30.Chamber Concert

Colorado MahlerFest XXX
Chamber Concert
Wednesday – May 17, 2017 – 7:30pm
Gordon Gamm Theater – The Dairy Center – Boulder, CO

Tickets: Dairy Center Box office – $20.00 ($10.00 for students)

G. Kurtág: Signs, Games, Messages (Jelek, Játékok és Üzenetek)
D. Matthews: Romanza for Violin and Piano, Op. 119a (U.S. Premiere)
G. Mahler/A. Schnittke: Piano Quartet in a (fragments)
   —  Intermission  —
F. Schubert: String Quintet in C, D. 956, Op. posth. 163

James Stern – Violin (Kurtág, Mahler/Schnittke, Schubert) ♦
Karen Bentley Pollick – Violin (Matthews, Schubert)
David Yang – Viola (Kurtág, Mahler/Schnittke, Schubert) ♦
Kenneth Woods – Cello (Kurtág, Mahler/Schnittke, Schubert) ♦
Jennifer Hayghe – Piano (Matthews, Mahler/Schnittke)
Eliana Razzino Yang – Cello (Schubert)

♦ Member of the Ensemble Epomeo – String Trio

Professor and Chair of Strings at the University of Maryland School of Music
B.M., M.M., D.M.A., The Juilliard School

James Stern is a multi-faceted musician whose violin playing has been heard worldwide and cited by the Washington Post for “virtuosity and penetrating intelligence.” He has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Banff and Bowdoin festivals as well as at New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall. His recording of the Sonatas and Partitas by Bach was released on Albany Records.
He is a member of the Stern/Andrist Duo with his wife, pianist Audrey Andrist, and Strata, a trio in which they are joined by clarinetist Nathan Williams. The duo has performed throughout the US, Canada and China, with additional recitals in Munich and Paris. The trio has received enthusiastic repeat engagements at San Francisco Composers Inc (for which they were listed as one of San Francisco Classical Voice’s “highlights of 2005”), the Piccolo Spoleto Festival and New York’s Maverick Concerts. Strata has commissioned works from Kenneth Frazelle and Stephen Paulus, giving the world premieres at, respectively, the Secrest Artist Series in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and New York’s Merkin Concert Hall.

Well-known to Washington, DC audiences, Stern has performed as a member of VERGE ensemble, 21st Century Consort, Smithsonian Chamber Players and the Axelrod Quartet, at such venues as the Corcoran Gallery, German and French Embassies, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, National Gallery, Phillips Collection, Strathmore Mansion, and the White House. In frequent appearances at the Clarice Smith Center he has brought innovative programming that includes performing in multiple capacities (as violist, pianist, conductor, reciter, and arranger). His chamber music and new music recordings can be heard on Albany, Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Dorian/Sono Luminus, Enharmonic, New Focus, and New World.

Stern has taught at the Cleveland Institute and the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music. He is currently professor at the University of Maryland School of Music.

James Stern’s Website
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Karen Bentley Pollick is one of America’s leading contemporary violinists and violists. Presently she tours with the Paul Dresher Double Duo,  Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov, and collaborates with New York video artist Sheri Wills on Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity.  She received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for her 2010 Solo Violin and Alternating Currents concerts. “Rarely will a recital such as this engage the ear from beginning to end, yet each piece at Birmingham Museum of Art event had a unique style and temperament, reflecting Pollick’s keen sense for gleaning quality in experimental music and giving these scores their rightful due…Pollick not only extended that thread, she vitalized and emboldened it.” Michael Huebner, Birmingham News

Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as violinist with Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999 and performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian hardangerfele. A native of Palo Alto, California, she studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky at Indiana University where she received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance. She has recorded much original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her own record label Ariel Ventures she has produced Dancing Suite to Suite, <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers, Bebop for Beagles, Estadio, Russian Soulscapes, and Peace Piece. She filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano in Shoal Creek, Alabama, and premiered David A. Jaffe’s Violin Concerto at the Tytuvenai Festival with Maestro Robertas Servenikas and the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra. Pollick continues her multimedia collaborations with Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity.

