tickets and More Information
“polished dexterity and genteel, old-world charm” –WQXR
Phoenix, AZ — Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, who The New York Times describes as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” is the featured soloist in three performances with the Phoenix Symphony, conducted by Andrew Litton. Kutik will perform Dimitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 as part of a performance that will also include Ludwig van Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3. This concert program will be performed on Friday, November 7 at 11am, Saturday, November 8 at 7:30pm, and Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 2pm. All three concerts will take place in Symphony Hall (75 North 2nd Street).
Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of standard works as well as rarely heard and newly composed repertoire.
“I grew up with Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 as a constant presence—its intensity and honesty became part of my musical language from an early age,” says Kutik. “Each time I return to it, I discover anew how music can embody strength, resilience, and vulnerability all at once. I’m especially thrilled to bring it to Phoenix this November with Maestro Litton.”
Composed between 1947-48, Shostakovich called his Violin Concerto No. 1 “a symphony for violin and orchestra.” Part of his inspiration for this concerto was the extraordinary violin playing of his friend, David Oistrakh. After Shostakovich finished composing the work, he and Oistrakh performed it together privately on violin and piano, however the concerto could not be performed publicly because of Soviet censorship until 1955, two years after Joseph Stalin’s death. Oistrakh premiered the concerto with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Evgeny Mravinsky. As time has gone on, the work has come to be thought of as one of the great violin concertos of the 20th century.
More about Yevgeny Kutik: Committed to the music of our time, Kutik regularly gives premiere and repeat performances of major works by today’s most celebrated composers. This season, he gives the world premiere of a new work by Jonathan Leshnoff with pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner presented by Newport Classical. In January 2025, he made his debut with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, led by Michelle Merrill, in a performance of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2. In 2022 at the Tanglewood Music Festival, he gave the world premiere of Cântico, a work for solo violin by Andreia Pinto Correia co-commissioned for Kutik by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2021, he debuted with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin, performing the world premiere of Joseph Schwantner’s Violin Concerto, written for him. The concerto is based on Schwantner’s earlier work, The Poet’s Hour – Soliloquy for Violin, which Kutik recorded on episode six of Gerard Schwarz’s All-Star Orchestra, released on DVD by Naxos and broadcast nationally on PBS.
A native of Minsk, Belarus, Yevgeny Kutik immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of five. His 2014 album, Music from the Suitcase: A Collection of Russian Miniatures (Marquis Classics), features music he found in his family’s suitcase after immigrating to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1990, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Classical chart. The album garnered critical acclaim and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in The New York Times. Kutik’s recent releases on Marquis include The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021) and Meditations on Family (2019), for which he commissioned eight composers to translate a personal family photo into a short musical miniature – a project featured on the cover of Strings magazine. Kutik’s other recordings include his debut album, Sounds of Defiance (2012), and Words Fail (2016), both released to critical acclaim.
Other recent performance highlights include debuts at the Kennedy Center presented by Washington Performing Arts, and at the Ravinia Festival, as well as recital appearances as part of the Dame Myra Hess Concerts Chicago; at UCLA; Peoples' Symphony Concerts, Kaufman Music Center, and National Sawdust in New York City; the Embassy Series and The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; and at the Lobkowicz Collections Prague presented by Prince William Lobkowicz. Festival performances have included the Tanglewood Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele in Germany, and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.
Kutik made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and The Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition, and has since performed with orchestras throughout the country including the Rochester and Dayton Philharmonics; the Detroit, New Haven, Asheville, and Wyoming symphony orchestras; and more. Abroad, he has appeared with Germany’s Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock and WDR Rundfunk Orchestra Köln, Montenegro’s Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s Tokyo Vivaldi Ensemble, and the Cape Town Philharmonic in South Africa.
Passionate about his heritage and its influence on his artistry, Kutik is an advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the United States, and regularly speaks and performs across the United States to both raise awareness and promote the assistance of refugees from around the world.
Yevgeny Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and went on to study with Zinaida Gilels, Shirley Givens, Roman Totenberg, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory. Kutik is the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Birch Festival – a festival built around connecting and integrating leading musicians with the Berkshire community, while highlighting the unique and original stories of those who make up the Berkshires. His violin was crafted in Italy in 1915 by Stefano Scarampella. For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, described as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” (The New York Times) is the featured soloist in three performances with the Phoenix Symphony, conducted by Andrew Litton. Kutik will perform Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77. The concert program will also include Ludwig van Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3.
Concert details:
Who: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Presented by Phoenix Symphony
Conducted by Andrew Litton
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
When: Friday, November 7, 2025 at 11am
Saturday, November 8, 2025 7:30pm
Sunday, November 9, 2025 2pm
Where: 75 North 2nd Street Phoenix, AZ 85004
Tickets and information: www.phoenixsymphony.org/shows/litton-conducts-tchaikovsky
Nov 21: ECM New Series Releases Pur ti miro - Wu Wei, Martin Stegner, Janne Saksala
Nov 21: ECM New Series Releases Pur ti miro - Wu Wei, Martin Stegner, Janne Saksala
ECM New Series Releases Pur ti miro
Wu Wei, Martin Stegner, Janne Saksala
Wu Wei, sheng; Martin Stegner, viola; Janne Saksala, double bass
ECM New Series 2843
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Pre-Order/Pre-Save: https://ecm.lnk.to/PurTiMiro
Downloads and CDs available upon request.
“An entirely new world of sound opened up for me. I had never heard early music like that before: so rich in colour, so immediately moving,” says violist Martin Stegner of his first experience playing Monteverdi with Wu Wei, master of the sheng. The range of colours that Wei can coax from his instrument is remarkable, as is the sonic blending of sheng, viola and double bass in this Chinese-German-Finnish trio. Bassist Janne Saksala, who like Stegner, is also a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, shares the violist’s sense of improvisational curiosity. Here the trio plays Claude Monteverdi’s Si dolce è’l tormento and Pur ti miro from L’incoronazione di Poppea, J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas Nos 1 and 4, and Antonio Vivaldi’s D minor Trio Sonata, in a programme completed by “Buremarsj frå Beiarn”, a bridal march from Norwegian folk tradition. “Over time our programme kept growing, even though it’s a challenge to arrange works for this unusual combination of sounds. We don’t aim to interpret early music in a strictly historically correct way. All of us come from different musical and cultural backgrounds and it is precisely this diversity that consciously flows into our interpretations.” The players “explore the freedom the music offers. With respect, but also with a desire for discovery”.
The sheng, whose history goes back three thousand years, is a free reed polyphonic instrument, with vertical bamboo pipes cased in a metal bowl. Its sound has been likened to the singing phoenix of Chinese legend, “silvery and fleeting as the wind.” Wu Wei plays a custom developed sheng with a key mechanism that gives him full access also to the Western tonal system.
Born in Gaoyou in China’s Jiangsu province, Wu Wei studied the sheng at the Shanghai Conservatory and came to Germany on a DAAD scholarship in 1995, and has been based in Berlin since then, establishing a reputation as a soloist not limited by idiomatic constraints, playing in contexts from Chinese traditional repertoire to European baroque and classical music, contemporary composition, jazz, electronic music and free improvisation. A number of composers have written music for him, among them Unsuk Chin, Jukka Tiensuu and Guus Jansen, and he has worked with new music groups including Ensemble Modern and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, jazz groups including the NDR Big Band, and orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony. Wu Wei was last heard on ECM in 2021 as a member of the multicultural collective led by singer Cymin Samawatie and drummer Ketan Bhatti, the Trickster Orchestra.
Martin Stegner studied violin at the Mannheim University of Music, before switching to viola, with a stipendium from the Karajan Academy. His first professional engagement was as principal viola with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. In 1996 he joined the Berlin Philharmonic. As soloist and chamber musician his repertoire extends from Bach to Piazzolla and beyond. In parallel with classical activities he has long been a committed improviser, and in 2008 co-founded the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group. In 2014 he made his first appearance on ECM, playing on the album Phoenix by the Berlin based band Cyminology, with whom he has also toured. Like Wu Wei he also appears on the debut album of the Trickster Orchestra. Other affiliations have included work with Markus Stockhausen.
Janne Saksala is first principal bass of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position he has held since 2008. He began studying the instrument in his hometown of Helsinki at the age of 14, and continued at Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste from 1986. In 1991 he was a prizewinner at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. A busy career as chamber musician and soloist has brought him together with artists such as Tabea Zimmermann, Isabelle Faust, Leonidas Kavakos, Leif Ove Andsnes, Pekka Kuusisto and Guy Braunstein. Passionate also about teaching the bass to the next generation of players, Saksala has been a mentor for many musicians. In 2023 he took up a position as double bass professor at Berlin’s Universität der Künste and is a guest lecturer at numerous universities around the world.
Pur ti Miro was recorded at Teldex Studios, Berlin, in October 2022. CD booklet includes liner notes by Martin Stegner in German and English.
Caramoor Continues Rosen House Concert Series - Six Classical, Jazz, Folk Concerts in November
Caramoor Continues Rosen House Concert Series - Six Classical, Jazz, Folk Concerts in November
Clockwise from top left: Evnin Rising Stars, Christie Dashiell, Poiesis Quartet, The Arcadian Wild, The English Concert. Press photos available here.
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts Continues its
Rosen House Concert Series in November with Six Performances
Held in the Music Room of the Historic Rosen House
November 1 & 2: Evnin Rising Stars
November 7: Christie Dashiell
November 9: The English Concert
November 16: Poiesis Quartet
(2025-26 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence)
November 21: The Arcadian Wild
“a year-round powerhouse of cultural activity” — BBC Music Magazine
“The next time you’re in or near Westchester, New York, be sure to make time to visit Caramoor” — Martha Stewart
Information & Tickets: caramoor.org
KATONAH, NY – Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, a vibrant cultural destination nestled on 81 acres of historic gardens and woodlands in Katonah, NY, continues its intimate Rosen House Concert Series with six performances featuring classical, jazz, and folk music in November. Caramoor, once the estate of music and art lovers Walter and Lucie Rosen, is one of the region’s most distinctive destinations for live performance, cultural engagement, and exploration. Caramoor’s Rosen House Concert Series runs from October through May, held in the exquisite Music Room of the historic home – a Mediterranean-style villa from 1939 filled with treasures from around the world. Audiences enjoy performances by some of today’s most in-demand artists in the same living room salon setting where the Rosens once entertained their many friends.
Caramoor’s November Rosen House Concert Series begins with a pair of afternoon performances on Saturday, November 1 and Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 3pm, featuring participants in Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program, which has nurtured emerging talent since 1992. Each year, the program’s Artistic Director Marcy Rosen identifies some of the most promising musicians at the cusp of professional careers, bringing them to Caramoor for a weeklong chamber music residency with distinguished artist mentors. This year’s mentors are violinist Ani Kavafian and violist Rebecca Albers. The 2025 Evnin Rising Stars are violinists Isabelle Ai Durrenberger, Clara Neubauer, and Cherry Choi Tung Yeung; violists Samuel Rosenthal and Luther Warren; cellists Annie Jacobs-Perkins and Leland Ko; and pianist Evren Ozel. The Evnin Rising Stars will perform chamber music by Boccherini, Ginastera, and Brahms on November 1, and music by Mozart, Shostakovich, and Dvořák on November 2. Tickets are free for audience members ages 18 and under.
