Photographs of the Performing Artists

Close Encounters with Music Presents “Magyar!” Liszt, Brahms, Bartok and Authentic Hungarian Folk Music

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —Musical fireworks, passion, and vertiginous speed are hallmarks of Hungarian and Gypsy music. From the cimbalom, the national folk instrument of Hungary, to the sophistication of Liszt’s fiery “Rhapsody” and Brahms’s majestic Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, selections on the April 27 Close Encounters With Music concert reflect the cadences and rhythm of Hungarian speech—and the paprika that spices up its cuisine.

The stage is set with a bravura performance on the folk hammered dulcimer (cimbalom) by Hungarian-trained Cosmo Gorsci. Béla Bartók’s 1938 “Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin and Piano,” commissioned by jazz legend Benny Goodman, is an amalgam of abstracted Hungarian folk music combined with Romanian dance melodies. It’s a study in contrasts: the tone and color of the three different instruments, different musical idioms, and jazz and classical modes. Both violist and clarinetist require two instruments apiece to capture the dual character and the disparate tunings—gritty country fiddle-atmosphere with barbaric energy, dances, and syncopations, and the concert-worthy brilliant passage work and polish. Also on the program is another Hungarian “Rhapsody,” a virtuosic work for cello and piano by David Popper, a famous 19th century cellist. It concludes with Brahms’s torrentially romantic piano trio with its Magyar themes.

Guest artists joining artistic director Yehuda Hanani are Erin Keefe, concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, who appears regularly at Lincoln and has been featured on “Live From Lincoln Center” broadcasts; Alexander Fiterstein, one of today’s top-tier clarinet players and winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant Award (“beautiful liquid clarity—“ New York Times); and pianist Lydia Artymiw, another Avery Fisher Award winner who has performed with over one hundred orchestras worldwide, including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Symphony.

Roma performer Cosmo Gorsci will demonstrate the expressive and haunting qualities of the cimbalom in traditional Magyar melodies, as well as its visual beauty. With its horizontal strings, two beaters, and tremolo sound, the cimbalom’s special effect—familiar to concert audiences from Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly’s opera Hary Jano— is used in film to evoke mystery and intrigue.

Ticket Information for MAGYAR!
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Visit www.cewm.org. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

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.

Photograph of the Linden String Quartet

Close Encounters with Music Presents the Linden String Quartet & Friends in Works of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Standouts in a chamber music landscape that is populated by exceptional young string quartets, the Linden has been heard at festivals from Ravinia to Caramoor, Banff, and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, collecting honors and prizes along the way. In their Berkshire debut performance, the brilliant and dynamic Linden Quartet (“Fire and Flare” –The Strad) will be heard on Saturday, March 22 at 6PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in an intensely passionate, lyrical and utterly winning program.

The centerpiece is Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, written for a St. Petersburg chamber music society as a 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. Cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani and French violist Pierre-Henri Xuereb join the Linden for this work.

The Linden Quartet will also offer Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet opus 13 in A minor and Tchaikovsky’s popular Andante Cantabile. Richly romantic, and notable for its uplifting and optimistic spirit, outpouring of sheer beauty and belief in a bright future, the Mendelssohn quartet, written when the composer was 18, recalls the overture to the incidental music to A Midsummer’s Night Dream, at the same time offering a tribute to Beethoven by modeling itself on his late quartets. One of Tchaikovsky’s most successful compositions, the Andante Cantabile, first performed in a quartet concert honoring Leo Tolstoy, and has been rewritten for many other instrumental combination.

Ticket Information for “An Evening with the Linden Quartet
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. A four-concert subscription is available for $140/ $120 for seniors. Visit www.cewm.org. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org. For your listening pleasure here is a YouTube of the Linden String Quartet performing Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. www.YouTube.com

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.

Photograph of Guzman and Yoffe

Close Encounters with Music Presents “The Miraculous Violin: an Evening with Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe”

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — In technique and sensibility, violinist Vadim Gluzman harkens back to the Golden Age of violinists of the 19th and 20th centuries, while demonstrating the passion and energy of the 21st century. Lauded by both critics and audiences as a performer of depth, virtuosity and technical brilliance, he has appeared throughout the world as a soloist and in a duo setting with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe. Gluzman’s warm tone, developed out of his miraculous “ex-Leopold Auer” Strad (on which the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was premiered!) takes its inspiration from the timeless examples of Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh. A legendary violin in the hands of a master, and a dazzling holiday program with music of Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Castelnuovo-Tedesco will be heard on Saturday, December 21, at 6PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center with Angela Yoffe as his chamber music partner.

Gluzman’s extraordinary artistry both sustains the great violin tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries and enlivens it with the dynamism of today. A recent music critic captured the singular quality of his approach to violin playing: “Most remarkable was his ability to sustain Tchaikovsky’s romantic emotionalism without falling into vibrato-drenched clichés,” wrote Chris Waddington of New Orlean’s Times-Picayune. “Gluzman did it by unleashing an astounding palette of colors from his violin: a golden hive-like droning, finger-snap pizzicatos, and a plunging dive-bomber wail that had me thinking of klezmer—and of Jimi Hendrix calling down fire from heaven in ‘Machine Gun.’” He goes on to say, “For folks who prefer the classics, I’d sum up Gluzman this way: He is better than Itzhak Perlman, better than Midori, better than Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and all the other big-name string titans who have soloed with the LPO [Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra] in recent years.”

