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About
the Artists 2008-2009
Pardon us while we update
for the new season |
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| Yehuda Hanani's charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and reengagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Hong Kong Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, and Seoul Symphony, among others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Great Lakes, and Prades Festival (France), Finland Festival, Leicester (England), Ottawa, Oslo, and Australia Chamber Music festivals, and has collaborated in performances with preeminent fellow musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Itzhak Perlman, Vadim Repin, Dawn Upshaw, Shlomo Mintz, Yefim Bronfman, the Tokyo, Audubon, Vermeer, Muir, Lark, Colorado, and Manhattan quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano, as well as members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Borromeo, and Emerson quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodgers Auditorium. His recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata —the first ever—received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination, and his other discs have won wide recognition. On CD and in live performances, he has premiered works of Nicolai Miaskovsky, Lukas Foss, Leo Ornstein, Joan Tower, Osvaldo Golijov, Bernard Rands, and Miriam Gideon, among other composers. Mr. Hanani is Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and presents masterclasses at leading conservatories and universities, including the Juilliard School, University of Indiana at Bloomington, New England Conservatory, McGill University, the Peabody Conservatory, Paris Conservatoire, Berlin Hochschule für Music, Royal Academy of Music in London, Tokyo National University, Jerusalem Academy of Music, Guildhall School in London, and the New World Symphony in Miami. His engaging chamber music with commentary series, Close Encounters With Music, has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Arizona, and the Berkshires. Mr. Hanani’s studies were with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School and with Pablo
Casals.
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| The
Amernet String Quartet, newly appointed Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University, has garnered worldwide recognition as one of today's exceptional young string quartets. First rising to attention after winning the Gold Medal at the seventh Tokyo International Music Competition, they are also winners of the Banff International Competition and have performed in Japan, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, France, Korea, Mexico, and Romania. From 2000 through 2004, the Amernet was the Corbett String Quartet in Residence at Northern Kentucky University, where they founded the Norse Festival, a summer workshop that provides an opportunity for young musicians to work intensively in chamber groups under their guidance. Prior to that, they had a residency at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. The group has recorded works by John
Harbison, Morton Subotnick and Stephen Dankner, and made a recording of the Debussy String Quartet and the Chausson Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet. The Quartet maintains a strong connection with today's composers and has worked with Anthony Brandt, John
Corigiliano, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Gerhard Samuel, and Morton
Subotnick. Amernet members
Marcia Littley, Javier Arias, Misha Vitenson and
Michael Klotz also serve as the Quartet-in-Residence for the Caramoor Center for the Arts.
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| Mezzo-soprano
Lucille Beer has received acclaim for her performances in opera houses and on concert stages around the world, in both the mezzo-soprano and contralto repertoires. She is widely praised, both for her superb musicianship and distinctive timbre that critics describe as “rare and memorable.” A native of New York City, Ms. Beer was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, which led to her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortileges. Since then she has performed in numerous Met and New York City Opera productions, while international opera engagements have taken her from Paris and Nice to Strasbourg and Prague. In addition to opera, Ms. Beer frequently performs in oratoria as well as a vast array of symphonic repertoire, performing with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras and conductors. Ms. Beer holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Mannes College of Music and a Master of Music Degree from the Juilliard School. |
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| Violinist
Yehonatan Berick, soloist, recitalist, chamber musician (violin and viola),
and pedagogue, was a prizewinner at the 1993 Naumburg Competition and recipient of the 1996-97 Prix Opus. He has performed with the Quebec, Winnipeg, Jerusalem, and Haifa Symphonies, and the Israel, Cincinnati, Montreal, and Manitoba Chamber Orchestras. He has appeared in recital with such pianists as James Tocco, Louis Lortie, Stephen Prutsman, and Michael Chertock, and has collaborated in chamber music performances with artists including members of the Guarneri Quartet, and cellists Peter Wiley and Stephen Isserlis. Berick’s festival credits include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Great Lakes, Moritzburg, Strings in the Mountains, and Bowdoin, and he is a member of Musicians from Marlboro, the Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, and the Huberman String Quartet. Mr. Berick can be heard on recordings on the Summit, Gasparo, Acoma, JMC and Helicon labels. Currently Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan, his teachers have included Henry Meyer and Dorothy DeLay. He is a past winner of the Clairmont Award, and plays a J. B. Vuillaume violin on loan from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.
