Aya Kaminaguchi, Michael Singer, William Braun, and Maiani da Silva
Sunday, April 2, 2023, at 4 pm

Program

Piazzolla “Histoire Du Tango”
Louis Harrison “Varied Trio”
Emmanuel Sejourne “Concerto for Marimba and Strings”
Chopin “The Revolutionary”
Chick Corea “Armando’s Rumba”

Percussionist Aya Kaminaguchi earned her Bachelor’s degree from Osaka College of Music in Japan and Master’s degree from the Boston Conservatory where she won a full scholarship. She is the winner of the Percussive Arts Society Audition, Aspen Music Festival Soloist Competition and a finalist of the International Marimba Competition in Belgium. As an orchestral percussionist, she has performed with numerous orchestras in the United States and Asia, including the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, Palm Beach Opera, Sarasota Opera, New World Symphony, and toured worldwide with “Star Wars: In Concert” and “Porgy and Bess”. Currently, she is a principal percussionist of the New Haven Symphony, sectional percussionist of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and a member of the Excelsis Percussion Quartet.

Timpanist Michael Singer was born and raised in New Mexico. He is a graduate of the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California and holds a Bachelor’s degree from New England Conservatory, Master’s degree from Boston University and Doctorate from Rutgers University. Michael has been fortunate to perform with orchestras internationally including New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, Singapore Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. He currently holds the positions of Principal Timpanist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and Hudson Valley Philharmonic and is the Principal Percussionist with the Palm Beach Opera in Florida.

William Braun has appeared as concerto soloist with the New World Symphony in Miami and the Florida West Coast Symphony (Sarasota) on multiple occasions. He has been the pianist of the New Haven Symphony for thirty-six years, performing as soloist in concertos by Ròzsa, Lambert and Gershwin. For twenty years he was the pianist of the Wall Street Chamber Players, and he teaches opera and lieder at the Hartt School. He has also written more than three hundred articles for Opera News magazine, including cover profiles of John Adams, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Adès and Nina Stemme, overviews of the operas of Michael Tippett and Giacomo Meyerbeer, and analyses of Britten’s Peter Grimes and Gloriana, Verdi’s Macbeth and Don Carlos, and Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise. He earned his doctorate from Yale University. For the past ten summers he has been performing at the Castello di Sorci in Anghiari, Italy and the Casa Monteripido in Perugia.

Maiani da Silva is a contemporary violinist, performer, arranger, and educator. She is a member of the four-time Grammy-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird, co-founder of performance-art duo The Furies, as well as Lecturer at Yale’s Department of Music and Visiting Distinguished Professor at University of Oregon. She has premiered concertos with the Cincinnati Symphony and the U.S. Navy Band, premiered staged works by David Lang/Anne Bogart, and has also collaborated with Louis Andriessen, Viet Cuong, Ted Hearne, Nina Shekhar, Childish Gambino, George Lewis, Taylor Mac, Julianna Barwick, Joe Hisaishi, and more.

Maiani studied under the tutelage of Irina Muresanu at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Mela Tenenbaum in Brooklyn, N.Y. Other mentors include Lenny Matczynski, and Andrew Mark. She is also an Artist in Residence and Fellow at Yale University’s Morse College. For more info, please visit https://www.maianidasilva.com.

Sunday, February 26, 2023, at 4 pm

Program

Dvořák and the American Identity

The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”, the intended recipient of his famous love confession. Formed in 1992, the Quartet soon received the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award.

In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music. It has performed many musical works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, among them Madrigals of Gesualdo, Fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin. Also, the quartet has worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, among them Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne and Gabriela Frank. The Quartet celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2002 by commissioning ten composers to write companion pieces for selections from Bach’s Art of Fugue, the result of which was an electrifying and wide-ranging single concert program. The Quartet has also worked with the celebrated poet Mark Strand, commissioning poetry from him to accompany works of Haydn and Webern.

In recent seasons the Quartet has traveled widely, appearing all over the United States and Canada, in Europe, Japan and Australia. It has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet has participated in summer festivals such as Aspen, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, the Taos School of Music and the Caramoor Festival.

The Quartet has recorded the Opus 71 Quartets of Haydn, and has also recorded a Mozart disc for Aeon Records, consisting of the K. 464 Quartet and the K. 593 Quintet, with violist Hsin-Yun Huang. In the area of newer music, the Quartet has released a disc of the music of Steven Mackey on Albany Records, and has also recorded the music of Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung and Charles Wuorinen.

