Press Releases Archives - Page 6 of 12 - Close Encounters With Music

The Art of the String Quartet

As they soar to the top of the international quartet firmament, the Escher Quartet will make their Berkshire debut at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center 6 PM on April 15 for an unforgettable evening of music Their rare tonal beauty will unfold as they bring their special sheen to three landmark works of chamber music: Mendelssohn’s gripping Quartet in F minor, opus 80, saturated with poetic melancholy and written in memory of his beloved sister Fannie; the Bartók Quartet No. 3, whose string quartets in particular achieve a fusion of folk and Western art music; and Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet in E minor, opus 59, No. 2, resplendent in its cosmic grandeur. Acclaimed for their keen musical insights and championed by the Emerson String Quartet, the Escher gave debuts at the BBC Proms and has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia.

According to Close Encounters artistic director and cellist Yehuda Hanani, “Both Béla Bartók and Felix Mendelssohn used Beethoven as their model for writing in this form. Beethoven had democratized the string quartet and made it a discourse among equals. Mendelssohn and Bartók took the idea forward, continuing his legacy into the twentieth century.” CEWM enthusiastically welcomes these BBC New Generation Artists, winners of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

“Clearly one of the finest quartets of their generation” (The Guardian)

The Escher String Quartet: Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Aaron Boyd, violin; Pierre La Pointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello www.escherquartet.com

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.

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $25 (Balcony) and $15 for students
Available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100.

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.

~

“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

March 6, 2017

Close Encounters with Music to Present “Beethoven Journey-Early, Middle and Late”

Press Releases

Press Release of Beethoven Journey and Artists

FEBRUARY 3, 2017

(Great Barrington, MA) On Saturday, March 18, Close Encounters With Music presents three stops along Ludwig’s journey, from disciple of Haydn to Olympian master and from historical time and place to transcending earthly connections: the early cello sonata No. 2 in G minor, a middle-period violin sonata No. 7 in C minor, and the glorious “Archduke” Trio Opus 97.

The program makes a case for art as biography. With representative works from his three periods, audiences will take away a composite portrait of Beethoven as a cultural giant steered oftentimes by his personal life.

“By the time we arrive at the majestic Archduke Trio, Beethoven is a changed person,” says artistic director and cellist Yehuda Hanani, who introduces each performance with guideposts for listening. “Gone are the rage, the self-pity and sentimentality of the earlier periods. It is a noble panoramic view from the mountain top.”

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.
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February 3, 2017

Close Encounters with Music to Present “The Intimate Back” Mid-Winter Fireside Concert at the Newly Renovated Saint James Place

Press Releases

The wonders of Bach are inexhaustible, and after decades of intimate dialogue with the suites, artistic director Yehuda Hanani is “still awed by his mastery, his architectural strength and harmonic daring, the human truth reflected in his balancing tension and release.” Three of the sublime unaccompanied suites that have taken dances from the courts of Europe and lifted them to the most spiritual realm will be presented in contrasting modern and historical approaches on modern cello and its earlier cousin the Baroque cello. These are works that were conceived under uneven non-electric light, predating the metronome, paved roads, and assembly lines, with no two performances or performers alike—an unending realm of possibilities. CEWM is delighted to return to the legendary acoustics of the newly “converted” Saint James Place, its earliest home.

The Bach suites will be performed alternately by Yehuda Hanani, whose recordings, masterclasses and seemingly direct line to the Baroque master are acknowledged as definitive interpretations of the works, and Kivie Cahn-Lipman, founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and director of the period instrument ensemble ACRONYM. Equally at home between the two bookends of music history, he has served on the faculties of Smith College and Mount Holyoke, and has recorded on the Naxos, Bridge, Tzadik and Nonesuch labels. As a chamber musician, Mr. Cahn-Lipman has performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and Rose Theatre and other major venues on three continents. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Oberlin and Juilliard and received his doctorate from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.

Hanani’s performances are acclaimed for their blend of intellectual rigor and intuition and spontaneity. Says Hanani, “The title ‘Unaccompanied’ attached to the suites is a misnomer. They are as unaccompanied as any of the numerous keyboard works in the sense that they are played by a single person. Musically, however, they are very much accompanied—by a bass line, above which two of three additional voices are spun. The challenge is to create an acoustic illusion of continuity. These suites are blueprints for cellists of all generations for the construction of temples of sound in time; and as long as time is, the task remains unfinished.”

