Ani Aznavoorian, cello
|
Nico Abondolo, bass
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Robert Cassidy, piano
Schubertiade Part Two
Schubert, Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 99
and
Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667 "Trout"
Sunday, February 18th, 2024 at 4:00pm
Schubert, Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 99
and
Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667 “Trout”
“These two pieces are undoubtedly huge favorites of the piano chamber music repertoire … The juxtaposition of the very serious Die Winterreise on November’s Program I, with the joyous exuberance of these masterworks on February’s Program II
will provide a very satisfying Schubertiade for the audience this season.”
—Robert Cassidy, Artistic Director
will provide a very satisfying Schubertiade for the audience this season.”
—Robert Cassidy, Artistic Director
Kristin Lee, violinKristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who 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.”
As a soloist, 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. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristen Lee became a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center after winning The Bowers Program audition and completing th program’s three-year residency. In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is a devoted educator. She is on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin. 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 Ani Aznavoorian, cellistThe Strad magazine describes cellist Ani Aznavoorian as having “scorchingly committed performances that wring every last drop of emotion out of the music. Her technique is well-nigh immaculate, she has a natural sense of theater, and her tone is astonishingly responsive.” Ms. Aznavoorian is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician with some of the most recognized ensembles, and she has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony, the International Sejong Soloists, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Edmonton Symphony. This season marks Ms. Aznavoorian’s seventeenth year as Principal Cellist of Camerata Pacifica.
Ms. Aznavoorian received the prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award for her outstanding cello playing and artistry. Some of her other awards include first prizes in the Illinois Young Performers Competition (televised live on PBS with the Chicago Symphony), the Chicago Cello Society National Competition, the Julius Stulberg Competition, and the American String Teachers Association Competition. She was a top prizewinner in the 1996 International Paulo Competition, held in Helsinki, Finland. As a recipient of the Level I Award in the National Foundation for the Arts Recognition and Talent Search, Ms. Aznavoorian was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performed as soloist at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. where she met former U.S. President Bill Clinton. As a first-year student at The Juilliard School, Ms. Aznavoorian won first prize in the institution’s concerto competition—the youngest cellist in the history of the school’s cello competitions to do so. As a result, she performed with the Juilliard Orchestra in a concert with conductor Gerard Schwarz at Avery Fisher Hall. With only 12 hours notice, Ms. Aznavoorian stepped in to replace Natalia Gutman in three performances of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with the San Jose Symphony— concerts that were hailed by the San Jose Press. Other notable appearances include concerts at Weill Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Ravinia’s Bennett Hall, Aspen’s Harris Hall, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, WFMT Live from Studio 1, and NPR’s Performance Today. She has been a member of the renowned string ensemble the International Sejong Soloists, and also performs frequently on the Jupiter Chamber Music series in New York. Ms. Aznavoorian received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School where she studied with Aldo Parisot. In addition to performing, teaching plays an important part in Ms. Aznavoorian’s career. She has been a member of the distinguished music faculty at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, and in the summers has served on the faculty of the Great Mountains Music Festival in South Korea. Ms. Aznavoorian enjoys performing new music and has made the world premiers of many important pieces in the cello repertoire. Some of these include Ezra Laderman’s Concerto No. 2 with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic under the baton of Lawrence Leighton Smith, Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano on stage at the Hamburg Staatsoper with the Hamburg State Ballet— choreographed by John Neumeier, and Lera Auerbach’s Dreammusik for Cello and Chamber Orchestra, which was written for her and commissioned by Camerata Pacifica and Sandra Svoboda. The 2023-24 season highlights include a return tour to Armenia, the country of her ancestors, and her debut at The Hague in the Netherlands. Ms. Aznavoorian records for Cedille Records, and she proudly performs on a cello made by her father Peter Aznavoorian in Chicago. |
Karen Dreyfus, violaKaren Dreyfus enjoys a wide-ranging career, as a noted orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, and as a pedagogue. Prized for her impassioned musicianship and her rich mahogany tone, she has inspired a variety of contemporary music’s finest composers to write scores specifically tailored to her communicative talents.
