May 12: GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and her Ensemble Baroklyn Perform First Ever All-Philip Glass Concert

Presented by Kaufman Music Center

Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm

Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center
129 West 67th Street | New York, NY
Tickets & Information

PLUS Dinnerstein & Baroklyn’s New Bach Album Complicité Out May 30
Review downloads and CDs available upon request

New York, NY – On Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, an Artist-in-Residence with the Kaufman Music Center (KMC) this season, performs her first ever all-Philip Glass concert at KMC’s Merkin Hall (129 West 67th St), as part of KMC’s Piano Dialogues series. Described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic,” Dinnerstein will perform three works by the American minimalist master – Glass’s Mad Rush for solo piano, plus two concertos – Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1) and – for the first time ever – his Suite from The Hours. Dinnerstein will perform the latter two works with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded and directs. (The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough). As part of her residency at the Kaufman Music Center, Dinnerstein will also lead a performance of J.S. Bach’s keyboard concertos with young pianists from Kaufman’s Special Music School High School on May 22, 2025, and lead a performance of Philip Glass ‘s Etudes with Lucy Moses School students and faculty on June 8, 2025.

Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and increasingly so for her interpretations of music by Philip Glass. She has performed and recorded his Piano Concerto No. 3, which Glass wrote for her in 2017, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. NPR Music reported of her recording of the piece, “Dinnerstein's creamy tone and elastic phrasing gives the music an air of Schubertian warmth and wistfulness.”

Of what is particularly special about her string ensemble Baroklyn, Dinnerstein says: “We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me – that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group.”

Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s performance at Kaufman Music Center comes just before the May 30 release of their new album, Complicité, on Supertrain Records. This is Dinnerstein’s first recording with Baroklyn. The album features the music of J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser. Complicité includes Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617, Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053 and his chorale Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (also arranged by Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String. Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano, and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore, join Dinnerstein and Baroklyn on this deeply felt recording, which embodies the artistic vision that Dinnerstein and Baroklyn hold dear. Read the album press release here.

Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s all-Glass program at Kaufman Music Center will also be recorded for future commercial release, following the concert.

Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto, composed in 2000, went unperformed in New York for more than 20 years until Dinnerstein’s performance of the work with the Brooklyn Orchestra and Olivier Glissant in November 2023. Glass based the concerto on melody fragments of traditional Austrian Volkslied, or folk music, in the Tyrolean tradition. Dinnerstein says of the piece, “The second movement of the ‘Tirol’ is what first drew me to it. Built almost as a set of variations, the sound is lush and pulsating, and its mood relates to his Symphony No 3 for strings. I love the play between intense lyricism and a feeling of austerity, so reminiscent of Schubert’s writing.”

Glass’s Suite from The Hours is a three-movement piano concerto taken from his film score for Stephen Daldry’s film The Hours, an adaptation of the novel by Michael Cunningham. The score received Golden Globe, GRAMMY, and Academy Award nominations, along with winning a British Academy Film Award in Film Music.

Glass’s Mad Rush was originally composed for the organ at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Dinnerstein recorded the piece for her 2022 album Undersong (Orange Mountain Music). The Washington Post wrote of her interpretation, “The vast architecture of Glass’s Mad Rush was shot through with ever-changing light, creating a hypnotic effect with a delicate symbiosis of the physical and spiritual,” while NPR called it, “gorgeous, transportive.”

More about Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fourteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. She released her live recording of the premiere in October 2024 on Supertrain Records to coincide with Ives’s 150th birthday. The Eye is the First Circle also marked Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse. Dinnerstein premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, an Artist-in-Residence with the Kaufman Music Center (KMC) this season, performs an all-Philip Glass concert as part of KMC’s Piano Dialogues series. Described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic,” Dinnerstein will perform three works by the American minimalist master – Glass’s Mad Rush for solo piano, plus two concertos with her string ensemble Baroklyn – Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1) and, for the first time, his Suite from The Hours.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs an All-Philip Glass Concert with her string ensemble Baroklyn
What: Philip Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto, Mad Rush, and Suite from The Hours
When: Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Merkin Hall at Kaufmann Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023
Tickets and information: https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/simone-dinnerstein-with-baroklyn

Sony Classical Signs World-Renowned Pianist Alexander Malofeev

“…His intensity overwhelms…[he] makes a monumentally thunderous impression with his music…” – The Los Angeles Times

Sony Classical is thrilled to announce the exclusive signing of world renowned pianist Alexander Malofeev. His debut album for Sony Classical is expected in the fall.

