(Great Barrington, MA) The Berkshires’ premiere chamber music organization, Close Encounters With Music, celebrates Johann Sebastian Bach and his progeny Saturday, March 19, 6 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center with “J.S. Bach and Sons—Legitimate and Otherwise.” The Bach brood boasts an illustrious cluster of great musicians who act as a bridge into the Classical style. Family members represented include Bach’s uncle Heinrich and his sons Johann Christoph Friedrich, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Also appearing on the program is Johann Sebastian’s “illegitimate” son (the twenty-first of Johann’s twenty children!), P.D.Q. Bach (a.k.a. Peter Schickele), in a concerto for “Four Handed Viola” that combines musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque, and the antics of slapstick comedy.

Internationally renowned cellist and Artistic Director of CEWM, Yehuda Hanani, will perform early twentieth century composer Henri Casadesus’ Concerto in C Minor, originally ascribed to Johann Christian Bach before scholars confirmed that it was in fact only written in his style—the other “illegitimate” element on the program. Johann Sebastian’s heavenly Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor, will come alive with solo performances by violinist Edwin Huizinga and oboist James Austin Smith, who dazzles audiences with his “bold, keen sound” (The New Yorker). ACRONYM, the 12-piece Baroque String Band will conclude with the timeless glory of the patriarch’s “Brandenburg Concerto” No. 3.

ACRONYM is distinguished by an ambitious mission to unearth and revive forgotten masterpieces of the Baroque era, often unheard since the 17th century. CEWM’s Yehuda Hanani says: “ACRONYM brings a youthful exuberance to ancient music, making it sound like it was written yesterday.” The ensemble’s director Kivie Cahn-Lipman is founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with which he performs regularly to international critical acclaim. He is also a gambist and lironist. Award-winning harpsichordist Gabriel Schuford joins the ensemble for historically informed performances infused with joyful insouciance.

“…The idiomatic performances and spacious recording by these young musicians are absolutely first-rate.”—Early Music America
“I find it hard to imagine better playing…”—Iowa Public Radio (Valentini CD featured on Best of 2015 List)

Close Encounters With Music continues to expand its original programming of classical, contemporary and cutting-edge music. The 2015-2016 season moves onward with celebration and discovery, featuring world-renowned musicians and extraordinary new faces. 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.

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

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.

Formed in 2012 to create the first recording of the complete “Alphabet Sonatas” of Johann Pezel, ACRONYM is a 12-member string band distinguished by an ambitious program to discover and revive forgotten masterpieces of the Baroque era, including composers such as Alessandro Poglietti, Clemens Thieme, and Adam Drese, representatives of the Viennese and German composers of the period. A second recording of instrumental sonatas by Antonio Bertali was released in early 2014 to critical acclaim: Alex Ross selected it as a CD Pick, and Early Music America magazine wrote, “The idiomatic performances and spacious recording by these young musicians are absolutely first rate. This is a disc…belonging in everyone’s collection.” Upcoming projects include concert tours featuring works of Pezel and Bertali, as well as the first recordings and modern performances of music by Samuel Capricornus, Johann Rosenmüller, and others. ACRONYM released a third album, modern premieres of Viennese composer Giovanni Valentini’s instrumental music, in 2015. Gramophone UK lauded the album, “played with expertise, enthusiasm and an almost tactile sense of timbre.” ACRONYM further recorded two albums to be released early 2016. Quickly becoming recognized as unique to their field, ACRONYM are “vital and vibrant…”,”…irresistible” and “…exceptional.”

Praised for his “virtuosic” and “brilliant” performances (The New York Times), oboist James Austin Smith performs equal parts new and old music across the United States and around the world. Mr. Smith is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Chamber Music Society Two), the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Talea Ensemble, Cygnus and Decoda, and is a regular guest of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a member of the faculty of the State University of New York at Purchase and of the Manhattan School of Music. Festival appearances have included Marlboro, Lucerne, Chamber Music Northwest, Schleswig-Holstein, OK Mozart, Schwetzingen and Spoleto USA. He has performed with the St. Lawrence and Orion string quartets and recorded for the Nonesuch, Bridge, Mode and Kairos labels.