Karen Bentley Pollick’s Website
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Admired for his intensity, honesty of musical expression, and passionate communication, violist David Yang has been heard throughout North America and Europe in collaboration with members of the Avalon, Borromeo, Brentano, Miro, Tokyo and Vermeer String Quartets and Eroica Trio, Trio Cavatina, and Eliot Fisk, Andriusz Zlabys, and Wendy Warner, amongst others. He is also the recent recipient of an artist fellowship from the Independence Foundation in Philadelphia, PA awarded to a small number of “exceptional artists” in the region. Concert highlights include recitals in Italy, the UK and throughout the USA and Canada. As an active advocate of new music he has commissioning dozens of new works by composers including Robert Capanna, Andrea Clearfield, Daniel Dorff, Jeremy Gill, Gerald Levinson, David Ludwig, Robert Maggio, Jay Reise, Dmitri Tymoczko, Anna Weesner, and Andrew Waggoner.

He is Founder and Artistic Director of the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival near Boston, MA and also Music Director of Poor Richard’s Chamber Music Society at historic ChristChurch in Philadelphia. In his role as leader of the Philadelphia-based storytelling music troupe Auricolae, he has developed a residency program to foster the creation of new compositions by public school students in Philadelphia and the surrounding region. Auricolae recordings are available on the New Focus label. Born and raised in New York City he studied with Martha Strongin Katz and Heidi Castleman and also has a Master’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and worked in the atelier of legendary Italian architect Aldo Rossi and eminent American architect Hugh Hardy in New York City. Director of Chamber Music at the University of Pennsylvania, he now lives in South Philadelphia with his two daughters, Eliana Razzino and Alessandra Pierson Yang. David’s father is the eminent landscape photographer John Yang and his mother, Linda Gureasko Yang, was a reporter for the New York Times.

He plays on a viola made by the viola da gamba maker Johannes Tielka in 1670 and previously owned by Brahms’ friend Joseph Joachim.

David Yang’s Website
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Hailed by Gramophone as a “symphonic conductor of stature,” conductor, cellist, composer, rock guitarist and author Kenneth Woods has worked with the National Symphony Orchestra (USA), Royal Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and English Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared on the stages of some of the world’s leading music festivals such as Aspen, Scotia and Lucerne. In 2013, he took up a new position as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Vernon Handley. In 2015, Kenneth became the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Colorado MahlerFest with his inaugural concerts as part of MahlerFest XXIX in 2016.

Gustav Mahler’s music has been a lifelong source of inspiration for Kenneth Woods, who has conducted acclaimed performances of the symphonies and songs across the Americas and Europe. In 2011, Somm Records released Woods’ first recording of the music of Gustav Mahler, Schoenberg’s chamber ensemble versions of Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, which won the coveted IRR Outstanding rosette from International Record Review.

Off the podium, Woods is also much in demand as an essayist and speaker on Mahler’s life and music. He has given talks and participated in panel discussions on Mahler for the BBC and multiple festivals and orchestras, and was the official blogger of The Bridgewater Hall’s Mahler in Manchester series in 2010-11.

Kenneth Woods was Principal Guest Conductor of the Stratford-upon-Avon based Orchestra of the Swan from 2009-13. He and the orchestra have recorded the first complete cycle of the symphonies of Austrian composer Hans Gál, paired with those of Robert Schumann for Avie Records. This series has been among the most widely praised classical recording projects in recent years, highlighted in National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Performance Today, BBC Radio 3, the Sunday New York Times, the Sunday Telegraph, Washington Post and was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Other recordings include “Spring Sounds, Spring Seas” (for MSR), a MusicWeb ‘Record of the Y ear’. Recent CD releases include orchestral music of Philip Sawyers (another MusicWeb Record of the Year in 2014) for Nimbus, music of Brahms and Schoenberg for Somm, a disc of new works for violin, cello and narrator and another of string trios by Schnittke, Penderecki, Kurtág and Weinberg for Avie, and Signum have just released a disc of contemporary trumpet concerti by John McCabe, Robert Saxton and Deborah Pritchard with trumpeter Simon Desbruslais. Kenneth is active as a cellist and is a founding member of the string trio, Ensemble Epomeo, whose debut CD was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Though his solo repertoire ranges from Haydn to Chen Yi, he is happiest playing chamber music and unaccompanied Bach.

