Image of Yahuda Hanani Playing the Cello

Close Encounters with Music Presents a Conversation with Berkshire Resident Benjamin Luxon to share stories of his international career in opera

LENOX, Mass. — Berkshire resident Benjamin Luxon will share anecdotes of his rich and varied career as an opera singer on Sunday, March 3, at 2 pm at the elegant Lenox Club, 111 Yokun Avenue here. Luxon will also discuss his artistic credo and the current state of the music and opera world in “An Afternoon with Benjamin Luxon,” one in a series of conversations about music and ideas presented by Close Encounters with Music.

Following his 1972 debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, Luxon quickly became one of Great Britain’s most renowned singers. His 30-year international career as a baritone throughout the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s included such great roles as Onegin, which he performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, and Wozzeck, which he sang at La Scala in Milan. He appeared in opera houses across Europe, and worked with most of the world’s major conductors and orchestras.

Luxon made more than 100 recordings in multiple genres, ranging from early music to contemporary, including musicals, Victorian ballads, music hall and his folk-singing partnership with banjo player Bill Crofut. He was a favorite of Benjamin Britten, who composed the title role of his television opera “Owen Wingrave” specifically for him. In 1986, Luxon was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his service to British music.

Acute hearing loss cut short Luxon’s singing career, but he continues to appear onstage. Since moving to the United States with his American wife in 2002, he has worked with various theater companies, mainly as a Shakespearean actor, and created and performed programs of poetry, including a recital of Victorian-era poems and songs created with author Simon Winchester.

Tickets for “An Afternoon With Benjamin Luxon” are $15 and are available at 800-843-0778 or www.cewm.org. The conversation will be followed by a high tea catered by Savory Harvest Catering in Pittsfield.

About “Conversations With …”
Close Encounters’ “Conversations With …” series has presented such notable speakers as film-maker Peter Rosen; writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; pianist-authors Walter Ponce and Adam Neiman; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar/performer/multimedia artist Robert Winter; poet Charles Coe; and former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Commentary from founder and artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests.

Close Encounters With Music programs have been presented in cities across the U.S. and Canada—Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Omaha, Cincinnati, Calgary, Detroit, Scottsdale, at the Frick Collection and Merkin Hall in New York City and at Tanglewood. Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

Yehuda Hanani is 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, Irish National Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among many others. He has collaborated in performances with Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman and many more. 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 Rodger Auditorium. His pioneering recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.

Upcoming Close Encounters with Music Concerts
March 23 An Evening with Eliot Fisk: “Old, New, Borrowed and Blues”
April 20 Grand Piano Trios I: Schubert & Schoenfield
May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel
June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2012–2013 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Image of Yahuda Hanani Playing the Cello

Close Encounters with Music Presents Guitarist Extraordinaire Eliot Fisk, Joined by Soprano Jennifer Zetlan and Cellist Yehuda Hanani in a World Premiere by Robert Beaser

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Eliot Fisk demonstrates the versatility and appeal of the classical guitar in a Close Encounters With Music concert on Saturday, March 23 at 6 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle St. The diverse program, titled “Old, New, Borrowed and Blues,” features J.S. Bach, tango, Schubert lieder, American folk music, improvisations and the world premiere of a commissioned work by Grammy Award-nominated composer Robert Beaser.

Fisk is known worldwide for his adventurous repertoire and willingness to take music into unusual venues, such as schools, senior centers and even logging camps and prisons. Described by his mentor, guitar legend Andrés Segovia, as “at the top line of our artistic world,” Fisk has transformed the repertoire of the classical guitar through his ground-breaking transcriptions, including works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Paganini.

A best-selling recording artist, Eliot Fisk has had numerous works dedicated to him and has collaborated with other musicians-including guitarist Angel Romero, virtuoso clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and jazz guitar great Bill Frisell-in classical, flamenco, jazz and world-music styles. He is founder and director of Boston Guitar Fest, an annual event co-sponsored by Northeastern University and the New England Conservatory, where he is a faculty member.

To premiere the new Beaser work, “Spring Songs,” Fisk will be joined by soprano Jennifer Zetlan, making her Berkshire debut, and acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, founder and artistic director of Close Encounters. Zetlan has performed on the stages of the New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, returning to the Met as Xenia in a new production of Boris Godunov, broadcast worldwide as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s “LIVE! in HD” series.

“Spring Songs” includes two songs in a projected four-song set. Says Fisk of the new work: “The combination of a bass instrument (e.g., cello) and chordal instrument (such as guitar) has deep roots in the baroque era, where such an ensemble was the core of the basso continuo. It will be fascinating to see how Beaser translates this ancient precedent into 21st-century terms.”

The program also includes French folk songs by Matyas Seiber, folk songs by Edward Benjamin Britten and music by Franz Schubert, Isaac Albeniz, Gabriel Fauré, Enrique Granados, Vittorio Monti and others.

Ticket Information for “An Evening with Eliot Fisk: Old, New, Borrowed and Blues”
Tickets, $42 (orchestra and mezzanine) and $32 (balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, by calling 413.528.0100, or online at www.cewm.org or www.mahaiwe.org.

Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The commission of “Spring Songs” is funded by a generous grant from the Louis and Lena Minkoff Foundation.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2012–2013 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

Upcoming Close Encounters with Music Concerts

April 20 Grand Piano Trios I: Schubert & Schoenfield

May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel

June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival

Image of Franz Liszt

Close Encounters with Music Presents Lisztomania! A 200th Anniversary Celebration

Close Encounters With Music celebrates the 200th Anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth with “Lisztomania!” at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Sunday, December 4 at 2 PM. The performance showcases his mesmerizing and brilliant compositional style, as well as works by his friends (Saint Saens) and polar opposites (Mendelssohn).