Gluzman maintains a dizzying international schedule: Within a mere six months, he will have performed with the Austin, Buffalo, Atlanta, and Columbus symphonies in the U.S.; the Russian National Philharmonic in Moscow, Orquestra Sinfoica do Parana in Brazil; Orchestra National de Lyon, in Sofia Bulgaria, with the Residendtie Orchestra in The Hague, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Japan, and back to solo with the Louisiana Symphony. On Novmber 18 he performs at a Holocaust Memorial Concert marking the 70th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at Théatre des Champs Elysées.

Ticket Information for “The Miraculous Violin—An evening with Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe”
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts, and include a free subscribers-only exclusive event. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Vadim Gluzman, an Israeli violinist appears regularly around the world: with major orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and NHK Symphony; and with leading conductors including Neeme Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Marek Janowski, and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Among his festival appearances are Verbier, Ravinia, Lockenhaus, Pablo Casals, Colmar, Jerusalem and the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Northbrook, Illinois, founded by Gluzman with his wife and long-standing recital partner, pianist Angela Yoffe. This season Gluzman begins a collaboration with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, in the position of Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gluzman began violin studies at the age of seven before moving to Israel, where he was a student of Yair Kless. In the US he studied at the Juilliard School under Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. Early in his career, Mr. Gluzman enjoyed the encouragement and support of Isaac Stern, and was awarded the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award in 1994. He plays the extraordinary 1690 ‘ex-Leopold Auer’ Stradivari, on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Admired for her outstanding musicianship, extraordinary sensitivity and virtuosity, pianist Angela Yoffe has performed in the concert halls of United States, Europe, Japan and Canada. Ms. Yoffe was born in Riga, Latvia where she began her musical training, later immigrating to Israel, where she studied with Victor Derevianko in Tel-Aviv. She continued her studies in the U.S. at Southern Methodist University. She has been a piano assistant in the violin studio of Ms. Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School, where she studied chamber music with Jonathan Feldman. As a chamber musician and recitalist, Angela Yoffe has performed in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Geneva, Rome and Tokyo. She has also appeared with the Seattle Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, SWR Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony and with New York’s Jupiter Symphony under the batons of Andrey Boreyko, Gerard Schwarz, Victor Yampolsky, Sebastian Lang-Lessing and the legendary Jens Nygaard. Angela Yoffe has received top prizes in many competitions, including the Dvarionas International Piano Competition in Lithuania.

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.

Photograph of Miriam Fried

Close Encounters with Music Opens 2013-2014 Season with “Anatomy of a Melody” – Beethoven, Brahms and World Premiere of Paul Schoenfield “Shaatnez” Popular Tune Migrates from Operetta to Concert Stage, Plus Brahms Symphonic-Scale Piano Quartet

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — In a musical conversation stretching across three centuries, a tune from Viennese operetta surfaces in a Beethoven piano trio and yet again in a newly penned piece by American composer Paul Schoenfield. Both will be heard at the opening concert of Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire’s preeminent chamber music series, on Saturday, October 19, 6 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

Beethoven’s Trio in B-Flat Major (nicknamed “Gassenhauer Trio”) spins out variations on a theme from Joseph Weigl’s popular 1797 “L’amor marinaro,” and sets the stage for the newly commissioned piece by Schoenfield, Shaatnez, which incorporates the same theme. Ending the program, the heavenly Brahms Piano Quartet Opus 26 is as close to symphonic scale as you get in chamber music. With its drama and gypsy vigor, it delivers an enthralling range of emotions. Featuring violinist Miriam Fried, violist Paul Biss, pianist Renana Gutman, and cellist Yehuda Hanani, the evening provides enduring classics with a contemporary twist.

Paul Schoenfield, whose music is widely performed and who moves with what has been described as “wizardly ease” from jazz to vaudeville and klezmer to ragtime and Broadway—sometimes in a single composition—combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, as exemplified in Café Music, his runaway classical hit. The new Shaatnez (which translates most readily from the Hebrew or Coptic—the origins of the term are obscure—as “linsey-woolsey”) weaves together not only the bawdy Viennese melody adopted by Beethoven, but also the famous Russian song, “Dark Eyes,” to astonishing effect.

“These two melodies co-exist like a marriage made in heaven,” says Close Encounters With Music artistic director Yehuda Hanani, who has known Schoenfield since student days at the Marlboro Festival. “Paul is a little bit like Ravel. He combines mathematical precision with passionate folkloric elements. It’s on the edge and has the acerbic frenzy of music of modernity, but with wit, intelligence, and deep understanding of past traditions and techniques. Shaatnez is framed on the program with two masterpieces, to which it stands up brilliantly.”

Schoenfield has received commissions, grants and awards from Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Fund, the America Composers Forum and many other organizations; his compositions can be heard on Angel, Decca/London’s Argo label, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG and New World. Shaatnez is the second work Paul Schoenfield has written for Close Encounters With Music. Refractions for clarinet, piano and cello, which was commissioned for bicentennial of Mozart death, was premiered in 1996, performed in New York, Detroit, Phoenix, and other U.S. cities, and recorded on an acclaimed all-Schoenfield CD for Naxos by Hanani, pianist James Tocco and clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein. Cultural critic Seth Rogovoy wrote of the world premiere: “Schoenfield’s dazzling work ingested the basic Mozartean vocabulary and transformed it into something astonishingly new and, even more remarkably, incredibly universal and personal at the same time.”

