Sunday, April 29, 2018 at 3 PM
Grand Piano Trios — Felix Mendelssohn and Bedřich Smetana
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Great Barrington, MA

The remarkably versatile composer-pianist-conductor-painter-gymnast Felix Mendelssohn personifies genius and musical prodigy and his second Piano Trio in C minor (1845) is a true expression of the exquisite sensibility of his life and art. Bedřich Smetana’s profoundly moving Piano Trio in G minor of 1855 was composed after the death of his daughter; its style is close to that of Robert Schumann, with hints of Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz. Two of today’s brightest young performers join cellist Yehuda Hanani for a juxtaposition of these passionate works, written in classic mid-19th-century style, full of beauty and riveting melodies. Winner of the Paganini Competition, Soovin Kim makes his area debut along with Uzbekistan-born Roman Rabinovich, first-prize winner in the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition in 2008.

“The first of the three-star constellation of Czech composers who put Bohemia and Moravia on the musical map, drawing on grass roots folkloric material (the patriotic Moldau) and countering the ‘official’ Viennese hegemony, Smetana led the way for Dvorak and Janáček,” says artistic director Yehuda Hanani.  “He was the pioneer. And being the first, he was still influenced by German musical traditions. Mendelssohn’s less-frequently performed C minor Trio has all the characteristic brilliance of his writing–singing melodies, a chorale, a nocturnal magical scherzo reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream–and demonstrates why Schumann called him the Mozart of the 19th century. It’s tremendously stirring and optimistic and I couldn’t ask for better colleagues to perform these masterful works.”

Roman Rabinovich, piano; Soovin Kim, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets, $50 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $27 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, call 413-528-0100 or visit www.mahaiwe.org. Season subscriptions are $250 ($225 for seniors) Visit our website www.cewm.org for more information.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Praised by the New York Times for his “uncommon sensitivity and feeling,” the eloquent young pianist ROMAN RABINOVICH  is the winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, the same year he replaced the eminent pianist Murray Perahia in a recital at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.   He has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel in such prestigious venues as Wigmore Hall in London, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, as well as the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Cité de la Musique in Paris and the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.   Recital engagements include Vancouver Recital Society, Cincinnati Matinee Musical Series, Chopin Society in St. Paul, MN, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Walter Reade Theatre, as well as the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff. Last season Mr. Rabinovich presented his “Haydn Project,” comprising the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas, at the Lammermuir Festival in Scotland and at the Tel Aviv Conservatory in Israel and made debut appearances with the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra and Calgary Philharmonic. In 2015, distinguished pianist András Schiff chose him for the “Building Bridges” series created to highlight young pianists of unusual promise.  Under this aegis, Mr. Rabinovich was presented in a series of recitals in Zurich’s Tonhalle, Berlin, Ruhr Piano Festival, and New York’s SubCulture. Mr. Rabinovich, “whose mature, self-assured playing belies his chronological age” (San Francisco Classical Voice), made his Israel Philharmonic debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 10 and has been heard as soloist with all the Israeli orchestras, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, KBS Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Prague Symphony, Dohnányi Orchestra and many others. To date, he has participated in such festivals as Marlboro, Lucerne, Davos, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, and Prague Spring, and was honored with the Classical Recording Foundation Artist of the Year award for his CD Ballets Russes.  Born in 1985 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, his early piano studies were with his mother, Mira. In 1994, he and his parents immigrated to Israel where he studied with Arie Vardi at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Seymour Lipkin and obtained his master’s degree at the Juilliard School. Mr. Rabinovich also excels as a gifted artist. He often combines his concerts with exhibitions of his paintings. Besides traditional painting, Mr. Rabinovich draws on his iPad.