Fan mania and the cult of celebrity had their roots with Franz Liszt, sex symbol and showman extraordinaire. He was the first to position the piano facing the audience, assuring the full effect of his expressions and flowing curls. Woman swooned, tore his clothing and vied a lock of hair.

Keyboard innovator and a powerful genius whose compositions blazed the way for Impressionism, Romanticism, and atonality, Liszt is regarded as the greatest pianist of all time, mesmerizing audiences at his thousands of concert appearances. Dubbed a “piano god”, he made the instrument sound like an entire orchestra. His playing reached such a frenzy that pianos were destroyed in the process.

An energetic portrait will emerge in this program: Liszt’s pictorial piano solo works, including St. Francis of Assisi Walking on the Waves, La Lugubre Gondol and Les jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este; Camille Saint-Saëns’ Rondo Capriccioso, (one of the many composers he generously promoted) and Felix Mendelssohn’s C minor Piano Trio #2 (his ideological rival of “abstract music”). Four recently published works for cello and piano, transcribed by Liszt himself, with acclaimed interpreter Jeffrey Swann will be presented. Cincinnati Post proclaimed about Swann : “His Liszt was a triumph of virtuosity.” The concert features Jeffrey Swann, piano; Yehonatan Berick, violin; and Yehuda Hanani, cello.

Jeffrey Swann’s varied repertoire includes more than 60 concertos and solo works ranging from Bach to Boulez. Mr. Swann has performed with the top symphonies in the United States and abroad. He lectures regularly at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and at Wagner Societies in the United States and Italy. A native of Northern Arizona, Jeffrey Swann studied at The Juilliard School, where he received his B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. Degrees. Since 2007 Jeffrey Swann has been Artistic Director of the Dino Ciani Festival & Academy in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and is Professor of Piano at New York University.

Violinst Yehonatan Berick is an award winning international soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and pedagogue. He has appeared with pianists James Tocco, Stephen Prutsman, Louis Lortie, and Michael Chertock, and collaborated in chamber music performances with a long list of internationally renowned artists. Prior to his appointment as Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan, Yehonatan Berick was on the faculties of McGill University and the Eastman School of Music.

Cellist Yehuda Hanani is founder and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music

His engaging chamber music with commentary has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Scottsdale, the Berkshires, and at the Frick Collection in New York City. A three-time recipient of the Martha Baird Rockefeller grant, Mr. Hanani’s studies were with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School and with Pablo Casals. His weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda” attracts thousands of fans. He also directs the High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival in Hunter, New York.

Tickets, $40 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony) include an After Glow audience reception on stage. They are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, 413.528.0100. For further information contact www.cewm.org or 800-843-0778.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Image of Yahuda Hanani Playing the Cello

Close Encounters with Music and the Berkshire Museum Screen Peter Rosen’s “Shadows in Paradise,” Documenting European Exiles in 1930s Hollywood

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The European diaspora’s influence on Hollywood culture in the 1930s and ’40s is the focus of Peter Rosen’s documentary film “Strangers in Paradise,” to be shown at the Berkshire Museum here on Sunday, Nov. 4, at 2 p.m.

Rosen will introduce his 2009 film and answer questions following the screening, which is co-presented by the museum and Close Encounters With Music.

Fleeing Germany and Austria as Hitler came to power, as many as 30,000 exiled intellectuals had poured into the Los Angeles area by 1939—80 percent of them Jews. These “displaced persons in Paradise” had a tremendous effect on music, art, literature, theater and film, giving the region the nickname “Weimar on the Pacific.”

Rosen’s documentary includes rare footage of some of these luminaries, including the author Thomas Mann, the composer Igor Stravinsky, the director Fritz Lang and many others. “Shadows in Paradise” weaves recorded interviews with the surviving artists and their friends and descendants with readings of the authors’ texts and performances of the composers’ work commissioned especially for the film.

“I have what I have always dreamed of—beautiful weather every day,” Mann wrote to Agnes Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post and a close friend, after settling in the Pacific Palisades in 1940. “I started to write again on the first day. Life would be more peaceful if we were not afraid that the agony we have already lived through would be exceeded by even worse news at any time.”

“Watching this film, one is struck by how important a role Hollywood ended up playing in helping to preserve the world’s intellectual life, at a time when not every community was that welcoming or accommodating,” writes reviewer Bruce Eder.

Rosen has produced and directed more than 100 full-length features and television programs. He won an Emmy Award and the Directors Guild of America Award in 1990 for his PBS special documenting the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. His subjects have also included radio personality Garrison Keillor, singer Enrico Caruso and architect I.M.Pei.

Tickets for “Shadows in Paradise” are $15 and include light refreshment. For reservations, call The Berkshire Museum (413) 443-7171.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2012–2013 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org

2012-13 Close Encounters with Music Calendar

October 20 “Dually” Noted: Music for Four Hands

November 4 Peter Rosen’s film Shadows In Paradise

December 9 Tragicomedia: A Baroque Holiday Celebration

February 24 Midwinter Fireside Concert: The Amphion String Quartet

March 3 Conversations With… Ben Luxon

March 23 An Evening with Eliot Fisk

April 20 Grand Piano Trios I: Schubert & Schoenfield

May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel

June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Image of Yahuda Hanani Playing the Cello

Close Encounters with Music Presents A Baroque Holiday Celebration with the Early-Music Ensemble Tragicomefdia Sunday Matinee Performance Offers Rare Handel Cantatas and Italian Cantatas that Speak of Love, Longing and Betrayal

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The drama and emotion of the Italian cantata takes center stage when the early-music ensemble Tragicomedia performs on Sunday, December 9, 2 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

“Tragicomedia: A Baroque Holiday Celebration” is the second concert in the 2012–13 Close Encounters with Music season. This festive performance features a soprano and bass-baritone accompanied by rarely heard Baroque instruments such as the mandolin, lirone, chitarrone and viola de gamba. The program includes 17th- and early 18th-century cantatas by George Frideric Handel—whose compositions represent the pinnacle of the cantata form—as well as Barbara Strozzi, Francisco Guerau, Agostino Steffani and Carlo Arrigoni.