Cellist and artistic director, Yehuda Hanani, who provides incisive commentary at each CEWM concert, is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and lecturer around the globe. He has been guest soloist with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, and Seoul Symphony as well as Columbus, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, New Orleans, Honolulu, Chattanooga, and many more in the US and on four continents.

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.

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets: $35
Yehuda Hanani, cello; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, Baroque cello
Mid-Winter Fireside Concert-The Intimate Bach
Saturday, February 18, 6PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrington, MA
Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

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.

~

“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

January 9, 2017

“A Studio of Her Own-Shattering the Glass Ceiling” with Prize-Winning Composer Hannah Lash

Press Releases

(Hudson, NY…) Just a century ago, you could count on one hand the number of women composers whose works were heard in public. As recently as the mid-19th century, Fanny Mendelssohn’s father declared it unseemly for her to publish her music—just a few decades before Edith Wharton’s family compelled her to publish her literary works under the name of her father’s friend. On Sunday, November 20, at 3 PM, Yale composer Hannah Lash, who has been lauded hailed by the New York Times for music that is “striking and resourceful…handsomely brooding,” will provide first-hand insights into what has changed and what remains of this restrictive legacy.

Ms. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Lash obtained her Ph.D in Composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University, at Alfred University, and currently serves on the composition faculty at Yale University School of Music. Her works have been commissioned by orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra and has been presented in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is married to actor Stephen Routman, who has appeared in The Wolf of Wall Street and Inside Llewyn Davis, among many Broadway, TV and film productions.

“A Studio of Her Own” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season.

The spring program in the series presents lawyer, best-selling author and cultural historian Linda Hirshman and “The Feminine Mystique” 3 PM, Sunday, May 14 at The Mount in Lenox, MA. Conversations With… has presented such notable speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow 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 filmmaker Daniel Anker; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine, and Metropolitan Museum curator of historic instruments Ken Moore.

Close Encounters Declares 2016-2017 “The Year of the Woman”
The Conversations With… talks are part of the CEWM’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in NY State, honoring women’s full assumption of place in the arts. The talks begin the three-season initiative, with a gala concert of commissions rounding out the year on June 10—a “quilt” of miniatures by Thea Musgrave, Tamar Muskal, Joan Tower, and Judith Zaimont, musical portraits of suffragettes and other women of valor—Ethel Smyth, Emma Lazarus, and Sojourner Truth—who advanced the causes of everyone with their steadfastness, ingenuity and idealism. On December 3 a light shines on the work and life of French composer Augusta Holmès and her relationship with Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck. For the season’s schedule of concerts see www.cewm.org.

“A STUDIO OF HER OWN—SHATTERING THE GLASS CEILING” WITH PRIZE-WINNING COMPOSER HANNAH LASH
Sunday, November 20, 3 PM
Hudson Opera House, Hudson, NY
Tickets: $15 includes light refreshment

Tickets for this event are available on the Close Encounters website— www.cewm.org , at 800-843-0778, or at the door. For more information please email [email protected]. 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, 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.

ABOUT THE HUDSON OPERA HOUSE
The Hudson Opera House offers a year-round schedule of arts and cultural programming in the 1855 former Hudson City Hall which contains New York State’s oldest surviving theatre. Since opening the first restored room in December of 1997, five rooms on the first floor have been rehabilitated, and we have presented thousands of cultural and educational programs, more than 1,125 in the last year alone. Ongoing programs include concerts, readings, lectures, exhibitions, theatre and dance presentations, workshops, classes, and community arts events like the annual Winter Walk on Warren Street.
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.

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $25 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 7 concerts. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

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.

~

“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

October 17, 2016

Close Encounters with Music Announces 25th Anniversary Season with its Signature Mix of Innovative Programs- Chamber Orchestra Kremlin Launches Season October 15; La Guitar Quartet takes the Stage; Season Finale Commemorates 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage; Celebrity Talks, Fireside Concert; Commissions, Collaborations, Celebrations All Season

Press Releases

(Great Barrington, MA…) Embarking on its 25th year of presenting outstanding chamber music with lively commentary, the Berkshires’ premier chamber music organization Close Encounters With Music CELEBRATES a landmark anniversary! It will be a season of commemorations and discoveries, world-renowned musicians and extraordinary new faces, and continued expansion of original programming of classical, contemporary and cutting-edge music.