The twenty-three-year-old Berlin-based musician has quickly emerged as one of the most prominent pianists of his generation, captivating audiences and garnering high praises from critics. The Guardian noted of him: “Malofeev doesn’t just play the notes; he brings every phrase to life as if it tells something entirely new...” Der Standard in Austria described his 2022 debut at the world-famous Musikverein as a: “world piano revolution.”

On the signing of this exclusive agreement with Alexander Malofeev, Per Hauber, President, Sony Classical noted: “Alexander Malofeev is undoubtedly one of the most exciting pianists of his generation. Despite his young age, he can already look back on an impressive career on stage. We believe the time has now come for him to embark on his career in the recording studio. With his unique debut album and many more ideas for the future, we can look forward to a brilliant recording career for Alexander Malofeev. Sony Classical is very proud to be his exclusive partner for this.”

Alexander Malofeev added: “In Sony Classical, I have found the right place to bring my personal recording vision to life - with genuine trust, openness and a shared sense of artistic curiosity. Recording for me is about capturing a moment that feels magical and honest. It’s an exciting beginning."

Malofeev gained international attention when in 2014, he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians aged just thirteen with high praise including: “…an incredible maturity. Crystal clear sounds and perfect balance revealed his exceptional ability” (Amadeus). Since then, he has performed with many leading orchestras around the world, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala and many more.

Alexander Malofeev regularly works with some of the most distinguished conductors of the day, including Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, JoAnn Falletta and Riccardo Chailly, who has said of him: “he is very young but already possesses depth and technical abilities…”. As well as performing on leading stages internationally, Malofeev has been a guest at world-famous music festivals such as Verbier Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival and Aspen Music Festival (USA), among others.

Renowned for his virtuosic technique and profound musical expressiveness, Malofeev's exceptional talent has also been recognized with numerous awards and prizes. In addition to his first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, he won the Grand Prix at the 1st International Competition for Young Pianists Grand Piano. In 2017, he became the first Yamaha Young Artist.

Gramophone’s Mark Pullinger reviewing a 2022 Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra concert from the city’s Alte Oper – where Malofeev stepped in for the indisposed original soloist - wrote that: “Alexander Malofeev…played a truly exciting rendition of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, displaying glittering dexterity, expansive rubatos and a demonic first movement cadenza.”

Official Channels

Alexander Malofeev: Official Website
Alexander Malofeev: On YouTube
Alexander Malofeev: On Instagram
Alexander Malofeev: On Facebook

Announcing the 27th Annual MATA Festival — in Partnership with ISSUE Project Room — INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces

June 11-14, 2025

Featuring Music by 18 Early-Career Composers

Alongside Major Works by Jessie Cox, Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and a World Premiere by Reza Vali

Performances by Sun Ra Arkestra, FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR, TROPOS, RE:duo, MATA Mavens, and More

“the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world” – The New Yorker

June 11-14, 2025 at 7pm (Doors 6:30pm)
ISSUE Project Room | 22 Boerum Place | Brooklyn, NY

Festival Passes On Sale April 22, Single Tickets Available May 1:
www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025

New York, NY – From June 11-14, 2025, MATA presents its 27th annual MATA Festival, this year in partnership with ISSUE Project Room, featuring four concerts across four nights exploring the concept of INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces – music that connects with the diaspora of ancestry and heritage, around ideas of imagination, mysticism, liberation, science fiction, history, fantasy, and technoculture. The New York Times has hailed the MATA Festival as “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic,” while The Wall Street Journal reports that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.”