The 17th-century aesthetic style of dramatic contrast known as tragicomedia was the inspiration for the ensemble’s cofounders, musicians Stephen Stubbs and Erin Headley, who formed the group in 1987. Since then, Tragicomedia, under Stubbs’ direction, has explored every musical genre from lute song to fully staged Baroque opera, in repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Bach. Many of the group’s recordings, for EMI, Virgin, Hyperion, and Harmonia Mundi USA, have won prestigious prizes, and the ensemble has appeared annually at the Boston Early Music Festival since 1997.

Love, longing and betrayal are common subjects of the Italian cantata, which moved from the church to the stage in the 17th century. “Burning sighs/Fly forth from my breast/Attempting to restore my lost love,” Steffani wrote in “Tengo per infallibile,” a cantata for soprano and bass. In a more cynical mood, Strozzi took women to task for their flightiness with lyrics such as “Women never make/A true promise./So it goes, he has much more/who hopes for nothing.”

The December 9 concert features soprano Mireille Asselin, bass-baritone Douglas Williams and musicians Paul O’Dette (lute), Headley (viola de gamba) and Michael Sponsellor (harpsichord). For this event, Catherine Liddell will be stepping in for Stubbs on the lute.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2012–2013 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

Ticket Information for “Tragicomedia: A Baroque Holiday Celebration”

Tickets, $40 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $185 ($160 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts, and include a free subscribers-only exclusive event, a Midwinter Fireside concert at Ventfort Hall on February 23 with the Amphion String Quartet. Visit www.cewm.org. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

2012-13 Close Encounters with Music Calendar

October 20 “Dually” Noted: Music for Four Hands

November 4 Peter Rosen’s film Shadows In Paradise

December 9 Tragicomedia: A Baroque Holiday Celebration

February 24 Midwinter Fireside Concert: The Amphion String Quartet

March 3 Conversations With… Ben Luxon

March 23 An Evening with Eliot Fisk

April 20 Grand Piano Trios I: Schubert & Schoenfield

May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel

June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

High Peaks Music Festival Advertisment

High Peaks Music Festival Brings Classical Hollywood to the Great Northern Catskills with Distinguished Artists and International Students “From Berlin to America” In Music, Literature and Film”

(Hunter, NY) Between August 15 and 25, the Catskill Mountain Foundation, the premier multi-arts center in the Northern Catskills, will host its third Catskill High Peaks Festival: Music with Altitude!” a ten-day chamber music festival offering an exciting combination of concerts, literary lectures, films and master classes open to the public and led by distinguished faculty artists with talented young musicians from around the world. Serving as backdrop for the High Peaks Festival are the magically beautiful summer landscapes of the Northern Catskill Mountains, drawing musicians, listeners and culture lovers alike to visit a destination where artists and musicians have gathered for over a hundred years. For those who love movies and music this may be just the ticket. Festival events will take place at multiple venues throughout the scenic and historic New York mountaintop towns of Hunter, Tannersville and Windham.

This year’s theme is Classical Hollywood, tracing the cross-influences between the concert stage, the Silver Screen, cabaret, and the jazz club and the composers who bridged these worlds. Always designed to give pleasure and emotional catharsis, film scores arose from the world of opera and classical music and were written by some of its most heralded composers (Saint-Saëns, Jacques Ibert, Prokofiev, Kurt Weill, Bernstein).

The ten-day long festival is a collaboration with Close Encounters With Music and celebrated cellist Yehuda Hanani, Artistic Director, who has again gathered for this summer an exciting line-up of world-class musicians. Two major concerts bookend the festival: The first, Classical Hollywood: Cinematic Piano, is scheduled for Sunday, August 19, 2pm at the Doctorow Performing Arts Center on 23A Main Street in Hunter, and the second, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, takes place on Saturday August 25, 8pm at the newly restored Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville on Route 23A. Festival artists include pianists Michael Chertock and Dianna Anderson; violinist Stefan Milenkovich; cellist Erik Anderson; mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera; accordionist Bill Schimmel; percussionist Arti Dixson; and bassist James Cammack as well as Yehuda Hanani. Each concert will be prefaced by a Prelude Performance Showcase, introducing international festival students who are participating in the music residency.

Placing a Hollywood/Broadway scrim over the concert stage, “Classical Hollywood: Cinematic Piano” on August 19 includes immortal songs by Bernstein, Gershwin, and Weill, original arrangements of romantic music from Casablanca, Summer of ’42 by Michael Chertock, pianist of the Cincinnati Pops; and music by Erick Wolfgang Korngold, Tan Dun, and William Bolcom. The centerpiece of the program is Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music, irreverent, caffeine-fuelled and pictorial music par excellence, after which everyone rides off into the sunset with Lukas Foss’s cello/piano Capriccio, a rollicking ode to the cowboy and the Golden Age of Hollywood—all presented in vivid musical Technicolor, of course.

“Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” August 25, offers up a jazz-inflected evening, with plenty of rhythm and a rich stew of influences! The program includes Chick Corea’s jazzy, flamenco-inspired La Fiesta! performed by virtuoso accordionist Bill Schimmel, one of the principal architects of the tango revival in America; Astor Piazzolla’s Grand Tango; Suite for Cello and Jazz Trio, the effervescent jazz-classical fusion ensemble work by Claude Bolling, composer of Borsolino and other scores plus works by Ives, Ravel and the brilliant Gao Ping. This unusual evening of fusion also features double bass James Cammack, who has performed as a member of the Ahmad Jamal Trio, one of the most acclaimed jazz ensembles; and percussionist Arti Dixson, a longtime collaborator of Jamal and of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald. Pianist Michael Chertock has toured with the Boston Pops Orchestra and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Cincinnati Pops performing Duke Ellington.