AHEAD:
J.S. Bach & Sons: Legitimate and Otherwise
Saturday, March 19, 6 PM
ACRONYM Baroque String Band
James Austin Smith, oboe; Yehuda Hanani, cello
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

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

Musical instruments serve an intangible and immaterial art that accompanies ritual, battle and work, entertains and expresses emotions; they document technological advancements and societal change.  Depictions in the visual arts reveal their functions and portray their performers —accurately or symbolically.  Surprisingly, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the perfect place to explore these connections using its global collection of over 5,000 instruments from the 3rd millennium BCE to the present and their matching depictions found throughout its galleries.   On Sunday, November 15, 2 PM, Ken Moore, Frederick P. Rose Curator in Charge of Musical Instruments, will provide an introduction to the collection and reveal new ways of looking and thinking about these extraordinary sounding forms.
“Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection” 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  award-winning poet Charles Coe.

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.

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 THE MOUNT The Mount, a National Historic Landmark, is a cultural center that celebrates the intellectual, artistic, and humanitarian legacy of Edith Wharton. The estate, designed and built by Edith Wharton in 1902, embodies the principles outlined in her influential book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). In addition to the mansion, the property includes three acres of formal gardens, including a French flower garden and an Italian white garden. Extensive woodscapes surround the formal gardens. Each year, The Mount hosts over 30,000 visitors. Daily tours of the property are offered May-October with special events throughout the year. Annual summer programming includes Wharton on Wednesdays, Music After Hours, and the popular Monday Lecture Series.  Exhibitions explore themes from Wharton’s life and work.

Celebration of Instrumental Virtuosos, Brilliant Vocalists, and Stars of the Chamber Music World in Concerts at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington Fall, Winter, Spring 2015-16

Curator Ken Moore Presents the Met’s 5,000 Piece Musical Instrument Collection Dating from 300 B.C. at The Mount in Lenox and Revolutionary, Lifelike 3D Audio Captured by Princeton Aerospace Engineering Professor Edgar Choueiri in “Conversations With….” Series

(Great Barrington, MA…) Going into its 24th year of presenting outstanding chamber music with lively commentary, the Berkshires’ premier chamber music organization, Close Encounters With Music, continues to expand its original programming of classical, contemporary and cutting-edge music. The 2015-2016 season will be one of celebration and discovery, featuring world-renowned musicians and extraordinary new faces. Walter Ponce (“Delectable playing with a crackle that Liszt himself would have applauded” – Chicago Tribune) returns after a hiatus, as well as consummate chamber musician Michele Levin and frequent Boston Pops soloist Michael Chertock; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Sarah McElravy and Ara Gregorian; and oboist James Austin Smith, already inducted into Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society (“virtuosic” and “brilliant performances—The New York Times—to which we can attest from his past performance!). The Dover Quartet, which has risen meteorically to the highest echelons of the string quartet firmament, makes its CEWM debut; and we introduce tenor Alex Richardson (“A charismatic Richardson triumphed!” – Huffington Post) and duo pianists Kate Soyeon Lee and Ran Dank, who together and apart garner raves (“Stunning command of the keyboard” –Washington Post). The Acronym Baroque Band brings its own brand of Baroque glitter to the Mahaiwe stage for the second consecutive year, and we are delighted to welcome Paul Green, an extraordinary clarinetist equally at home in classical, jazz and Klezmer music. From October through 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.

(For Calendar listings, see below.)

Grand Piano Quartets—Brahms and Dvořák
Saturday, October 24, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

The season opens at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Saturday, October 24, at 6 PM with two epic works by Brahms and Dvořák, two giants whose lives intersected, both nurtured by the traditions of Central Europe. These pieces are symphonic in scope, with unbuttoned, folksy finales; four superb soloists convene to play some of the most vivacious and appealing music in the repertoire. The program features Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet Op. 25, with its animated Hungarian idioms and whirlwind coda; and the Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major Op. 87, one of Dvořák’s most sublime works. The two composers, friends and fellow admirers during their lifetime, stand side by side with these powerful masterpieces that display the seemingly endless inventiveness of both in architecture, melody, instrumental interplay, and sheer sonic beauty.

Walter Ponce, piano; Ara Gregorian, violin; Xiao-Dong Wang, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

“Dually” Noted—Music for Four Hands
Saturday, December 12, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

On Saturday, December 12 at 6 PM, CEWM presents “Dually” Noted—Music for Four Hands at the Mahaiwe. Doubling the sonorities and dazzle of the piano, and turning the solitary recital into an eloquent dialogue, this duo piano evening features the brilliant husband-wife team of Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank in a panoply of styles together and separately. In the spirit of the holiday, the program includes Beethoven’s ever-popular “Moonlight Sonata” and a bravura arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”—plus Debussy’s Preludes, Barber’s “Souvenirs,” Mozart’s Four Hand Variations in G Major K. 501, and Scriabin’s mystical Fantasy in B minor. The precise coordination of four hands is thrilling, the more so with a couple united in music and matrimony!

“Four Hands and Two Hearts Beating as One”—The New York Times

Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank, piano

J.S. Bach & Sons–Legitimate and Otherwise
Saturday, March 19, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

On Saturday, March 19 at 6 PM, the Mahaiwe stage sparkles with contrast and complement as the characters of the illustrious and multifarious Bach family tree resound. J.S. Bach & Sons–Legitimate and Otherwise showcases this cluster of great musicians who forged a pathway into the Classical style. Presented with reverence are the works of Johann Sebastian, the Oboe Concerto by Carl Philippe Emanuel, and the Cello Concerto by Johann Christian. Presented with mischievous irreverence is his “illegitimate” son, P.D.Q. Bach (a.k.a. Peter Schickele) in a concerto for “Four Handed Viola” that combines musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque, and slapstick comedy. The program concludes with the timeless Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Acronynm is a 12-member string orchestra that is distinguished by an ambitious program to unearth and revive forgotten masterpieces of the Baroque era, often unheard since the 17th century.
“…The idiomatic performances and spacious recording by these young musicians are absolutely first-rate.” – Early Music America
Acronym Baroque String Band; James Austin Smith, oboe; Yehuda Hanani, cello

“Fiddler OFF the Roof”
Sunday, April 17, 3 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

On Sunday, April 17 at 3 PM the Mahaiwe stage is set for the fascinating phenomenon of Jewish music, spanning multitudes of cultures and centuries—its ancient roots, its meandering trails as it wends its way across continents, and its contribution to the American voice. Works by Gershwin, Bernstein, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Milhaud, Bloch, and Max Bruch, who adopted Jewish modes and themes. And of course, a touch of Klezmer, the toe-tapping Eastern European celebratory music imbued with spirituality. Medieval Iberian ballad repertoire meets German Enlightenment (Bruch’s Kol Nidre and Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor) and a rendition by Maurice Ravel of the ancient Kaddish, which dates back to the 1st century. A kaleidoscopic exploration of diverse traditions and the symbiosis of East and West, as exemplified in the world premiere of Paul Schoenfield’s Evocation, an adaptive reshaping of liturgical material to concert hall spirit.

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
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)

On Saturday, May 14 at 6 PM, CEWM presents a rising quartet—the Dover— dubbed by The New Yorker “the young American string quartet of the moment” which catapulted to international stardom following a stunning sweep of the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The program’s triad of Beethoven, Dvořák and Alban Berg offers up the “American” Quartet, a triumph of Dvořák’s astonishing melodic vision, disarming immediacy, and attempt to capture the American spirit; Beethoven’s cosmic “Razumovsky” Quartet; and Alban Berg’s Second String Quartet Op. 3 (1908), written during a turbulent courtship with his wife-to-be Helene. It is the composer at a compositional as well as personal crossroads and, in spite of its rigor, is full of Viennese flavor—somewhat like eating a Sachertorte with cream. Three landmark works of chamber music delivered by the first quartet to be honored with a residency at the venerable Curtis Institute.
“The Dover Quartet won new fans for its sublime playing.” – The New York Times

The Dover String Quartet: Joel Link, violin; Bryan Lee, violin; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola; Camden Shaw, cello

“Music That Shook the World!”
Gala Event!
Saturday, June 11, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $50 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $30 (Balcony)

“Music That Shook the World!” vibrates the Mahaiwe stage Saturday, June 11 at 6 PM, bringing the season to a close. 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 respectability to the Jazz concert hall; 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. This program brings to the fore some of the direct predecessors of John Cage, Philip Glass and John Adams. Amplifying the music, passages from Igor Stravinsky’s and Antheil’s memoirs will be threaded through the program. In Paris of the 1920s, Antheil’s concerts regularly incited huge riots. Ballet Mécanique is scored for multiple pianos, percussion, electric buzzers and airplane propellers and we offer a segment of the film. (Bring your riot gear!)

Michael Chertock, piano; Yehonatan Berick, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello; special guest narrator, TBA

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.

For Subscribers Only: Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
An exclusive event, the Midwinter Fireside Concert, for season subscribers, Saturday, February 20, 6 PM at Ventfort Hall in Lenox:
“Some Enchanted Evening” with baritone Mischa Bouvier and pianist Yegor Shevtsov.

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.

Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection with Curator Ken Moore
Sunday, November 15, 2 PM
The Mount, Lenox, MA
Tickets: $15 per person includes light refreshments

On Sunday, November 15 at 2 PM Close Encounters With Music and Edith Wharton’s The Mount present Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection with Curator Ken Moore: The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of musical instruments includes approximately 5,000 examples from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from 300 B.C. to the present, and illustrating the development of musical instruments from all cultures and eras. Ken Moore, the Frederick P. Rose Curator of Musical Instruments, will share information about this extraordinary collection and its storied history. Since 1990, he has advocated the application of contextual display methods of non-European instruments and developed educational performance programs that emphasize world music cultures. Outside the Metropolitan, he has made pioneering studies of the music of the Snake Handler cult in West Virginia. Woven into the talk is the story of how, at the end of the 19th century, a forward-thinking woman founded a comprehensive collection of musical instruments rivaling any in the world.

Making Waves – Sounds of the Future
Sunday, May 22, 2 PM
Basilica Hudson, Hudson, NY
Tickets: $15 includes light refreshment

On Sunday, May 22 at 2 PM at Basilica Hudson in Hudson, NY, CEWM presents Making Waves – Sounds of the Future, with Edgar Choueiri, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University who heads the school’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics 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. With his binaural audio set-up, he will demonstrate—in Basilica Hudson’s post-industrial raw and resonant space—how the brain is tricked into believing the performance being heard is actually live, and not recorded. 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.”

Close Encounters on the Radio/Podcast

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune into 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—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 50 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) and $25 (Balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 series concerts PLUS one subscriber-only concert. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

2015-16 CALENDAR AT THE MAHAIWE

Grand Piano Quartets—Brahms and Dvořák
Saturday, October 24, 6 PM

“Dually” Noted—Music for Four Hands
Saturday, December 12, 6 PM

J.S. Bach & Sons–Legitimate and Otherwise
Saturday, March 19, 6 PM

“Fiddler OFF the Roof”
Sunday, April 17, 3 PM

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

“Music That Shook the World!”
Saturday, June 11, 6 PM

These six performances are at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.
14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.

Conversations With…

“Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection with Curator Ken Moore” at The Mount (Lenox, MA) is on Sunday, November 15 at 2 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Making Waves – Sounds of the Future,” at Basilica Hudson (Hudson, NY) is on Sunday, May 22 at 2 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Who says a composer has to be dead to sell records?” is how a recent review of his album Around the World in a Daze in New York Magazine began.

A fixture of New York’s downtown scene, composer and lyricist Phil Kline stands out for his range and unpredictability. He makes music in many genres and contexts, from experimental electronics and sound installations to songs, choral, theater, chamber and orchestral works. Early in his career he co-founded the rock band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborated with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and played guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble. Some of his early work evolved from performance art and used large numbers of boom boxes, such as the Christmas cult classic Unsilent Night. Other diverse works include John the Revelator, a setting of the Latin mass written for early music specialists Lionheart, and dreamcitynine, which mixed 60 percussionists with hundreds of iphones around the plaza of Lincoln Center. Kline is currently working with Jarmusch on an opera, Tesla in New York. You are just as likely to encounter 15,000 chattering, African gray parrots as you are a “mash up of street noise, music clips, music boxes, bug zappers, and many other bits of sonic detritus” in his compositions.

On Sunday, May 3, 2 PM in The Stables at The Mount, Phil Kline surveys the classical music scene from a composer’s viewpoint, looking at and listening to a wide variety of music written in the last few years here and abroad. He’ll take stock of the huge influx of very active young composers, and how all of this is affecting orchestras and music presenters. Kline’s exposure on CNN, NPR and countless other media outlets as well as his three decades of writing for post-punk bands, choral groups, and, yes, iPods, have helped him manage a remarkable feat: escaping the avant-garde ghetto. Kline may be experimental, but he hasn’t scared off less adventurous listeners. His talk and recorded selections are geared to centrist classical music appreciators as well as the hip hop crowd.

“… Balances hipster zen with the seriousness of Bach and Wagner.” The New Yorker

“Unsilent Composer” 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; Metropolican Opera costume designer Charles Caine, and award-winning poet Charles Coe.

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.


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 Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Erin Keefe and Itamar Zorman; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Jennifer Zetlan, Kelley O’Connor, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf 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 MOUNT
The Mount, a National Historic Landmark, is a cultural center that celebrates the intellectual, artistic, and humanitarian legacy of Edith Wharton. The estate, designed and built by Edith Wharton in 1902, embodies the principles outlined in her influential book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). In addition to the mansion, the property includes three acres of formal gardens, including a French flower garden and an Italian white garden. Extensive woodscapes surround the formal gardens. Each year, The Mount hosts over 30,000 visitors. Daily tours of the property are offered May-October with special events throughout the year. Annual summer programming includes Wharton on Wednesdays, Music After Hours, and the popular Monday Lecture Series. Exhibitions explore themes from Wharton’s life and work.

“CONVERSATIONS WITH…” —  A series of talks with notable composers, writers, performers, and cultural avatars

“Unsilent Composer” with composer Phil Kline at The Stables at The Mount, Sunday, May 3, 2PM.  $15 per person includes light refreshments.

Music Mystical, Meditative and Sensual à la Russe to Be Performed by Renowned Interpreters Pianist Vassily Primakov and Cellist Yehuda Hanani

For many in classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was one of the last links between 19th century romanticism and modern times. As pianist or conductor, his grand presence on stage (he was 6 foot 6!) embodied bygone artistic values and a style of expression missed greatly by the public. The oceanic, enveloping sound Rachmaninoff’s music generates and his ability to stun audiences with performances of his fiendishly difficult pieces helped make him one of the highest paid performers of his time, one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century, and a veritable “rock star” of classical music.

No doubt one of the secrets of his immense popularity is the power of nostalgia. His grip on us relates to a universal wish to rescue an irretrievable past. Although he worked in the West and was a fan of the Jack Benny show from his Hollywood home, he remained an exile, staunchly steeped in nostalgia and continuing the great Romantic Russian tradition of his teacher Tchaikovsky.

The mesmeric Russian pianist Vassily Primakov joins distinguished cellist Yehuda Hanani in a program that explores the many facets of this enigmatic and prodigious figure. The magnetic appeal of the mysterious East attracted Rachmaninoff’s artistic predecessors (Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade became the best-known example of Russian musical Orientalism), and he followed suit beginning with some of his earliest compositions. The sumptuousness and ecstatic expressivity of the Sonata for Piano and Cello and the early Prelude and Orientale organically entwine Orientalism around his thoroughly European palette. His Variations on a Theme of Corelli, miniature character pieces, is a pianistic tour de force, requiring the highest levels of piano performance.