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| Kevin Cobb
joined the American Brass Quintet in the fall of 1998 and with that appointment also became a faculty member of the Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival. He is also currently serving as faculty at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and at SUNY Stony Brook. Originally from Bowling Green, Ohio, his first solo appearance was at age fifteen with the Toledo Symphony. After attending Interlochen Arts Academy, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Frank Kaderabek; he continued studies at The Juilliard School earning a Master of Music degree as a student of Mark Gould. Since his days at Curtis, Mr. Cobb has enjoyed touring and performing in Asia, Central America and Europe, as well as in the U.S. In New York, Mr. Cobb leads a diverse career and is regularly active with many of New York’s top organizations. He can frequently be heard in radio and television commercials and has recorded over eight CDs with the ABQ alone. His first solo CD entitled, “One” released by Summit Records, features an all American program of unaccompanied trumpet solos. |
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| Eliot
Fisk - Known world wide for his adventurous repertoire and willingness to take art music into unusual venues (including schools, senior centers and even prisons!), Eliot Fisk has performed to dazzling critical and public acclaim in recital, as soloist with major orchestras and in a wide variety of chamber music combinations in most of the great concert halls of the world and in 1996 in a command performance in the Palacio de los Cordova in Granada, Spain, for then U.S. President Bill Clinton and King Juan Carlos of Spain and their families. He has expanded the repertoire for the guitar enormously through countless transcriptions and through commissions from leading composers as varied as Luciano Berio, Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, William Bolcom, George Rochberg and Kurt Schwertsik. His transcriptions and editions are published by Universal, Presser, Ricordi and Guitar Solo Publications and his recordings for the Musical Heritage Society, DGG, Arabesque, and EMI have entered the Billboard charts as bestsellers. Eliot Fisk's forays into unconventional territory have included collaborations with chanteuse, Ute Lemper; Turkish music master, Burhan Öçal; jazz guitar legend, Joe Pass; flamenco great, Paco Pena; and master of castanets, Lucero Tena. The last direct pupil of Andrés Segovia, he also studied interpretation under the legendary harpsichordist, Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale University. He is Professor at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and in Boston at the New England Conservatory. In 2006, by order of King Juan Carlos of Spain, he was awarded the Cruz of Isabel la Catótlica for his service to the cause of Spanish music. |
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| Alexander
Fiterstein is one of the world's exceptional young clarinet players. A first-prize winner of the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition (Denmark), Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the Aviv Competition in Israel, he has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Lincoln Center, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Radio Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, and the China National Symphony Orchestra. He has presented recitals at the Louvre, 92nd St. Y, Kennedy Center, Tel Aviv Museum, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo and is a member of the prestigious Chamber Music Society II of Lincoln Center. Mr. Fiterstein has performed with Daniel Barenboim, Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax, Roberta Peters, and the American, Borromeo, and Mendelssohn Quartets. He is a recipient of the Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award (Tokyo) and America-Israel Cultural Foundation awards. Born in Belarus, he immigrated with his family to Israel at the age of two. He studies were at the Israel Arts and Science Academy, Interlochen Arts Academy, and the Juilliard School. He now lives in New York.