Concurrent with the performances, YEHUDA HANANI and colleagues lead a residency for 25 cellists, violinists and pianists selected from around the world. Daily master classes are open and free to the public, and all are invited to join and gain insight into the interaction between experienced master and young artist. In addition to violin, piano and cello master classes, demonstrations and talks with the artists in residence are open to the public and will include:

Encounters: “Crossing Over—Bridging the Classical and Popular.” An informal talk with Michael Chertock, pianist of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra at Christman’s Windham House on Thursday, August 17 from 7:30 to 9pm.

Tea & Talk at the Washington Irving Lodge with YEHUDA HANANI, Michael Chertock and Stefan Milenkovitch on Saturday, August 18 from 1:30-3:30, $25.

Encounters: “Evolution of Violin Showpieces.” An informal lecture/demonstration by Stefan

Milenkovich at the Doctorow Center for the Arts on Tuesday, August 21 from 7-8:30pm.

Classical Kids: Designed for children from ages 4 through 12, the performance will entertain parents as well. Saturday, August 18, from 1:30 to 3 pm at the Centre Church in Windham. Admission is free.

Amala Levine, director of the Millbrook Symposium and lecturer at New School University and UCLA, will return again this year to lead two Literary Lectures on “From the Lake District to the Hudson Valley in Poetry and Painting” and “From Berlin to America in Literature, Music and Film” which will complement the summer’s theme of art and dislocation. These talks are scheduled on August 24th and 25th from 1:30-3pm at the Hunter Village Square on Main Street in Hunter, NY.

There will be showings of films with a music theme, including a documentary about composer Philip Glass on Monday August 20 from 1-3pm; Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee’s 2009 film about the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival on Wednesday, August 22 from 1-3 with a guest speaker; and East of Eden, featuring the original score by Leonard Rosenman and special commentary by YEHUDA HANANI on Friday, August 24 from 4-6pm. All films will be shown at the Mountain Cinema on Main Street in Hunter, NY.

Two guided history hikes will be led by Carol and David White; on Friday, August 24 from 9 am-12 pm to the site of the Catskill Mountain House, Thomas Cole’s Artists Rock and Sunset Rock; and on Saturday, August 25, 9 am-12 pm to Boulder Rock and Split Rock.

Catskill High Peaks Festival is a performing and teaching institute bringing renowned musicians, pedagogues and exceptionally gifted international students to the Northern Catskills. For more information and a full schedule of all High Peaks Festival events contact Catskill Mountain Foundation at 518-263-2063 or visit the website at www.catskillmtn.org.

The Artists

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, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Buenes Aires Philharmonic, Irish National Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Seoul Symphony, and BBC Welsh Symphony. He is a frequent guest at the Aspen, Chautauqua, Prades Festival (France), Finland Festival, Oslo, Ottawa, and the Australia Chamber Music Festival and has collaborated in performances with preeminent fellow musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Dawn Upshaw and Vadim Repin, among others. A prolific recording artist and an innovator in reshaping concert programs to include original, illuminating commentary, he made the pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello sonata, receiving a Grand Prix du Disque nomination. His engaging chamber music series, Close Encounters With Music, has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Scottsdale, the Berkshires, and at the Frick Collection in New York City.

“Rightfully rewarded with cheers from the audience” – The New York Times

Violinist STEFAN MILENKOVICH is recognized internationally for both exceptional artistry and his life-long commitment to humanitarianism, beginning with his appointment as Child Ambassador of the First Children’s Embassy founded in Yugoslavia during the war in Bosnia. At age seven he won grand prize in the Jaroslav Kozian Violin Competition, and came to international attention when at ten he was invited to perform for President Reagan at the White House. This was followed by an invitation from the former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev. By age 17, he was a prizewinner in numerous international violin competitions: Indianapolis; the Queen Elisabeth (Belgium); Hanover (Germany); Paganini (Italy); and the Yehudi Menuhin (England). Orchestral concerto appearances include the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestra of Radio-France, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium and the Melbourne and Queensland Symphonies in Australia. He has served on the violin faculty of the Perlman Music Program and teaches at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

In a feature article on JAMES CAMMACK, Bass Player Magazine reviewer Richard Johnston nick-named James, who was at the time a Chicago resident, “Chicago fire,” for his hard-driving, creative approach to playing both acoustic and electric bass. Cammack has visited more than 30 countries backing pianist Ahmad Jamal and has also toured with singer Nancy Wilson, tubist Howard Johnson, and singer Vanessa Rubin. He has performed in some of the world’s most famous jazz clubs such as the Village Vanguard in New York City and Yoshi’s in San Francisco; and major jazz festivals, including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Italy’s Umbria Jazz Festival, and the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland. For the past 25 years, he has performed continuously with the legendary pianist Jamal.

Pianist MICHAEL CHERTOCK has toured Asia with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, and with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. and is a regular performer at the Raviinia Festival in Chicago, Blossom Music Center in Cleveland, and the Grand Tetons Music Festival in Wyoming. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, L’Orchestre Symphonique du Montreal, the Toronto Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Utah Symphony, and the Indianapolis Symphony. His performance on the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Petrouchka with Paavo Järvi turned in rave reviews in Gramophone and American Record Guide. He made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, performing Duke Ellington’s New World A’Comin’ and in 2005, gave the world premiere of Todd Machover’s concerto for hyper-piano and orchestra, Jeux Deux, in Boston’s Symphony Hall.