Born into a family of musicians, Dreyfus began studying the violin with her father, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, before pursuing the career of a concert violist under the tutelage of the longtime master, Leonard Mogill. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Michael Tree and Karen Tuttle, Dreyfus was subsequently a prizewinner of such prestigious musical competitions as the Washington International Competition, the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, and the Naumburg Viola Competition. A regular performer over many years with the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Musicians from Marlboro, among many others, she has collaborated with such legendary artists as Yehudi Menuhin, Alexander Schneider, Leon Fleisher, and her husband, Glenn Dicterow. Her wide discography includes the aptly named "Romanze", a recital with the pianist Robert McDonald, recordings of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (with violinist Glenn Dicterow) and William Walton’s Viola Concerto, Chick Corea’s chamber-music-meets-jazz, Grammy Award-nominated Lyric Suite for Sextet, and numerous works written expressly for Dreyfus, some included in her recording of contemporary viola concertos, American Journeys. In 2022 Ms. Dreyfus was awarded a faculty emerita at the Manhattan School of Music where she taught on the Viola faculty as well as on the Orchestra Performance Program. Karen Dreyfus currently serves on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music where she teaches viola, orchestra and chamber music. During the summer season she teaches viola, chamber music and orchestral studies at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. Nico Abondolo, double bassAn internationally recognized leading double bass soloist and chamber musician, Nico Abondolo was appointed principal double bass of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the 2011-12 season. He made his debut at age 14 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in 1983, became the first double bass ever to win first place in the International Competition for Musical Performers in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, he has appeared with orchestras and in recital throughout the United States and Europe.
Nico regularly performs chamber music at the Ojai and St. Bart’s music festivals, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest and with concert: nova, an exploratory chamber ensemble. Recent highlights include collaborations with eighth blackbird at the Ojai Music Festival and performances of Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat under Esa-Pekka Salonen, Schubert’sTrout Quintet with the Brentano String Quartet and John Adams’ Shaker Loops and Tan Dun’s Quintet with the composers conducting. He has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and has toured with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado, Sir Georg Solti and Lorin Maazel. Nico has premiered solo works of Sofia Gubaidulina and Henry Brandt. He was the double bass for the New York-based ensemble CONTINUUM and for eight seasons, served as principal bass for San Francisco’s GRAMMY®-nominated New Century Chamber Orchestra. He has composed for several New York and West Coast dance companies, performing with them at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Merce Cunningham Studio and the La MaMa Experimental Theatre (New York). He has received commissions from concert: nova and Chamber Music Unbound. Additionally, he serves as principal bass for many motion picture composers. Maintaining a busy schedule of master classes at music schools throughout the country, Nico is also the double bass professor at the Music Academy of the West and a guest professor at Azusa Pacific University. Previously, he was a faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music and UC Santa Barbara. He studied with Dennis Trembly, Peter Mercurio and Gábor Rejtő at USC; David Walter and Albert Fuller at The Juilliard School; and Franco Petracchi in Italy. Robert Cassidy, piano
Celebrated pianist, Robert Cassidy, has received widespread praise for his performances and recordings of solo piano repertoire, as well as vocal and instrumental chamber music. Released in February of 2022 is a new recording of Franz Schubert’s Die Wintereisse featuring Cassidy with American baritone, Ben Lowe.
Cassidy is the Artistic Director of the Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series in Los Olivos, California. He has performed chamber music with the members of the Cleveland Orchestra, cellist Ani Aznavoorian, and violist, Richard O’Neill, among many other esteemed musicians. An extremely active and highly sought-after teacher and chamber music coach, Cassidy is in demand for master classes, workshops and lectures, private teaching, and adjudication. A former member of the faculty at Cleveland State University, Cassidy currently teaches at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. |
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