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.

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.

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.

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Eliot Fisk demonstrates the versatility and appeal of the classical guitar in a Close Encounters With Music concert on Saturday, March 23 at 6 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle St. The diverse program, titled “Old, New, Borrowed and Blues,” features J.S. Bach, tango, Schubert lieder, American folk music, improvisations and the world premiere of a commissioned work by Grammy Award-nominated composer Robert Beaser.

Fisk is known worldwide for his adventurous repertoire and willingness to take music into unusual venues, such as schools, senior centers and even logging camps and prisons. Described by his mentor, guitar legend Andrés Segovia, as “at the top line of our artistic world,” Fisk has transformed the repertoire of the classical guitar through his ground-breaking transcriptions, including works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Paganini.

A best-selling recording artist, Eliot Fisk has had numerous works dedicated to him and has collaborated with other musicians-including guitarist Angel Romero, virtuoso clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and jazz guitar great Bill Frisell-in classical, flamenco, jazz and world-music styles. He is founder and director of Boston Guitar Fest, an annual event co-sponsored by Northeastern University and the New England Conservatory, where he is a faculty member.

To premiere the new Beaser work, “Spring Songs,” Fisk will be joined by soprano Jennifer Zetlan, making her Berkshire debut, and acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, founder and artistic director of Close Encounters. Zetlan has performed on the stages of the New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, returning to the Met as Xenia in a new production of Boris Godunov, broadcast worldwide as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s “LIVE! in HD” series.

“Spring Songs” includes two songs in a projected four-song set. Says Fisk of the new work: “The combination of a bass instrument (e.g., cello) and chordal instrument (such as guitar) has deep roots in the baroque era, where such an ensemble was the core of the basso continuo. It will be fascinating to see how Beaser translates this ancient precedent into 21st-century terms.”

The program also includes French folk songs by Matyas Seiber, folk songs by Edward Benjamin Britten and music by Franz Schubert, Isaac Albeniz, Gabriel Fauré, Enrique Granados, Vittorio Monti and others.

Ticket Information for “An Evening with Eliot Fisk: Old, New, Borrowed and Blues”
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.

Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The commission of “Spring Songs” is funded by a generous grant from the Louis and Lena Minkoff Foundation.

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

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.

Upcoming Close Encounters with Music Concerts

April 20 Grand Piano Trios I: Schubert & Schoenfield

May 18 Grand Piano II: Mozart, Beethoven and Ravel

June 8 Nordic Lights: Grieg Revival