The MATA Festival has been a much-anticipated fixture of the New York and worldwide new music scene since its founding in 1996 by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa, who established “Music at the Anthology,” now called MATA, as a means of providing early-career composers a platform for finding community and creating performance opportunities. Nearly 30 years later, MATA still serves as an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multi-media, performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. Its annual MATA Festival has become one of the most sought-after opportunities for young and emerging composers.

Curated by MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris, the 2025 MATA Festival features works by 18 composers in the early stages of their professional careers, selected by Harris and a panel of eight esteemed composers and artists – Titilayo Ayangade, Tom Chiu, Felix Fan, John Glover, Conrad Harris, Max Mandel, Paula Matthusen, and Kal Sugatski – from a free, global call resulting in over 300 submissions.

Pauline Kim Harris has crafted four unique concert programs for the Festival that combine the works of these early-career composers with major works by six legendary artists – Jessie Cox (whose Enter the Impossible was written for and will be performed by Sun Ra Arkestra and FLUX Quartet), Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Reza Vali. The 2025 MATA Festival performers include Sun Ra Arkestra, FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR conducted by Tito Muñoz, TROPOS, RE:duo, and the MATA Mavens to include Majel Connery, soprano; Oshay LeGare, baritone; Titilayo Ayangade, cello; Laura Cocks, flutes; Louis Arques, clarinets; Sam Nester, trumpet; Han Chen, piano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; Sam Yulsman, piano; and Josh Perry, percussion.

“This year’s festival brings focus to a past and future of musical exploration by living legends, manifesting a legacy which continues to influence, inspire and impact generations of composers — grounded by the complexities and intersections of identity, race, history, and cultural ethos,” says MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris. “Each night of the four-day festival is titled after a work by an iconic pioneer in the fabric of the American sound that makes up music today, performed by the illustrious FLUX Quartet and on opening night, Sun Ra Arkestra. Programs are further illuminated by the selected early-career composers, our very own MATA Mavens and invited guest artists and ensembles, igniting the intimacy of the experience, uniquely curated for a four-night journey. Attending the full festival is highly recommended.”

Composers that have been presented by MATA early in their careers include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur “Geniuses.” For a full list of MATA Alumni, visit www.matafestival.org/mata-alumni. This year’s cohort of 18 composers includes:

• Diallo Banks is interested in sympathetic resonance, open scores, improvisation, and instrument modification. As a performer, his work pushes the Hammond organ’s capabilities to its limits while still firmly engaging with its history as a sonic signifier of Black identity. His works have been commissioned and performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Conducting Orchestra, and Contemporary Insights Ensemble in Leipzig, Germany. In the fall of 2025, he will begin his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at Columbia University.

• Anuj Bhutani is a first-generation Indian-American whose work is focused on liminal spaces, and as such is often highly interdisciplinary, engaging with theater, dance, and film while drawing on his musical background in classical, emo/screamo, ambient, singer/songwriter, and electronic music, resulting in genre- and culturally-fluid pieces that firmly situate the listener between multiple musical worlds at once. His music has been called "alternately celestial and dark" by WNYC's John Schaefer.

• Inga Chinilina is a multimedia composer with concert pieces ranging from solo to orchestral compositions, alongside works for dance, film, and installations. She sees music as an act of translation, a concept she explores in both her academic and creative work. In her creative practice, Inga transforms personal stories into sonic expressions, reflecting a wide range of societal issues, including immigration, womanhood, and the environment. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University.

• Rodrigo Espino is a Mexican composer and sound artist. His music is a visceral experience, produced and perceived through the entire body. The driving force behind his music emerges from the experience of epilepsy and physical pain, exploring the body’s inability to voice itself as a catalyst for transforming convulsion into creative energy. His works have been presented at Mexico's most important venues, such as the Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, as well as in Brazil and Switzerland.

• Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer based in New York City. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical and experimental music, she is a co-founder of the Bergamot Quartet, as well as Tropos and earspace ensemble. As a composer, she has been commissioned by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, Ayane and Paul, and more. Her music embodies a desire to create and share a sound-world in which the classical tradition, the folk music with which she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an extensive improvisatory sensibility, are in productive dialogue.

• Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. She makes instrumental and computer music and uses various media and technologies to express extramusical meaning. Her works are focused on the contemporary world through the lens of horror esthetics, video games, and feminist scholarships. She explores the possibilities of communicating through art by superimposing latent meanings with distinct images within the context of tradition and mass culture.

• Kylan Hillman is a composer, guitarist, and improviser whose primary interest is destroying and scrambling material to investigate the beauty in imperfection. His music often includes visceral computerized glitches, novel approaches to traditional instruments, and harsh walls of noise. Kylan’s recent output includes Methods of Crunching which uses objects like butterknives, screwdrivers, and guitar picks to create overwhelming scratching, popping, and rubbing sound. He is currently a Master’s student studying composition at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

• New York City-based composer, pianist, and video artist Brian Mark has been hailed by the American Composers Forum as an “intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth.” He has had works performed by the BBC Singers, Chelsea Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Psappha Ensemble, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, the Ligeti Quartet, and more. He completed his Ph.D. at the Royal Academy of Music and is also a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University.

• Anna Meadors is a composer, saxophonist, electronic music producer, and educator. Her music is inspired by nature walks and small details, birds, slightly uneven pulses, the buzzy stillness of bodies of water, and joyful improvisation. Her saxophone playing has been described as “potently feral” (American Pancake) and “sprawling across the walls and dripping onto the floor all John Zorn-like” (Outside Left). She graduated from Peabody Conservatory with a B.M. in saxophone performance, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with an M.M. in Composition, and recently finished her Ph.D. at Princeton University in Music Composition.

• Giordano Bruno do Nascimento, born in Brazil, is a German composer distinguished by his profound artistic exploration of the role of the human voice in our society. Do Nascimento’s artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the diverse meanings and functions of the human voice. These investigations frequently culminate in new works. His research also delves into the intersections of gender and voice, examining how vocal expressions can transcend traditional gender norms and contribute to a more fluid understanding of identity. Currently, do Nascimento is exploring “the boundaries of the human voice in its definitions” as part of his doctoral studies at the HfMT Hamburg.

• The "spellbinding" (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. His music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, New World Center, and Chicago's Symphony Center. Novak is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.

• Sofia Jen Ouyang is committed to creating artwork that both expressively and critically engages with other people and the world. Her works have been performed across the US, Europe, and Asia, including in venues such as Lincoln Center, Frankfurt Oper, Columbia University Miller Theatre, Luzern KKL, Arvo Pärt Center, National Sawdust, New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, and more. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Composition at Columbia University.

• Born in Puerto Rico, Luis Quintana is an internationally recognized composer based in France who extends the frontiers of his musical universe from concert music to acousmatic pieces and sound installations. Captivated by cultural fusions and their sonic expressions, he engages in an ongoing dialogue between diverse traditions, merging ancient heritages, natural soundscapes, and contemporary practices. He holds a Master’s Degree from the Paris National Conservatory.

• Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn born and based, Ramsay’s work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin’s current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process immersive audio for playback on multichannel sound systems.

• Jee Seo is a South Korean contemporary classical music composer. Over the last decade, his works have been presented by numerous performers and ensembles in more than 50 cities and about 20 countries across four continents. Jee has been collaborating on a wide range of projects with artists, dancers, and filmmakers, and his collaborative music videos have been screened at festivals worldwide. He is currently a doctoral student at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

• Negar Soleymanifar is an Iranian composer and performer currently based in Middletown, CT. She centers her work on an interpersonal perspective and its relationship to other human beings, exploring psychological states, inner struggles, and social contexts through her music, with the aim of communicating what seems uncommunicable. She holds a bachelor's degree in music composition from the Tehran University of Art and is pursuing an M.A. in music with a concentration in experimental music and composition at Wesleyan University.