MORE ABOUT SHAATNEZ
One idea of the biblical notion of shaatnez is that mixing wool and linen upsets the environmental and/or metaphysical fabric of the universe. In combining popular, classical, high and low, it could be said that much of Schoenfield’s signature style is “shaatnez,” that is a weaving and mixing, pastiche and superimposition spun into something classical music has rarely seen before him—that reinvigorates old forms.

Since the inception of the Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Robert Beaser—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon. A new work by Paul Schoenfield is cause for classical music aficionados to rejoice.

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


ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Miriam Fried has been recognized for many years as one of the world’s preeminent violinists. She has played as guest soloist with virtually every major orchestra in the United States and Europe, including the principal orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, as well as with the Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony. Since 1993 she has been Artistic Director of the Ravinia Institute, one of the country’s leading summer programs for young musicians. Additionally, was until recently the first violinist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and collaborates regularly with her son, pianist Jonathan Biss. She plays a particularly noteworthy violin, a 1718 Stradivarius that is said to have been the favorite of its 18th-century owner, the composer-conductor Louis Spohr.

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, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Blue Hill, Bowdoin, Great Lakes, and Grand Canyon festivals, among many others, and has collaborated with fellow musicians including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk and the Tokyo, Muir, and Manhattan quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, The Frick Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. His recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.

Violist Paul Biss has conducted in Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Korea, and Israel and over 125 orchestral performances at the University of Indiana at Bloomington where he was professor of music. He has collaborated with the Mendelssohn Quartet, Fine Arts Quartet, and Alexander Quartet and has appeared in concert with Christoph Eschenbach, Menahem Pressler, Gidon Kremer, Pinchas Zukerman, Miriam Fried, Michael Tree, and Janos Starker, among other eminent performers. He is a faculty member at the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, and at New England Conservatory.

Praised by the New York Sun for playing “with great vigor and aplomb” and for the “true poetry in her phrasing,” pianistRenana Gutman was a top prize winner at the Los Angeles Liszt competition and International Keyboard Festival in New York and has performed with orchestras including the Jerusalem Symphony and Belgian “I Fiamminghi.” One of four young pianists selected by Leon Fleisher to participate in his workshop on Beethoven piano sonatas hosted by Carnegie Hall where she presented performances of Hammerklavier and Appassionata to critical acclaim, she spent three summers at the Marlboro Music Festival where she collaborated with Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, and members of the Guarneri string quartet. She has performed with soprano Susan Naruki and Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford. Her piano trio Terzetto has won critical acclaim and was featured at the Banff Center, Canada.

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, and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

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

Ticket Information for “Anatomy of a Melody—Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenfield”
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts, and include a free subscribers-only exclusive event. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

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

2013-14 CALENDAR AT THE MAHAIWE

Anatomy of a Melody—Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenfield, Saturday, October 19, 6PM

The Miraculous Violin: An Evening with Vadim Gluzman & Angela Yoffe, Saturday, December 21, 6PM

Linden String Quartet, Saturday, March 22, 6PM

Magyar! Sunday, April 27, 3PM

Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism, Saturday, May 17, 6PM

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

Conversations With…
“Footlights at the Met—A Peek Behind the Curtain” at the Mount is on Sunday, November 10. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi,” at the Lenox Club is at the Lenox Club on Sunday, April 6 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

Antonin Dvořák —A Bohemian Idyll concert takes place Saturday, June 14, 6PM, at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA. Tickets: $50 Orchestra and $40 Balconies.

Photograph of Woman in Historical Costume

Footlights at the Met – A Peek Behind the Curtain with International Costume Designer Charles Caine Historic Theatrical Fashions, Jewelry and Memorabilia

Do artifacts make the artist? Can tiaras and swashbuckling ensembles make the star?

Couture meets backstage drama in an afternoon presented by Close Encounters With Music and The Mount, as international costume designer Charles Caine offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at the Met and relates his experiences with such artists as Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, and Marc Chagall. The presentation features the actual tiara and necklace jewelry for Renata Scotto’s Tosca, the bodice of the Franco Zeffirelli designed dress worn by Leontyne Price as Cleopatra, and the actual historic Carmen shawl, worn by Madame Calve, a famous Carmen of the 1890’s.

The talk takes place at Edith Wharton’s Estate and Gardens Sunday, November 10 at 4 PM. Caine will open the curtain on what goes into the dressing and packaging of divas as they appear in opera houses around the world, focusing especially on the venerable Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where he started his career, and continued as resident costume designer for 16 seasons. Since then he has designed for many other opera companies, including Canadian Opera, Montreal Opera, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago Lyric, Washington Opera, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, and Miami. His designs have appeared in the acclaimed PBS-TV production of “Luisa Miller” starring Domingo, Milnes and Scotto.

“Footlights at the Met” 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; pianist-authors Walter Ponce and Adam Neiman; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar/performer/multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; 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. Refreshments, courtesy of Chocolate Springs, are included following the presentation.

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, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and 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 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 is the turn-of-the-century home that Edith Wharton designed and built in Lenox, MA, based on the precepts outlined in her 1897 book The Decoration of Houses, co-authored with architect Ogden Codman, Jr. A perfect example of the newly dawned American Renaissance, the classical revival house and its formal gardens represent the only full expression of Wharton’s architectural and landscape architectural theories. Only five percent of National Historic Landmarks are dedicated to women, and The Mount is one of them.