“… A first-rate pianist and an interpreter of notable interest through the freshness that he brought to familiar scores.” —La Presse (Montreal)

Percussionist ARTI DIXSON studied drum set concepts with the legendary drummer Jack DeJohnette. With folk-pop singer Janis Ian, he has performed in most major concert halls in the United States and toured Israel, Japan, Australia, Holland, Belgium, Spain and South Africa. He has also appeared with pianist Ahmad Jamal, throughout Europe as well as at Tanglewood, Saratoga, and Carnegie Hall and has worked at the the Foxwood Casino with Harry Connick and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.

JENNIFER RIVERA has earned a spot as one of the most sought after and versatile lyric mezzo sopranos of her generation. While still a student at Juilliard, she was invited to join the roster of the New York City Opera, and after winning their prestigious Debut Artist of Year award, went on to sing several roles with the company. She created the starring role of Sharon Falconer in the critically acclaimed World Premiere of Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry, which premiered at Nashville Opera in 2007. Her concert work has included recitals with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, a performance with Ms. Horne at Carnegie Hall, appearances at Avery Fisher Hall, and with the Berkshire Choral Festival and the L’Opera Français de New York.

“Jennifer Rivera … displayed a ravishing mezzo-soprano bloom from top to bottom, effortlessly negotiating the filigree with grace.” —Opera News

WILLIAM SCHIMMEL, virtuoso accordionist, teacher and lecturer, has performed with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America and enjoys a longstanding relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra. He is founder of the Tango Project, which appeared with Al Pacino in the film Scent of a Woman, won the Stereo Review Album of the Year Award, received a Grammy nomination, and rose to number one on the Billboard Classical Charts. An authority on the music of Kurt Weill, he has recorded all of Weill’s music that employs the accordion and has written many works for the concert hall as well as Broadway and off-Broadway. “Accordion mega-star” —The New York Time

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

A Photograph of The Daedalus Quartet

Close Encounters with Music Presents the Daedalus Quartet: Beethoven, Shubert & Berg

(Great Barrington, MA) The Daedalus Quartet brings an intriguing all-Viennese program to the Mahaiwe stage Saturday, May 19 at 6 pm. Selections include Schubert’s Quartettsatz, brimming with ardor and ecstasy; the majestic Razumovsky, Beethoven’s Opus 59 No.1; and Alban Berg’s Quartet Opus 3, completing a musical journey through Imperial Vienna to the era of Klimt and Freud. Recognized as one of the leading quartets on the scene today (“The refined but passionate Daedalus Quartet gave a riveting performance”—The New York Times), members of the Daedalus are Min-Young Kim, violin; Matilda Kaul, violin; Jessica Thompson, viola; and Thomas Kraines, cello.

The program is a tightly-knit voyage that reflects how composers inspire each other across time, and, in this instance, also across town! Schubert took inspiration from his hero, Beethoven, and especially from the almost symphonic Razumovsky Quartet, and ran with it. The results are evident in the two-movement Quartettsatz, foreshadowing Schubert’s later chamber music masterpieces. The first string quartet of Alban Berg was completed in 1910 when he was twenty-five years old. The emotional power of the Opus 3 takes its cue from Mahler, his mentor and a great source of his inspiration—and another denizen of Vienna. It was Berg’s first great success.

Tickets, $40 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony) include the After Glow audience reception on stage provided by Guido’s Fresh Marketplace and Domaney’s Fine Wines & Liquors. They are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, 413.528.0100 or at www.mahaiwe.org. For further information contact www.cewm.org or 800-843-0778.

The Artists
Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. In the eleven years of its existence the Daedalus Quartet has received plaudits from critics and listeners alike for the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances. The New York Times has praised the Daedalus Quartet’s “insightful and vibrant” Haydn, the “impressive intensity” of their Beethoven, their “luminous” Berg, and the “riveting focus” of their Dutilleux. The Washington Post in turn has hailed their performance of Mendelssohn for its “rockets of blistering virtuosity,” while the Houston Chronicle described the “silvery beauty” of their Schubert and the “magic that hushed the audience.” The Boston Globe noted the “finesse and fury” of their Shostakovich, the Toronto Globe and Mail the “thrilling revelation” of their Hindemith, and the Cincinnati Enquirer the “tremendous em/otional power” of their Brahms.

Since its founding the Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues; in the United States and Canada these include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Great Performers series), the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Boston’s Gardner Museum, as well as on major series in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Abroad the ensemble has been heard in such famed locations as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan.

The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág and György Ligeti. Among the works the ensemble has premiered is David Horne’s Flight from the Labyrinth, commissioned for the Quartet by the Caramoor Festival; Fred Lerdahl’s Third String Quartet, commissioned by Chamber Music America; and Lawrence Dillion’s String Quartet No. 4, commissioned by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts. The 2010-2011 season features the premiere of Richard Wernick’s String Quartet No. 8, commissioned for the Daedalus Quartet by the Bay Shore Schools Arts Education Fund and the Islip Arts Council. Daedalus will premiere a new quartet from Joan Tower, commissioned for them by Chamber Music Monterey Bay, in April 2012. The Quartet has also collaborated with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists: these include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang, and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera, David Shifrin, and Alexander Fiterstein; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein.

To date the Quartet has forged associations with some of America’s leading classical music and educational institutions including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. The Daedalus Quartet has been Columbia University’s Quartet-in-Residence since 2005, and has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. In 2007, the Quartet was awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award. The Quartet won Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funded a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island from 2007-2010. The award-winning members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University.

Saturday, June 2, 6 PM : “The Roaring Twenties-Berlin, Paris, New York.”