• Andrew Stock is a composer and artist working in concert and installative formats with focus areas in experimental music, conceptual art, and Black studies. His work has been commissioned or programmed by groups and festivals including LA Phil/wild Up, Fonema Consort, Quince Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Ostrava Days (CZ). He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.

• Petra Strahovnik is an internationally acclaimed composer and interdisciplinary artist, celebrated for her fearless exploration of sound and music. Her groundbreaking works blend music, performance, and visual art, drawing inspiration from societal issues and human experiences. She won the 66th International Rostrum of Composers Prize and her achievements also include a Fellowship and Art Residency at Villa Concordia in Bamberg, and the Berlin Art Prize for Music 2021.

In addition to its annual MATA Festival, MATA’s activities include MATA Presents, which brings commissioned projects to venues and non-conventional spaces throughout New York; MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by emerging composers, and performed by top performers in new music; special MATAthon fundraising events throughout the year which bring supporters in close communion with MATA artists; and MATAlab, a new concert platform that embraces the casual atmosphere of a chamber music reading party that allows composers, musicians, and audiences to mingle and discover new music together. ASCAP has awarded MATA its prestigious Aaron Copland Award in recognition of its ongoing work.

27th Annual MATA Festival Schedule

ENTER THE IMPOSSIBLE
Opening Night: Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY

Performances by Sun Ra Arkestra; FLUX Quartet; Jessie Cox, drums; and Sam Yulsman, piano and electronics

Program:
Jessie Cox: Enter the Impossible (2023) for Sun Ra Arkestra; commissioned by the Paul Fromm Foundation
Oliver Lake: One Move (2022, New York Premiere)
Jessie Cox: Sound Drape Painting (2025, World Premiere)
+*Diallo Banks: Sarmad for String Quartet (2025, World Premiere)

The 27th annual MATA Festival opens with Jessie Cox’s evening-length opus Enter the Impossible, written for and performed by the unparalleled Sun Ra Arkestra, with FLUX Quartet and Sam Yulsman. Enter the Impossible is imagined as a space flight, journeying through different musical spaces, including many pieces from Sun Ra Arkestra’s large collection of works, such as Say from their recent record Swirling, or the classic Space is the Place, among others. The concert also includes the world premiere of Cox’s Sound Drape Painting, inspired by Sam Gilliam’s drape paintings and exploring new ways of hearing musical form and movement through the sonic. Cox explains, “Music as aesthetic experience proposes, or is a site to imagine, ways of spacing – how we come to inhabit and make space and time." FLUX Quartet will also perform the New York premiere of jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist Oliver Lake’s One Move as well as the world premiere of MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer Diallo Banks’ Sarmad for string quartet. Sarmad is structured around the concept of yati, a principle in South Indian music that shapes musical phrases through systematic variation.

Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025

THE CAPITOL
Night Two: Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY

Performances by FLUX Quartet, MATA Mavens, TROPOS, and RE:duo

Program:
Wadada Leo Smith: String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism) for String Quartet (2024, New York Premiere)
Roscoe Mitchell: 9/9/99 With CARDS for String Quartet (2009/2011, rev. 2021, New York Premiere)
*Ledah Finck: The Best Donuts In Pennsylvania for Violin, Saxophone, Piano and Drums (2023)
*Inga Chinilina: Shock Workers for Viola, Saxophone and Motors (2024, New York Premiere)
*Kylan Hillman: Methods of Crunching for Electric Guitar (2024)
*Anna Meadors: Encircle, recirculate for Saxophone and No-Input Mixer (2025, World Premiere)
*Jee Seo: On Fever II for Solo Violin (2017, New York Premiere)
*Brian Mark: Per Aspera Ad Astra for Solo Violin and Digital Delay Processing Pedal with Video (2020)

Night Two of the 27th Annual MATA Festival features the New York premiere of Wadada Leo Smith's String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism) which examines the U.S. Capitol building as both a symbol of democracy and insurrection, performed by FLUX Quartet. FLUX Quartet also performs the New York premiere of Roscoe Mitchell's 9/9/99 With CARDS, which Mitchell describes as a “scored improvisation,” in which each player is given six cards with musical notation on them that they can arrange, reshuffle, and perform in different “hands.” Night Two also includes six works by MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composers for varying instrumentation – from solo violin to an ensemble of viola, saxophone, and motors – performed by MATA Mavens, TROPOS, and RE:duo.

Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025

SALMAK (World Premiere)
Night Three: Friday, June 13, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY

Performances by FLUX Quartet and MATA Mavens

Program:
Reza Vali: String Quartet No. 6, Salmak (2024, World Premiere)
*Petra Strahovnik: Attack for String Quartet (2023, New York Premiere)
*Anuj Bhutani: On Letting Go for Solo Cello and Electronics (2020)
*Rodrigo Espino: Responso el en Vacío for Contrabass Clarinet and Electronics (2023, World Premiere)
*Negar Soleymanifar: Prelude to the Ashes for Cello and Narrator (2023, New York Premiere)

Night Three of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is centered around the world premiere of Reza Vali’s String Quartet No. 6, Salmak, a tribute to the great 13th century Persian music theorist and musician Safialdin Ormavi. Vali says of the work, “I have used some of Ormavi’s 13th century medieval modes and have interpolated these modes with some of the modes of the modern Persian modal system, the Dastgâh system.” The evening also includes four pieces by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career Composers, each exploring varying heightened emotional states – surviving survival instincts; pain and lamentation; catharsis after the pandemic; and the struggle to release unresolved emotions – performed by FLUX Quartet and the MATA Mavens.

Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025

EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING
Night Four: Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY

Performances by Members of FLUX Quartet; Ensemble LPR led by Tito Muñoz, conductor; Majel Connery, soprano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; and Oshay LeGare, baritone

Program:
George Lewis: String Quartet 1.5, “Experiments in Living” (2016)
*Giordano Bruno do Nascimento: Vis-aVis(a) for 3 Performers and One Grand Piano, 3 Toms and Credit Cards (2020, New York Premiere)
*Paul Novak: seven dreams about my body  for microtonal sextet (2024, New York Premiere)
*Andrew Stock: “Les concerts ne sont jamais de veritable musique, on doit renoncer a y entendre, ce qu’il y a de beau dans l’art.” for Piano, Flute, Clarinet (or bass clarinet), Violin (or viola), Cello, and Percussion (2024, New York Premiere)
*Luis Quintana: Textos Invisibles for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano, Soprano/Mezzo (2015, New York Premiere)
*Sofia Jen Ouyang: Return to Root for Conductor, Flutes, Soprano, Percussion, Recorded-improvisation, and Video (2022)
*Nina Fukuoka: Polka is a Czech Dance for Flutes, Clarinets, Cello, Percussion, Piano, with Video (2023, US Premiere)
*Kevin Ramsay: Golden Euphonics for Alto Flute, CB Clarinet, Piccolo A Trumpet, Violin, Cello, Piano, and Baritone (2023)

The centerpiece for Night Four of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is George Lewis’s String Quartet 1.5 "Experiments in Living” from 2016; Lewis's first string quartet. He says of the work, “I take ‘Experiments in Living,’ a phrase from John Stuart Mill, to express my notion of recombinant assemblage, associative sonic discourses that appear and recur in ever new forms and guises, suffused with the power of noise. . . I’m looking for listeners to experience the volatility of memory, resistance, and hope." Night Four includes seven works by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career composers, all exploring what lies beyond our perception – from a sextet encapsulating vivid dreams during the pandemic to a work exploring the reciprocity of presence and absence – performed by FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR led by conductor Tito Muñoz, soprano Majel Connery, pianists Erika Dohi and Paul Kerekes, and baritone Oshay LeGare.

Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025

*MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer
+Next Fest Composer, selected from MATA Festival alumni and participants

Programs subject to change. Visit www.matafestival.org for all festival updates and information.

May 3 & 4: California Symphony's Epic Season Finale Features Striking Pair of Unfinished Masterpieces by Schubert and Bruckner

Photo by Kristen Loken; high resolution photos available here.