On Friday, November 7, 2025 at 7:30pm, Caramoor presents Christie Dashiell, one of jazz’s most captivating voices, and her quartet. With her soulful sound and remarkable technical skill, Dashiell weaves stories that touch the heart and lift the spirit. Her GRAMMY®-nominated album Journey in Black (which earned a coveted five-star review from DownBeat) showcases her ability to explore profound themes of freedom, legacy, and joy through her music. Critics and audiences alike are falling under the spell of this rising jazz star. Dashiell recently appeared on season three of NBC’s The Sing-Off as a member of Afro Blue, and she has performed in concert with Esperanza Spalding, Fred Hammond, Smokey Robinson, Geri Allen, Allan Harris, and more. Her latest album, with Terri Lyne Carrington, is We Insist 2025!, a bold reimagining of the seminal 1961 album We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite. This performance is presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center. The concert is underwritten in part by a generous donation from Amy & John Peckham and the Peckham Family Foundation.
The English Concert brings their magic touch to Caramoor once again, for a performance on Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 3pm. After captivating audiences with all-Vivaldi programs in 2021 and 2023, this renowned British ensemble returns under Harry Bicket’s masterful direction from the harpsichord. Playing on authentic 17th-century instruments, they achieve something truly special – passionate, fiery performances that never sacrifice precision or delicate beauty. The English Concert is considered one of the world’s premier period-instrument ensembles. Their performance at Caramoor will feature music by masters including J.S. Bach, Handel, Purcell, and more. This concert is sold out, but a waitlist is available. The performance is underwritten in part by a generous donation from the Howard and Sarah D. Solomon Foundation.
On Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 3pm, the Poiesis Quartet gives its first concert as Caramoor’s Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence. Formed in 2022 at Oberlin, the Poiesis Quartet has swiftly risen to prominence, and are the Grand Prize winners of the 2025 Banff International String Quartet and the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competitions. Renowned for their cohesive artistry and adventurous programming, the group lives up to its name – poiesis, from the Greek “to make” – with performances that forge new paths in chamber music. Dedicated to championing the voices of emerging and historically underrepresented composers, the Poesis Quartet brings this vibrant mission to life in their Caramoor residency. Poiesis’s November 16 program, titled Surfacing, is an exploration of the raw, human responses to existential and life-altering events. Incorporating musical influences as varied as electronic dance music, East Asian folk tunes, R&B, jazz, gospel, and traditional spirituals, four composers take us on a journey through phases of healing and growth, ultimately surfacing from confusion and pain with resilience and a renewed sense of hope. The concert includes music by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Brian Raphael Nabors, Kevin Lau, and Sky Macklay. The Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence program at Caramoor, founded in 1999, annually supports an exceptional emerging string quartet. The year-long residency includes three performances at Caramoor and two 10-day periods in which the Quartet works with students in local schools, as well as the commissioning of a new work by a composer of the Quartet's choosing. Tickets are free for audience members ages 18 and under.
The Arcadian Wild takes the stage in the Music Room on Friday, November 21, 2025 at 7:30pm. This Nashville-based ensemble is known for its intricate, heartfelt acoustic sound. Blending progressive folk, bluegrass, and choral harmonies, they create a musical style that is uniquely their own. Led by songwriters Isaac Horn (guitar) and Lincoln Mick (mandolin), joined by Bailey Warren on fiddle and Erik Coveney on bass, the group is celebrated for their rich arrangements and vivid storytelling. The Arcadian Wild’s latest album, Welcome, draws on everything from country and classical to pop and choral music with lush, cinematic arrangements that balance the intellectual and the emotional in equal measure. Though the group tours and records without a drummer, their songs are deeply rooted in rhythmic propulsion, driven by intricately interlocking instrumental and vocal parts that cohere into a deceptively effortless whole. This concert is presented in collaboration with City Winery.
About Caramoor
Each year, Caramoor presents an exciting array of concerts across genres – from classical, opera, and chamber music to jazz, American roots, global sounds, and the American songbook. Caramoor’s acclaimed Summer Season brings audiences together for unforgettable outdoor performances from June into August in five distinct settings (the Music Room, Venetian Theater, Spanish Courtyard, Friends Field, and the Sunken Garden), while the intimate Rosen House Concert Series runs from October through May in the historic Rosen House, a Mediterranean-style villa listed on the National Register of Historic Places and filled with treasures from around the world. With a mission to engage audiences of all ages, Caramoor also offers a selection of concerts and programs for families and our youngest listeners.
Caramoor is a place where music, history, and nature come together to create moments of beauty and connection for all who visit. In addition to hearing concerts, visitors to Caramoor can tour the spectacular Rosen House, explore its intriguing collections, enjoy a picnic, and experience the lush gardens and grounds – including Caramoor’s unique collection of site-specific Sound Art, permanently installed sound sculptures which draw inspiration from their environment. Caramoor also offers a formal afternoon tea service year-round in the Music Room (by reservation), a seasonal concessions tent, and a selection of public programs such as yoga, art classes, and large-scale community events.
At-a-Glance Calendar: Upcoming Rosen House Concert Series Performances
Friday, October 17 at 7:30pm: Stella Cole - Cabaret in the Music Room | Benefit Concert
Sunday, October 26 at 3pm: Raphaël Feuillâtre, guitar
Saturday, November 1 at 3pm: Evnin Rising Stars
Sunday, November 2 at 3pm: Evnin Rising Stars
Friday, November 7 at 7:30pm: Christie Dashiell
Sunday, November 9 at 3pm: The English Concert
Sunday, November 16 at 3pm: Poiesis Quartet
Friday, November 21 at 7:30pm: The Arcadian Wild
Saturday, December 6 at 8pm: Rosanne Cash - Benefit Concert
Sunday, December 7 at 3pm: An Amarcord Christmas
Sunday, March 8 at 3pm: Schwab Vocal Rising Stars
Friday, March 20 at 7:30pm: Goitse
Sunday, March 22 at 3pm: Víkingur Ólafsson, piano
Sunday, April 12 at 3pm: Junction Trio
Sunday, April 19 at 3pm: Steven Isserlis, cello & Connie Shih, piano
Friday, May 1 at 7:30pm: Anat Cohen Quartetinho
Sunday, May 3 at 3pm: Poiesis Quartet
Friday, May 8 at 7:30pm: Solomon Hicks
For Caramoor’s complete schedule: caramoor.org/events
Ticketing Information
Concert tickets are available for purchase online at caramoor.org; by phone at 914.232.1252 Tuesdays through Fridays from 10am-4pm; and on site from the Box Office two hours before each performance.
More information about visiting Caramoor: caramoor.org/visit
Caramoor’s Rosen House Concert Series runs from October through May, held in the exquisite Music Room of the Rosens’ historic home – a Mediterranean-style villa from 1939 filled with treasures from around the world. Photo by Gabe Palacio available in high resolution here.
Jan. 23: Pianist and Composer Hayato Sumino Releases Chopin Orbit Second Album on Sony Classical – New Single Berceuse Out Today
Jan. 23: Pianist and Composer Hayato Sumino Releases Chopin Orbit Second Album on Sony Classical – New Single Berceuse Out Today
Album Artwork (Download)
Chopin Orbit
The Eagerly Anticipated Second Album
by Celebrated Japanese Pianist and Composer
Hayato Sumino (AKA ‘Cateen’)
New Single Berceuse Out Today
Listen Here
Worldwide Album Release Date: January 23, 2026
Pre-Order Available Now
Carnegie Hall Recital Debut on November 18, 2025
Sony Classical has announced the forthcoming release of Chopin Orbit, the second album by the acclaimed, multi-faceted New York-based Japanese pianist and composer, Hayato Sumino (aka ‘Cateen’), set for release on January 23, 2026 and available for pre-order now. Accompanying today’s news is the release of the new single Berceuse – listen here.
For this new recording, Hayato Sumino has turned his gaze on the composer who possibly means the most to him, namely Chopin (1810-1849). It was indeed Sumino’s sensational performances during the 2021 International Chopin Competition where he was a semi-finalist that first brought this fine young musician to wider international attention.
Hayato Sumino explains his concept for Chopin Orbit: “For me, Chopin has always been like an idol, and his music has remained close to my heart since childhood. As I grew as a musician, I began to realize how naturally his influence found its way into my own creations. At some point I thought—why not create an album with Chopin at its center? That moment became the starting point of this project. My pieces were born out of inspiration from Chopin’s works. Sometimes I quote a motif or weave in a melody, but I never set out simply to write “in the style of Chopin.” What I wanted was to bring together his spirit with my own modern sensibility and creativity.
The title Chopin Orbit reflects this idea. I placed Chopin’s music at the center, and from there different responses and offshoots take shape—as if drawn by his gravity, forming new orbits of their own. In respect for Chopin, each of my pieces is paired with the original that inspired it, so the album presents his works and my responses in alternation. And not only with my own works: I also paired Chopin with composers I admire—including Thomas Adès (b. 1971), Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938), and Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)—showing how the resonance of Chopin’s music continues to expand across time.
I imagine the listener roaming freely between these two closely connected worlds, old and new, whilst keeping in mind the twist that pieces composed in the 19th century were themselves considered new and different in their time to the music that had gone before, highlighting that we inhabit an ever-evolving musical space."
The album includes, among others, Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie op. 61, Nocturne in c-sharp minor, Berceuse and Raindrop Prelude, coupled with Hayato’s own pieces White Keys and Post Rain, Godowsky’s transcription of Chopin's Waltz No. 1 and Janacek’s Good Night! from On an Overgrown Path.
Echoing this imaginative framework, Chopin Orbit showcases Sumino’s distinctive musical style, merging his refined classical sensibilities with his discerning ear as an arranger and his instinctive feel for the new. During his exquisite performances of his carefully curated programme for the album, Sumino adeptly utilises a variety of keyboards, including a concert grand, a vintage piano, a modern upright and celeste.
Chopin Orbit follows this exceptional young musician’s acclaimed Sony Classical debut album Human Universe, released in November 2024, which saw Sumino range effortlessly across a diverse selection of repertoire from Bach to Zimmer via some of his own compositions.
HAYATO SUMINO:
2025-2026 PERFORMANCE DATES
Oct. 24, 2025 Fresno Concert Hall; Fresno, CA
Oct. 26, 2025 Bing Concert Hall; Stanford, CA
Oct. 27, 2025 Bing Concert Hall; Stanford, CA
Nov. 16, 2025 Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center; Chicago, IL
Nov. 18, 2025 Carnegie Hall (DEBUT); New York, NY
Mar 25, 2026 Bowker Auditorium – University of Massachusetts; Amherst, MA
Mar 27, 2026 McKnight Center, Performance Hall; Stillwater, OK
Mar 27, 2026 McKnight Center, Performance Hall; Stillwater, OK
Mar 31, 2026 Carnegie Hall; New York, NY
Apr 4, 2026 Irvine Berkeley Theatre; Irvine, CA
May 9, 2026 The Baker-Baum Concert Hall; La Jolla, CA
May 10, 2026 Visual and Performing Arts Center; Cupertino, CA
ABOUT HAYATO SUMINO
Hayato Sumino is an artistic phenomenon. Also known as ‘Cateen’, he has garnered over 2.2 million followers globally across his social media platforms.
In April 2024, he made a spectacular Royal Albert Hall debut with his performance of Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and recently performed at the BBC Proms in an historic overnight event, as a personal guest of the evening’s curator, star organist Anna Lapwood. He has enjoyed a string of successful concerts this year, performing at prestigious venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie and the Hollywood Bowl, and is set to make his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in November.
