Colorado MahlerFest XXXI
Chamber Concert II
Friday – May 18, 2018 – 2:00pm
The Academy – Boulder, CO
This is a FREE concert
- Alexander Zemlinsky – Three Pieces for Cello and Piano
- Johannes Brahms – Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in F major, Op. 99
- Jesse Jones – Phantasma for Solo Cello (2011)
- George Enescu – Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in A minor, Op. 25
Karen Bentley Pollick – Violin
Jennifer Hayghe – Piano
Parry Karp – Violoncello
Karen Bentley Pollick – Violin
Karen Bentley Pollick joined the Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Ensemble in 1999 and champions 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 with a cognate in Choral Conducting. Her recordings of original music include 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, Russian Soulscapes, Bebop for Beagles, Estadio and Peace Piece, and filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano. She has also recorded for CRI, Sony, RCA and Camel Productions, as well as the Bridge, Albany, Mode, Numinous, Innova, Tzadik, NEOS and Blue Coast Records labels.
Concertmaster of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Kammerorchester and the New York String Orchestra, Karen has also participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences, and the Olympic Music, Tanglewood, Amelia Island, Next Generation, Canberra, Permainu Muzika, and Bowling Green State Contemporary Music Festivals. She has toured with the New York Philharmonic, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, the Bolshoi Ballet and Barbra Streisand, and has recorded with the Dave Matthews Band and Evanescence as well as numerous film scores at Skywalker Ranch. She was a guest artist with the contemporary music group Opus Posthumous from Moscow, Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices Festival, and Ensemble for the Romantic Century in New York. She performs frequently with Valse Cafe Orchestra in Seattle.
She premiered Swedish composer Ole Saxe’s Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra with Redwood Symphony and has performed concertos with the Alabama Symphony and orchestras in Panama, Russia, Alaska, New York and California. Karen has presented recitals with Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome, Seattle, New York City, Alabama, Louisiana and Colorado and throughout the Czech Republic; with cellist Dennis Parker at the American Spring Festival in Brno; and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, she received a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists towards the creation of Quips and Cranks. Karen was awarded a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for her March 2010 Solo Violin and Alternating Currents concerts in Birmingham, Seattle and at Music Olomouc 2011. She launched Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity with New York video artist Sheri Wills in April 2012 at Evergroove Studio and has since performed the program featuring sixteen videos projected onto the violinist in Brooklyn, Seattle, Colorado Springs, Klaipeda and New York. With pianist Lisa Moore and the Paul Dresher Double Duo she toured Australia in May 2013 and the US in fall 2014. While residing in Vilnius, Lithuania she debuted Resonances from Vilna with pianist Jascha Nemtsov in May 2014, Nothing is Forever with actor Aiste Ptakauske in December 2015, and premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra in August 2016. Karen performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee.
Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers towards solo concerts with electronics in Seattle and Stanford University’s CCRMA in spring 2018. She is represented on two tracks of Dorothy Hindman’s “Tightly Wound”, released on Innova and winner of #1 Gold Medal in the Fall 2017 Global Music Awards.
Karen Bentley Pollick’s Website
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Jennifer Hayghe – Piano
Pianist Jennifer Hayghe is an Associate Professor of Piano in the Roser Piano and Keyboard Area at the University of Colorado Boulder. She 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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Parry Karp – Violoncello
Cellist Parry Karp is Artist-in Residence and Professor of Chamber Music and Cello, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is director of the string chamber music program. He has been cellist of the Pro Arte Quartet for the past 42 years, the longest tenure of any member in the quartet’s over 100 year history.
Parry Karp is a active solo artist, performing numerous recitals annually in the United States with pianists Howard and Frances Karp, and Eli Kalman. Mr. Karp has played concerti throughout the United States and gave the first performance in Romania of Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo with the National Radio Orchestra in Bucharest in 2002. He is active as a performer of new music and has performed in the premieres of dozens of works, many of which were written for him, including concerti, sonatas and chamber music. As a solo recording artist, he has recorded the solo cello works of Ernest Bloch, and works of Frank Bridge, Rebecca Clarke, Ernest Chausson, Edward Collins, Georges Enesco, John Ireland, Alberic Magnard, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Miklos Rosza, and Richard Strauss. Unearthing and performing unjustly neglected repertoire for cello is a passion of Mr. Karp’s. In recent years he has transcribed for cello many masterpieces written for other instruments. This project has included performances of all of the Duo Sonatas of Brahms, as well as compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Hindemith, Strauss, Schumann, Stravinsky and Szymanowski. He is presently in the process of transcribing all of the Beethoven Violin Sonatas for Cello. Parry Karp performs annually in summer music festivals throughout the United States.
As cellist of the Pro Arte Quartet he has performed over 1000 concerts throughout North, Central and South America, Europe, and Japan. His discography with the group has been extensive and includes the complete string quartets of Ernest Bloch, Miklos Rosza, and Karol Szymanowski . Many of these recordings received awards from Fanfare and High Fidelity Magazines. Other composers whose string quartets or string quintets the Pro Arte Quartet has recorded during his tenure include: Beethoven, Luís de Freitas Branco, Martin Boykan, Tamar Diesendruck, Dvorak, Brian Fennelly, Andrew Imbrie, Fred Lerdahl, Walter Mays, Mendelssohn, Karol Rathaus, Samuel Rhodes, Roger Sessions, and Ralph Shapey. As a member of the Pro Arte Quartet he has recorded the Piano Quintets of Ernest Bloch, Johannes Brahms and Armando José Fernandes with pianist Howard Karp. Guest artists with the Pro Arte during his years have included: the Emerson Quartet, Denes Koromzay, Leon Fleischer, Sidney Harth, Nobuko Imai, Gunnar Johansen, Gilbert Kalish, Jerome Lowenthal, Robert Mann, Samuel Rhodes, Robert Silverman, Christopher Taylor, Laszlo Varga and Tamas Vasary. Gunther Schuller conducted the group in the premiere of his String Quartet Concerto which he wrote for the Pro Arte Quartet. The Pro Arte Quartet was one of five finalists (the others were the Juilliard, Tokyo, and Emerson Quartets, and the Beaux Arts Trio) for the First Annual Arturo Toscanini Award in the Chamber Music Category
Parry Karp’s chamber music discography outside of the Pro Arte Quartet includes the three piano trios of Joel Hoffman, as well as works of Britten, Fauré, Martinu, Mozart and Pierné. Mr. Karp had a visiting professorship at the University of British Columbia, and has been a visiting fellow at Princeton University. Former students of Mr. Karp’s are members of professional string quartets, major orchestras, and teachers in the United States. In 2012 he was a recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the spring of 2016, Parry Karp was named a fellow of the Wisconsin Academy.
Mr. Karp received early training in Vienna, Austria and studied cello with Lee Duckles, David Kadarauch, Peter Farrell, Gabriel Magyar and Gabor Rejto. Inspirational chamber music teachers included Gabriel Magyar, Howard Karp, Lorand Fenyves and Zoltan Szekely.