“Playing with exceptional boldness and confidence — a blazing, larger-than-life performance that seemed to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit” (Washington Post)

Violinist SOOVIN KIM is an exciting player who has built on the early successes of his prize-winning years to emerge as a mature and communicative artist. Kim enjoys a broad musical career, performing repertoire such as Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin and Mozart and Vivaldi concerti without conductor, as well as Romantic concerti, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, and world-premiere works almost every season. For two months each year, he performs as the first violinist of the Johannes String Quartet. Soovin Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont, and serves on the faculty of New England Conservatory. He has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in some of the world’s most prominent venues—Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royce Hall, Herbst Theatre, Ravinia, the Freer Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Lincoln Center and Strathmore Hall among them; at the Bard and Marlboro festivals, and in programs combining new music with standard repertoire at chamber music festivals in Bridgehampton and Charlottesville. He toured with the legendary Guarneri Quartet, as part of their last season before the public; with Musicians from Marlboro, and in numerous recital appearances and collaborations with such partners as Mitsuko Uchida, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Colin Carr, William Purvis, Gilbert Kalish, Martin Fröst, the Chiara Quartet and Jeremy Denk.  Mr. Kim has recorded for Azica Records the music of Fauré and Chausson, as well as Niccolò Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices for solo violin, which zoomed to Billboard’s Classical Chart, and was named Classic FM magazine’s Instrumental Disc of the Month (“he emerges thrillingly triumphant…a thrilling debut disc.”). He is a member of the violin faculty at New England Conservatory.

“Soovin Kim was the highlight of the evening, a patrician virtuoso on the solo part of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto…He drew a golden tone from his 1709 “ex-Kempner” Stradivarius” (Washington Post)

Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and re-engagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Honolulu Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Bowdoin, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Great Lakes, and Grand Canyon festivals, Finland Festival, Great Wall (China), Leicester (England), Ottawa, Prades (France), Oslo, and Australia Chamber Music festivals, and has collaborated in performances with preeminent fellow musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Itzhak Perlman, Vadim Repin, Dawn Upshaw, Shlomo Mintz, Yefim Bronfman, the Tokyo, Vermeer, Muir, Lark, Avalon, Amernet, and Manhattan quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano, as well as members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Borromeo, and Emerson. 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 Rogers Auditorium. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination, and his other discs have won wide recognition. On CD and in live performances, he has premiered works of Nicolai Miaskovsky, Lukas Foss, Leo Ornstein, Joan Tower, Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Jorge Martín, and Bernard Rands, among other composers. Mr. Hanani has been committed to extending the range of the cello repertoire and to collaborating with performers in many artistic realms, including actors Jane Alexander, Richard Chamberlain and Sigourney Weaver. Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he presents masterclasses internationally at conservatories and for orchestras, including the Juilliard School, University of Indiana at Bloomington, New England Conservatory, McGill University, Peabody Conservatory, Paris Conservatoire, Berlin Hochschule für Music, Royal Academy of Music in London, Tokyo National University, Jerusalem Academy of Music, Guildhall School in London, Central Conservatory of Shanghai and Central Conservatory of Beijing, and the New World Symphony in Miami. His engaging chamber music with commentary series, Close Encounters With Music, has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, 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 best-selling recording of the Unaccompanied Bach Suites has become a standard-setter, and of his recent Naxos CD with the National Symphony of Ireland Fanfare Magazine wrote: “Renowned cellist Yehuda Hanani, great virtuoso that he is, handles this with astounding aplomb…This is certainly a splendid release, and should by no means be passed up.” Aimed at outreach for classical music, his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda,” has gained thousands of fans for the direct broadcast and podcast. He directs the High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival that takes place in 2018 on the campus of the Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA. Soloist, chamber musician, master teacher, essayist, and ambassador for the arts, Yehuda Hanani illuminates and enlightens audiences on the essence of music.

ABOUT 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 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, Robert Beaser, 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 Roman Rabinovich, Soyeon Kate Lee, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists, Vadim Gluzman, Julian Rachlin, Peter Zazofsky, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, and Kelley O’Connor; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; 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 on the Radio/Podcast
Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune in to the new weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” on WAMC Northeast Radio. Visit www.wamc.org.

Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
Voice of the Baroque–A Close EnCountertenor!
Saturday, February 24, 6 PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrington, MA
$38 general seating, $15 for students

Three “storied” string quartets share the theme of a love triangle. The first three years of Schumann’s marriage to his beloved Clara Wieck were an exceedingly productive period for the young composer, and the time when he focused on the genre of the string quartet, producing the String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, one of the most poignant and satisfying of his works. Brahms, Clara’s platonic and cherished confidante and friend, reportedly destroyed some twenty string quartets before allowing the two Op. 51 quartets to be published, the achingly beautiful A minor No. 2 being one of these. Identified as one of opera’s most promising rising stars, in 2017 he received a Richard Tucker Music Foundation grant, made his European debut at the Theater an der Wien and was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition.

“It happened once in the history of Western music that contradictions coexisted in such perfect balance–passion and discipline, structure and freedom, intellectual rigor and spiritual flight. To quote my teacher Pablo Casals, ‘Bach is a miracle’” says artistic director Yehuda Hanani. “He is of his time and timeless.” Joining him for the journey through the sonatas is his long-time musical partner Michele Levin, first prize winner of the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Washington, DC.

With this concert and Nussbaum Cohen’s Berkshire debut, CEWM further displays its aptness for discovering fresh talent (violinist Vadim Gluzman and composer Osvaldo Golijov are just two of the world-class musicians who made their debuts with CEWM before being recognized by a wider public). The New York Times wrote recently of him, “There was only one complete artist. At just 23, Cohen, a baby-faced countertenor from Brooklyn, already possesses a remarkable gift for intimate communication….Expressive yet dignified, his phrasing confident and his ornamentation stylishly discreet, he brought tears to my eyes.”

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets are $38 general admission, $15 for students. Order by calling 800-843-07788 or visiting www.cewm.org. Subscriptions for the remaining season’s concerts are also available for purchase through Close Encounters With Music by phone, at www.cewm.org or at the concert.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

23-year-old American countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen has quickly been identified as one of opera’s most promising rising stars. In his breakout 2016-17 season, he was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, recipient of a Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, First Prize Winner in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition, and winner of an award from the George London Foundation. Recent performances have included the world premiere of Kenneth Fuchs’ Poems of Life with the Virginia Symphony, which he records with the London Symphony Orchestra for release in 2018 (Naxos). In the summer of 2016, he participated in the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, and in the summer of 2017, he joined Wolf Trap Opera as a Studio Artist. In 2017-18, he joins the Houston Grand Opera Studio as the first countertenor in the Studio’s history, where sings Nireno in Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Maid in Strauss’ Elektra. He also joins American Bach Soloists for their 20th annual performances of Handel’s Messiah in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, and Ars Lyrica Houston for two concert programs. On the recital stage, Nussbaum Cohen presents a recital in San Francisco, under the auspices of the Merola Opera Program, and he sings recitals in Houston, Great Barrington, MA and additional cities. In the summer of 2018, he makes his role debut as Ottone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Cincinnati Opera. He made his European debut at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, singing the primo uomo role of Timante in Gluck’s Demofonte with baroque ensemble Il Complesso Barocco. Nussbaum Cohen has significant experience in the world of sacred music. Highlights include serving as the alto soloist in the Bach Magnificat with the Leipzig Barockorchester in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany. During his senior year at Princeton University, he became the first singer in a decade to win the Princeton University Concerto Competition. Nussbaum Cohen received his BA in 2015 from Princeton, where he majored in History (with a concentration in Intellectual and Cultural History) and received certificates in Vocal Performance and Judaic Studies. Upon graduating, he was awarded Princeton’s Isidore and Helen Sacks Memorial Prize for extraordinary achievement in the arts, granted each year to the student of greatest promise in the performance of classical music.

Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and re-engagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Honolulu Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Bowdoin, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Great Lakes, and Grand Canyon festivals, Finland Festival, Great Wall (China), Leicester (England), Ottawa, Prades (France), Oslo, and Australia Chamber Music festivals, and has collaborated in performances with preeminent fellow musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Itzhak Perlman, Vadim Repin, Dawn Upshaw, Shlomo Mintz, Yefim Bronfman, the Tokyo, Vermeer, Muir, Lark, Avalon, Amernet, and Manhattan quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano, as well as members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Borromeo, and Emerson. 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 Rogers Auditorium. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination, and his other discs have won wide recognition. On CD and in live performances, he has premiered works of Nicolai Miaskovsky, Lukas Foss, Leo Ornstein, Joan Tower, Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Jorge Martín, and Bernard Rands, among other composers. Mr. Hanani has been committed to extending the range of the cello repertoire and to collaborating with performers in many artistic realms, including actors Jane Alexander, Richard Chamberlain and Sigourney Weaver. Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he presents masterclasses internationally at conservatories and for orchestras, including the Juilliard School, University of Indiana at Bloomington, New England Conservatory, McGill University, Peabody Conservatory, Paris Conservatoire, Berlin Hochschule für Music, Royal Academy of Music in London, Tokyo National University, Jerusalem Academy of Music, Guildhall School in London, Central Conservatory of Shanghai and Central Conservatory of Beijing, and the New World Symphony in Miami. His engaging chamber music with commentary series, Close Encounters With Music, has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, 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 best-selling recording of the Unaccompanied Bach Suites has become a standard-setter, and of his recent Naxos CD with the National Symphony of Ireland Fanfare Magazine wrote: “Renowned cellist Yehuda Hanani, great virtuoso that he is, handles this with astounding aplomb…This is certainly a splendid release, and should by no means be passed up.” Aimed at outreach for classical music, his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda,” has gained thousands of fans for the direct broadcast and podcast. He directs the High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival that takes place in 2018 on the campus of the Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA. Soloist, chamber musician, master teacher, essayist, and ambassador for the arts, Yehuda Hanani illuminates and enlightens audiences on the essence of music.

Audiences and critics have acclaimed Michele Levin, pianist and composer, as a multi-faceted musician of extraordinary sensitivity, virtuosity, and dedication to the art of making music. Ms. Levin is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music with a double major in piano and composition. She began her studies there at the age of eleven and is the first woman to receive a Curtis Master’s Degree in Composition. The Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Washington, DC awarded her first prize in competition with pianists from fourteen countries. Ms. Levin has performed as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Pops, Florida Philharmonic, Miami Chamber Symphony, Sinfonia Virtuosi, New World Symphony, Albany Symphony, and Virginia Symphony. She has also given solo and chamber music recitals in major cities throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. In demand as a chamber musician, she has toured the world with violinists Peter Zazofsky, Joseph Silverstein, Ruggerio Ricci, Nina Beilina, Daniel Phillips, Donald Weilerstein, Sydney Harth, Ik-Hwan Bae, Maria Bachman, Arve Tellefson, Lin Chang, and Yehonaton Berick; with violists Rivka Golani, Paul Neubauer, Atar Arad, Rainer Moog, and Jessie Levine; and with cellists Yehuda Hanani, Ronald Thomas, and Wolfgang Boettcher. She has performed with clarinetists Mitchell Lurie, Alexander Fiterstein, Eli Eban, and Charles Neidich; with harpist Heidi Lehwalder; and with flutists Thomas Wolf and Carol Wincenc. Ms. Levin tours regularly with the Muir String Quartet and as a guest artist with the Miami String Quartet. In 2007, the Muir Quartet premiered her String Quartet No. 1, which she dedicated to the quartet. Her repertoire extends into the realm of vocal music, having given recitals with Metropolitan Opera vocalists Gwendolyn Bradley, Marvis Martin, Martina Arroyo, D’Anna Fortunato, Carol Farley, Lucy Shelton, and William Sharp. Ms. Levin records for Koch International, EcoClassics, Altarus, and the Canadian Broadcasting Companies.