Concurrent with celebrating its 25th, CEWM marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in NY State and declares 2016-17 the Year of the Woman, launching a three-season initiative to bring works by women composers to the fore! The season culminates with a gala concert of commissions—a “quilt” of miniatures by Thea Musgrave, Tamar Muskal, Joan Tower, and Judith Zaimont, musical portraits of suffragettes and other women of valor—Ethel Smyth, Emma Lazarus, and Sojourner Truth—who advanced the causes of everyone with their steadfastness, ingenuity and idealism. A light shines on the work and life of French composer Augusta Holmès and her relationship with Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck—and two superstar speakers (see Conversations With… panel) present women’s themes.

Featured performers this season are the Escher Quartet, which has risen meteorically to the highest echelons of the string quartet firmament; Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes (“The luminous shimmer, bright finish and clarion high notes brought pure sunshine to everything she sang”—Washington Post), pianists Roman Rabinovich, Michael Brown, Renana Gutman and Ieva Jokubaviciute; the outstanding Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, plus CEWM returning favorites and brilliant performers making their debuts. From October to June, it’s a season NOT TO BE MISSED!

Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani has led the series since its founding, providing entertaining, erudite commentary that puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich and enlighten the concert experience. Each concert is framed by an introduction before the music, and is followed by an AFTERGLOW reception with an informal “talk-back” and an opportunity to meet the musicians. Venues include the landmark Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center and the newly renovated Saint James Place in Great Barrington; Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox; and the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY.

(For Calendar listings, see below.)

Chamber Orchestra Kremlin—Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn
Saturday, October 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), Students $15

The season opens Saturday, October 15, at 6 PM with the return of audience favorite Chamber Orchestra Kremlin in a panoramic program of Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich (augmentation of his powerful 8th String Quartet). The grand and lush sweep of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings was not lost on the composer himself who said, “I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played.” Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C was discovered in a private music collection in Czechoslovakia in 1964 and has since been embraced by cellists as one of the major solo vehicles for their instrument. Carving out a singular niche, the “crème de la Kremlin” tours the US, Europe, Asia, and South America annually, and has recorded over thirty CDs with its signature supercharged brilliance (“The ensemble’s music director elicited warm, full-blooded and virtuosic playing with colorfully shaped, gleaming phrases” —The New York Times).

Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Misha Rachlevsky, conductor; Yehuda Hanani, cello

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The Passion of Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck—Cherchez la Femme!
Saturday, December 3, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), Students $15

Tout Paris was in love with the alluring Augusta Holmès, a student at the Conservatoire, later a pivotal figure in the artistic circles of fin-de-siècle Paris (her daughters were famously painted at the piano by Renoir). The tie that binds together the brilliantly virtuosic Saint-Saëns Violin Sonata No. 1 and the smoldering Franck Piano Quintet is the composers’ shared unrequited adoration of Augusta. Dubbed the “quintet of discontent” it was dedicated to Saint-Saëns, who walked out of the first performance while Madame Franck quietly seethed at the transparency of this emotional exposé of passion. One of the masterpieces of the repertoire, it provides musical high drama and a glimpse into a fevered soul. Holmès’s own salute to love opens the program on Saturday, December 3 at 6 PM.

Roman Rabinovich, piano; Diana Cohen and Sarah McElravy, violin; Xiao-Dong Wang, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

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Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
The Intimate Bach
Saturday, February 18, 6 PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrington, MA
FREE TO SUBSCRIBERS ($35 FOR THE PUBLIC, $15 FOR STUDENTS)

The wonders of Bach are inexhaustible, and after decades of intimate dialogue with the suites, artistic director Yehuda Hanani is “still awed by his mastery, his architectural strength and harmonic daring, the human truth reflected in his balancing tension and release.” Three of the sublime unaccompanied suites that have taken dances from the courts of Europe and lifted them to the most spiritual realm will be presented in contrasting modern and historical approaches on modern cello and baroque cello. These are works that were conceived under uneven nonelectric light, predating the metronome, paved roads, and assembly lines, with no two performances or performers alike—an unending realm of possibilities. CEWM is delighted to return Saturday, February 18 at 6 PM to the legendary acoustics of the newly “converted” Saint James Place, its earliest home.

