Imani Winds performs with Jasper String Quartet
The Grammy-nominated Imani Winds will join guest ensemble the Jasper String Quartet for a concert on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8 pm in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven). The renowned wind quintet will perform a colorful variety of music – Bozza’s Scherzo for Wind Quintet, Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, and Villa-Lobos’s Woodwind Quintet. The Jasper Quartet, the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, will play Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 76 No. 1. The concert will culminate in a piece featuring all the performers: Sierra’s Concierto de Camara, a nonet for winds and strings. Along with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Imani Winds commissioned the Concierto de Camara from the Puerto Rican-born composer Roberto Sierra in 2008. At the work’s premiere, critic David Stabler of The Oregonian wrote: “Sierra’s exuberant nonet fairly danced off the stage… preserving the integrity of each ensemble while demanding intricate interplay among individual players. The cross-court volleys amid the rushing scales were exhilarating to behold.”
The name Imani, which means “faith” in Swahili, reflects the African-American and Latin American ancestry of the ensemble’s five members: Valerie Coleman, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon. The members of the Jasper Quartet, named for Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, are J Freivogel and Sae Niwa, violin; Sam Quintal, viola; and Rachel Henderson, cello. (more…)
Tokyo String Quartet to perform Haydn, Beethoven, and Bartok
The Tokyo String Quartet, one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles, will perform three powerhouse works on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 8 pm. Artists in residence at the Yale School of Music for the past 33 years, the quartet appears in recital every semester. Their performance this October will open with Haydn’s Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5, and will continue with Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet in F minor, Op. 95. The evening will conclude with Bartók’s Quartet No. 6, the last work Bartók wrote in his native Hungary before emigrating to the United States in 1939.
The Tokyo Quartet’s performance, which is presented by the Chamber Music Society at Yale, will take place on Tuesday, October 20 at 8 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven). The members of the Tokyo String Quartet are Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violins; Kazuhide Isomura, viola; and Clive Greensmith, cello. (more…)
Chamber Music Society presents competition winners
The Chamber Music Society at Yale presents the winning ensembles of the Yale School of Music’s 2009 Chamber Music Competition in a performance on Tuesday, April 28, at 8:00 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven). This showcase for the School’s renowned chamber music program will feature the trio Contrasts by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, with Benjamin Charmot, violin, Sergiy Dvornichenko, clarinet, and Wei-Jen Yuan, piano; the Sextet for Winds and Piano by French composer Francis Poulenc, with Itay Lantner, flute, Carl Oswald, oboe, Xiaoting Ma, clarinet, Jeremy Friedland, bassoon, Leelanee Sterrett, horn, and Jason Wirth, piano; and Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, by Johannes Brahms, featuring Anastasia Metla, violin, Mathilde Geismar Roussel, viola, Mo Mo, cello, and Juan Carlos Fernandez-Nieto, piano. (more…)
Daedalus Quartet: Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Carter
Quartet has won a Martin Segal Award and Guarneri String Quartet Award
Daedalus Quartet
The award-winning Daedalus String Quartet, called “one of the finest ensembles around” by the New York Sun, will perform on Yale’s Chamber Music Society series on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:00 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall. The program will include Haydn’s Quartet in F minor, Op. 20 No. 5; Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13; and Carter’s String Quartet No. 5 from 1995. The members of the Daedalus Quartet are Min-Young Kim and Kyu-Young Kim, brother and sister violinists who are alternate on first violin; Jessica Thompson, viola; and Raman Ramakrishnan, cello. Tickets are $27 to $34 ($14 for students). Student rush tickets priced at $7 will be sold at 7:45 pm on the night of the concert, if available.
The Daedalus Quartet takes its name from the mythical Greek inventor, artist, and architect celebrated for creating the art of sculpture, designing the Labyrinth, and above all for regaining his freedom by devising wings that made it possible for him to fly. The Daedalus Quartet (pronounced DED-a-lus) was founded in the summer of 2000, and one year later captured the Grand Prize of the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The quartet was honored with Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award and Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award in 2007. They were named by Carnegie Hall to participate in the ECHO Rising Stars program, through which it made debuts during the 2004-2005 season throughout Europe, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Salzburg, and Vienna. They were also appointed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as the Chamber Music Society Two quartet for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons. The ensemble has been Columbia University’s Quartet-in-Residence since 2005 and has been serving as a visiting ensemble at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. The Daedalus Quartet’s debut CD, works of Ravel, Sibelius, and Stravinsky, was released in August 2006 by Bridge Records.
Tokyo String Quartet returns to New Haven
Program will feature works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Janáček
The award-winning Tokyo String Quartet will perform on Yale’s 2008-09 Chamber Music Society series on Tuesday, January 20. 2009 at 8:00 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall. Regarded as one of the supreme chamber ensembles of the world, the Tokyo String Quartet has captivated audiences and critics alike since its founding more than 30 years ago. The quartet’s members are violist Kazuhide Isomura, a founding member; second violinist Kikuei Ikeda, who joined the ensemble in 1974; cellist Clive Greensmith, former principal cellist of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who joined in 1999; and first violinist Martin Beaver, who joined the ensemble in 2002. The quartet has been in residence at the Yale School of Music since 1976 and performs two concerts on the series each season. The January 20 program will include Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, no. 1; Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67; and Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Pages” (1928).
Tickets are $27 to $34 ($14 for students). Student rush tickets priced at $7 will be sold at 7:45 pm on the night of the concert, if available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Yale School of Music website at www.yale.edu/music or call 203 432-4158. Box office hours are Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, in the Sprague Hall lobby, 470 College Street, New Haven.
The Tokyo String Quartet has released more than thirty landmark recordings, including the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, and Bartók. The ensemble’s recordings of works by Brahms, Debussy, Dvorák, Haydn, Mozart, Ravel and Schubert have earned numerous honors, including seven Grammy nominations. The quartet has been featured on PBS’s “Sesame Street” and “Great Performances,” “CNN This Morning” and “CBS Sunday Morning,” as well as the soundtrack for the Sidney Lumet film Critical Care. Officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School, the Tokyo String Quartet traces its origins to the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members were profoundly influenced by Professor Hideo Saito. Soon after its creation, the Tokyo Quartet won First Prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The Quartet performs on “The Paganini Quartet,” a group of Stradivarius instruments named for legendary virtuoso Niccolò Paganini who acquired and played them in the nineteenth century.