ABOUT 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 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, Robert Beaser, 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 Roman Rabinovich, Soyeon Kate Lee, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists, Vadim Gluzman, Julian Rachlin, Peter Zazofsky, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, and Kelley O’Connor; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; 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 on the Radio/Podcast
Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune in to the new weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” on WAMC Northeast Radio. Visit www.wamc.org.

ABOUT SAINT JAMES PLACE

Saint James Place opened in January 2017 as a home for small and mid-size Berkshire County arts groups in need of quality performance space. Saint James Place is a state-of the-art cultural center, where residents can enjoy music, theater, dance and other performances along with lectures, classes and meetings year-round in the heart of downtown Great Barrington.

To what extent do operas express the political and cultural ideas of their age? How do story lines, harmonies and musical motifs reflect the composer’s view of the changing relations among art, politics, and society? Mitchell Cohen, who combines his academic expertise in political science and lifelong interest in the spectacle of opera in his new book (The Politics of Opera—A History from Monteverdi to Mozart, Princeton Press), will underscore the political dimensions of libretti and ideological elements of opera, which absorbs and mirrors currents of the day in dramatic dress-up. Professor of political science at Baruch College and the Graduate School of CUNY, he has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement (London), Les Temps Modernes (Paris), and edited Princeton Readings in Political Thought (1995) and Rebels and Reactionaries: An Anthology of Great Political Stories (1992). Your next night at the opera won’t be the same!

“The Politics of Opera” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season. “Conversations With…” has presented such notable cultural personages as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim Fellow composer Judith Zaimont; baritone and actor Benjamin Luxon; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker and Directors Guild of America Award winner Peter Rosen; scholar, performer and multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine, and award-winning poet Charles Coe.

Tickets for this event are $20 and are available on the Close Encounters website – www.cewm.org, at 800-843-0778, or at the door. Light refreshments, following the presentation, are included.

ABOUT 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 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, Robert Beaser, 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 Adam Neiman, Roman Rabinovich, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Kelley O’Connor, and Lucille Beer; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; 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.

ABOUT SAINT JAMES PLACE
CEWM is delighted to return to the legendary acoustics of the newly “converted” Saint James Place, its earliest home. Saint James Place is a state-of the-art cultural center, where residents can enjoy music, theater, dance and other performances along with lectures, classes and meetings year-round in the heart of downtown Great Barrington. “The acoustics are old world, ideal for Baroque music. It’s a rich, intimate and warm sound with a radiance, a halo. The surroundings become an extension of the instruments being played and respond to their vibrations. Saint James Place is located at 352 Main Street in Great Barrington.

RENSSELAERVILLE, New York — “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” is the theme of the eighth edition of the Catskill High Peaks Festival, hosted by the Carey Institute for Global Good, August 6-17. A joint presentation of the Carey Institute and Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire-based chamber music organization, High Peaks this year features remarkable composers who stormed the barricades and helped revolutionize the place of women in the arts as it celebrates the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in NY State.

The ten-day chamber music festival and teaching institute, directed by internationally acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, offers a combination of concerts, lectures, film and master classes, open to the public—and featuring distinguished faculty artists sharing the stage with outstanding young musicians from around the world. Festival events will take place on the historic 100-acre estate of the Carey Institute for Global Good overlooking Lake Myosotis in Rensselaerville, New York. Throughout the festival and residency, historic, forgotten, and new works by women composers will be presented alongside major works by Bach, Schumann and Brahms in performances, master classes and special lectures. This year, the festival also expands into the mandolin repertoire, with French virtuoso mandolin player Vincent Beer-Demander.

Artistic director Yehuda Hanani observes, “The societal obstacles to acquiring the vote reflect the same barriers and cultural biases that women had to overcome to have their works published and performed and that kept them from careers as creators of new music. Since many of the key figures and pivotal events of the suffrage movement took place in or near our home region in the Hudson Valley, we believe this is a fitting time and place to bring attention to the creative achievements of women composers.”