A widely read writer and frequent broadcaster, Woods’ blog, A View from the Podium, is one of the 25 most popular classical blogs in the world. Kenneth lives in Penarth, Wales with his wife, the violinist Suzanne Casey, and their two children, Samuel and Esther.

Kenneth Woods’s Website
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Seventeen-year-old cellist Eliana Razzino Yang is a student of Clara Minhye Kim at Juilliard Pre-College. She has performed solo recitals in London, Paris, Rome, New York, Helsinki, and Philadelphia and concertos with orchestras at the Incontri di Canna Music Festival, Newburyport Festival Baroque Orchestra (with violinist Nurit Pacht), Temple University Pre-College, New England Suzuki Institute, and Musicopia String Orchestra. She has also performed as part of Harrisburg’s Market Square rising star series and received first prizes in the Philadelphia All City Orchestra Concerto Competition, Young Classical Virtuosos of Tomorrow Competition, and Vivace Competition, and has collaborated with members of the Vermeer, Tokyo, Audubon, Aizuri, and Momenta string quartets, Ensemble Epomeo, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Recital partners include pianists Ieva Jokubaviciute, Amy Yang, and Clare Hammond. In 2015 she travelled to Budapest, Hungary, to play for composer György Kurtág and cellist Miklós Perényi and in 2016 she played for composer George Crumb. She has performed in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center with the New York String Orchestra under the baton of Jaime Laredo. Upcoming engagements include three recitals in Italy with pianist Sandro de Palma and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra.

Eliana will be returning to the Perlman Music Program in the summer of 2017. Past programs include the Castleman Quartet Program, Meadowmount School of Music, and Hotchkiss Institute. She has worked individually with teachers Ron Leonard, Peter Wiley, Richard Aaron, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Natasha Brofsky, Timothy Eddy, Alan Harris, Darrett Adkins, Clive Greensmith, Bonnie Hampton, Péter Szabó, and Martti Rousi. Her previous teachers include Yumi Kendall and Amy Barston. Eliana has also been coached by Ida Kavafian, Merry Peckham, Masao Kawasaki, Samuel Rhodes, Csaba Erdélyi and members of the Brentano, Miro, and Shanghai string quartets, amongst others. Eliana plays on a Joseph Panormo cello from 1810 on generous loan from Mr. Harold and Holly Glass of Philadelphia, PA.

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Jennifer Hayghe has performed in solo recitals and made orchestral appearances throughout the world, including the United States, Europe and Asia. Hayghe received her bachelors, masters degrees and doctorate degree in piano performance from The Juilliard School, where she was the last student of the legendary artist-teacher Adele Marcus. Hayghe won every award possible for a Juilliard pianist to receive, including the William Petschek Debut Award, resulting in her New York City recital debut at Alice Tully Hall.

Hayghe’s orchestral appearances include performances on numerous series with the National Symphony Orchestra, recent concerts with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and performances with various orchestras in the United States and abroad. She has performed in major chamber music series, including the Museum of Modern Art’s “Summergarden” series and Bargemusic in New York. She has also performed as a chamber musician in the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and has taught chamber music throughout the United States and Central America. In addition, Hayghe has been frequently featured in radio broadcasts, including National Public Radio’s Performance Today series, and on live broadcasts on the major classical radio stations of Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York City. Her first solo recording, Paintings From the Piano, featuring works by Debussy, Schumann and Mussorgksy, was recently released by Centaur Records.

Formerly an Associate Professor of Piano at Ithaca College, Hayghe has served as a featured artist at music teachers’ conventions in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Virginia. Most recently, Hayghe has given master classes at the Manhattan School of Music and as part of the New York University Piano Master Class Series. She has performed and taught as a soloist and chamber musician at universities and colleges throughout the country and was previously the Barineau Endowed Professor of Piano and Keyboard Area Coordinator at Louisiana State University. She lives with her husband, Robert McGaha, and son William in Erie, Colorado.

Jennifer Hayghe’s Website
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