Yehuda Hanani, cello; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, baroque cello

~

Beethoven Journey–Early, Middle and Late
Saturday, March 18, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), Students $15

Saturday, March 18 at 6 PM represents three stops along Ludwig’s journey, from disciple of Haydn to Olympian master and from historical time and place to transcending earthly connections. The early Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor, a middle-period Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, and the glorious “Archduke” Trio. Winner of a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Michael Brown has been described by The New York Times as a “young piano visionary” and “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” Violinist Rachel Lee Priday, acclaimed for her beauty of tone, riveting stage presence, and “irresistible panache” (Chicago Tribune), has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, including the Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, and Seattle Symphony orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Berlin Staatskapelle.

Michael Brown, piano; Rachel Lee Priday, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello

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The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, April 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), Students $15

Acclaimed for musical insights and rare tonal beauty, and championed by the Emerson String Quartet, the Escher has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia. They served as BBC New Generation Artists and gave debuts at the BBC Proms, are winners of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and perform as Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. For this program, they bring their special sheen to Mendelssohn’s gripping Quartet in E minor, opus 80, saturated with poetic melancholy and written in memory of his beloved sister Fannie; to the Bartok Quartet No. 3, whose string quartets in particular achieve a fusion of folk and Western art music; and Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet in E minor, opus 59, No. 2, resplendent in its cosmic grandeur. Three landmark works of chamber music delivered by new stars in the quartet firmament, Saturday, April 15 at 6 PM.
“Clearly one of the finest quartets of their generation” (The Guardian)

The Escher String Quartet: Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Aaron Boyd, violin; Pierre La Pointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello

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The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, May 6, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), Students $15

The Grammy Award-winning LAGQ is one of the most multifaceted groups in any genre, consistently playing to sold-out houses world-wide. Their inventive, critically acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, while their interpretations of works from the contemporary and world-music realms continually break new ground. Haunting music from the time of Cervantes, breathtaking transcription from the opera Carmen, Copland Mexican songs, Jazz, and an arrangement of the Bach Brandenburg as well as Far East and Irish classics will transport listeners around the world in a single concert experience! Saturday, May 6 at 6 PM.

“The world’s hottest classical ensemble or its tightest pop band? However it helps you to think about the LAGQ, keep the emphasis on superlatives for its unrivaled joy, technical élan and questing spirits.” —Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet: John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant, guitar

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Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman—Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage
Saturday, June 10, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $50 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony), Students $15

Anonymous may have been a woman composer. Clara Schumann, Fannie Mendelssohn, Germaine Tailleferre, Maria Theresia von Paradis, Ethel Smyth, Lili Boulanger, Amy Beach, Marianna Martinez, and Augusta Holmès (120-some songs!), move from footnotes to forces in the annals of classical music as women gain the vote and their artistic voices. Extraordinary works by these fearless female composers include songs and sonatas displaying the genius of Fannie, Clara, Amy and Augusta; Tailleferre’s richly romantic Piano Trio; von Paradis’ shimmering Sicilienne; Piano Sonata in G Major by Martinez, a study in beauty and classicism, plus the Mozart four-hand piano sonata she performed with Amadeus himself. Additionally, to kick off a multi-year celebration of women in music, CEWM has commissioned a “quilt” of miniatures by Thea Musgrave, Tamar Muskal, Joan Tower, and Judith Zaimont, musical portraits of suffragettes and other ladies of valor—Smyth, Emma Lazarus, Sojourner Truth, and Candace Wheeler—who advanced the causes of women and everyone else with their steadfastness, ingenuity and idealism. Saturday, June 10, 6 PM.

Renana Gutman and Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano; Xiao-Dong Wang, violin; Danielle Talamantes, soprano; Yehuda Hanani, cello

In the Close Encounters With Music tradition, each performance is followed by an AFTERGLOW reception, with hors d’oeuvres and wine provided by local restaurants.

MORE THAN MUSIC:

Close Encounters With Music continues its listen and talk series, Conversations With… intimate and stimulating afternoons of music, literature and exchanges of ideas with notable performers, critics, authors, and cultural personages.