Guest performers include: Peter Zazofsky, winner of the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Competition, soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, first violinist of the Muir Quartet, winner of two Grand Prix du Disques and founding director of the String Quartet Institute at Tanglewood; violinist Irina Muresanu; violist Michael Strauss; and pianist and conductor Michael Chertock, frequent soloist with the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, and BBC Symphony Orchestra. “We are committed to bringing the very best artists and leading pedagogues to continue this new musical tradition, here in the breathtaking environment that inspired the Hudson River School painters and generations of artists since,” says Hanani.  “The majestic setting of the Carey Institute for Global Good provides a backdrop for ten days of music-making and fellowship, bringing together fifty of the most talented young musicians from around the world to work with world the world-renowned faculty.”

The astonishing contribution of women composers to classical music will be manifest in the programming—two main Sunday evening concerts (August 6 and 13) featuring eminent guest soloists, chamber music ensembles mixing faculty and residents, and the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra; a concert at Basilica Hudson (Friday, August 11) and at the New York State Museum in Albany (Saturday, August 12) as well as in talks such as “The Schumanns—Music, Muse and Marriage” at the Carey (Sunday, August 13).  Composers represented include Grazyna Bacewicz, Caroline Shaw, Lili Boulanger, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn and Amy Beach.  At summer’s end master students and faculty will be encouraged to explore, research and perform women’s compositions back in their own conservatories—Juilliard, Curtis, Paris Conservatoire, Oberlin, Boston University, Tokyo, Korea, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and other leading schools.

Two Sunday Concerts in Rensselaerville

The festival opens with “Crazy Quilt—Schubert, Piazzolla, Locatelli, Clara Schumann, Caroline Shaw and more” Sunday, August 6, 7 PM at the Carey Institute’s Guggenheim Pavilion.  Tango, Baroque, Romantic, popular—it’s all stitched together in an incredibly vibrant tapestry. With pianist Mikael Darmanie, violinist Peter Zazofsky, and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

The centerpieces of the second Sunday concert are Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, Vivaldi Concerto for Two Mandolins and Brahms Piano Quintet and Bacewicz Quartet for Four Violins, performed by faculty and young resident artists joining together for these chamber music favorites. This last of the Brandenburgs highlights the burnished lower tones of viola and viola da gamba.  Sunday, August 13, 7 PM at the Carey Institute’s Guggenheim Pavilion.

In Hudson

A performance is scheduled on Friday, August 11, 8 PM at Basilica Hudson, a former industrial building newly renovated and repurposed as an arts center.  Renowned faculty and international rising young artists from the festival fill the hall with an exuberant display of virtuosity and talent. Various chamber music combinations and crossover repertoire include cello chorus, violin and mandolin ensembles and the High Peaks Chamber orchestra in works by Vivaldi (with an all-ladies orchestra) and notable women composers, historic and current—Amy Beach, Lily Boulanger, Caroline Shaw and Grazyna Bacewicz.  A celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York State with music from the demur and lyrical to the bold, propulsive and cosmic!  Performers include: Irina Muresanu and Peter Zazofsky, violin; Michael Strauss, viola; Yehuda Hanani, Paul Dwyer and DoYeon Kim, cello; Michael Chertock and Mikael Darmanie, piano; and the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra. 

And more in Rensselaerville…

Throughout the festival, a series of performances by talented up-and-coming musicians participating in the residency will provide audiences with an opportunity to catch a glimpse of some of the classical music world’s future stars. This series of “Moonlight Sonatas” performances showcasing top-tier young artists at the Carey Institute is free and open to the public. This year’s program also features a “Buddy Day” on August 14, in which 25 students from Albany’s Empire State Youth Orchestra and Kids 4 Harmony in Pittsfield and CHIMES of Albany will participate in a day of interaction with the residents and masters, culminating with a performance at 4 PM.

The festival also offers a series of illuminating talks, free classes, and workshops offered each day. For a full schedule of events, visit www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org. 
 