Close Encounters With Music Season Finale at Tanglewood
Celebrate the golden age of jazz and cabaret, a period exemplified by experimentalism and decadence. Songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Cole Porter and Gershwin; Erwin Shulhoff’s Jazz Suite; and Entartete composers whose “degenerate” music. Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Will Ferguson, tenor; James Tocco, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello. Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall, Lenox, MA. Tickets $50 Orchestra/$40 Balconies. 800.843.0778; www.cewm.org.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Photograph of Jennifer Rivera

Close Encounters With Music Presents “The Roaring Twenties: Berlin, Paris, New York”

The cabaret beckons at Ozawa Hall Saturday, June 2, 6 pm as Close Encounters With Music ushers in the summer season in the Berkshires. In a performance that evokes the twenties of the last century—a time exemplified by Art Deco, Prohibition, the loosening of social restraints, Jazz, the Charleston and flappers—“Roaring Twenties” offers a panorama of composers and styles that defined and shaped the era: Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Alexander Zemlinsky, Hanns Eisler, Cole Porter, Poulenc, Schoenberg, and Erwin Schulhoff provide a bi-continental glimpse into a decade that still looms colorful, mythical and seductive in cultural history.

Soon to be banned in the thirties by the Third Reich, their brilliant, razor-sharp, wicked and enduring songs (“Bilbao”; “Speak Low”; “Makin’ Whoopee”; “Supply and Demand”; “’S Wonderful”) are part of the program featuring Entartete (degenerate, or Jewish, and then by definition undesirable) music, composers who careers and lives were interrupted and irrevocably altered by the rise of Hitler. Under the new laws, the jazz and cabaret that had been embraced just a few years earlier were now viewed as decadent and posing a threat to European higher culture. The social, artistic, and cultural dynamism of this period ended abruptly with the stock market crash of 1929 and onset of the Great Depression and National Socialism but not before an eruption of creative frenzy in theater, film, art and music almost unparalleled in cultural history.

Wandering into the charged European pre-WWII landscape was also American composer Samuel Barber, whose works were inspired by his sojourn in Paris, as were those of Gershwin. The sonata for piano and cello is a sea of tranquility and emblematic of an isolationist America in an otherwise tempestuous political landscape. Hanns Eisler’s music got him twice ejected—initially from Germany for its subversiveness, and then from the US, for its political intent. Erwin Schulhoff, a European apostle of the new Jazz, died in a concentration camp. His Jazz Etudes for Piano, with movements titled Charleston, Blues, Chanson, Tango, and Toccata Sur le Shimmy “Kitten on the Keys” convey how fervently he internalized the edgy music of the day.

The program re-introduces an important but often neglected group of diverse composers whose works were suppressed during the Nazi era, along with those whose voices were silenced altogether, and places them and their works in context within 20th century music.

“The Roaring Twenties” performers are Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Will Ferguson, tenor; James Tocco, piano; and Yehuda Hanani, cello and artistic director. They bring to life the spirit of a music that was nearly destroyed. Hear the recovered voices, come to the cabaret!

Tickets are $50 and $40. For reservations call 800-843-0778 or visit www.cewm.org.

A reception following the June 2 Close Encounters With Music “Roaring Twenties” concert is part of a $125 Preferred Seating Package which includes the concert and a ticket to the reception at Gateways Inn. To reserve a Preferred Seating Package go to www.cewm.org or call 1-800-843-0778.

THE ARTISTS

Jennifer Rivera is a superb lyric mezzo soprano with a growing career in the United States and abroad. She recently appeared with the Teatro Regio di Torino and makes her debut this season with the Berlin Staatsoper as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Ms. Rivera received her Master’s degree from Juilliard and, while a student, was invited to join the New York City Opera where she sang Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, and Nerone in Handel’s Agrippina. She has been praised repeatedly by The New York Times for her “radiant mezzo soprano,” her “warm dark tone,” and “fresh ready singing.” A favorite among living composers, Ms. Rivera created the starring role of Sharon Falconer in the critically acclaimed World Premiere of Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry, which premiered at Nashville Opera in 2007. She has received prizes in the Operalia Competition in Madrid where she performed in a Gala Concert conducted by Placido Domingo; the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions where she was winner of the Eastern Region and a national Semi-Finalist; the George London Foundation; the Opera Index Competition; the Licia Albanese Puccini Competition; and the Richard F. Gold Shoshana Foundation Career Grant from The Juilliard School.

Acclaimed for his versatility in both opera and concert, William Ferguson made his debut with the Santa Fe Opera in 2006 as Caliban in the North American premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Tempest. He soon joined the roster of The Metropolitan Opera where he has performed Beppe in I Pagliacci as well as roles in Le Nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute (under the baton of James Levine). A regular artist at The New York City Opera, his performances have included the title role in Candide, and Nanki-Poo in The Mikado. Additional credits include Wozzeck with Opera Festival of New Jersey, Così fan tutte at Aspen, Turandot with Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pirates of Penzance with Virginia Opera and Opera Omaha, Dido and Aeneas with Gotham Chamber Opera, the title role in Albert Herring at The Music Academy of the West, L’Heure Espagnole and Falstaff at the Tanglewood Music Center (both with Seiji Ozawa), and Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw at Chautauqua. Mr. Ferguson has appeared with the American Symphony Orchestra, BBC Orchestra (London), Boston Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (England), Handel and Haydn Society, and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, among others. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music degree from The Juilliard School.

Pianist James Tocco is widely regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of American masterworks, and his 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 Corigliano’s Etude-Fantasy. He is acknowledged to be the definitive interpreter of Corigliano’s Piano Concerto. Recent engagements include his Royal Concertgebouw debut, performing the MacDowell Concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, both under Leonard Slatkin. He is associated particularly with Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety, which he recorded with Leonard Slatkin and the BBC London Symphony. He has performed with most major American and European orchestras including the Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh as well as the Berlin, London, and Munich Philharmonics.