Following a sold-out performance for 15k spectators at Budokan in July 2024, Sumino will headline the +20,000-capacity K-Arena Yokohama in the fall of 2025—an unprecedented achievement for a classical solo artist. In July 2025, he was awarded the prestigious Bernstein Award, recognizing his exceptional contributions to contemporary classical music. At the upcoming 2025 Opus Klassik Awards, he will also be honored with two accolades for his Sony debut album “Human Universe”: ‘Young Talent of the Year’ and ‘Best Live Performance (Soloist)’.
Sumino’s rising international profile has earned him widespread recognition: he was featured in Japan’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2023, named one of Vogue Japan’s #TheOnesToWatch in 2024, spotlighted by Rolling Stone Korea, and most recently selected by Elle Magazine US as one of “9 Artists Shaping Culture in 2025.”
A prodigious composer, Hayato Sumino possesses a unique and captivating style that readily combines his diverse musical interests, ranging from classical and jazz to film music, post-classical, and electronica. He is also much in-demand for film and TV scores in Japan. He also holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology and was honored with the President’s Award for his exceptional achievements in both music and engineering.
Hayato Sumino is one of the leading members of the next generation of boundary-pushing musicians who move seamlessly between genres and across musical borders, and who allow themselves the freedom of musical expression however they see fit, for the benefit of the audience.
Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records, and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com.
FOLLOW HAYATO SUMINO
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Newport Classical Continues Chamber Series with Two November Concerts - Pianist Charlotte Hu and Saxophonist Valentin Kovalev
Newport Classical Continues Chamber Series with Two November Concerts - Pianist Charlotte Hu and Saxophonist Valentin Kovalev
L-R: Charlotte Hu and Valentin Kovalev. Photos available in high resolution here.
Newport Classical Continues 2025-2026 Chamber Series
Pianist Charlotte Hu Performs Chopin
Friday, November 7, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saxophonist Valentin Kovalev performs Pictures at an Exhibition
Friday, November 21, 2025 7:30pm
Information & Tickets: www.newportclassical.org
Newport, RI – Newport Classical continues its fifth full-season Chamber Series, which features twelve concerts held on select Fridays between September 2025 and June 2026 at the organization’s home venue, the Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with two concerts in November. Pianist Charlotte Hu performs on Friday, November 7, 2025 at 7:30pm and saxophonist Valentin Kovalev performs on Friday, November 21, 2025 at 7:30pm.
On November 7, virtuoso Taiwanese American pianist Charlotte Hu, celebrated as a "first-class talent" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) with "superstar quality" (Jerusalem Post), embarks on a compelling journey through Chopin's expressive world. From the sparkling Polonaise-Fantasie to the sweeping drama of the Piano Sonata No. 3, the heart of the evening features the luminous Nocturnes, all showcasing a different facet of Chopin’s emotional world through Hu’s expressive grace and refined lyricism. Charlotte Hu is a well-known interpreter of Chopin – her debut album, Chopin, was released in 2011 and was named Best Classical Album of the Year by Taiwan's prestigious Golden Melody Award. Hu has said that she hopes that her performances “encourage people to listen deeply and discover anew the work of even the most well-known composers.”
On November 21, saxophonist Valentin Kovalev, a Gold Medal winner at the Jean-Marie Londeix International Saxophone Competition, brings his electrifying technique and soulful depth to his Newport Classical debut. A winner of the Concert Artists Guild competition, Kovalev presents a unique blend of virtuosic brilliance and heartfelt expression in a program that journeys from Romantic warmth to contemporary vibrancy featuring Schumann’s tender Fantasiestücke, Chaminade’s elegant Flute Concertino, Fazil Say’s vivid Suite, Debussy’s shimmering Rhapsody, the spirited energy of Barry Cockcroft’s KuKu, and Mussorgsky's art gallery-inspired masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition. Hailing from Siberia, Kovalev is an ebullient and highly eclectic performer whose unique style was developed after studying in Russia, France, and the US. He recently gave a sold-out debut recital at Carnegie Hall as a winner of the Naumburg Foundation 2022 Saxophone Competition.
Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. Audiences are invited to enjoy performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with complimentary wine generously provided by Gold's Wine and Spirits served when the doors open at 7:00pm and again during intermission. Both performers and audience members alike have described these concerts as some of their favorites. “Beautiful concert, high artistry and exciting programming . . . a deeply moving and soulful experience, with a rousing and brilliant virtuosity that kept you on the edge of your seat,” raved one attendee.
As part of Newport Classical's desire to create connections between classical music, the artists who perform it, and the Newport community, all musicians performing on the Chamber Series will also visit a local school or organization to present their talents and meaningfully engage with students and community members of all ages through Newport Classical's Music Enrichment and Engagement Initiative. While in Newport, Charlotte Hu will visit Pell Elementary School and Valentin Kovalev will visit East Bay Community Action Program’s (EBCAP) Head Start preschool.
Up next, Newport Classical presents a free Community Concert, designed especially for families – classical guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan presents his New Lullaby Project (comfy PJs and stuffed animals welcome) on October 12 at Emmanuel Church. The Chamber Series continues on October 17, with Trio Zimbalist in their Newport Classical debut, performing with what EfSyn calls “precision and feverish intensity,” in Beethoven's beloved "Archduke" Trio alongside works by Smetana and George Xiaoyuan Fu.
The Chamber Series continues in 2026 with cellist Jonathan Swensen making his highly anticipated return on January 23 following his memorable 2024 debut as a Festival Artist. Honored with the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and joint First Prize at the 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition, Swensen is described as "a musician of charisma and thrilling physicality" (BBC Music Magazine). The Verona Quartet, celebrated by The New York Times as an "outstanding ensemble... cohesive yet full of temperament," makes their Newport Classical debut on February 20 with a program tracing a vivid stylistic arc from Scarlatti to Beethoven. On March 13, baritone Benjamin Appl, whose voice “belongs to the last of the old great masters of song” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) and whose artistry has been described as “unbearably moving” (The Times), presents Schubert's hauntingly beautiful Die Winterreise with his frequent collaborator, pianist James Baillieu. Ars Poetica, an ensemble of acclaimed instrumentalists and vocalists with a passion for historical music, explores "Dance and Transfiguration" on March 27 with their colorful array of Baroque instruments. Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, praised for his "dark-hued and razor-sharp technique" (The New York Times), makes his Newport Classical debut on April 10 alongside returning pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner in works by Debussy, Prokofiev, and Grieg. Rising-star pianist James Zijian Wei, first-prize winner at the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, makes his highly anticipated Newport debut on May 8 with a program featuring Ravel, Liszt, and more. The Chamber Series concludes on June 5 with flutist Amir Hoshang Farsi and pianist Chelsea Wang, both Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect alumni, presenting a program of sparkling impressionism featuring works by Fauré, Lili Boulanger, and contemporary composers Reena Esmail, Ian Clarke, and Yuko Uebayashi.
The 2026 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 2-19, 2026.
About Newport Classical
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 56 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of live performing arts on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.
Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, Clarice Assad, and Cris Derksen.
Dec. 5: Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason Announces Jane Austen's Piano on Sony Classical – New Single Menuet by Händel Out Now
Dec. 5: Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason Announces Jane Austen's Piano on Sony Classical
Expressive Young Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason
Explores Jane Austen’s Musical World on New EP
Jane Austen’s Piano
New Single: Menuet by George Frideric Händel Out Today
Listen Here | Watch Music Video
Celebrates the 250th Anniversary of the Beloved Author’s Birth in 2025
Worldwide Release Date: December 5, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now
To which books does a busy professional musician turn for relaxation in between the hectic whirl of rehearsals, performances and travel?
In the case of young rising star pianist, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, whose debut album Fantasie was praised by Gramophone for its “poetry and confidence” and by BBC Music Magazine for its “sparkle and self-possession”, it’s the novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) that provide her with an unending source of enjoyment and contentment as well as revelry in the understated humour and social commentary contained therein.
So much so that Jeneba started to reflect on references to music in Jane Austen’s works and more broadly on the music of the time. It started a new train of thought for her: known to be a pianist herself, with which music may Jane Austen have been familiar? Which pieces might she have performed privately?
Happily, Jeneba had two important lines of enquiry to follow: the original Austen family music book collection dating from Jane Austen’s lifetime is extant and was able to provide some direction. Furthermore, Jane Austen is also very likely to have visited the annual local Hampshire Music Meeting, for which records exist. In fact, Jane Austen’s own piano teacher Dr George Chard, assistant organist at Winchester Cathedral (where Jane Austen is buried), was someone who helped organise the festival and curate the programme, all of which no doubt had a lasting musical influence on his private pupils.
The result of Jeneba’s fascination with the music of Jane Austen’s time is this brand-new recording for solo piano: Jane Austen’s Piano, scheduled for release on December 5, 2025 via Sony Classical, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth on December 16, 1775. New single, Menuet by George Frideric Händel, is out now - listen here. Accompanying the announcement is a new music video as well - watch here.
The recording consists of six pieces overall, mirroring the fact that Jane Austen wrote six full, famous and much-loved novels: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (published in 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Persuasion (1817) and Northanger Abbey (1817).
Jane Austen’s Piano includes music hand-picked by Jeneba either because of its specific link to Jane Austen or for its significance to the time. It features music by George Frideric Händel (1732-1809), Joseph Haydn (1685-1759), George Kiallmark (1781-1835) and Johann Baptiste Cramer (1771-1858) plus a bonus Jane Austen-related work composed by Dario Marianelli (b. 1963).
Jeneba has chosen Händel’s Suite in B flat major/Menuet and his Suite in D minor/Allemande for inclusion on the recording. Jane Austen would have been very familiar with Händel’s music, as his works were regularly featured at the local music festival and several arrangements of his vocal works formed part of her family’s own personal music collection.
In showcasing Haydn, Jeneba performs the Piano Sonata in C major, first published in 1780 but only published in London in 1792. It is extra-special to Jeneba as a copy of this work in Jane Austen’s own hand appears in the Austen family music collection. It is therefore highly likely that the author herself performed this work.
As for music specifically referenced in Jane Austen’s work, Jeneba has included the Robin Adair Variations by British violinist and composer George Kiallmark, as mentioned in Jane Austen’s fourth novel ‘Emma’. This version of the Irish folk tune appears in the Austen family music collection, signed by Jane’s sister, Cassandra and is likely the version Jane would have had in mind when referencing the piece in her novel. Kiallmark was also someone well-known to the audiences of the local music festival, performing there in 1803 and 1805 and appointed by Jane’s teacher George Chard to be one of the principal instrumentalists at the event.
Johann Baptist Cramer was a famous English pianist and composer of German origin, some of whose music is also contained in the Austen family music collection. He is the only composer to be named by Jane Austen in all her novels (also in ‘Emma’, referenced there as “something quite new”). His Etude No. 3 in A minor, although not in the family collection, is a welcome addition, introducing early flares of romanticism into Jane Austen’s mostly very classical piano literature.
Finally, sitting alongside the music of the period is Dario Marianelli’s Dawn from his Oscar-nominated 2005 soundtrack to the film Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright. Jeneba has included it as a modern cinematic homage to Jane Austen’s world, bridging historical inspiration with contemporary interpretation, and also marking the 20th anniversary of the film.
About her new recording, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason notes: “I am an avid reader and from a very young age, I have thoroughly enjoyed Jane Austen’s novels and being immersed in the world that she inhabits. When I read her books, I always find myself imagining a soundtrack to each novel. Curating this collection has therefore been such a joy, as the music has all been in my head for a very long time.”