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Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman has established himself as a performer of depth, virtuosity and technical brilliance. He has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia and Canada as a soloist and in a duo setting with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe. In 1990, sixteen-year-old Gluzman was granted five minutes to play for the late Isaac Stern. From that meeting, a friendship was born. In 1994, Mr. Gluzman was named recipient of the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. He now plays the extraordinary 1690 ex-Leopold Auer Stradivarius on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago. In recent seasons, Vadim Gluzman has appeared with the Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Utah, Vancouver and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, NHK and KBS Orchestras under the baton of conductors such as James DePreist, Neeme J@rvi and Yehudi Menuhin. He has also performed at the international Verbier, Ravinia, Pablo Casals, Lockenhaus, and Radio France festivals. Mr. Gluzman records exclusively for the BIS label. A recording of Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano (written for Mr. Gluzman and Ms. Yoffe) received rave reviews, as did their second album, featuring music by Schnittke, Vasks, Pärt, and Kancheli. Born in 1973 in the Ukraine, Vadim Gluzman began studying the violin at the age of seven. Before moving to Israel in 1990, he studied under Zakhar Bron and later under Yair Kless in Tel Aviv. He also studied in the United States under Arkady Fomin and at the Juilliard School under Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki.
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Born in 1978 in Rochester, NY,
Michael Klotz made his solo debut with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of seventeen. He has also appeared with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Penfield Symphony Orchestra, Mannes Bach Festival Orchestra, and the World Youth Music Festival Orchestra in London , England . An avid performer of the chamber music repertoire, recent appearances on violin and viola include concerts in New York at venues such as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, Merkin Hall, Steinway Hall, Museum of Modern Art and the Kosciuzsko Foundation, which included a live broadcast on WQXR-FM. Additionally, he has been heard in prestigious halls in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Diego, Rochester, and Mexico. He has enjoyed numerous collaborations in concerts with artist faculties of the Juilliard and Eastman Schools of Music as well as members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Baltimore and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras.
Michael Klotz has performed at leading festivals such as the Sarasota Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, where he was an assistant faculty member for three summers. He prizes his association with the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall. In December of 2003 he was invited by Maestro Jaime Laredo to perform with distinguished alumni of the Seminar in Carnegie Hall.
Michael Klotz received a Bachelor of Music degree and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music as a student of Zvi Zeitlin. In 2002, Michael Klotz became one of the few individuals to complete the Master of Music degree in both Violin and Viola Performance from The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of the Maxwell Gluck Fellowship and the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship.
Michael draws his musical influence primarily from distinguished musicians such as Zvi Zeitlin, Shmuel Ashkenasi of the Vermeer Quartet, and members of the Guarneri and LaSalle Quartets.
Michael Klotz is currently artist-in residence at Florida International University , where he teaches viola and chamber music.
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| Michele
Levin, pianist and composer, has been acclaimed as a multi-faceted musician of extraordinary sensitivity, virtuosity and dedication to the art of making music. A graduate of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, she began her studies there at the age of eleven and is the only woman ever to receive their Master's Degree in Composition. First prizewinner in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Washington, D.C., Ms. Levin has performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston "Pops," the Florida Philharmonic, the Miami Chamber Symphony, the Sinfonia Virtuosi, and the New World Symphony. She has given solo and chamber music recitals in major cities throughout the United States, Central and South America, Canada, Europe and Asia. Ms. Levin is very much in demand as a chamber musician. She has collaborated in concert tours with violinists Joseph Silverstein, Peter Zazofsky, Ruggiero Ricci, Mark Kaplan, Sidney Harth, and Arve Tellefsen; with violists Paul Neubauer and Atar Arad; with cellists Yehuda Hanani and Ronald Thomas; and with clarinetists Mitchell Lurie, Eli Eban and Charles Neidich. She has also performed with the Muir and the Miami String Quartets. Her vast repertoire also extends into the realm of vocal literature. She has collaborated in recital with Metropolitan Opera sopranos Gwendolyn Bradley, Marvis Martin, and Martina Arroyo.