Shattering the Glass Ceiling – Brigadier General (Ret.) Carol Eggert
Sunday, November 20, 3 PM
Hudson Opera House, Hudson, NY
Tickets: $15 includes light refreshment

Joining the military as a French horn player, recently retired Brigadier General Carol Eggert has served in a wide variety of field and staff positions, including battalion command and overseas deployments to Germany, Italy, Nicaragua and Lithuania. During a combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as Chief of the Women’s Initiatives Division and Senior Liaison to the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, she developed a strategic plan for the economic and political empowerment of Iraqi women under the U.S. Secretary of State. In recognition of her contributions to the military, she has received numerous awards and commendations, including the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and multiple awards of the Meritorious Service Medal. Weaving personal biography with history, General Eggert will provide first-hand insights that resonate with our celebration of women’s full assumption of roles in government and the arts.
$15 includes light refreshment

Author Linda Hirshman and The Feminine Mystique
Sunday, May 14, 3 PM
The Mount, Lenox, MA
Tickets: $15 includes light refreshment

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. 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.
$15 includes light refreshment

For further information and to make reservations: 800.843.0778 or [email protected].

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 the composers and their times in perspective to enrich and enlighten the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Lera Auerbach, Robert Beaser, Kenji Bunch, Osvaldo Golijov, John Musto, and Paul Schoenfield 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, Lydia Artymiw and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manahattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf, 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 With Music programs have been presented in cities across the U.S. and Canada—Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Omaha, Cincinnati, Calgary, Detroit, at the Frick Collection and Merkin Hall in New York City, at Tanglewood and in Great Barrington, MA, as well as in Scottsdale, AZ. Summer performances have taken place at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; and the Catskill High Peaks Festival continued the educational mission of Close Encounters With Music with fifty international students in residence in the Great Northern Catskills at the Carey Center for Global Good in an immersive course of study and performance.

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $25 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 7 concerts. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

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 Brigadier General Carol Eggert 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

September 7, 2016

Close Encounters with Music Summers on a Mountain Top: Catskill High Peaks Music Festival August 7-18 Brigs “The Miracle of Back and his Legacy” to the Hudson Valley and Capital Region with Internationally Acclaimed Musicians and Young Artists Around the Clock Festivities at Carey Institute Location – Baroque Themed Concerts, Lectures, master Classes and Film! “Beethoven, Back and Beer” on Tap; J.S. Back at the Top of the Charts!

Press Releases

RENSSELAERVILLE, New York — “The Miracle of Bach” is the theme of the seventh edition of the Catskill High Peaks Festival, hosted by the Carey Institute for Global Good, August 7-18. A joint presentation of the Carey Institute and Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire-based chamber music organization, High Peaks this year turns its attention to the architectural genius and spiritual force of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose influence hovered over every future generation of composers that followed him. On a recent New York Times survey of the all-time top ten classical composers, opinions varied from number two on; however, number one was unanimous, and Bach remains securely at the top of the chart!

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, the works and legacy of J. S. Bach, extending through the Romantics (Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, who worshiped him, will be present), will be explored via daily performances and events.

Guest performers include: Peter Zazofsky, winner of the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Competition, soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, and first violinist of the Muir Quartet; winner of two Grand Prix du Disque and founding director of the String Quartet Institute at Tanglewood, violinist Bayla Keyes; 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 50 of the most talented young musicians from around the world to work with world the world-renowned faculty.”

An unwavering enthusiasm for Johann Sebastian Bach’s music will be manifest in the programming—two main Sunday evening concerts featuring eminent guest soloists, chamber music ensembles mixing faculty and residents, and the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra; a concert at the newly renovated Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY, and in talks that illuminate subjects such as a “Bravura and virtuosity a la Baroque,” demonstrate how to improvise effectively, and demystify the Fugue as a musical form. Performers and audiences will experience an exciting perspective on the many ways to be “authentic” in approaching music that has survived and flourished for over 300 years.

The festival opens with “A Musical Offering—Celebrating J. S. Bach, Beethoven & Duke Ellington” Sunday, August 7, 7 pm at the Carey Institute’s Guggenheim Pavilion. Like Bach, Ellington was an exemplar of the art of improvisation, embracing the phrase “beyond category” as a liberating principle, and defying classification.

The centerpieces of the second Sunday concert are Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins, the Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 3, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet (double string quartet) with faculty and young resident artists joining together for this chamber music favorite. Written when Mendelssohn was sixteen, its brilliance, youthful verve and perfection make it one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music.