Nov 15 & 16: California Symphony Presents BEETHOVEN’S EROICA Conducted by Donato Cabrera Featuring Pianist Robert Thies
Nov 15 & 16: California Symphony Presents BEETHOVEN’S EROICA Conducted by Donato Cabrera Featuring Pianist Robert Thies
Photo by Kristen Loken. Hi res photos available here.
California Symphony's 2025-2026 Season Continues with
BEETHOVEN’S EROICA
Celebrating the Triumph of the Human Spirit with
Jessie Montgomery’s Overture, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 featuring Soloist Robert Thies, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”
Led by Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director
In Concert November 15 at 7:30pm & November 16 at 4:00pm
At Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts
Tickets & Information: www.californiasymphony.org
WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera continue the 2025-2026 season with BEETHOVEN’s EROICA – two concerts celebrating the triumph of the human spirit featuring Jessie Montgomery’s Overture, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 performed by the orchestra with GRAMMY-nominated pianist Robert Thies, and Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 7:30pm and Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 4:00pm at Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts (1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek).
Full of rich harmonies, GRAMMY-winning composer Jessie Montgomery’s Overture from 2022 blends elements of jazz, American classical music, and Baroque rhythms. Nicknamed the Elvira Madigan concerto because of its use in the 1967 Swedish film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 features one of classical music’s most famous and serene melodies, performed by Robert Thies, praised by the Los Angeles Times as, "A pianist of unerring warm-toned refinement, revealing judicious glimmers of power." Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 – the Eroica Symphony – changed the game for symphonic music: A bold and powerful celebration of struggle, triumph, and humanity, the composition marks the point where Beethoven truly began to push boundaries, introducing the emotional depth and drama that later culminated in the grandeur of the Ninth.
Donato Cabrera says, “Jessie Montgomery’s music has become a welcome and frequent visitor to the California Symphony stage. Her music has a unique rhythmic vitality, while at the same time exhibiting a deep sonority. Like all great composers, Ms. Montgomery seamlessly incorporates the sounds and styles that are not only surrounding her in the moment, but she also uses sounds and styles from the past, and from all genres. Her Overture is a great example of this beautiful cornucopia. One of the oddest titles to be posthumously given to a piece of music - let’s face it, few now have seen the movie, Elvira Madigan - Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 is brimming with his free and easy musical atmosphere, I am very excited to welcome back Robert Thies to play this exquisite concerto with us as he brings a sense of style and tone to the piano that is simply unmatched. While the Eroica isn’t Beethoven’s first symphony, it is the symphony that announced Beethoven’s arrival as the next great composer. I am always thrilled beyond measure to conduct this particular work because it is so dramatic in nature. It is like an opera without words.”
Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness. Her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post), and she was named 2025 Classical Woman of the Year by the nationally broadcast radio program Performance Today. Montgomery describes her Overture as, “a one-movement orchestral tutti steeped in harmonic textures inspired by a fusion between jazz and American classical harmonies, Baroque rhythmic gestures, and polyphonic tension.”
Mozart composed his Piano Concerto No. 21 in 1785 during one of the most productive periods of his life, when he was writing piano concertos at an astonishing rate for his own performances as a soloist in Vienna. The work balances Mozart's characteristic elegance with moments of playful virtuosity, creating a conversation between piano and orchestra. For these performances, California Symphony welcomes back piano soloist Robert Thies, an artist renowned for his consummate musicianship and poetic temperament. Thies first captured worldwide attention in 1995 when he won the Gold Medal at the Second International Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia. With this victory, he became the only American pianist to win first prize in a Russian piano competition since Van Cliburn’s famed triumph in Moscow in 1958.
Premiered in 1805, Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the Eroica, was revolutionary not only in its emotional scope but also in its sheer scale. At nearly 50 minutes, it was almost twice as long as any symphony that had come before it. Beethoven originally dedicated the work to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he admired as a champion of democratic ideals, but famously tore up the dedication page when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. The funeral march in the second movement is powerfully beautiful, and the final movement demonstrates Beethoven's unparalleled ability to transform simple themes into profound musical statements.
Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concerts, rich in storytelling and spanning the breadth of orchestral repertoire, the 2025-2026 season explores evocative programmatic music including Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik; the fruitful intersection of jazz and classical in music by Jessie Montgomery, Friedrich Gulda, and George Gershwin; the monumental symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Borodin; the timelessness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart including excerpts from Don Giovanni; and world-class soloists in riveting concertos including pianist Robert Thies in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Nathan Chan in Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto, violinists Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, and pianist Sofya Gulyak in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
This season, California Symphony continues to serve its community beyond the stage through its nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds and its innovative lifelong learning program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed. It will also expand its programs for vulnerable populations at Trinity Center Walnut Creek and continue community partnerships to reach more underserved youth throughout Contra Costa County.
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Donato Cabrera since 2013. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area. California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.
Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. Season subscriptions and single tickets are available now. More information is available at CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, 12pm to 6pm).
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:
WHAT: California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. These concerts open with the rich harmonies of GRAMMY-winning composer Jessie Montgomery’s Overture and continue with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 featuring pianist Robert Thies, closing with Ludwig van Beethoven’s towering Symphony No. 3 – the Eroica, a bold, powerful celebration of struggle, triumph, and humanity.
California Symphony takes the stuffiness out of the concert experience: Take selfies at the photo booth, order a signature cocktail, and sip at your seat. Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, starting one hour before the show.
WHEN:
Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 4:00pm
WHERE:
Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
CONCERT:
BEETHOVEN’S EROICA
Donato Cabrera, conductor
California Symphony
PROGRAM:
Jessie Montgomery: Overture (2022)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 (1785)
Robert Thies, piano
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) (1804)
TICKETS: Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, 12pm to 6pm).
PHOTOS: Available here
ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY:
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera since 2013. It is distinguished by its vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area.
California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.
Since 1991, California Symphony's three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program has provided a composer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with the orchestra over three consecutive years to create, rehearse, premiere, and record three major orchestra compositions, one each season. Every Composer-in-Residence has gone on to win top honors and accolades in the field, including the Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Awards, and more.
The orchestra's nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds impacts students' trajectories by providing instruction for violin or cello and musicianship skills. Sound Minds has proven to contribute directly to improved reading and math proficiencies and character development, as students set and achieve goals, learn communication and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. Inspired by the El Sistema program of Venezuela, the program is offered completely free of charge to the students and families of Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, California.
Through its innovative adult education program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed, California Symphony provides lifelong learners a fun-filled introduction to the orchestra and classical music. Led by celebrated educator and California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong, these live classes are held over four weeks in the summer annually.
In 2017, California Symphony became the first orchestra with a public statement of a commitment to diversity. Its website is available in both Spanish and English.
Reaching far beyond the performance hall, since 2020 the orchestra's concerts have been broadcast nationally on multiple radio series through Classical California (KUSC/KDFC) and the WFMT Radio Network, reaching over 1.5 million listeners across the country.
For more information, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org.
California Symphony’s 2025-26 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.
Composer, Vocalist, and Producer Lisa Bielawa – 2025-2026 Season Highlights
Composer, Vocalist, and Producer Lisa Bielawa – 2025-2026 Season Highlights
Photo of Lisa Bielawa by Shawn Poynter available in high resolution here.
Composer, Vocalist, Producer Lisa Bielawa
2025-2026 Season Highlights
Knoxville Broadcast Presented by Big Ears
A Spatial Symphony for Hundreds of Musicians at World’s Fair Park in Knoxville, TN
October 17-18, 2025
Premiere Performances of Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE, by Tessa Lark
Louisville Orchestra Conducted by Teddy Abrams: October 24 & 25, 2025
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Music Director Cristian Mӑcelaru:
November 29 & 30, 2025
Composer Portrait Concert Presented by Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Performed by Contemporaneous & Lisa Bielawa Conducted by David Bloom
February 26, 2025
Appointed Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the
Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester for 2025-2026
Currently at Work on Guggenheim Fellowship Project
La Ballonniste or Balloon: A Hot Air Opera
“the formal sophistication and lyrical richness of Bielawa’s music go deep” – The New Yorker
Complete Schedule: www.lisabielawa.net/calendar
Composer, producer, vocalist Lisa Bielawa, (b. 1968) is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Gramophone reports, “Bielawa is gaining gale force as a composer, churning out impeccably groomed works that at once evoke the layered precision of Vermeer and the conscious recklessness of Jackson Pollock.” Her music has been described as “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” by The New York Times, and “fluid and arresting ... at once dramatic and probing,” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Lisa Bielawa is established as one of today’s leading composers and performers, consistently incorporating community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; she has composed and produced a twelve-episode, made-for-TV opera that features over 350 musicians and was filmed in locations across the country.
Lisa Bielawa’s 2025-2026 season features bold programming, new collaborations, and world premieres of several new works. Knoxville Broadcast, a new installment in Bielawa’s Broadcast series, will premiere on October 17 and 18, 2025 in Knoxville, TN in three site-specific performances at Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park presented by Big Ears. Violinist Tessa Lark will give the first two premiere performances of Bielawa’s Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE with two of the co-commissioning orchestras – the world premiere performances with the Louisville Orchestra, conducted by Teddy Abrams on October 24 and 25, 2025; and the Cincinnati premiere with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Cristian Mӑcelaru, on November 29 and 30, 2025. On February 26, 2026, Miller Theatre at Columbia University will present a Composer Portrait concert dedicated exclusively to Bielawa’s music, including the world premiere of a new work, all performed by Contemporaneous led by David Bloom, with Bielawa singing. Bielawa also serves as Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY for 2025-2026, where she will work with students who will be performing her music throughout the academic year.
On October 17 and 18, 2025, Knoxville Broadcast will be presented by Big Ears as part of its ongoing expansion beyond the festival stage with year-round engagement throughout Knoxville, TN. A large-scale, site-specific “spatial symphony,” created by Lisa Bielawa, Knoxville Broadcast will unite hundreds of musicians from across Knoxville in three free public performances at World’s Fair Park on Friday, October 17 at 6pm and Saturday, October 18 at 11am and 2pm. Knoxville Broadcast continues Bielawa’s celebrated series of Broadcast performances in Berlin, San Francisco, and Louisville, each rooted in the history and community of its location. The San Francisco Chronicle called her Crissy Broadcast “one of the most moving performances of the year … where all the boundaries we take for granted in musical life … are casually obliterated.”
For Knoxville, Bielawa has composed a new score inspired by the city’s landscape, voices, and musical traditions. More than 600 local musicians of all ages and backgrounds will take part, including the Appalachian Equality Chorus, Knoxville Community Band, Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, Halls Middle School Bands, L&N Stem Academy Concert Band and Orchestra, Drums Up Guns Down, members of Nief-Norf, Hardin Valley Academy Guitar Ensemble, Roane State Community College Choir, and the University of Tennessee Gospel Choir. Three all-ages “pickup” groups—Sterchi String Band (old-time), Found Forte (youth percussion), and the Sunsphere Singers (intergenerational choir)—are also open to the public. Bielawa will weave in spoken and sung texts contributed by Knoxville residents, embedding their words and stories directly into the music.
"The abundance of musical cultures here makes Knoxville Broadcast unique among my large-scale urban celebrations,” says Bielawa. “From Appalachian traditional music and folk guitar to found object percussion and West African drumming, plus a vital tradition of school and community bands, orchestras, and choruses – it’s been an exciting adventure collaborating with this vibrant city!"