Cellist Yehuda Hanani is founder and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music. His engaging chamber music with commentary has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Scottsdale, the Berkshires, and at the Frick Collection in New York City. A three-time recipient of the Martha Baird Rockefeller grant and a nominee for Grand Prix du Disque for his pioneering recording of Alkan, he appears with orchestras and on the recital stage on five continents. Mr. Hanani is one of the illustrious cellists of today, has appeared with musical luminaries—Aaron Copland, Andre Kostelanetz, Dawn Upshaw, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Leon Fleisher—since his career was launched; and is a prolific recording artist and an innovator in reshaping concert programs to include original, illuminating commentary. He has been the subject of hundreds of articles and interviews in the media, and his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda” attracts thousands of fans. Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he also directs the High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival in Hunter, New York.

“Life Is A Cabaret,” an essay in the season’s playbill by Richard Houdek, traces the movements, trends and personalities during the era variously known as the “Jazz Age” and the “Roaring Twenties”: http://www.cewm.org/twenties.pdf

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

A Photograph of Lichetenstein Center for the Performing Arts

Close Encounters with Music Presents A Free Afternoon with Young Composers

(Pittsfield, MA) Emerging musicians Simon Brown, Brian Simalchik and 12 year old wunderkind Graham Cohen present their compositions Sunday, May 13 in an intimate setting at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. Conversations and music begin at 4 pm, and reflect on inspiration, influences and role models; the creative process; tonality and post-tonality, and how to find one’s artistic voice in a multi-directional anything-goes age. These young spokesmen will be addressing and demonstrating the future of classical music as they explore various compositional streams. The discussion and musical selections are part of the Close Encounters With Music series “Conversations With…”

The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments follow the panel discussion.
The Lichtenstein Center for the Arts is located at 28 Renne Avenue, Pittsfield, MA.

THE COMPOSERS

Simon Brown is the recipient of a Kellerman Foundation Grant for Music and the Koussevitsy Award for Excellence in Music. He earned a BA in Composition and Classical Guitar from Westfield State College, and graduated from Berkshire Community College. He currently teaches cello in a group setting, working with underprivileged elementary school students, in an El Sistema-inspired music program. Recent projects include Witch, a piece commissioned by the Berkshire Music School Orchestra. “I decided to write a fun, pulsing piece in three different meters- 4/4, 5/8 and 6/8. The effect is rhythmic cacophony, and the dissonant melody adds to the intense, creepy effect.”

Graham Cohen, age 12, was the 2009 Charlotte Bergen Scholarship Award recipient and ASCAP Morton Gould Award winner for his composition Infernal Fantasy. Since then ASCAP has honored Graham for his full orchestral work Hurricane Abigale and Exotica for 13 Instruments. Other compositions include Earth Symphony and Winds Off the Atlantic. He founded the group Quartet 48, and performed as principal violist for the New Jersey Youth Symphony Sinfonia. In 2010, he was accepted into the Juilliard Pre-College for composition and viola. His website informs us that “I also enjoy my cat, cooking, weather, and old cartoons.”

Brian Simalchik is a composer with interests ranging from American experimental music and minimalism, to rock n’ roll and noise. He received the 2010 Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship in Music at Williams College, where he graduated with highest honors in Music. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in composition at The Hartt School, where he co-directs the Composers Ensemble. He has collaborated in other disciplines, including theatre, dance and poetry. In November 2011 he wrote incidental music for a production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. As artist-in residence at Mass MOCA he presented original works with Roomful of Teeth. He has also had premieres by the Berkshire Symphony and Williams Symphonic Winds. His score for the documentary Child of Hope: Darfur Dreams of Peace won best soundtrack at the 2008 Kent Film Festival. American avant-garde. “Trade Winds” also includes Bulgarian pianist Emma Tahmizian playing Ravel’s Mother Goose and Leo Ornstein’s remarkable A la Chinoise, while Israeli violinist Hagai Shaham offers Debussy’s pentatonic-inflected Sonata and Fritz Kreisler’s Tambourin Chinois. He also performs a work from another ancient tradition-Joseph Achron’s haunting Hebrew Melody.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Saturday, May 19, 6 PM: “Daedalus Quartet-Beethoven, Schubert & Berg”
Presented by Close Encounters With Music
An intriguing all-Viennese program. Schubert’s Quartettsatz; Alban Berg’s groundbreaking Lyric Suite; “Razumovsky,” Beethoven’s Opus 59 No. 1 in F Major. Min-Young Kim, violin; Ara Gregorian, violin; Jessica Thompson, viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. Tickets $40/$30. Box Office: 413.528.0100.

Saturday, June 2, 6 PM : “The Roaring Twenties-Berlin, Paris, New York.”
Close Encounters With Music Season Finale at Tanglewood
Celebrate the golden age of jazz and cabaret, a period exemplified by experimentalism and decadence. Songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Cole Porter and Gershwin; Erwin Shulhoff’s Jazz Suite; and Entartete composers whose “degenerate” music. Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Will Ferguson, tenor; James Tocco, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello. Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall, Lenox, MA. Tickets $50 Orchestra/$40 Balconies. 800.843.0778; www.cewm.org.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Photograph of Liu Fang

Close Encounters with Music Presents “Trade Winds: From China with Love”

(Great Barrington, MA) China’s “Empress of Pipa,” soloist Liu Fang, enchants with counterparts to the lute and zither during “Trade Winds: From China With Love,” a celebration of traditional Chinese classical music. The concert is presented by Close Encounters With Music Saturday, April 21, 6 pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. Liu Fang is joined by cellist Yehuda Hanani for a premiere of Green by recent Pulitzer Prize winner Zhou Long. Originally written for Chinese bamboo flute and pipa in 1983, the version for cello and pipa was adapted in 2011. Composer Zhou Long elaborates on the intent of the work: “Heaven is blue, Earth yellow, and green all the plants they nurture. Green symbolizes the spirit of life. The music is exquisitely provocative, and its sound filling the distant space evokes the communion between man and nature.”