Sunday, December 4, 2022, at 4 pm

Program

Béla Bartók: Selections from 44 Duos for Two Violins
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Eyeglasses” Duo for Viola and Cello
Gideon Klein: String Trio
Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Quintet

The Manhattan Chamber Players are a chamber music collective of New York-based musicians who share the common aim of performing the greatest works in the chamber repertoire at the highest level. Formed in 2015 by Artistic Director and violist Luke Fleming, MCP is comprised of an impressive roster of musicians who all come from the tradition of great music making at the Marlboro Music Festival, Steans Institute at Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival and Perlman Music Program, and are former students of the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School, Colburn School, and the New England Conservatory.

MCP has been praised in Strings Magazine for “A fascinating program concept…It felt refreshingly like an auditory version of a vertical wine tasting.” The article went on to applaud MCP for “an intensely wrought and burnished performance…Overall, I wished I could put them on repeat.” At the core of MCP’s inspiration is its members’ joy in playing this richly varied repertoire with longtime friends and colleagues, with whom they have been performing since they were students. Its roster allows for the programming of the entire core string, wind, and piano chamber music repertoire—from piano duos to clarinet quintets to string octets. While all its members have independent careers as soloists and chamber musicians, they strive for every opportunity to come together and again share in this special collaboration, creating “a mellifluous blend of vigorous intensity and dramatic import, performed with enthusiasm, technical facility and impressive balance, relishing distinctions…a winning performance.” (Classical Source)

Members of MCP are current and former members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ensemble Connect, and the Aizuri, Attacca, Dover, Escher, Vega, and Ying Quartets, the Aletheia, Appassionata, and Lysander Piano Trios, and Imani Winds. They are top prizewinners in the Banff, Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff, Melbourne, Naumburg, Osaka, Primrose, Queen Elisabeth, Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, Tertis, and Young Concert Artists Competitions, and are some of the most sought after solo and chamber performers of their generation. The Manhattan Chamber Players have been featured multiple times on NPR’s Performance Today, and is the Ensemble-in-Residence at both the Festival de Febrero in Mexico and the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans. In addition to its numerous concerts across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, MCP regularly tours in Asia and the Middle East, and has led chamber music residency programs at institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Sunday, October 23, 2022, at 4 pm

Program

Mompou: Cants Magics
Scriabin: 5th Sonata
Debussy: Estampes
Hough: Sonatina Nostalgica
Liszt: 3 Petrarch Sonnets (from Italian Années de Pélerinage)
            Dante Sonata (from Italian Années de Pélerinage)

One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer.

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001). He was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010, and in 2016 was made an Honorary Member of RPS. In 2014 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022.
Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York, Sir Stephen has appeared with most of the major European, Asian and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in major halls and concert series around the world from London’s Royal Festival Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall. He has been a regular guest at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Aspen, Blossom, Edinburgh, La Roque d’Anthéron, Hollywood Bowl, Mostly Mozart, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Verbier, Blossom, and the BBC Proms, where he has made 29 concerto appearances, including playing all of the works of Tchaikovsky for piano and orchestra, a series he later repeated with the Chicago Symphony.

Many of his catalogue of over 60 albums have garnered international prizes including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’Or, Monde de la Musique, several Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Magazine Awards including ‘Record of the Year’ in 1996 and 2003, and the Gramophone ‘Gold Disc’ Award in 2008, which named his complete Saint-Saens Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past 30 years. His 2012 recording of the complete Chopin Waltzes received the Diapason d’Or de l’Annee, France’s most prestigious recording award. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos was the fastest selling recording in Hyperion’s history, while his 1987 recording of the Hummel concertos remains Chandos’ best-selling disc to date.

Published by Josef Weinberger, Sir Stephen has composed works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, organ, harpsichord and solo piano. He has been commissioned by the Takacs Quartet, the Cliburn, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, the Gilmore Foundation, The Genesis Foundation, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, London’s National Gallery, Wigmore Hall, Le Musée de Louvre and Musica Viva Australia among others.

A noted writer, Sir Stephen has contributed articles for The New York Times, the Guardian, The Times, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, and he wrote a blog for The Telegraph for seven years which became one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion and for which he wrote over six hundred articles. He has published three books: The Bible as Prayer (Bloomsbury and Paulist Press, 2007); a novel: The Final Retreat (Sylph Editions, 2018); and a book of essays: Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More (Faber & Faber and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019).

Sir Stephen resides in London where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester. He is also a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School.