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Close Encounters with Music Opens 22nd Season with its Signature Mix of Innovative Programs – Paul Schoenfield World Premier October 19; Celebrity Talks, Film-In-Progress, Fireside Concert; Collaborations, Celebrations

Parade of Violin and Piano Virtuosos, Stars of Opera and the Chamber Music World in Concert at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington and Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Fall, Winter, Spring 2013-2014

Historic Met Costumes Presented at The Mount in Lenox and Verdi Bicentennial Marked at the Lenox Club in “Conversations With….” Series

(Great Barrington, MA…) Going into its 22nd year of presenting outstanding chamber music with lively commentary, the Berkshire’s premier chamber music organization, Close Encounters With Music, continues to expand its original programming of classical, contemporary and cutting-edge music. For the 2013-2014 season, CEWM features world-renowned musicians, including six leading violin virtuosos—Vadim Gluzman, Yehonatan Berick, Erin Keefe, Itamar Golan, Miriam Fried, and Joana Genova, together with their legendary instruments—along with outstanding pianists, vocalists, and clarinetist extraordinaire Alexander Fiterstein. Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor makes her Berkshire debut as does the Linden String Quartet; and CEWM introduces a Gypsy cimbalom player in a program devoted to Hungarian music. 2013 marks an important birthday for Giuseppe Verdi, which is celebrated with a special program and film on his legacy—“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi”—one of two in the Conversations With… series.

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.)
The season opens at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Saturday, October 19, 6 PM with a program featuring works by Beethoven, Brahms, and a world premiere by eminent American composer Paul Schoenfield. The heavenly Brahms Piano Quartet Opus 26 is as close to symphonic scale as you get in chamber music. With its drama and gypsy vigor, it delivers an enthralling range of emotions. Beethoven’s Trio in B-Flat Major spins out variations on a popular theme, setting the stage for the newly-penned piece by Schoenfield, which incorporates the same theme. Featuring violinist Miriam Fried, the evening provides enduring classics with a contemporary twist.

“When’s the last time that a piece of music made you laugh out loud…? He gets an “A” for wit in my grade book… This is some of the most life-affirming new music that I’ve heard in quite some time. It’s not all cheerful…but it does support the hypothesis that our lives are nothing more than a cosmic Keystone Kops film that has pie-fights, head-clubbing, and it stimulates the comforting thought that all of us eventually are going… down?… up?, … wherever we’re going, together. –Classical Net

“Anatomy of a Melody—Brahms, Beethoven and Schoenfield”
Renana Gutman, piano; Miriam Fried, violin; Paul Biss, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

On Saturday, December 21 at 6 PM, CEWM presents An Evening With Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe at the Mahaiwe. In technique and sensibility, Gluzman harkens back to the Golden Age of violinists of the 19th and 20th centuries, while demonstrating the passion and energy of the 21st century. He brings his “ex-Leopold Auer” Strad to a recital with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffee. A dazzling holiday program featuring the music of Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

“Gluzman’s sensational performance galvanized everyone around him.” –The London Telegraph

“The Miraculous Violin: An Evening with Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe”
Vadim Gluzman, violin; Angela Yoffe, piano

On Saturday, March 22 at 6 PM the award-winning Linden String Quartet takes the Mahaiwe by storm in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, a musical remembrance of his visit to Italy to recover from a disastrous marriage. The young energetic Linden also perform Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile and Brahms’ dramatic and turbulent quartet Opus 51 No. 1, which he wrote, in his own words, “hearing the footsteps of Beethoven” behind him, the first survivor after twenty destroyed quartets.

“Polished, radiant and incisive…” – The Strad

“Linden String Quartet”
Sarah McElravy, violin; Catherine Cosbey, violin, Eric Wong, viola; Felix Umansky, cello
with Pierre-Henri Xuereb, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

On Sunday, April 27 at 3 PM at The Mahaiwe, the stage is set for bona fide Hungarian sounds – from the cimbalom, the national folk instrument, to the sophistication of Liszt’s fiery Rhapsody, and Brahm’s majestic Piano Trio No.2 with Magyar themes. Bartok’s 1938 Contrast for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, commissioned by jazz legend Benny Goodman, is an amalgam of Hungarian folk music combined with Romanian dance melodies. The “contrasts” include the tone color of the three instruments, different musical idioms and jazz and classical modes. An authentic Roma player adds a dash of paprikash!

“The clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein seems to be capable of anything a composer could ask.” – Gramophone Magazine UK

“The sonatas came bounding to life in vital interpretations rich in imaginative detail and virile strength. Mr. Hanani was rightly rewarded with cheers from the audience.”—New York Times

“In this era of the cello, Hanani is among the best. His Bach was absorbing, imaginative, beautiful in all respects.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Lydia Artymiw is a compelling musical personality with the unusual ability to reach out and touch her listeners.—New York Times

“Magyar!”
Erin Keefe, violin; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Lydia Artymiw, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello; Cosmo Gorcsi, cimbalom

The sounds of an all-Beethoven program fill The Mahaiwe Saturday, May 17, 6PM, following his pathway from disciple of Haydn, from whom he inherited his audacity and humor, to prophet and hero of the Romantic Movement. His music stands as a glorious bridge between two eras—classical and romantic—and the selected works cover a good distance of this journey. In the Cello/Piano Sonata No.2, he is a young artist working within the forms of his day. The rare String Quintet Opus 29 points the way to his middle period. The Archduke Trio represents the pinnacle of his writing in that genre.

“Berick’s warm, passionate and gypsy-like tone quality suited the Brahms, as it moved through sections rhapsodic, wistful and plaintive, searching and unpredictable.”—El Paso Times

“Brilliant…A dashing virtuoso….Spectacular playing from Jeffrey Swann”…—New York Times

“It was (Joan Tower Concerto) superbly played by Yehuda Hanani” –Boston Globe

“Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism”
Yehonatan Berick and Joana Genova, violin; Amadi Azikiwe and Ariel Rudiakov, viola; Jeffery Swann, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello

The season concludes on Saturday, June 14 at Tanglewood at 6 PM a star-studded ensemble of musicians and one of the most beloved figures in classical music. Grammy Award winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor makes her Berkshire debut in Antonin Dvořák—A Bohemian Idyll, a program devoted to Dvořák, whose music almost by definition glows with lyricism and melodiousness. Representative works include the glorious Piano Quintet and Dumky Trio; and his Biblical Song, Gypsy Songs, and selections from the opera Rusalka, reflect another aspect of his output. Avery Fisher/Moscow Violin Competition laureate Itamar Zorman and Rubenstein Piano Competition laureate Roman Rabinovich join cellist Yehuda Hanani for a grand finale performance.

Diva Kelley O’Connor “has the potential to be one of the great singers of our time… managed to be at once seductive and haunting…”
The Denver Post.

Itamar Zorman’s….splendid playing conveyed precisely the right mix of tenderness, agitation and spiritual succor. –New York Times

“Native Israeli cellist Yehuda Hanani…studied with Leonard Rose at Juilliard and with Pablo Casals. It should come as no surprise then that he possesses Rose’s tonal amplitude and Casals’s intellectual discipline, breathtaking technique and limpid style….Commanding musicianship.” – Fanfare Magazine (January/February 2012)

“Antonin Dvořák —A Bohemian Idyll”
Kelly O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Itamar Zorman, violin; Roman Rabinovich, piano; 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.

For Subscribers Only: Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
An exclusive event, the Midwinter Fireside Concert, for season subscribers, Saturday, February 22, 6 PM at Ventfort Hall in Lenox:
“An Evening of Song—Surveying the Centuries”
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. On Saturday, November 10, 4PM, The Mount, Lenox., Close Encounters With Music and Edith Wharton’s The Mount present “Footlights at the Met – A Peek Behind the Curtain,” featuring international costume designer Charles Caine, who will offer a “behind-the-scenes” look at the Met and relate his experience with Maria Callas, Beverley Sills, Renata Scotto, and more. The presentation features costumes and memorabilia of historic theatrical fashions.

On Sunday, April 6, 3PM at The Lenox Club in Lenox, Close Encounters With Music presents author, architect and film-maker August Ventura, whose extensive writing on Verdi focuses on the relationship Verdi’s hometown of Parma maintains with the maestro’s legacy. The talk and film sequences (Ventura has been producing and directing an independent, feature-length documentary on Verdi entitled “27”) capture his political and cultural relevance, shedding light on how the operas promoted the notion of a unified Italy and help define her national character.

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 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 40 international students in residence in the Great Northern Catskills 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.

Note: Tickets for June 14 concert at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall can be purchased through CEWM only.

2013-14 CALENDAR AT THE MAHAIWE

Anatomy of a Melody—Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenfield, Saturday, October 19, 6PM

The Miraculous Violin: An Evening with Vadim Gluzman & Angela Yoffe, Saturday, December 21, 6PM

Linden String Quartet, Saturday, March 22, 6PM

Magyar! Sunday, April 27, 3PM

Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism, Saturday, May 17, 6PM

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

Conversations With…
“Footlights at the Met—A Peek Behind the Curtain” at the Mount is on Sunday, November 10. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi,” at the Lenox Club is at the Lenox Club on Sunday, April 6 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

Antonin Dvořák —A Bohemian Idyll concert takes place Saturday, June 14, 6PM, at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA. Tickets: $50 Orchestra and $40 Balconies.

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“White Nights” Program Highlights Russian Melodic Mastery: Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikosky

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Celebrating “White Nights” of the Russian tradition, two charismatic international performers—pianist Vassily Primakov and cellist Yehuda Hanani—join forces to present a program of Russian masters Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky, in the inaugural concert of Close Encounters With Music at the Clark Sunday, July 14 at 3 PM.

The epic cello/piano sonatas of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev reflect the same aspects of the Russian character as seen in the great literature—melancholy, mysticism, whimsy, biting humor and torrential Romanticism—as well as the added richness of Western influence from their sojourns in Paris and New York. Tchaikovsky’s Seasons for solo piano offers the signature charm, power and grandeur, and, of course, the inexhaustible reservoir of melody that produced his Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. The program provides a sweeping view of late Russian Romanticism and Modernism through the prism of three pillars of the repertoire. “We are delighted to be part of the expansion and new vision of the Clark,” says artistic director Yehuda Hanani. “Being surrounded by the large and varied collection is bound to spark new revelations about the synchronicities between the “bow and the brush.”

Based in Great Barrington and in its 22nd year in the Berkshires, Close Encounters has enjoyed collaborations with museums across the country, including the Detroit Institute of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Center for Fine Arts in Miami, and the Frick Collection in New York City. Often centering programs around an art movement, or commonalities between the visual and the acoustic, CEWM’s thematic programming brings a heightened sense of discovery to the concert experience.

Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, and Vadim Gluzman; 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, 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.
Tickets for “White Nights” are $40 ($30 members). Visit clarkart.edu or call 413- 458-0524 for information or to order tickets.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and reengagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, 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, and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among many others. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination, and his other discs have won wide recognition. 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 new audiences to classical music. He is Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music and the Catskill High Peaks Festival.

“One of the most polished performers of the post-Starker generation and a consistently expressive artist…The sonatas came bounding to life in vital interpretations rich in imaginative detail and virile strength. Mr. Hanani was rightly rewarded with cheers from the audience.” –The New York Times

“Native Israeli cellist Yehuda Hanani…studied with Leonard Rose at Juilliard and with Pablo Casals. It should come as no surprise then that he possesses Rose’s tonal amplitude and Casals’s intellectual discipline, breathtaking technique and limpid style….Commanding musicianship.” – Fanfare Magazine (January/February 2012)

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 the Juilliard School 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, 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.

Vassily Primakov: “The music soared with all the vibrancy and turbulence it possesses. We will be hearing much from this remarkable musician.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Berkshire-based Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Robert Beaser—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, Lydia Arytmiw, and Walter Ponce; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Erin Keefe; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, 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 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, CEWM performances begin at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; and the Catskill High Peaks Festival continues the educational mission of Close Encounters With Music with 40 international students in residence in the Great Northern Catskills in an immersive course of study and performance.

ABOUT THE CLARK
Set amidst 140 acres in the Berkshires, the Clark is one of the few major art museums that also serves as a leading international center for research and scholarship. The Clark presents public and education programs and organizes groundbreaking exhibitions that advance new scholarship. The Clark’s research and academic programs include an international fellowship program and conferences. Together with Williams College, the Clark sponsors one of the nation’s leading master’s programs in art history. The Clark receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The galleries are open daily in July and August (open Tuesday through Sunday from September through June), 10 am to 5 pm.

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Close Encounters’ “Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival”

LENOX, Mass. – Fjords, forests and fairy tales will be conjured up in an evening of music and readings, Saturday, June 8, at 6 PM at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall in Lenox, Mass. “Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival,” the final Close Encounters with Music concert of the 2012–2013 season, brings to the fore the national composer of Norway, Edvard Grieg, and two of his contemporaries, German composer Johannes Brahms and Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

Special guest narrator Tina Packer, founder and former artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, will deliver readings from Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” the most widely performed Norwegian play, and “Doll’s House,” which roiled Victorian-era Europe with its frankness and early feminism. “Peer Gynt,” inspired by a fairy tale, blends poetry, social satire and surrealism. Ms. Packer will have just completed her much-lauded appearance on Broadway in “Women of Will,” examining the roles of women in Shakespeare.

Violinist Ara Gregorian, known as one of the most versatile musicians of his generation, will perform Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3. The program for this gala event also includes a sampling of his superb piano works performed by internationally acclaimed pianist Adam Neiman and Brahms’ majestic Trio in B Major Opus 8 and. The evening will also feature baritone Mischa Bouvier, performing Grieg’s lush songs, and cellist Yehuda Hanani, founder and artistic director of Close Encounters with Music.

“The spirit of Northern Lights, the giddiness and lightheadedness of perpetual sunlight after the seemingly eternal winter will be reflected in the joyfulness of the evening,” promises Hanani. “It’s the same sensibility as Ingmar Bergman at his sunniest—the wild strawberries, the trolls, imps, elves, witches, and the symbolism of Peer Gynt’s Solweg, true love at the end of the journey.”

“Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival” is scheduled for Saturday, June 8, 6 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 ticket are available at $150. For more information or to order, visit www.cewm.org or call (800) 843-0778.

Artistic director Yehuda Hanani describes how he developed the theme for this performance:

I became very excited about presenting the music of Edvard Grieg and linking it to his friends and colleagues, other giants of the day — Brahms and Ibsen. As we know, artists often inspire and stimulate one another, whether at the Parisian Cafe Les Deux Magots, where Sartre, Hemingway, and Picasso traded ideas, or some other rendezvous of the literary and intellectual élite….There is a famous lunch that took place in Leipzig in 1887 on New Year’s Day at the home of Arthur Brodsky, one of the most famous European violinists. Brodsky had been rehearsing the Brahms Trio opus 100 with Brahms himself and had invited Eduard Grieg, who was in town, to visit. Well, in walked Tchaikovsky, and the rest is music history: Tchaikovsky and Brahms got to meet, Grieg more or less had to referee (Tchaikovsky never understood or liked Brahms’s music), and Arthur Brodsky agreed to premiere the magnificent Grieg Sonata No. 3 that violinist Ara Gregorian is going to play for us at Ozawa Hall on June 8.

We’ll also be playing a Brahms Trio — not the one that didn’t please Tchaikovsky, but the B Major Trio Opus 8. Adam Neiman, who is one of my favorite pianists, will present a panorama of Grieg’s folkloric and beautiful piano works; the sensational singer Mischa Bouvier will sing both Brahms and Grieg songs, and, on top of that, Tina Packer, who is winning all kinds of critical accolades with her current “Women of Will” show on Broadway, will read from Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen is evidently second only to Shakespeare in popularity, and Tina will provide illumination on the very fruitful artistic and personal friendship between Grieg and Ibsen. The play Peer Gynt inspired Grieg to write some of his most tuneful music, and Doll’s House, with its frank examination of the battle of the sexes, completely roiled Europe, and still is psychologically compelling.

So it will be an evening of great artistic collaborations — historic as well as new.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Mischa Bouvier made his professional musical theater debut in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” with the Boston Pops, and since then has performed numerous notable opera and musical theater roles, including Usher in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial By Jury,” Sergeant of Police in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” Moneybags Billy in Kurt Weill’s “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” at Tanglewood and Malatesta in Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale.” His artistic collaborators include Sting, on “Songs from the Labyrinth,” Guillermo Figueroa and the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the American Handel Society and many others.

Ara Gregorian made his New York recital debut in 1996 at Carnegie Hall, and his debut as a soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1997. Since then, he has performed in cities throughout the world, and is also founder and artistic director of the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival in Greenville, North Carolina, which recently celebrated its 12th anniversary season. He has appeared at festivals worldwide and performed extensively as a member of numerous chamber music ensembles, including the Daedalus Quartet, Concertante and the Arcadian Trio.

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, and Grand Canyon festivals, among many others, and has collaborated with fellow musicians including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman, and the Emerson 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 recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.

Adam Neiman has performed in most of the major cities and concert halls throughout the United States and Canada. His European solo engagements have brought him to Italy, France, Germany and Japan, where he made an eight-city tour culminating in his debut at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. He has collaborated with many of the world’s celebrated conductors, including Jiri Belohlavek, Giancarlo Guerrero, Theodor Gushlbauer, Carlos Kalmer, Uros Lajovic, Yoël Levi, Andrew Litton, Rossen Milanov, Heichiro Ohyama, Peter Oundjian, Leonard Slatkin and Emmanuel Villaume.

Tina Packer is one of the country’s foremost experts on Shakespeare and theater arts, and has directed more Shakespeare productions than any other woman in the world. She is the founder and artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, based in Lenox, Mass., one of the largest and most critically acclaimed Shakespeare festivals in North America. Before founding Shakespeare & Company in 1978, Packer trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed in the West End and in more than 20 productions for BBC and ITV television. She is the subject of Helen Epstein’s biography “The Companies She Keeps,” and coauthor of “Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management.”

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Berkshire-based Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Robert Beaser—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, Lydia Arytmiw, and Walter Ponce; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Erin Keefe; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Jennifer Zetlan, 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 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, CEWM performances begin at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; and the Catskill High Peaks Festival continues the educational mission of Close Encounters With Music with 40 international students in residence in the Great Northern Catskills in an immersive course of study and performance.

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

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Mozart, Beethoven, and Ravel on Tap in “Grand Piano Trios II,” Presented by Close Encounters with Music

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The great masters of the German tradition—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven—and the man who challenged their aesthetic, Maurice Ravel, will be celebrated in a Close Encounters With Music concert on Saturday, May 18 at 6 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle St. “Grand Piano Trios II” features violinist Itamar Zorman, pianist Roman Rabinovich and Close Encounters’ artistic director, cellist Yehuda Hanani. This is the second in a series showcasing piano trios that reflect significant junctures in classical music.

The program begins with Mozart’s Trio in B Flat Major and continues with Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Opus 24, also known as the “Spring Sonata.” The second half of the program is devoted to Ravel’s groundbreaking Piano Trio, brimming with ardor and his signature astringent ecstasy (as in “Bolero”!). When it was introduced in 1915, it blazed with new sonorities and contemporary rhythms based on archaic Mediterranean and Basque dances, and it continues to retain its freshness and exoticism 100 years later. The first movement was used extensively as the soundtrack for the film “Un coeur en hiver” (A Heart in Winter) starring Emmanuelle Béart.

Each of the evening’s performers is an acclaimed soloist with an international career. Though a work firmly entrenched in the chamber music repertoire, the Trio requires top-tier virtuosity to realize Ravel’s dazzling vision.

Born in Tel Aviv to a family of musicians, Itamar Zorman is the winner of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia. He previously won first prize at the 2010 Freiburg International Violin Competition in Germany. In 2011, as winner of the Juilliard Berg Concerto Competition, he made his Avery Fisher Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra. Zorman has performed as a soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and many others. 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. A founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project, Mr. Zorman has toured with the group across Israel and North America for the past four seasons.

Roman Rabinovich is the winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, and has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. Born in Uzbekistan, he began studying piano at age six with his mother; in 1994, he and his parents immigrated to Israel, where he studied at the Rubin Academy of Music. He made his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut at age 10, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and has since appeared with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, Dohnányi Orchestra of Budapest, Lubbock Symphony and the Neuchatel Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland), among others. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and with a master’s degree from Juilliard, he is also a visual artist who often combines concerts with exhibitions of his paintings.

Yehuda Hanani is renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Irish National Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among many others. He has collaborated in performances with Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman and many other lumininaries. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. His pioneering recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.

Ticket Information for “Grand Piano Trios II”
Tickets, $42 (orchestra and mezzanine) and $32 (balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, by calling 413.528.0100, or online at www.cewm.org or www.mahaiwe.org.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Commentary from founder and artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests. Close Encounters With Music programs have been presented in cities across the U.S. and Canada—Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Omaha, Cincinnati, Calgary, Scottsdale, Detroit, at the Frick Collection and Merkin Hall in New York City and at Tanglewood. Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly segments of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast and available on podcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

Upcoming Close Encounters With Music Concert:

June 8 — “Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival” at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, with Adam Neiman, piano; Ara Gregorian, violin; Mischa Bouvier, baritone; and Yehuda Hanani, cello. With special guest Tina Packer, reading from Ibsen. Music of Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms.

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

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Close Encounters with Music Brings All Star Line Up to “Grand Piano Trios”

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The engaging chamber music series Close Encounters With Music returns on April 20 to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, presenting two magnificent piano trios—a 20th century classic side by side with Schubert at the summit. Franz Schubert’s B-Flat Piano Trio opus 99 is juxtaposed with Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music, one of classical music’s most popular works. Often described as a post-Modern Gershwin, Paul Schoenfield combines ingredients of jazz, klezmer, and whimsy. Irresistible and full of energy, humor and nostalgia, as well as dazzling virtuosity, Café Music is caffeine-fuelled music at its most entertaining, instantly accessible despite its rich complexities. Schubert’s final year was staggeringly productive. The B-Flat Trio captures the meteoric luminosity of his inevitable death, as well as his inimitable melodic lyricism. Both composers utilize folklore and the point of departure for each is the easy charm of the institution of the Viennese café. Violinist Erin Keefe (hailed as “an impressive violin soloist” by The New York Times) and award-winning pianist Jeffery Swann join cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani for this evening of fascinating contrasts.

“Grand Piano Trios” will take place on Saturday April 20, 6 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington. Tickets are $32/42 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 413.528.0100, or by going online to http://www.mahaiwe.org. For more information about this concert or others in our series visit http://www.cewm.org.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and reengagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, 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, 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, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman, the Tokyo, Vermeer, Muir, Lark, Avalon, Colorado, and Manhattan quartets, as well as members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Borromeo, and Emerson. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey 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. Mr. Hanani has been committed to extending the range of the cello repertoire and to collaborating with performers in many artistic realms, including actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander, and Sigourney Weaver. 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 is “one of the most polished performers of the post-Starker generation and a consistently expressive artist.”
— The New York Times

Winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, American violinist Erin Keefe is quickly establishing a reputation and earning praise as a compelling artist who combines exhilarating temperament and fierce integrity. A top prize winner of several international competitions, she took the Grand Prizes in the 2007 Torun International Violin Competition (Poland), the 2006 Schadt Competition and the Corpus Christi International String Competition, and was the Silver Medalist in the Carl Nielsen, Sendai (Japan) and Gyeongnam (Korea) International Violin Competitions. She has appeared with orchestras and in recital in the United States, Austria, Germany, Korea, Poland, Japan and Denmark and has collaborated with many leading artists of today including Edgar Meyer, Gary Graffman, Richard Goode, Colin Carr, Menahem Pressler, and Leon Fleisher. She appeared on a program with Michael Tilson Thomas premiering his own chamber music at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Her recording credits include Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet for the Naxos Label, recordings of the Dvorak Terzetto and the Dvorak Piano Quartet in E-flat for the CMS Studio Recording label and live performances of the Bartok Contrasts, Dvorak Piano Quintet, and Mozart E-flat Piano Quartet recorded for Deutsche Gramophone. Her festival appearances have included Marlboro, Music from Angel Fire, Ravinia, Seattle, OK Mozart, and Bridgehampton. As a member of Chamber Music Society Two she has appeared at Lincoln Center numerous times as well as on tour and was featured on Live From Lincoln Center. She holds a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music Degree from The Curtis Institute. Ms. Keefe holds the position of Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra.

Jeffrey Swann enjoys an international performing career which has taken him throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. He won first prize in the Dino Ciani Competition sponsored by La Scala in Milan, a gold medal at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and top honors at the Warsaw Chopin, Van Cliburn, Vianna da Motta and Montreal Competitions, as well as the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York City. His large and varied repertoire includes more than 60 concertos as well as solo works ranging from Bach to Boulez. In addition to presenting lecture/recitals worldwide, Mr. Swann has performed with the symphonies of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Dallas, Saint Louis, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore and Minneapolis; and in Europe with the orchestras of Rotterdam, The Hague, Belgian National, La Scala, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Prague Philharmonic, and the London Philharmonia, among many others. The conductors with whom he has performed include Zdenek Macal, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marek Janowski, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti and Leonard Slatkin. In addition, he continues to lecture regularly at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and at Wagner Societies in the United States and Italy. Mr. Swann has also served as a judge at many competitions, most recently at the Utrecht International Liszt Competition. A native of northern Arizona, Jeffrey Swann studied with Alexander Uninsky at Southern Methodist University and with Beveridge Webster and Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School, where he received his B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. Degrees. His CD, “The Virtuoso Liszt” (Music & Arts) won the Liszt Society’s Grand Prix, and his first volume of the Complete Beethoven Sonatas (Agorá) was chosen one of the Best of the Year by Fanfare magazine. Since 2007 Jeffrey Swann has been Artistic Director of the Dino Ciani Festival & Academy in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and 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.

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $42 (orchestra and mezzanine) and $32 (balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $185 ($160 for seniors) for a series of 7 concerts. Visit our website at www.cewm.org. Note: Tickets for June 8th concert at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall can be purchased through CEWM only.

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.

Upcoming Close Encounters with Music Concerts
May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel
June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival

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