Before today’s multi-culturalism and penchant for fusion, the musical dialogue between East and West began with Debussy, Ravel, and the American avant-garde. “Trade Winds” also includes Bulgarian pianist Emma Tahmizian playing Ravel’s Mother Goose and Leo Ornstein’s remarkable A la Chinoise, while Israeli violinist Hagai Shaham offers Debussy’s pentatonic-inflected Sonata and Fritz Kreisler’s Tambourin Chinois. He also performs a work from another ancient tradition-Joseph Achron’s haunting Hebrew Melody.

The pipa has existed in China for over 2,000 years. Liu Fang compares classical Chinese music to Chinese poetry, lyric drama and calligraphy: “Chinese calligraphy has been regarded as the highest art form in our tradition. Indeed, great calligraphy gives me immense inspiration. The dynamics and movement of strokes of the brush, the line and the points, and the whole structure, are all comparable.” This is a rare appearance by one of today’s masters of the instrument combining her knowledge and practice with Western classical music, contemporary music and improvisation with distinguished colleagues.

An on-stage Afterglow Reception for the audience and artists follows the performance.

THE ARTISTS

As a child prodigy in her native China, and now as a resident of Canada, Liu Fang has been regarded as one of the eminent pipa soloists in the world. She is also an excellent proponent of the Guzheng, or Chinese zither. Her talent crosses all boundaries, linguistic and cultural: She regularly performs solo recitals of Chinese traditional and classical music as well as contemporary music with orchestras, string quartets and varying ensembles and has premiered new compositions-works of Canada’s leading composers R. Murray Schafer and Jose Evangelista among others. Highly acclaimed for her “Silk and Steel” projects in which she collaborates with world class musicians from various traditions, she has released nine solo and collaborative albums. Her most recent recording Silk Sound, for the French Label Accords Crosses, won the prestigious Académie Charles Cros (the French equivalent of the Grammy). Liu Fang is referred to in the press as “the empress of pipa” (L’actualité, 2001), “divine mediator” (World, 2006), “the greatest ambassadress of the art of the pipa” (La presse, 2002) and “possessing virtuoso technique, grace and a unique empathy toward the music she plays-whether it is a traditional folk tune or a modern Western composition” (All Music Guide, 2004). To view a conversation with Liu Fang, click here: http://www.cewm.org/pipa_soloist.pdf

Displaying a dazzling combination of technical brilliance and an intensely musical personality, Hagai Shaham is internationally recognized as one of the astonishing young violinists who have emerged from Israel in recent years. In September 1990, Hagai Shaham and his duo partner, Arnon Erez, won first prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in the Violin-Piano duo category, the first competitors to be awarded this coveted prize since 1971. As a soloist, Shaham has performed with many of the world’s major orchestras, among them the English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; with the Taipei, Singapore and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. In 1985 he was invited to join Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman Brahms’ Double Concerto at Carnegie Hall. In 2006 he performed this work again under Mehta, at the Israel Philharmonic 70th anniversary’s celebrations with cellist Misha Maisky. Mr. Shaham has recorded for Decca International, Chandos, Biddulph, Naxos, and Hyperion and served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at USC, Los Angeles.

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 soprano Bethany Beardslee. 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 philharmonics, 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.

Cellist Yehuda Hanani is founder and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music. His engaging chamber music with commentary has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Scottsdale, the Berkshires, and at the Frick Collection in New York City. A three-time recipient of the Martha Baird Rockefeller grant, he appears with orchestras and on the recital stage on five continents. He has been the subject of hundreds of articles and interviews in the media, and his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda” attracts thousands of fans. Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he also directs the High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival in Hunter, New York. He has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras around the world, with eminent colleagues, and has championed some of the most influential composers of our times.

Tickets, $40 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony) include the After Glow audience reception on stage. They are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, 413.528.0100. For further information contact www.cewm.org or 800-843-0778.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Sunday, April 29, 12:30 PM: Close Encounters With Music Annual Musicale Benefit at Blantyre
Savor a superb lunch and chamber concert while supporting Close Encounters With Music. A Salon-style celebration at one of the Berkshire’s most elegant resorts. Blantyre, Lenox, MA. For further information and reservations: 800.843.0778 or [email protected].

Sunday, May 13, 4 PM: “Conversations With…An Afternoon of Young Berkshire Composers”.
Free Presentation by Close Encounters With Music at the Lichtenstein Center
Emerging artists present their compositions. Conversations reflect on inspiration, the creative process and differences from the days of Mozart and Stravinsky. Light refreshments follow. The Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, 28 Renne Avenue, Pittsfield, MA. Free and open to the public. For further information: 800.843.0778 or [email protected].

Saturday, May 19, 6 PM: “Daedalus Quartet-Beethoven, Schubert & Berg”
Presented by Close Encounters With Music
An intriguing all-Viennese program. Schubert’s Quartettsatz; Alban Berg’s groundbreaking Lyric Suite; “Razumovsky,” Beethoven’s Opus 59 No. 1 in F Major. Min-Young Kim, violin; Ara Gregorian, violin; Jessica Thompson, viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. Tickets $40/$30. Box Office: 413.528.0100.

Saturday, June 2, 6 PM : “The Roaring Twenties-Berlin, Paris, New York.”
Close Encounters With Music Season Finale at Tanglewood
Celebrate the golden age of jazz and cabaret, a period exemplified by experimentalism and decadence. Songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Cole Porter and Gershwin; Erwin Shulhoff’s Jazz Suite; and Entartete composers whose “degenerate” music. Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Will Ferguson, tenor; James Tocco, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello. Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall, Lenox, MA. Tickets $50 Orchestra/$40 Balconies. 800.843.0778; www.cewm.org.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.