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Lawyer, best-selling author, and cultural historian Linda Hirshman has chronicled battles that have changed the social landscape of America in her books Get to work: A Manifesto For Women of the World, Hard Bargains: The Politics of Sex, and others. Her dual biography of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sisters in Law reveals how these trailblazers shaped the legal framework of modern feminism, also situating their respective ascents to the Court within the broader women’s rights movement. A fitting way to celebrate Mother’s Day, with historic and current-day women of note-with the backdrop of Edith Wharton’s majestic and beloved Lenox property The Mount; a discussion resting on heroines of our legal system; and the brilliant author and thinker Linda Hirshman!

Hirshman has written for a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, and The Daily Beast, and participated herself in cases in the United States Supreme Court representing organized labor. She has also spent time in academia, teaching law, and philosophy and women’s studies at Brandeis University. A charismatic speaker, she will analyze the 14th and 19th Amendments in tandem as two paths to equality in the suffrage effort and as they affected private and public lives of women Hirshman compares Ginsburg to no less than Mozart and Jane Austen, with her observation that “Mozart had, by many accounts, five operatic masterpieces. Jane Austen’s reputation rests on five novels. . . . In five landmark cases over less than a decade, [Ginsburg] largely transformed the constitutional status of women in America.”

With this event and others, Close Encounters With Music is marking the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in NY state with special programming highlighting women composers and other women of achievement. The June 10 gala (Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington), “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” features remarkable composers who stormed the barricades and helped revolutionize the place of women in the arts—playing four-hand piano with Mozart, conducting their works from an English prison, and overcoming the taboo to write but not be heard, especially in public. These include the estimable Clara Schumann, Fannie Mendelssohn, Maria Theresia von Paradis, Ethel Smyth, Lili Boulanger, Amy Beach, Marianna Martinez and Augusta Holmes, as well as contemporary composers Thea Musgrave, Tamar Muskal, Joan Tower, Judith Zaimont and Patricia Leonard.

“Linda Hirshman and the Feminine Mystique” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season. “Conversations With…” has presented such notable cultural personages as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; baritone and actor Benjamin Luxon; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee filmmaker Daniel Anker and Directors Guild of America Award winner Peter Rosen; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine, and Metropolitan Museum curator of historic instruments Ken Moore.

Tickets for this event are $15 and are available on the Close Encounters website— www.cewm.org , at 800-843-0778, or at the door. Light refreshments, following the presentation, are included.

CLOSE  ENCOUNTERS ON THE RADIO/PODCAST
Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune in to the new weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” on WAMC Northeast Radio or visit www.wamc.org.

ABOUT 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 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, Robert Beaser, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Thea Musgrave 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 Adam Neiman, Roman Rabinovich, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Kelley O’Connor, and Lucille Beer; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; 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.

2016-2017 CALENDAR

Chamber Orchestra Kremlin—Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn
Saturday, October 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

The Passion of Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck—Cherchez la Femme!
Saturday, December 3, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

Mid-Winter Fireside Concert–The Intimate Bach
Saturday, February 18, 6PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrinton, MA

Beethoven Journey–Early, Middle and Late
Saturday, March 18, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, April 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, May 6, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman—Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage
Saturday, June 10, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is at 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
Saint James Place is at 352 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.


Conversations With…

“Shattering the Glass Ceiling” with Prize-Winning Composer Hannah Lash at the Hudson Opera House (Hudson, NY) is on Sunday, November 20 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Author Linda Hirshman and The Feminine Mystique” is at The Mount (Lenox, MA) on Sunday, May 14 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

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“The Berkshires are home to distinguished cultural events, but none so brilliant, perhaps, as the chamber music series Close Encounters With Music.” —Berkshire Record

“…A stunning, majestic resolution, a brilliant ending to an unforgettable encounter with music. Bravi!” —The Berkshire Edge

“…To experience the finest music ever written, presented by leading musicians of the day, in the inviting atmosphere of the Berkshires, is the best of all possible worlds. . . The quality of Lincoln Center with an intimacy that exceeds it….”
—Yehuda Hanani, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR