“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.

Roman Rabinovich, piano and celesta; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; James Austin Smith, oboe; Daniel Phillips, violin; Xiao-Dong Wang, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

The 2014-15 Close Encounters With Music season opens at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Saturday, October 25, 6 PM with an all-Mozart program.  No composer has survived the shifting tides of ideas, styles and fashion more assuredly than Mozart.  The celestial blend of strings and winds in major works (Oboe Quartet in F, Flute Quartet in D) will affirm his status as incomparable master of the lighthearted as well as the profound. Stars of the chamber music world gather to showcase works written for wind virtuosos of his age—plus the Piano Quartet in E-Flat and rarely heard Quintet for Glass Harmonica, the instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin—and his incandescent Rondo in A minor for solo piano.

The “Mozartiana” program introduces oboist James Austin Smith, already inducted into Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society (“virtuosic” and “brilliant’ performances– The New York Times) in his Berkshire debut.  Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani is also joined by violinist Daniel Phillips, first of the noted Orion String Quartet; violist Xiao-Dong Wang; and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.  Pianist Roman Rabinovich, winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, performs on both piano and celesta.   

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 $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 series concerts PLUS one subscriber-only concert. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor is sought after for her unusual artistic depth, brilliant technique, and colorful tone in music of every era. Last season she premiered a new chamber work by John Zorn, made appearances at the Avila Chamber Music Celebration in Curaçao, and performed concerts in Hawaii and Georgia. She also gave her debut performance at the Mainly Mozart Festival with Windscape and returned to the festival to perform a concerto with Maestro David Atherton. This season she premieres Jonathan Berger’s new opera with the Saint Lawrence String Quartet. Ms. O’Connor has appeared at Zankel Hall, Symphony Space, Music@Menlo, the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto USA, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. She is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble, teaches at the Bard College Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, is professor of flute and head of the wind department at Purchase College Conservatory of Music. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, she is an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as chamber musician, solo artist and teacher. He has appeared with many of the country’s leading symphonies, including those of Pittsburgh, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, and San Antonio. He performs regularly at Spoleto USA, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England. He has also served on the faculties of the Banff Centre and the Colorado College Music Festival. He is a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group, and has toured and recorded in a string quartet for SONY, with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma. Upcoming are concerto appearances with the Nova Philharmonic in New York, and the Queens College Symphony under Maestro Maurice Peress.  Daniel Phillips is Professor of Violin at the Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College, and on the faculties of Mannes College of Music and Bard Conservatory.

Roman Rabinovich is winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv. Praised by critics for “vivacity and virtuosity” and his “impeccable clarity of execution,” he has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel in such prestigious venues as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Wigmore Hall, Lucerne and Davos festivals in Switzerland, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museums, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and Glazunov Hall in St. Petersburg, Vienna’s Musikverein, as well as the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, Les Invalides in Paris and Kennedy Center. Born in Uzbekistan, he made his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta at the age of ten. He has appeared with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, Dohnányi Orchestra of Budapest, and the Neuchatel Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland), among others. In May 2008 he replaced Murray Perahia in a recital at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.  A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and with a Master’s from Juilliard, he also excels as an artist, often combining concerts with exhibitions of his paintings.

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 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. Mr. Smith received his Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music and graduated in 2005 with Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) and Bachelor of Music degrees from Northwestern.  He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Leipzig, Germany at the Hochschule für Musik and is an alumnus of Ensemble ACJW, a collaboration of Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, the Weill Music Institute.  

Xiao-Dong Wanghas been called the most talented violinist to emerge from China. He began his studies at age 3 with his father, concertmaster of the Shanghai Symphony; he then studied with the renowned teacher Zhao Ji-Yang at the Shanghai Conservatory. As First Prize winner in the Menuhin International Violin Competition and the Wieniawski-Lipinski International Violin Competition at the ages of thirteen and fifteen, he was brought to the attention of violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay who arranged a four-­year scholarship at Juilliard. Mr. Wang has performed as soloist with orchestras around the world, including the London Royal Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, Adelaide, Perth, Queensland symphony orchestras and Sydney Opera Orchestra. His recording credits include the Bartok Concerto No. 2 and Szymanowski Concerto No. 1 for Polygram. He has also appeared performing on both violin and viola in chamber music concerts at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Aspen, Ravinia and festivals and music series worldwide. Wang was the resident soloist of the Shanghai Symphony for the 2012-13 season, during which he also performed as a soloist with other major Chinese orchestras, including the China Philharmonic in Beijing. 

Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim across the globe.  His solo appearances have been with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Seoul Symphony among others.  A frequent guest at Aspen, Bowdoin, Chautauqua, Yale at Norfolk, Great Lakes, Marlboro, Casals Prades, Finland, Ottawa, Oslo and Australia Chamber Music festivals, he has collaborated with preeminent fellow musicians. He made the first recording ever of the monumental Alkan Sonate en Concert, receiving a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.  On CD and in live performances, he has premiered works of Nikolai Miaskovsky, Lukas Foss, Leo Ornstein, Paul Schoenfield, Joan Tower, Eduard Franck, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Virgil Thomson, Jorge Martin and Bernard Rands, among other composers.  Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he is artistic director of the innovative chamber music series Close Encounters With Music, based in the Berkshires. and director of the new Catskill High Peaks Festival in Hunter and Tannersville, NY. 

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

Mozart—Rejoice, Exult! Saturday, October 25, 6PM

Best of the Baroque, Saturday, December 6, 6PM

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.

HUNTER, New York — “The Grand Italian Tour” is the theme of the fifth edition of the Catskill High Peaks Festival: Music with Altitude!, hosted by the Catskill Mountain Foundation, August 10–20 and presented by Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire-based chamber music organization.

The ten-day chamber music festival, 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 and outstanding young musicians from around the world. Festival events will take place at the newly restored Orpheum Theater in Tannersville, NY and the Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter as well as additional locations in the Hudson Valley and Berkshires.

“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. Guest performers include Elmar Oliveira, Gold-Medal winner of Moscow’s prestigious Tchaikovsky International Competition, the only American violinist to ever capture the award and Axel Strauss, Enescu and Naumburg prize winner and guest concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic.

The centerpieces of the festival are two concerts devoted to Italy as the mother lode of musical culture. “Years of Pilgrimage,” Sunday, August 10 at 2 pm at the Doctorow Center for the Arts, traverses two centuries of Italian brilliance and demonstrates how it inspired its famous tourists (Mendelssohn, Byron, etc.). This concert showcases selections from the mercurial keyboard music of Baroque-era Domenico Scarlatti, to Luigi Boccherini’s luscious string works, the humor and exuberance of Rossini, the virtuosity of Paganini, and the genius of Verdi. Performing with Yehuda Hanani on cello and Michael Chertock on piano, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Lucille Beer sings favorite coloratura arias that typify the bravura of Italian vocal tradition.

The major work of the second concert, “Souvenir de Florence,” Sunday, August 17 at 2 pm at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center, is Tchaikovsky’s own musical souvenir of his visit to Italy as he recovered from a disastrous marriage and developed an infatuation with the city that spawned the Renaissance. Florence worked its magic on Tchaikovsky, and the result is one of the most delightful and charming pieces in the repertory, for string sextet. Stravinsky was similarly stricken, and wrote his quasi-baroque Suite Italienne for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. The Valentini cello sonata offers a high quotient of virtuosic verve, and the Boccherini Quintet holds familiar moments from the cinema. No Italian showcase would be complete without Vivaldi’s Double Concerto for two violins, which features eminent guests Elmar Oliveira and Axel Strauss. Other performers are violist Amadi Azikiwe; cellists Yehuda Hanani and Thomas Landschoot; pianist Michael Chertock, as well as the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Throughout the festival, a range of venues will host performances by talented up-and-coming musicians participating in the festival’s residency for young artists, providing audiences with an opportunity to catch a glimpse of some of the classical music world’s future stars. These include a concert of cello chorus (with 20 cellists!), string quartets, quintets and sextets and the Festival Orchestra on Monday, August 18, 5:30 PM at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, and a “Stars of Tomorrow” performance at the historic Olana Estate in Hudson, NY, Friday, August 15 at sunset. A series of “Moonlight Sonatas” performances featuring top-tier young artists at the Doctorow Center in Hunter and in Tannersville will be free and open to the public.

The festival also offers a series of illuminating talks. Marking the Verdi bicentennial, Opera News contributor, architect and film-maker August Ventura presents “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi” on Friday, August 15 at 2 PM in the Doctorow Center for the Arts. Ventura has been producing and directing an independent, feature-length documentary that captures the composer’s political and cultural relevance, shedding light on how the operas promoted the notion of a unified Italy and helped define her national character.

“Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism,” tracing Beethoven’s pathway from disciple of Haydn, from whom he inherited his audacity and humor, to prophet and hero of the Romantic Movement, is presented on Saturday, August 16 at 2 PM at the Doctorow Center. His music stands as a glorious bridge between two eras—classical and romantic—and selected examples will be played (live with Yehuda Hanani and Michael Chertock, and from recorded performances) to cover a good distance of this journey. A “Meet the Artists” afternoon will take place at the Onteora Library, and free classes and workshops will be offered each day, including a talk by Woodstock luthier David Wiebe on “Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati—Why Italy?”. For a full schedule of events, visit www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org . Catskill High Peaks Festival is presented by Close Encounters With Music, the thematic chamber music series based in Great Barrington, MA, and hosted by the Catskill Mountain Foundation.

Ticket information for “Years of Pilgrimage” and “Souvenir de Florence”

Advance tickets: $25; seniors, $18; students, $7

Tickets purchased at the door: $30; seniors, $22; students, $7.

Information about “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi,” “Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism, free master classes, Stars of Tomorrow concerts and Tea & Talk: www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org or 518-392-6677.

MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The Catskill High Peaks Festival is a performing and teaching summer institute bringing together renowned musicians, pedagogues and exceptionally gifted international students. It is held in the majestic Northern Catskill Mountains, surrounded by the iconic scenery – mountain peaks, water falls and charming hamlets – that inspired the Hudson River painters, and that continues to inspire generations of artists, musicians and writers. The intimate scale and highest level of talent make possible an invigorating ten days of discovery, exploration, bonding, and growth. The festival has an all-inclusive atmosphere, fostering camaraderie and cross-cultural exchange and understanding. The faculty is similarly international. In past summers, the music has focused on traditions ranging from Latin American tango to Japanese ceremonial drums to the heritage of Jazz and improvisation in addition to the classical canon. Central to the festival’s mission are performance opportunities for young artists on the cusp of their careers. Faculty and guest performers have included the most respected classical musicians of our time: guitarist Eliot Fisk; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Ara Gergorian and Stefan Milenkovich; pianists James Tocco, Michael Chertock, and Vassily Primakov and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

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, and 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.

LENOX, Mass. – With representative works from many of the genres in which he wrote—piano quintet, piano trio, song cycles, and opera, and always with his trademark captivating melodiousness and soulfulness—audiences at the Close Encounters With Music all-Dvořák gala concert, Sunday, June 15 at 2 PM will take away a composite portrait of the composer as an original and independent force in classical music. The program will also illustrate how the irresistible charm and mastery of Dvořák’s compositions helped bridge the world of popular musical culture with that of the 19th century concert hall.

The gallery of scheduled works includes two of his greatest and most dazzling chamber pieces—the “Dumky” Trio and the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, both incorporating pensive Slavonic music (Dumka), Czech folk dances, and glowing with Dvořák’s optimism, rhythmic vitality and intoxicating beauty. The “Dumky” was so well received at its premiere that it was presented on a forty-concert tour, just before Dvořák left Bohemia to head the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. It was published while Dvořák was in America and proofread by none other than his friend, Johannes Brahms. The Piano Quintet is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces in the form, along with those of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Shostakovich.

A stellar assemblage of instrumentalists includes violinist Itamar Zorman, first prize winner of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition and 2013 Avery Fisher Award; pianist Roman Rabinovich, first prize winner of the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition; violinist David McCarroll; violist Ara Gregorian; and CEWM founder and artistic director, cellist Yehuda Hanani.

Adding a vocal dimension to the Dvořák portrait, special guest mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor makes her Berkshire debut singing Dvořák’s rarely heard Biblical Songs, the Gypsy Songs, and “Song to the Moon,” from the opera Rusalka. O’Connor’s impressive calendar this season has included John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with Grant Gershon conducting the Ravinia Festival Orchestra; the world premiere of John Harbison’s Crossroads with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic; an international tour with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as performances with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, and Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The cycle of Biblical Songs was composed in 1894. Following a personal crisis, with the death of two dear friends (Tchaikovsky and conductor Hans von Bulow) and with the news of the terminal illness of Dvořák’s own father, the deeply religious composer sought comfort in his faith. He selected verses from the book of Psalms, and produced some of his most spiritual music. “Songs my mother taught me” from the Gypsy Songs, and “Song of the Moon” from his fairy-tale opera Rusalka are among the most beloved of vocal works.

“The Many Faces of Antonin Dvořák” is scheduled for Sunday, June 15, 2 PM at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood (Lenox, MA). Tickets for this extraordinary concert are $40 and $50. A limited number of Preferred Patron Seating and Gala Reception Packages are available at $125 per person. For more information or to order tickets, visit www.cewm.org or call (800) 843-0778.
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE AND TIME.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yehuda Hanani is internationally 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 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 Emerson 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 in Hunter and Tannersville, NY.

Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor is taking the music world by storm! The California native’s recent engagements have included appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of music director Gustav Dudamel; a debut as Suzuki in a new production of Madama Butterfly by Lillian Groag at Boston Lyric Opera; Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with both Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue with Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony; Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony, and Lieberson’s The World in Flower with Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Ms. O’Connor brought her “smoky sound and riveting stage presence” (The New York Times) to performances of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénedict with Opera Boston, and to her signature role as Federico Garcia Lorca in a Peter Sellars staging of Golijov’s Ainadamar at Teatro Real in Madrid. She has performed in festivals, including the London Proms, Colorado Music Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, and the Berlin Festival, among others.

Twenty-eight year old Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich is winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel. Praised by critics for “vivacity and virtuosity” and his “impeccable clarity of execution,” he has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel in such prestigious venues as Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wigmore Hall, Lucerne and Davos festivals in Switzerland, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museums, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and Glazunov Hall in St. Petersburg, Vienna’s Musikverein, as well as Jordan Hall in Boston, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, Les Invalides in Paris and the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Born in Uzbekistan, Mr. Rabinovich immigrated to Israel where he studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, making his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age ten. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and with a Masters Degree from Juilliard, he also excels as an artist, often combining concerts with exhibitions of his paintings.

Violinist Itamar Zorman is winner of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia, where he subsequently performed in the winners’ concerts with Maestro Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. In 2013, he was named a winner of the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Zorman has performed as a soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, with the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, the Het Gelders Orkest at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, and Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at Lincoln Center, in Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and at the Kennedy Center. Born in Tel Aviv to a family of musicians, he holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School and Artist Diplomas from Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard. He plays on a 1737 Pietro Guarneri violin from a private collection.

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

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

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.