Following Knoxville Broadcast, Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE, will have its world premiere performances by the Louisville Orchestra on October 24 and 25, 2025. The concerto will be premiered by the captivating violinist Tessa Lark, for whom Bielawa wrote the piece, and conducted by Louisville Orchestra Music Director Teddy Abrams. Lark will give the Cincinnati premiere of PULSE with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra later this fall on November 29 and 30, 2025, in concerts led by CSO Music Director Cristian Măcelaru. PULSE is co-commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Library of Congress; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; and Louisville Orchestra; with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Santa Fe Pro Musica. Support has been provided by James Rosenfield, Justus Schlichting, Kari and Jon Ullman, New Music USA's Amplifying Voices Program, and the Loghaven Artist Residency.
Bielawa writes, “This concerto was conceived as a way of keeping my finger on the pulse of American life during a period of seismic change and self-examination. Composed over a six-month period starting just before the 2024 presidential election, it is also informed by my immersion during this time in our sentimental history as told through our traditional musics. Tessa Lark’s artistry draws from multiple musical traditions, from Old-time to jazz to the classical avant-garde. I have had the enviable opportunity to hear Tessa play in the Smoky Mountains with Appalachian traditional musicians, at the Blue Note in midtown Manhattan, and on concert stages in concertos and chamber music both new and old.”
On February 26, 2026, Lisa Bielawa will be featured in a Composer Portrait concert at Miller Theatre at Columbia University, with performances of her music by Contemporaneous conducted by Music and Co-Artistic Director David Bloom. The program includes Bielawa’s pieces Graffiti dell’amante (2010) and Incessabili Voce (2013) performed by Bielawa with Contemporaneous, plus the world premiere of a new work commissioned for the occasion by Miller Theatre. The new piece, written for seven instruments, will showcase the unique virtuosity of Contemporaneous and its conductor David Bloom, exploring the meeting ground between comedy and expansiveness. Bielawa’s Graffiti dell’amante is an open-ended musical-dramatic exploration of the multi-faceted predicament of the Lover inspired by Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Of Incessabili Voce, Bielawa writes: “In designing material for the voice, I thought about singing in church, the ecstatic singing of angels, the roar of soldiers, the mannerisms of Greek storytelling in the great oral tradition, the traditions of Gregorian and Anglican chant. The vocal part coaxes cries of various sorts out of the instruments. . . It is more of a dreamscape than a story, more cry than word.”
Lisa Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. She is currently at work on her Guggenheim Fellowship project, a hybrid film and live action opera called La Ballonniste or Balloon: A Hot Air Opera – a heartfelt comedy centering on 18th century French opera singer Élisabeth Tible, the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon. Bielawa’s music has recently been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, Town Hall Seattle, Naumburg Orchestral Concerts Summer Series in New York’s Central Park, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, Rouen Opera, Helsinki Music Center, Arsenal de Metz, Japan Society, and MAXXI Museum in Rome, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include the Louisville Orchestra, The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Orlando Philharmonic; she has also written for the combined forces of The Knights, San Francisco Girls Chorus, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by leading ensembles and organizations including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Big Ears, Miami String Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, American Guild of Organists, American Pianists Association, California Music Center, Akademiska Sångföreningen (Helsinki), Paul Dresher Ensemble, SOLI Chamber Ensemble, the Washington and PRISM Saxophone Quartets, Ensemble Variances (commissioned by Radio France), and more. Bielawa’s music has been recorded on the Tzadik, Orange Mountain, Supertrain, Cedille, TROY, Innova, BMOP/sound, and Sono Luminus labels.
Bielawa is the recipient of the Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an OPERA America Grant for Female Composers, a 2025 commission from The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and is a 2025 New Music USA Amplifying Voices composer. She was named a William Randolph Hearst Visiting Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society for 2018 and was Artist-in-Residence at Kaufman Music Center in New York for the 2020-2021 season. During the 2022-23 season, she was a member of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps.
For more information about Lisa Bielawa: LisaBielawa.net
Ariel Quartet Releases Volume Two of Monumental Beethoven String Quartet Cycle - First Single Out Now
Ariel Quartet Releases Volume Two of Monumental Beethoven String Quartet Cycle - First Single Out Now
Ariel Quartet Continues Monumental Beethoven String Quartet Cycle
Three Albums over Two Years
Culminating in 2027
Honoring Beethoven’s Legacy 200 Years After His Passing
Volume Two to be Released Worldwide on November 7, 2025
On Orchid Classics
First Single Out Now: LISTEN
“At moments on this lively first volume of its perusal of the complete Beethoven string quartets, the players of the Ariel Quartet come across like a living organism with a single central nervous system that transmits emotional impulses to every part of the body.”
– Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times, on Vol. 1
Review CDs and downloads available upon request.
Ariel Quartet: www.arielquartet.com/the-cycle
Upcoming Performances: www.arielquartet.com/schedule
The Ariel Quartet (Alexandra Kazovsky, violin; Gershon Gerchikov, violin; Jan Grüning, viola; and Amit Even-Tov, cello) – distinguished by its virtuosity, probing musical insight, and impassioned performances – will release the complete Beethoven String Quartets over two years on the Orchid Classics label, culminating in 2027, the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death. The Quartet released the first volume of the series on April 4, 2025, and will release volume two on November 7, 2025, with volume three arriving in June 2026 and a special box set release in March 2027.
Volume two of the cycle, recorded across three CDs, includes Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartets – String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59 No. 1; String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59 No. 3; and String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2 – as well as his String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major, Op. 74; and String Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op. 95, “Quartetto serioso.” The first single from the album, movement one of Op. 95, is available now.
The Ariel Quartet’s first volume of this Beethoven Cycle has been met with considerable critical acclaim, with positive reviews in The New York Times, Gramophone, The Whole Note, Classical Voice of North America, and more. Richard Wigmore wrote in Gramophone magazine that the album included, “supremely skillful, deeply considered performances . . . no one could deny the physical and intellectual energy of the Ariel’s playing, or their sheer technical brilliance.”
Formed when the members were just teenagers studying at the Jerusalem Academy Middle School of Music and Dance in Israel, the Ariel Quartet has a long history with the quartets of Beethoven. His String Quartet in C minor, Op.18 No.4 was the very first piece that the group tackled together as thirteen year olds, and the members credit the work for hooking them on the genre, for life.
The Quartet recounts an early experience with Beethoven’s Op. 59, the Razumovsky Quartets, which left a long-lasting impression. They write, “A memorable milestone in our personal journey with Beethoven was a concert at Frankfurt’s Kaisersaal during the 1999-2000 season, where we performed all three Razumovsky Quartets in a single evening. At sixteen, we approached the challenge with youthful excitement, and through countless hours in rehearsal we began to understand the depth and demands of this music – gradually developing not only the stamina, but the artistic maturity required to bring over two hours of this intricate music to life. Youthful enthusiasm (let’s be honest: fearlessness) alone allowed us to commit to the repertoire for this important concert without hesitation – and luckily, all went well. In hindsight, preparing this music for increasingly demanding opportunities played a crucial role in forging a confident and lasting relationship with this extraordinary canon.”
In 2013 to mark its 15th anniversary, the Ariel Quartet performed its first complete Beethoven cycle – a landmark for the group, which has been performing Beethoven’s music since its inception. Since then, the Ariel has performed the complete cycle on six occasions throughout the United States and Europe. They view the complete quartets as part of their personal life-long journey reflected in Beethoven’s music – works that are interwoven with the evolution of the string quartet genre as well as the group’s own genesis story.
The Quartet writes:
“As interpreters, we love diving deeply into the music’s details and we leave no theoretical and contextual stone unturned. At the same time, we make sure to maintain our intuitive approach to the music: every work we learn is first sight-read without preparation, unlocking our purest emotional reactions to the music. These feelings are then carefully preserved, allowing us to channel them when all the technical work of putting things where they belong is done. The next stage is when the magic truly happens, and we feel lucky to have been experiencing this over and over since 1998: when the music meets the energy of the audience it starts to develop a life of its own, making each performance a once-in-a-lifetime event. This connection transforms both the music and ourselves, and it’s this immediacy and expressivity we aimed to capture in our recording.”
More about the Ariel Quartet: The Ariel Quartet was named a recipient of the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award, granted by Chamber Music America in recognition of artistic achievement and career support. Recent highlights include the Quartet’s sold-out Carnegie Hall debut, a series of performances at Lincoln Center together with pianist Inon Barnatan and the Mark Morris Dance Group, as well as the release of a Brahms and Bartók album for Avie Records. In 2020, the Ariel gave the U.S. premiere of the Quintet for Piano and Strings by Daniil Trifonov, with the composer as pianist for the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati. The Quartet serves as the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where they direct the chamber music program and present a concert series in addition to maintaining a busy touring schedule in the United States and abroad.
The Ariel Quartet regularly collaborates with today’s eminent and rising young musicians and ensembles, including pianist Orion Weiss, cellist Paul Katz, and the American, Pacifica, and Jerusalem String Quartets. The Quartet has toured with cellist Alisa Weilerstein and performed frequently with pianists Jeremy Denk and Menahem Pressler. In addition, the Ariel served as Quartet-in-Residence for the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia Festival, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, and the Perlman Music Program, as well as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Festival.
Formerly the resident ensemble of the Professional String Quartet Training Program at the New England Conservatory, from which the players obtained their undergraduate and graduate degrees, the Ariel was mentored extensively by acclaimed string quartet giants Walter Levin and Paul Katz. It has won numerous international prizes in addition to the Cleveland Quartet Award: First Prize at the prestigious Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition in Graz/Austria, Grand Prize at the 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Székely Prize for the performance of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, and Third Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. About its performances at the Banff competition, the American Record Guide described the group as “a consummate ensemble gifted with utter musicality and remarkable interpretive power” and noted, in particular, their playing of Beethoven’s monumental Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, as “the pinnacle of the competition.”
The Ariel Quartet has received significant support from the American-Israel Cultural Foundation, Dov and Rachel Gottesman, and the Legacy Heritage Fund. Most recently, they were awarded a grant from the A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation.
Follow the Ariel Quartet:
www.instagram.com/arielquartet
www.facebook.com/ArielQuartet
ALBUM TRACK LISTING:
Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets Vol. 2
Ariel Quartet
Orchid Classics | Release Date: November 7, 2025
DISC 1: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59 No. 1
1 Allegro [10:04]
2 Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando [8:55]
3 Adagio molto e mesto [13:10]
4 Thème Russe: Allegro [8:27]
String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59 No. 3
5 Introduzione: Andante con moto – Allegro vivace [10:48]
6 Andante con moto quasi allegretto [9:52]
7 Menuetto: Grazioso [5:12]
8 Allegro molto [6:09]
Total time: 72.41
DISC 2: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2
1 Allegro [13:55]
2 Molto adagio [12:36]
3 Allegretto [7:30]
4 Presto [5:29]
Total time: 39:33
DISC 3: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet No.10 in E-flat major, Op. 74
1 Poco adagio – Allegro [9:23]
2 Adagio ma non troppo [9:22]
3 Presto [5:02]
4 Allegretto con variazioni [6:45]
String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, "Quartetto serioso"
5 Allegro con brio [4:15]
6 Allegretto ma non troppo [7:19]
7 Allegro assai vivace ma serioso [4:23]
8 Larghetto espressivo – Allegretto agitato – Allegro [4:36]
Total time: 51:11
Ariel Quartet:
Alexandra Kazovsky, violin
Gershon Gerchikov, violin
Jan Grüning, viola
Amit Even–Tov, cello
Recorded at Robert J. Werner Recital Hall, University of Cincinnati College-
Conservatory of Music on 30 April & 1-3 May 2024 (Disc 1), 17-19 March 2025
(Disc 2) & 27-30 May 2025 (Disc 3)
Producer: Jesse Lewis
Recording Engineer: Shauna Barravecchio
Assistant Engineer: Adam Sorley
Editing Engineers: Caroline Shaffer Robin, Alexandre Robin, Karl Doty & Thiago Wolf
Mix Engineer: Jesse Lewis
Denoise Engineers: Kyle Pyke & Mark Alletag
Mastering Engineer: Christopher Moretti
Authoring Engineer: Shauna Barravecchio
Cover & booklet photography: Marco Borggreve
© 2025 Orchid Music Limited
Oct. 24-25: World Premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto PULSE – Performed by the Louisville Orchestra Featuring Violinist Tessa Lark Conducted by Music Director Teddy Abrams
World Premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto PULSE – Performed by the Louisville Orchestra Featuring Violinist Tessa Lark Conducted by Music Director Teddy Abrams
Photo of Tessa Lark by Lauren Desberg available here & Lisa Bielawa by Shawn Poynter available here.
World Premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto PULSE
on October 24 & 25, 2025
Performed by the Louisville Orchestra
Conducted by Music Director Teddy Abrams
Featuring Violin Soloist Tessa Lark
Friday, October 24, 2025 at 11am and Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 7:30pm
Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center | 501 W. Main St. | Louisville, KY
Tickets & Information
Lisa Bielawa: www.lisabielawa.net | Tessa Lark: www.tessalark.com
Louisville, KY – Composer Lisa Bielawa’s new work, a violin concerto titled PULSE, will be given its world premiere performances by the Louisville Orchestra led by Music Director Teddy Abrams with violin soloist and Kentucky native Tessa Lark, on Friday, October 24, at 11am and Saturday, October 25, at 7:30pm at Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center. Lisa Bielawa is a familiar face to Louisville audiences – she lived in Louisville as an inaugural member of the Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps during the 2022-23 season. In addition to writing several works for the orchestra and touring throughout the state, Bielawa also composed and produced Louisville Broadcast with the Louisville Orchestra – a spatial symphony featuring hundreds of Louisville musicians performed outdoors at Shelby Park and the Big Four Bridge in spring 2023.
Of her new violin concerto, Bielawa writes, “This concerto was conceived as a way of keeping my finger on the pulse of American life during a period of seismic change and self-examination. Composed over a six-month period starting just before the 2024 presidential election, it is also informed by my immersion during this time in our sentimental history as told through our traditional musics. Tessa Lark’s artistry draws from multiple musical traditions, from Old-time to jazz to the classical avant-garde. I have had the enviable opportunity to hear Tessa play in the Smoky Mountains with Appalachian traditional musicians, at the Blue Note in midtown Manhattan, and on concert stages in concertos and chamber music both new and old.”
Lark, for whom Bielawa wrote this concerto, is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. Increasingly in demand in the classical realm, in 2020 she was nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. She is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky, delighting audiences with programming that includes Appalachian and bluegrass music and inspiring composers to write for her.
PULSE was co-commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Library of Congress; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; and Louisville Orchestra; with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Santa Fe Pro Musica. Support has also been provided by James Rosenfield, Justus Schlichting, Kari and Jon Ullman, New Music USA's Amplifying Voices Program, and the Loghaven Artist Residency. Tessa Lark will give the Cincinnati premiere of PULSE with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra later this fall on November 29 and 30, 2025, in concerts led by CSO Music Director Cristian Măcelaru.
In addition to PULSE, Lisa Bielawa’s 2025-2026 season features more bold programming, new collaborations, and world premieres of several new works. Knoxville Broadcast, a new installment in Bielawa’s Broadcast series, will premiere on October 17 and 18, 2025 in Knoxville, TN in three site-specific performances at Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park presented by Big Ears. On February 26, 2026, Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York will present a Composer Portrait concert dedicated exclusively to Bielawa’s music, including the world premiere of a new work, all performed by Contemporaneous led by David Bloom, with Bielawa singing. She is also currently at work on her Guggenheim Fellowship project, a hybrid film and live action opera called La Ballonniste or Balloon: A Hot Air Opera – a heartfelt comedy centering on 18th century French opera singer Élisabeth Tible, the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon.
Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, American Antiquarian Society, Loghaven Artist Residency, and was part of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps. She received a Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ROCO, and the Orlando Philharmonic. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall in Armenia, the Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, the INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, and more. Bielawa consistently incorporates community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the pandemic, Bielawa cultivated a virtual community using submitted testimonies and recorded voices from six continents through her work Broadcast from Home, now archived by the Library of Congress.
Oct. 23-25: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Three Concerts in West Hartford, CT and Worcester, MA
Oct. 23-25: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Three Concerts in West Hartford, CT and Worcester, MA
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn by Grayson Dantzic available in high resolution here.
GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Three Concerts in West Hartford, CT and Worcester, MA
October 23-25, 2025
Performing Music from New Bach Album Complicité
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Library of Congress’s Concert Series
Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 7:30pm
Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn: Music from New Album Complicité
with CONCORA at the University of Hartford
Presented by the Richard P. Garmany Concert Series
Tickets & Information
Friday, October 24, 2025 at 8pm
Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn: Music from New Album Complicité
with Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano & CONCORA at Mechanics Hall
Presented by Music Worcester as part of BACHtoberfest 2025
Tickets & Information
Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 8pm
Simone Dinnerstein and Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach
Bach’s Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord and Inventions and Sinfonias at Mechanics Hall
Presented by Music Worcester as part of BACHtoberfest 2025
Tickets & Information
Complicité is Out Now on Supertrain Records
Listen to Simone Dinnerstein on NPR’s Morning Edition
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Hartford, CT; Worcester, MA – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein – who is described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” – will give three performances centered around the music of J.S. Bach on October 23, 24, and 25, 2025, presented by the Richard P. Garmany Concert Series at the University of Hartford (October 23) and by Music Worcester as part of BACHtoberfest 2025 (October 24 and 25).
On Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 7:30pm, Dinnerstein performs with Baroklyn – the string ensemble she founded and directs – in music from their new Bach album, Complicité, plus Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1060. The concert will also feature CONCORA (Connecticut Choral Artists). The performance, presented by the Garmany Concert Series, will take place in Millard Auditorium at the University of Hartford (200 Bloomfield Ave., Hartford, CT). They will repeat the program as part of Music Worcester’s BACHtoberfest on Friday, October 24, 2025 at 8pm at Mechanics Hall (321 Main St., Worcester, MA). As part of both programs, Dinnerstein will be making her conducting debut, conducting Cantata BWV 9 and movements from Cantatas 99, 22, and 182 with CONCORA and Baroklyn.
With her longtime friend and musical colleague, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, Dinnerstein will also perform a second concert as part of Music Worcester’s BACHtoberfest at Mechanics Hall on Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 8pm. The program features Bach’s Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord and his Inventions and Sinfonias.
Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and for her expressive performances of music by J.S. Bach. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Her new album with Baroklyn, Complicité, includes Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617; Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053; J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser, featuring mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.
The deeply felt recording has been warmly received by listeners – Complicité has already been streamed over 1 million times. Gramophone describes Dinnerstein’s performance as “full of life, engagement and detail.” Of the new album, Textura writes: “Not only are the performances terrific, the music impresses for being more than faithful replications of existing scores but instead arresting re-imaginings that take Bach's pieces into dynamic new realms.” Read the album press release here and listen here.
Dinnerstein says of her group Baroklyn, “Baroklyn is a group of string players which I lead from the piano. We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me, that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group. We rehearse and perform in a semi-circle around the piano and I rearrange parts to emphasize lines, voices and imitative qualities to create a sense of dialogue.” The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough.
Coinciding with the album’s release, Dinnerstein spoke with NPR’s Morning Edition about the project, as well as about her experience with performance anxiety and the way that playing with the sheet music on an iPad has resolved this for her. Of her work with Baroklyn, she said, “It's like a sharing circle, and you hear everybody's individuality, their individual sound as it gets passed around.” Listen to the NPR interview here.
Simone Dinnerstein and Alexis Pia Gerlach are not only musical collaborators but also dear friends. “Alexis and I have been playing chamber music together since our tweens as students at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division,” says Dinnerstein. “Playing with her feels like breathing.” For their October 25 concert, they will perform a program that includes Bach’s Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord, BWV 1027-1029; Inventions, BWV 772-786, and Sinfonias, BWV 787-801.
Dinnerstein recorded an album of Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias in 2014 for Sony Classical. BBC Music Magazine described Dinnerstein’s performance on the album as: “stylish, crisply articulated.” She says, “The first keyboard pieces of Bach that I remember hearing were his Inventions, when I was nine years old. The music seemed impossibly expressive and virtuosic at the time, and wholly beyond my abilities. Here were two continuous and independent voices, neither of which was subservient to the other. Until then I had thought of music as melody and accompaniment. Instrumental training is as much a training in how to listen as in how to play. In the text that accompanies the Inventions, Bach calls them ‘an honest guide.’ His Inventions and Sinfonias are marvels in demonstrating just how potent counterpoint is as an aid to expression, and how powerful a cantabile voice can be when surrounded by contradiction and elaboration. These small masterpieces have snippets of dances in them, laments and celebrations, simplicity and complexity.”
Simone Dinnerstein served as Music Worcester's first Artist-In-Residence during its 2018-2019 season. During her residency she performed at beloved Worcester music venues including Mechanics Hall, The Hanover Theatre, and Tuckerman Hall as both a soloist and ensemble leader with groups including Pam Tanowitz Dance, A Far Cry, and The Havana Lyceum Orchestra. Additionally, she brought her "Bach-Packing" program to several of Worcester's public elementary schools throughout the season to work directly with students in the classroom. She was awarded the Key To The City by Worcester mayor Joe Petty in May of 2019 following the completion of her Residency with Music Worcester.
More about Simone Dinnerstein: Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fifteen albums, all of which have topped the Billboard classical charts. Her first fourteen albums were recorded with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy. Her most recent recording Complicité (Supertrain Records, 2025), is her first all-Bach album in over ten years and features Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with the string ensemble Simone founded and directs, Baroklyn. Recorded with producer Silas Brown, the album also includes composer Philip Lasser’s continuo realizations and recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording, Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra.
The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.
For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
Oct. 26: Pianist Charlotte Hu Presented by Music on Madison – Performing the Music of Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados
Oct. 26: Pianist Charlotte Hu Presented by Music on Madison – Performing the Music of Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados
Photo by Dario Acosta available in high resolution here.
Pianist Charlotte Hu Presented by Music on Madison
Performing the Music of Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados
Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 3pm
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
921 Madison Avenue | New York, NY
Tickets and information
“praises follow her all around the world” – International Piano
New York, NY – Internationally acclaimed Taiwanese-American pianist Charlotte Hu will be presented in concert by Music on Madison on Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 3pm. The performance will be held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (921 Madison Avenue). Charlotte Hu (formerly known as Ching-Yun Hu) has been praised by audiences and critics across the globe for her dazzling virtuosity, captivating musicianship, and magnetic stage presence.
With a fierce dedication to making classical music more accessible, Hu presents captivating programs that tell human stories inclusive of gender and race. By juxtaposing audience favorites with underperformed treasures and newly commissioned works, Charlotte Hu’s recitals consistently offer musical and narrative contrasts that encourage people to listen deeply and discover anew the work of even the most well-known composers.
For this concert presented by Music on Madison, Hu will perform a program dedicated to the music of Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados. This program connects Hu’s past and future, as the Romantic era Polish pianist and composer was the primary inspiration behind her debut solo album Chopin, released on ArchiMusic in 2011. The recording was named Best Classical Album of the Year by Taiwan's prestigious Golden Melody Award.
Conversely, Granados serves as the inspiration for Hu’s next album – her second on the PENTATONE label following 2024’s Liszt: Metamorphosis – which will be released in June 2026. Focusing on Granados’ Goyescas Suite (1911), Hu brings the vibrant, expressive, and emotionally rich melodies from this work to the live ambiance of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. The complete concert program will include: Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie in A-Flat Major, Op. 61; Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60; selections of Mazurkas; and Polonaise "Heroic," Op. 53; as well as Goyescas No. 1: "Los requiebros" (Compliments/Flattery); No. 2: "Coloquio en la reja" (Conversation at the Window); and No. 3: "El fandango de candil" (Fandango by Candlelight) by Granados.
Hu says of this emotive program:
“I'm excited to share two composers who have become closest to my heart throughout my artistic journey: Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados. What fascinates me about both is how they each found their unique voice within the Romantic tradition - while both were immersed in 19th-century Paris, they remained deeply connected to their roots. Chopin brings that elegant, introspective Polish soul to everything he touches, while Granados captures something so passionate and brilliantly expressive about the Spanish spirit.
This program features some of Chopin's most treasured late works - his Barcarolle and the Polonaise-Fantasie - alongside three pieces from Granados's incredible and rarely performed Goyescas suite. I'm particularly thrilled about the Granados selections because they're part of my upcoming PENTATONE album, set for release on June 5, 2026. It's wonderful to be able to share this music with the audience at Music on Madison fresh from the studio!”
More about Charlotte Hu: As a soloist, Charlotte Hu has astounded audiences across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, performing sold-out concerts at many of the world’s most prestigious venues — including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw, Taipei National Concert Hall, and Osaka’s Symphony Hall. She is a frequent guest at music festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, Ruhr-Klavier Festival, and Oregon Bach Festival. Concerto engagements have included performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and Taiwan Philharmonic, among others. Recent and upcoming highlights for Charlotte Hu include performances presented by Newport Classical, the Mansion at Strathmore, the Gilmore Piano Festival, the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Taipei Concert Hall, Hong Kong Cultural Center, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and the Taichung Opera House.
An active recording artist, Charlotte Hu’s debut album of Chopin works on ArchiMusic was named Best Classical Album of the Year by Taiwan’s prestigious Golden Melody Award, and recordings released on Naxos/CAG Records and BMOP/sound with Boston Modern Orchestra Project have received overwhelming critical acclaim. Her Rachmaninoff album on Centaur/Naxos received a five-star review by the U.K.’s Pianist magazine, which called it “essential listening for Rachmaninoff admirers.” Her latest album, Liszt Metamorphosis, was released by PENTATONE in July 2024. In June 2026, Charlotte will release her next album on PENTATONE, which will feature Enrique Granados’ Goyescas suite in its entirety.
Charlotte Hu is the founder of two piano festivals across two continents: the Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei and the PYPA Piano Festival in Philadelphia. Now in its 13th year, PYPA has become an important fixture in the classical music world, cultivating a deeper appreciation for classical music and serving as a cultural bridge between East and West.
At the heart of Charlotte’s success is a story of strength, dedication, and resilience that has powered her dream of becoming a world-class artist. Moving to the United States from Taiwan at age 14 without her parents to begin studies at The Juilliard School was the first of many challenges Charlotte has overcome in building her illustrious career — one that’s included winning top prizes at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Competition, performing on classical music’s biggest stages, and fostering the next generation of musicians as an advocate for classical music through entrepreneurial and philanthropic initiatives. A tireless advocate for humanity, Charlotte raised $27,000 for youth education charities through a Hope Charity Concert live-streamed on her Facebook page in June 2020. The online concert reached more than 140,000 people across the globe.
A Steinway Artist, Charlotte Hu serves as an associate professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and as an artist in residence at Temple University in Philadelphia, in addition to her busy performance schedule. She is a frequent guest artist, leading master classes and artist residencies at universities and music festivals worldwide. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Germany’s Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, where she studied with Herbert Stessin, Sergei Babayan, and Karl-Heinz Kammerling, respectively.
For more information, visit www.charlottehu.com
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Taiwanese-American pianist Charlotte Hu, who the Jerusalem Post describes as having “superstar quality” and being “musical, energetic, and full of flair,” is presented in concert by Music on Madison. Hu will perform a program featuring the music of Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Charlotte Hu
Presented by Music on Madison
What: Music by Frédéric Chopin and Enrique Granados
When: Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 3pm
Where: Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 921 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10021
Tickets and information: mapc.com/music/sams
Oct. 26: Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Jun Cho Perform American Sketches – Presented by The Phillips Collection
Oct. 26: Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Jun Cho Perform American Sketches – Presented by The Phillips Collection
L-R Violinist Kristin Lee, Pianist Jun Cho
Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Jun Cho
Perform American Sketches in Washington D.C.
Presented by The Phillips Collection
Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 4pm
The Phillips Collection | 1600 21st Street NW | Washington, DC
Sold Out (Rush Tickets and Standby Tickets Only)
More Information
Kristin Lee: www.violinistkristinlee.com | Jun Cho: www.junchopiano.com
Washington DC – On Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 4pm, violinist Kristin Lee – praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy” – will perform with pianist Jun Cho in a concert presented by The Phillips Collection (1600 21st Street NW). Coinciding with The Phillips Collection’s exhibition Out of Many: Reframing an American Art Collection (November 8, 2025-February 15, 2026), the program features music from Kristin Lee’s debut solo album, American Sketches, released on First Hand Records last year.
Out of Many tells a dynamic story of how artists have imagined and depicted American identity. Like the exhibition, American Sketches presents a panoramic view of America’s musical landscape, reflecting the distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history. The album and concert program also encompass Lee’s journey as an American as well as the journeys of the composers she has selected. The concert is part of Phillips Music, the museum’s renowned Sunday Concerts series, now in its 85th season. For over 80 years, Phillips Music has presented exceptional young musicians alongside an international roster of acclaimed performers in the intimate, art-filled setting of the museum’s Music Room. A cornerstone of Washington, DC’s classical music scene, the series continues to champion both classic repertoire and innovative new works.
A violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique, Kristin Lee enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”
For her American Sketches program at The Phillips Collection, Kristin Lee will perform Four Southland Sketches by H.T. Burleigh (1866-1949); Non-Poem 4 by Jonathan Ragonese (b.1989); Sonata No. 2 “Poeme Mystique” by Ernst Bloch (1880-1959); But Not For Me (arr. Jeremy Jordan) by George Gershwin (1898-1937); Lament (arr. Jeremy Jordan) by J.J. Johnson (1924-2001); The Entertainer (arr. Jeremy Jordan); by Scott Joplin (1868-1917); Romance by Amy Beach (1867-1944) and Fantasy on Themes from Porgy and Bess (arr. Frolov) by George Gershwin (1898-1937).
American Sketches embraces the beauty of cultural diversity in the U.S. The album has a personal resonance for Lee. A native of Seoul, Korea, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. During her childhood, playing the violin was a refuge from bullying and racism for Kristin – she moved to the U.S. not speaking any English, and felt the violin became her voice. As a foreign-born citizen of the U.S., Lee was compelled to select repertoire for the album that would express her pride in the country she now calls her own.
Performing on a violin crafted in Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano, in addition to her solo appearances, Kristin Lee tours throughout the world as a member of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, including in Italy, Croatia, Germany, Taiwan, and across the U.S. Always up for adventure, at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, Lee has performed in such unexpected places as rafting down the Colorado River, in a natural rock grotto, and in the magical landscape of the red rock canyons of the area.
As a soloist, Kristin Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. In 2026, she makes her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall performing her program American Sketches with pianist John Novacek. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing regularly in New York at Lincoln Center and on tour.
In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is a devoted educator. She has served on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and she has also been in residence with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and is a summer faculty member at Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. Lee is also the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music (ECM), a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State.
Kristin Lee’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation.
Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley. For more information, visit www.violinistkristinlee.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Violinist Kristin Lee, praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy,” will perform with pianist Jun Cho in American Sketches, a concert inspired by Lee’s debut album of the same title, which reflects the distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history, encompassing both Lee’s journey as an American, as well as the journeys of the composers she selected. The concert, presented by The Phillips Collection, will include works by H.T. Burleigh, Jonathan Ragonese, Ernst Bloch, George Gershwin, J.J. Johnson, Scott Joplin; and Amy Beach.
Concert details:
Who: Violinist Kristin Lee and Pianist Jun Cho Presented by The Phillips Collection
What: American Sketches
When: Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 4pm
Where: The Phillips Collection 1600 21st Street NW, Washington DC, 20009
Tickets: Sold Out - Rush and Standby Tickets Only
More Information: www.phillipscollection.org/event/2025-10-26-kristin-lee-and-jun-cho
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s First Opera HILDEGARD Premieres at Los Angeles Opera at The Wallis (Nov 5-9) and PROTOTYPE in NYC (Jan 9-17)
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s First Opera HILDEGARD Premieres at Los Angeles Opera at The Wallis (Nov 5-9) and PROTOTYPE in NYC (Jan 9-17)
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s First Opera HILDEGARD
Rolling World Premiere Performances:
Los Angeles Opera at The Wallis – November 5-9, 2025
PROTOTYPE in NYC at BRIC Arts Media – January 9-17, 2026
Plus Aspen Music Festival Summer 2026
Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects & Aspen Music Festival and School
Schedule: www.sarahkirklandsnider.com/events
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, deemed “one of new music’s leading names” (Gramophone), writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times) and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). With an attention to detail that is “as intricate and exquisite as a spider’s web” (BBC Music Magazine), her music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. Snider’s first opera, HILDEGARD, for which she also wrote the libretto, will be presented in rolling world premieres by Los Angeles Opera (November 5-9, 2025) and PROTOTYPE Festival in New York (January 9-17, 2026), with subsequent performances at the Aspen Music Festival and School (Summer 2026, details TBA).
Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival and School, HILDEGARD is a work of operatic historical fiction about twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess/polymath St. Hildegard von Bingen. Set in 1147, the opera follows Hildegard as she receives visions from God. While transcribing these visions for Papal evaluation – a process that will decide her prophet or heretic – she enlists the young convalescent Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript. As they develop a transformative collaboration that awakens them in ways both profound and unexpected, the two women must confront the powers that would see them erased from history rather than authoring it. At the same time, Hildegard is haunted by mysterious visions she cannot explain, forcing her to grapple with unacknowledged truths she can no longer deny.
Inspired by historical events and the writings of Hildegard von Bingen, HILDEGARD is a meditation on the desire for connection – to spirituality, to humanity, and to our most authentic sense of self – and the conflicts that can compete therein.
For eight years, Snider extensively researched Hildegard's life and work, as well as Benedictine monastic culture and the broader socio-political history of Hildegard’s time. Snider also visited Eibingen Abbey and the ruins of Disibodenberg Monastery, and consulted with renowned Hildegard scholar Barbara Newman. Snider chose to write the libretto herself so that she could develop the text and music simultaneously, and because she had a clear idea of how she wanted to tell Hildegard’s story.