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| Internationally acclaimed pianist
Walter Ponce has performed around the globe as a soloist with orchestras, in solo recitals and chamber music. He has been heard in every major city of North and South America, as well as concert halls in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Africa. Born in Bolivia, Walter Ponce's musical beginnings took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he attended the National Conservatory. There he met Alberto Ginastera, whose notable piano sonata was part of Ponce's New York City debut recital on the series "Introductions" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Ponce has participated in festivals at Ravinia, Marlboro, Caramoor, Aspen, Sintra and Evora in Portugal, Tangiers in Morocco, and Cervantino and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. He has performed with the Cleveland, Audubon, American, and Lenox quartets and has made guest appearances with Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society. In contemporary music, he has given the world premieres for more than two hundred works, including those by Hugo Weisgall, George Rochberg, Karel Husa, William Bolcom, and Morton Gould. Composers Paul Reale and Ezra Laderman have written piano concertos specifically for Ponce. Mr. Ponce came to the United States with a Fulbright grant which continued for an unprecedented four years. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Mannes College of Music, and Master of Science and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from Juilliard where was one of three students chosen to play and study with Vladimir Horowitz (1967). At the Marlboro Music Festival, he was coached in several chamber works by Rudolf Serkin. After 24 years at the State University of New York at Binghamton, he joined the Department of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles, as Professor and Head of the Piano Area.
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| The Rose Ensemble, Medieval and Renaissance singers
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| Bulgarian native
Emma Tahmiziàn made her debut as a soloist with orchestra at thirteen, and her international career was launched at nineteen, when she won First Prize in the Robert Schumann International Competition in Germany and gave her Berlin debut in the legendary Maxim Gorki Theatre. Ms. Tahmiziàn has concertized throughout Europe and North America. She has collaborated with first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet Joel Smirnoff, violist Kim Kashkashian, cellists Yehuda Hanani, Fred Sherry, and Matt Haimovitz, and sopranos Bethany Beardslee and Julia Migenes. Critics have hailed her playing as “stunning” (The Times Record) and
“electrifying” (The New York Times). Ms. Tahmiziàn has performed with all the major orchestras of her native Bulgaria, the Moscow and St. Petersburg Philharmonic, The Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the East Berlin Radio Symphony. A graduate of the Bulgarian State Music Conservatory, she holds a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School of Music, where her teachers included Adele Marcus. She is a laureate of the Tchaikovsky, Leeds, Van Cliburn, Montréal, Bach and Smetana competitions, a winner of the Pro Musicis Award, and a recipient of multiple grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has taught at the Bulgarian State Music Conservatory, the University of Virginia, and the College of the Holy Cross and enjoys a long-standing association with the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where, in addition to performing, she teaches piano, chamber music and presents master classes.
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| Pianist
James Tocco’s vast repertoire includes virtually the entire standard piano literature, and he is widely regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of American masterworks. He is associated particularly with Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety, which he recorded with Leonard Slatkin and the BBC London Symphony and performed with Marin Alsop and the New World Symphony, and with the Corigliano Piano Concerto, of which he is acknowledged to be the definitive interpreter. Mr. Tocco’s recent engagements include his Royal Concertgebouw debut, performing the MacDowell Concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, both under Leonard Slatkin. Mr. Tocco is Eminent Scholar/Artist-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Professor of Piano at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany. He is also the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Mr. Tocco has performed with the major American orchestras including those of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh, and in Europe he has appeared with the Berlin, London and Munich Philharmonics. He has performed under David Atherton, Christoph Eschenbach, Lukas Foss, Neeme Järvi, Yoel Levi, Raymond Leppard, and Wolfgang Sawallisch. Festival appearances include Schleswig-Holstein, Wolf Trap, Blossom, Ravinia, Spoleto (USA), Santa Fe, and Mostly Mozart. Mr. Tocco’s extensive discography, which reflects his varied tastes and astonishing versatility, includes the world premiere recording of Bernstein’s complete solo piano music, an all-Copland disc, the complete Chopin Préludes, the complete piano music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Erwin Schulhof’s Cinq Etudes de Jazz, Bach-Liszt organ transcriptions, the four piano sonatas of Edward MacDowell, and a recently issued Corigliano Etude-Fantasy on the Sony Classical label. |
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