Rachmaninoff’s reputation has skyrocketed since the years when he was dismissed as a “Hollywood composer” (he never wrote a note for a movie though his music was appropriated for 50 films!). Vassily Primakov has made the music of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff a specialty. Yehuda Hanani was the first Western artist to record the cello/piano sonatas of Nicolai Miaskovsky, another great Russian melodist. Timothy Sergay, professor of Russian Studies at SUNY Albany, will lead a discussion on the subject of Russian Oriantalia at the Afterglow reception, onstage at the Mahaiwe, following the performance, over wine and local reception fare.

TICKET INFORMATION
For Concerts at the Mahaiwe
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Subscriptions are $150 ($130 for seniors) for the remaining 4 concerts in the series. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
In recent years, Vassily Primakov has been hailed as a pianist of world class importance. Born in Moscow in 1979, his initial piano studies were with his mother, Marina Primakova. He entered Moscow’s Central Special Music School at the age of eleven and at seventeen came to New York to pursue studies at Juilliard with the noted pianist, Jerome Lowenthal. At Juilliard Mr. Primakov won the William Petschek Piano Recital Award, which presented his debut recital at Alice Tully Hall, and while still at Juilliard, aided by a Susan W. Rose Career Grant, he won both the Silver Medal and the Audience Prize in the 2002 Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition. He took First Prize in the 2002 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In 2009, Mr. Primakov’s Chopin Mazurkas recording was named “Best of the Year” by National Public Radio and that same year he began recording the 27 Mozart piano concertos in Denmark. BBC Music Magazine praised the first volume of Primakov’s Mozart concertos: “The piano playing is of exceptional quality: refined, multi-coloured, elegant of phrase and immaculately balanced…..By almost every objective criterion, Vassily Primakov is a Mozartian to the manner born, fit to stand as a role model to a new generation.” His extensive discography includes Beethoven Sonatas, Chopin Concertos, and music of Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Scriabin for Bridge Records. Recent engagements have been with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cape Philharmonic, and the KZN Philharmonic in Durban, South Africa; at the Newport, Manchester and Woodstock Mozart festivals in the US.


Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and reengagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Irish National Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Honolulu Symphony, Orquestra Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico, Belgrade Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among many others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Blue Hill, Bowdoin, Great Lakes, and Grand Canyon festivals, Prades Festival (France), Finland Festival, Leicester (England), Ottawa, 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, Yefim Bronfman, Eliot Fisk, the Tokyo, Vermeer, Muir, Lark, Avalon, Colorado, and Manhattan quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. His pioneering recording of the 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, Robert Beaser, Pulitzer Prize winners Bernard Rands and Zhou Long, among other composers. 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. 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. His recent TEDx talk is available on YouTube. An addition to his concert activities and educational mission is the founding of the Catskill High Peaks Festival, a teaching and chamber music festival in Rensselaerville, New York.

A consummate artist, Yehuda Hanani possesses élan and panache in spades, and “delivers with commanding assurance” (The Strad).  His cello speaks a powerful instrumental and emotional language!

“Rightly rewarded with cheers from the audience.”  The New York Times

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—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, Roman Rabinovich, 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 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.  This summer, performances took 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 50 international students in residence in the Great Northern Catskills in an immersive course of study and performance.


2014-15 CALENDAR AT THE MAHAIWE

Sergei Rachmaninoff and Russian Orientalia, Saturday, March 21, 6PM

Surveying the Centuries – The New York Wind Quintet, Saturday, April 18, 6PM

Debussy and Schubert – The Avalon String Quartet, Saturday, May 16, 6PM

Invitation to the Dance, Saturday, June 13, 6PM

These six performances are at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.
“CONVERSATIONS WITH…” —  A series of talks with notable composers, writers, performers, and cultural avatars “Touching the Sound” with filmmaker Peter Rosen at the Berkshire Museum, Sunday, November 2, 2PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Unsilent Composer” with composer Phil Kline at The Stables at The Mount, Sunday, May 3, 2PM.  $15 per person includes light refreshments.