Snider says, “I have chronic migraine, and first learned about Hildegard von Bingen through reading Oliver Sacks’s book Migraine, in which Sacks popularized a theory suggesting that Hildegard’s visions were a result of migraine. I immediately wanted to know more. Thus began a twenty-five-year fascination with Hildegard – her music, visions, and astonishing story. I was awestruck by her triumph over self-doubt, illness, and the otherwise impenetrable social barriers of her time to become the first woman in the history of the Catholic Church to speak and write in the name of God. I wanted to share this story while exploring aspects of her philosophy and the more mysterious realm of her visions, and I thought it would be interesting to do this through the prism of her relationship with fellow nun Richardis von Stade, with whom she shared an impassioned yet complicated love. Opera is an art form that excites me most when it deals with complex, layered emotions. I wanted to explore not only the struggle for intellectual and artistic expression in an oppressive environment, but also what happens when the human desire for connection comes into conflict with socially conditioned notions of right and wrong. Hildegard overcame extraordinary obstacles to lead a self-directed, creatively expansive life. I hope that my treatment of her story will resonate with anyone who has chafed against power structures or societal norms in pursuit of living their authentic truth.”
Beth Morrison is the creative producer of HILDEGARD and Beth Morrison Projects is the producer. The opera is directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with music director Gabriel Crouch, and stars Nola Richardson (Hildegard von Bingen), Mikaela Bennett (Richardis von Stade), Raha Mirzadegan (Angel), Blythe Gaissert (Margravine von Stade), Roy Hage (Volmar), Patrick Bessenbacher (Mechthild), David Adam Moore (Abbot Cuno), and Paul Chwe MinChul An (Otto). The Los Angeles Opera production will feature LA Opera Orchestra instrumentalists, while the PROTOTYPE performances will feature NOVUS. The creative team comprises Marsha Ginsberg, scenic designer; Molly Irelan, costume designer; Pablo Santiago, lighting designer; Deborah Johnson, projection designer; Drew Sensue-Weinstein, sound designer; and Annie Jin Wang, dramaturg.
Of the approach to the production, director Elkhanah Pulitzer says, “The piece is a blend of influences inspired by Medieval religious paintings and iconography, and Hildegard’s own artwork put through a filter of minimalist, modern design. We emphasize symbolic representation and spirituality while breaking with some of the tropes one carries in mind associated with monastic life in the 12th century. The veil between what is real and what lies in the realm of mystery and metaphor is also celebrated in the work, inspired by Hildegard’s visions.”
With two grants from Opera America, HILDEGARD has been workshopped at Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts Atelier program (2023), Opera Fusion: New Works at Cincinnati Opera (2024), and Mannes College of Music (2025).
Photo by Anja Schutz available in high resolution here.
About Sarah Kirkland Snider:
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s music has been commissioned and/or performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; Detroit Symphony Orchestra; National Symphony Orchestra; New York Philharmonic; San Francisco Symphony; Philharmonia Orchestra; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Residentie Orkest; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Emerson String Quartet; Renée Fleming and Will Liverman; Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo Emily D’Angelo; percussionist Colin Currie; eighth blackbird; A Far Cry; and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. The winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Lebenbom Competition, Snider’s recent works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by American women suffragists; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission by the legendary Emerson String Quartet; Mass for the Endangered, a Trinity Wall Street-commissioned prayer for the environment for choir and ensemble, programmed by dozens of choirs the world over; and Embrace, an orchestral ballet for the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Snider’s music will be performed around the world during the 2025-2026 season in cities including Paris, France; Offenbach, Germany; Toronto and Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia; and Antwerp, Belgium; as well as across the United States from Brooklyn, New York and Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Berkeley, California. In addition, in February 2026 Sarah Kirkland Snider will release her fifth full-length LP, a new, all-orchestral album titled Forward Into Light produced by multi-Grammy-winning producer Silas Brown and recorded by Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble, which features her work Forward Into Light; the string orchestra version of Drink the Wild Ayre; Eye of Mnemosyne, commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic; and Something for the Dark, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The album will be co-released by the label that Snider co-founded, New Amsterdam Records, and Nonesuch Records.
Snider’s four full-length LPs – The Blue Hour (Nonesuch/NewAmsterdam, 2022), Mass for the Endangered (Nonesuch/NewAmsterdam, 2020), Unremembered (New Amsterdam, 2015), and Penelope (New Amsterdam, 2010) – have garnered year-end nods and critical acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Gramophone Magazine, Pitchfork, BBC Music Magazine, The Nation, and many others. A founding Co-Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Sarah Kirkland Snider has an M.M.and Artist’s Diploma from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in fall 2023. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.
For more information about Sarah Kirkland Snider: www.sarahkirklandsnider.com/bio
Oct 26: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine Performing on Violin and the Museum's Historic Viola d’Amore
Oct 26: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine Performing on Violin and the Museum's Historic Viola d’Amore
Photo of Rachel Barton Pine by Lisa Marie Mazzucco. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine
Performing on Violin and Viola d’Amore
Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 1:30pm
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Information: gardnermuseum.org/calendar/rachel-barton-pine-10.26.25
“Striking and charismatic . . . she demonstrated a bravura technique and soulful musicianship.” — The New York Times
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, presenting Rachel Barton Pine, described by The Washington Post as "display[ing] a power and confidence that puts her in the top echelon,” on Sunday, October 26 at 1:30pm. Pine will give a very special recital with pianist Matthew Hagle, performing on her own violin and viola d’amore, as well as on the Gardner Museum’s extraordinary 18th century viola d’amore, which she tested at the Museum last year.
The Gardner Museum’s viola d’amore, which was last played in concert in the 1980s, was crafted in the 1770s by Tomaso Eberle in Naples, Italy, and is on display in the Yellow Room. The instrument was given to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 by composer Charles Martin Loeffler, who was her close friend and central to music programming at the Museum. Championed by composers as varied as Vivaldi, Haydn, and Bernstein, the viola d’amore developed from roots in Middle Eastern music. The Museum’s instrument has seven bowed strings and additional sympathetic strings, which add a silvery glow to its sound.
On October 26, Rachel Barton Pine will perform selections by Vivaldi, Telemann, and Haydn for viola d’amore, as well as two works composed by Loeffler—his Mescolanza “Olla Podrida” and Norske Land. On violin, she will perform Brahms’s Violin Sonata and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella.
With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Rachel Barton Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Her discography consists of over 40 recordings, including 25 for Cedille Records, and her many recital appearances have included Davos, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Marlboro, Ravinia, Salzburg, Bravo! Vail, and Wolf Trap. She performs regularly with world’s foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, and the Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and Vienna Symphony Orchestras.
Pine began playing the viola d’amore in 2007. "Reading about the history of the great violinists of the past, going back to the 1700s, I was struck by the fact that the greatest virtuosos of their era were also known as great players of the viola d'amore as well," she said in an interview with Violinist.com. In 2015, she released a widely praised album, Vivaldi’s Complete Viola d’Amore Concertos, performing on the complex instrument. Classics Today reported, “When played with perfect intonation such as we might expect from Rachel Barton Pine, the result is captivatingly mellow and expressive, even in virtuoso passages.”
A multiinstrumentalist, in addition to the violin and viola d’amore, Rachel Barton Pine also plays Renaissance violin, Baroque violin, the Medieval rebec, electric violin, and more.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
George Steel’s programming continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Oct. 29: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform at the Library of Congress for 100th Anniversary of Concert Series
Oct. 29: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform at the Library of Congress for 100th Anniversary of Concert Series
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn by Grayson Dantzic available in high resolution here.
GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
and Baroklyn with Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and Oboist Katherine Needleman
Presented by Library of Congress
Performing Music from New Bach Album Complicité
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Library of Congress’s Concert Series
Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 8pm
Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium
10 1st Street SE | Washington D.C.
Tickets & Information
Complicité is Out Now on Supertrain Records
Listen to Simone Dinnerstein on NPR’s Morning Edition
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
New York, NY – On Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 8pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein – described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic” – performs with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded and directs, in music from their recent Bach album Complicité. Presented by Library of Congress in the Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (10 1st Street SE) Washington D.C., the concert also features mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and oboist Katherine Needleman with Dinnerstein and Baroklyn
Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and for her expressive performances of music by J.S. Bach. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
For her most recent performance at the Library of Congress in February 2024, Dinnerstein celebrated the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the U.S. Air Force Band. Her October 29 performance commemorates the centennial anniversary of the Library of Congress's Concert Series. In celebration of the milestone, Dinnerstein will begin the concert program performing a solo piano arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, the same chorale that opened the LOC’s concert series in October 1925, when it was performed on the organ. In a special letter to organist Lynnwood Farnam–the first musician to play in the Coolidge Auditorium–that the Library of Congress shared with Dinnerstein, the message describes an approach to programming that is very similar to that which Dinnerstein applies to her performances – thinking of a concert feeling like a "service" (as it's put in the letter), with one piece continuing into the next without applause. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s performance thoughtfully connects the concert series’ past with the present.
Letter from the Library of Congress written by Music Division Chief Carl Engel
Following the opening of the concert, the program will feature music from Complicité, including Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617; Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053; J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.
The deeply felt recording has been warmly-received by listeners – Complicité has already been streamed over 1 million times. Gramophone describes Dinnerstein’s performance as “full of life, engagement and detail.” Of the new album, Textura writes: “Not only are the performances terrific, the music impresses for being more than faithful replications of existing scores but instead arresting re-imaginings that take Bach's pieces into dynamic new realms.” Read the album press release here and listen here.
Dinnerstein says of her group Baroklyn, “Baroklyn is a group of string players which I lead from the piano. We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me, that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group. We rehearse and perform in a semi-circle around the piano and I rearrange parts to emphasize lines, voices and imitative qualities to create a sense of dialogue.” The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough.
Coinciding with the album’s release, Dinnerstein spoke with NPR’s Morning Edition about the project, as well as about her experience with performance anxiety and the way that playing with the sheet music on an iPad has resolved this for her. Of her work with Baroklyn, she said, “It's like a sharing circle, and you hear everybody's individuality, their individual sound as it gets passed around.” Listen to the NPR interview here.
Of the album’s title, Dinnerstein says, “Complicité is a term that I first heard from my son, who studied the teachings of the French theatre practitioner, Jacques Lecoq. Three important ideas that Lecoq communicated to his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness), and disponsibilité (openness). I was so intrigued by these ideas, and the different exercises that my son learned in order to cultivate these skills within ensemble acting, that I decided to try a Lecoq approach with my own musical ensemble, Baroklyn.”
More about Simone Dinnerstein: Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fifteen albums, all of which have topped the Billboard classical charts. Her first fourteen albums were recorded with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse.
During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy. Her most recent recording Complicité
(Supertrain Records, 2025), is her first all-Bach album in over ten years and features Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with the string ensemble Simone founded and directs, Baroklyn. Recorded with producer Silas Brown, the album also includes composer Philip Lasser’s continuo realizations and recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording, Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra.
The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.
For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein performs with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, oboist Katherine Needleman, and Baroklyn – the string ensemble Dinnerstein founded and directs – are presented in concert by the Library of Congress. The performance will open with an arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, the same chorale that opened the LOC’s concert series in October 1925, commemorating the centennial anniversary of the series. The program will also feature music by J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser from Complicité, Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s new Bach album.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn, Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Oboist Katherine Needleman
Presented by the Library of Congress
What: Music from Dinnerstein’s new Bach album Complicité and an arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, celebrating the centennial anniversary of the LOC’s Concert Series
When: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 8pm
Where: Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (LJG45E), 10 1st Street SE, Washington, DC 20540
Tickets and Information: loc.gov/item/event-417408/simone-dinnerstein-jennifer-johnson-cano-katherine-needleman-and-baroklyn/2025-10-29/