Additional performances
“Music From High Peaks,” with a mix of faculty and young artist-participants, has been featured throughout the Hudson Valley-Berkshire region—at Basilica Hudson in Hudson, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, in the orchard at Olana, at historic Clermont, at the Doctorow PAC in Hunter and the Orpheum Theater in Tannersville, NY. This August, in addition to concerts in Rensselaerville, a performance is scheduled on Friday, August 12, 7 PM at Bridge Street Theatre’s Mainstage in Catskill, a former industrial building newly renovated and repurposed as an intimate arts center. Performers include: Bayla Keyes and Peter Zazofsky, violin; Michael Strauss, viola; Yehuda Hanani, Tom Landschoot and Sae Rom Kwon, cello; Michael Chertock and Mikael Darmanie, piano; Baroque specialist Paul Dwyer; and the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra.

On a frothy note, “Bach and Beethoven in the Tavern” will be presented at the Carey Institute on Saturday, August 13 as part of the “Moonlight Sonatas” series, and in conjunction with the Helderberg Brewery. Not some saintly figures above common indulgences, both masters were fond of their beer and the tavern atmosphere. From all accounts, J. S. Bach enjoyed life enormously, and this included beer drinking. He was often paid for his compositions in beer.

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 15, in which approximately 20 students from Albany’s Empire State Youth Orchestra and Kids4Harmony in Pittsfield will participate in a full day of interaction with the Residents and Masters, culminating with a performance at 4 PM.

The festival also offers a series of illuminating talks, a “Meet the Artists Tea and Talk,” and free classes and workshops offered each day. For a full schedule of events, visit www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org.

Catskill High Peaks Festival Artistic Director, Yehuda Hanani has received acclaim across the globe for his charismatic playing and profound interpretations. 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, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Irish National Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Seoul Symphony, Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, and the BBC Welsh Symphony. 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. 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. A prolific recording artist, he is Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music and the new Taipei-New York Festival in Taipei, Taiwan as well as Shanghai, China.

Established in 2012 when international businessman Wm. P. Carey purchased the campus, the Carey Institute for Global Good mission is to make a better world by contributing to a strong, educated and just society, “to bring together innovative and dynamic people from around the world to seek creative solutions to the most pressing challenges of the day.” The Carey Institute is located in the historic hamlet of Rensselaerville, New York on a 100-acre campus in the heart of a pristine nature reserve. It works with local and international partners to achieve its mission through residency programs and initiatives in nonfiction, agriculture, and art and music.

Ticket information
Music From High Peaks at The Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY
Available at catskillhighpeaksmusic.org in advance or at the door: 444 West Bridge Street, Catskill
General admission $25; students $15

Most events are free. To reserve tickets, and for information about concerts, a list of master classes, Stars of Tomorrow concerts and Tea & Talk at the Carey: www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org and (800) 843-0778; or www.careyinstitute.org (518) 797-3692 http://berkshirehighpeaksmusic.org/

July 7, 2016

The Music that Shook the World Press Release

Close Encounters June 11 Gala Concert “Music that Shook the World” Earthquakes for the Ears-Musical Ground Resettles into Modernism Beethoven, Stravinsky, Debussy, Antheil Transform Music

Press Releases

(Great Barrington, MA) The 20th century saw a series of cultural earthquakes that shook the music establishment and scandalized audiences. Now that modernism has receded, we can view them in perspective and see how they entered the mainstream and vitalized our concert experience. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Debussy’s breaking through the German hegemony with Impressionism; granting Jazz concert hall respectability; coupling music with film (from “Bad Boy of Music” George Antheil and Fernand Léger’s 1924 Ballet Mécanique); and the advent of Latin American vernacular—all radically transformed our notion of classical music. Amplifying the music, passages from Igor Stravinsky’s and Antheil’s memoirs will be threaded through the program and read by brilliant comedienne Alison Larkin.

As Paris was the nexus of all the art forms and isms of the early part of the 20th century, the first half of the program includes Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano; Olivier Messiaen’s “Louange a l’Éernité de Jésu” from his transcendent Quartet for the End of Time; as well as (Paris adopted son) Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in its piano version. Perhaps no one composer shook the musical establishment and revolutionized what followed so much as Beethoven. His magnificent final violin sonata, No. 10 in G Major Opus 26 receives a performance along with the effervescent and irreverent Café Music by Paul Schoenfield. Schoenfield’s music attracts listeners with its combination of exuberance and seriousness, originality, lightness and depth, often with sly twists in the spirit of the French musical iconoclasts.

This program brings to the fore some of the direct predecessors of John Cage, Philip Glass and John Adams. Performers are pianist Michael Chertock, violinistYehonatan Berick, cellist Yehuda Hanani, and comedienne Alison Larkin.

All in all, a thrilling, kinetic and illuminating evening, infused with a sense of historic immediacy.

TICKET INFORMATION:

Tickets, $50 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

~Patron’s Preferred Package~
$150 includes Preferred Patron seat and Patron-only dinner reception. Contact Close Encounters With Music at.800.843.0778 or [email protected].

THE ARTISTS:

Cellist Yehuda Hanani has performed 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 and many others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Blue Hill, Bowdoin, Great Lakes, Ottawa Festival and Finland Festival, among many others, and has collaborated with fellow musicians including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman, Eliot Fisk, and the American and Tokyo quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, The Frick, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. A prolific recording artist, his pioneering recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination. As founder and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music, he has been at the forefront of presenting thematic concerts with commentary in cities across the U.S. He is professor of cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and artistic director of the Catskill High Peaks Festival. His broadcasts on Northwest Radio WAMC’s “Classical Music According to Yehuda” with Dr. Alan Chartock reach thousands of listeners weekly.

Prizewinner at the 1993 Naumburg competition and a recipient of the 1996-97 Prix Opus, violinist Yehonatan Berick is in high demand internationally as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. Performances as soloist include Quebec, Winnipeg, Windsor, Ann Arbor, Jerusalem and Haifa symphonies, and the Israel, Cincinnati, Montreal and Manitoba chamber orchestras. He has collaborated with many world renowned artists, and toured as a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, the Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, and the Huberrman String Quartet among other ensembles. Festival apprearances include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Ottawa, Great Lakes, and Music@Menlo. He has been featured in the world’s most important venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Paris’s Musée du Louvre, Milan’s Sala Verdi and London’s Wigmore Hall. On CD, he has recorded for the Albany, Centaur, Equilibrium, Gasparo, Summit, and Helicon labels. Equally sought after as violin teacher and chamber music mentor, Berick serves as professor of violin at the University of Ottawa and visiting professor at the University of Toronto. His studies were at the Tel Aviv University Music Academy, followed by the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with Dorothy Delay and master classes with Isaac Stern, Henryk Szeryng and Josef Gingold. Mr. Berick plays on a 1761 violin by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi, generously on loan from the University of Ottawa.

Pianist Michael Chertock has fashioned a successful career as an orchestral soloist, collaborating with conductors such as James Conlon, Jaime Laredo, Keith Lockhart, Erich Kunzel and Andrew Litton. His many orchestral appearances include solo performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, l’Orchestre Symphonique du Montreal, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony and he has won accolades with his solo performances in Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Korea. Mr. Chertock made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1999 with the Cincinnati Pops, performing Duke Ellington’s New World A’Comin’. In June 2005 with the Boston Pops Orchestra, he performed the world premiere of a work by Todd Machover, commissioned by the Boston Pops expressly for him. His 2003 performance on the Cincinnati Symphony’s recording of Petrouchka with Paavo Järvi turned in rave reviews in Gramophone and American Record Guide. In 1994, Chertock released his first CD on the Telarc label, a collection of his original arrangements of music from movies entitled Cinematic Piano. Since then, he has recorded three more discs with Telarc: Palace of the Winds, Christmas at the Movies and Love At the Movies, which have been praised for their lush, original arrangements and exquisite technical facility. He is a regular performer at the Ravinia Festival, Blossom Music Center, Grand Tetons Music Festival and Catskill High Peaks in Rensselaerville. Mr. Chertock serves as chair of the keyboard division at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he received his master’s degree.

“Hysterically funny Anglo-American comedienne” NBC TV
Internationally acclaimed actress, award-winning audio book narrator and comedienne ALISON LARKIN is the bestselling author of “The English American,” a novel that sprang from her hit one woman show, about an adopted English woman who finds her birth parents—and true love—in the United States. A Vogue “most powerful book of the season” and Redbook’s Book Club pick of the month, “The English American” is currently under development for a film adaptation. Her show played to packed houses and high critical acclaim on both sides of the pond.

GALA: “Music That Shook the World!”
Saturday, June 11, 6 PM
Michael Chertock, piano; Yehonatan Berick, violin
Yehuda Hanani, cello; Special Guest Narrator, Alison Larkin Tickets: $50 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony)

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.

THE 2015-16 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC SEASON CALENDAR

CONCERTS AT THE MAHAIWE
Grand Piano Quartets–Brahms and Dvořák
Saturday, October 24, 6 PM
Walter Ponce, piano; Ara Gregorian, violin
Xiao-Dong Wang, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

“Dually” Noted: Music for Four Hands
Saturday, December 12, 6 PM
Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank, piano

J.S. Bach & Sons: Legitimate and Otherwise
Saturday, March 19, 6 PM
Acronym Baroque String Band
James Austin Smith, oboe; Yehuda Hanani, cello

“Fiddler OFF the Roof”
Sunday April 17, 3 PM
Michele Levin, piano; Paul Green, clarinet; Alex Richardson, tenor
Sarah McElravy, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello

The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, May 14, 6 PM
The Dover String Quartet

GALA: “Music That Shook the World!”
Saturday, June 11, 6 PM
Michael Chertock, piano; Yehonatan Berick, violin
Yehuda Hanani, cello; Special Guest Narrator, tba

CONVERSATIONS WITH…
Curator Ken Moore
Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection
Sunday, November 15, 2 PM | The Mount, Lenox, MA

Professor and Inventor Edgar Choueiri
Making Waves | Sounds of the Future
(New lifelike 3D audio system in picture-perfect fidelity)
Sunday, May 22, 2 PM | Basilica Hudson, Hudson, NY

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
“Some Enchanted Evening”
Saturday, February 20, 6 PM, | Ventfort Hall, Lenox, MA
Mischa Bouvier, baritone; Yegor Shevtsov, piano

ANNUAL BLANTYRE LUNCHEON MUSICALE BENEFIT
Sunday, May 1, 12:30 PM | Blantyre, Lenox, MA

May 24, 2016

Audiophiles Hear Hear! Close Encounters with Music’s “Conversations with…” Series Groundbreaking Acoustician Edgar Choueiri Reveals Revolutionary Recording Sounds of the Future

Press Releases

“Choueiri belongs to a distinctly modern type: the engineer-aesthete.”—The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik

Audiophiles will enjoy the sounds of Edgar Choueiri demonstrating how the brain can be tricked into believing it is experiencing a live performance, when it is actually a recording being heard. An avid acoustician, Choueiri is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University and head of the school’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics Lab. On May 22 he brings his binaural audio set-up to Time & Space Limited’s art space in Hudson, NY to discuss the fruits of a decade of development, application, and refinement of this revolutionary, groundbreaking system of recording that captures lifelike 3D audio in picture-perfect fidelity. Binaural recording systems are unique because they emulate the workings of the human head. Prepare to be fooled, says Choueiri: “You can hear a bird flying over your head. You’ll hear a whisper in one ear.”

“Making Waves—Sounds of the Future” 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 speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow 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; scholar, performer and multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine and Metropolitan Museum curator of musical instruments Ken Moore.

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

BIO:
Edgar Choueiri is a professor of applied physics at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Princeton University and the associated faculty at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Program in Plasma Physics. He is also director of Princeton University’s Engineering Physics Program and chief scientist at the university’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Lab, a center of research in the field of advanced spacecraft propulsion. He is also the director of Princeton’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics (3D3A) Lab. An avid audiophile and acoustician, over the last decade, he has dedicated his time to the development, application, and refinement of a revolutionary, groundbreaking system of audio recording that captures lifelike 3D audio in picture-perfect fidelity. The author of more than 160 scientific publications and encyclopedia articles on plasma rockets, plasma physics, space physics and applied mathematics, he is Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the recipient of many awards and honors including a knighthood. He has been an invited speaker on more than 55 occasions at symposia and leading institutions in the USA, Russia, China, Japan, Poland, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, and many countries in Western Europe. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honors and was recently elected president of the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society, whose members include hundreds of scientists working on plasma propulsion for spacecraft in more than 15 countries. Dr. Choueiri was selected by NASA in 2004 as the winner of a competition to lead a team of NASA and academic researchers on a 3-year research project to develop a high-power plasma rocket system intended for the robotic and human exploration of the Moon and Mars.