California Symphony's Epic Season Finale
UNFINISHED BRUCKNER

Featuring the Unfinished Symphonies of Schubert & Bruckner

Led by Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director

In Concert May 3 at 7:30pm & May 4 at 4:00pm
At Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts 

California Symphony’s 2024-2025 Season Showcases the Crowning Achievements of
Composers at the Peak of Their Powers: Watch Donato Cabrera’s Introduction

Tickets & Information: www.californiasymphony.org

WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera conclude the 2024-2025 season, which has showcased the crowning achievements of composers at the peak of their powers, with UNFINISHED BRUCKNER – two concerts featuring a striking pair of unfinished masterpieces by Franz Schubert and Anton Bruckner on Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30pm and Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 4:00pm at Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts (1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek).

Declining health, hesitation over how to continue the piece, work overload, or even that the pages were completed but ultimately lost – theories abound, but no one really knows why Schubert never finished his hauntingly beautiful Symphony No. 8. The three completed movements of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 showcase his signature big symphonic sound, iconic themes, and brass fanfares. Featuring one of the largest ensembles to take the stage, Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9 makes a fittingly epic grand finale to California Symphony’s concert season.

“It has been a longtime wish of mine to program Schubert’s unfinished Symphony No. 8 with Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9,” says Donato Cabrera. “While over 70 years separate them from one another, they share many of the same attributes and are, in this sense, musical contemporaries. In both symphonies, profound mystery and solemnity are frequently interrupted by emotional and dramatic outbursts. Simple, chorale-like melodies are used by both composers to create a complex web of communal experience, while also suggesting that there is a greater force behind it all. It’s as if both are trying to depict, in music, what is beyond the great veil. Music such as this gives us a great opportunity to contemplate such matters on our own terms, without words or dogma to muddy the waters. It is my hope that people will leave the concert hall in a deep and thoughtful satisfaction, truly changed by these two powerful symphonies.” 

Schubert began work on his Symphony No. 8 in 1822 but left only two movements completed, even though he lived for another six years. The symphony was never performed during his lifetime, and lay in storage until the 1860s — more than 30 years after Schubert’s death — until it was discovered in the study of one of his contemporaries and performed in Vienna in 1865. Scholars have had many theories about why the work remained incomplete, but none have been proven. What is clear is that it is a masterpiece, stamped with the composer's indelible voice. The critic Eduard Hanslick wrote after the premiere, “When, after the few introductory measures, clarinets and oboes in unison begin to sound their sweet song above the peaceful murmur of the violins, then each and every child recognizes the composer, and a half-suppressed outcry ’Schubert’ buzzes through the hall. He has hardly entered, but it is as if one knows him by his step, by his manner of lifting the latch."

Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 was left unfinished at the time of his death. A deeply religious man, he dedicated it to “the beloved God.” He began writing the work in 1887 but was frequently interrupted by other work and poor health. By the end of 1894, he had completed three movements. He is quoted as saying, “I have done my duty on earth. I have accomplished what I could, and my final wish is to be allowed to finish my Ninth Symphony. Three movements are almost complete, the Adagio nearly finished. There remains only the finale. I trust that death will not deprive me of my pen.” He worked on the third movement for the next two years, until the morning of the day he died in October 1896, never completing the final movement.

Season tickets are now available for California Symphony’s 2025-2026 season. Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concerts, rich in storytelling and spanning the breadth of orchestral repertoire, next season explores evocative programmatic music including Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik; the fruitful intersection of jazz and classical in music by Jessie Montgomery, Friedrich Gulda, and George Gershwin; the monumental symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Borodin; the timelessness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart including excerpts from Don Giovanni; and world-class soloists in riveting concertos including pianist Robert Thies in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Nathan Chan in Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto, violinists Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, and pianist Sofya Gulyak in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Read the season announcement here.

Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Donato Cabrera since 2013. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area. California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.

Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. A free 30-minute pre-concert talk by lecturer Scott Fogelsong will begin one hour before each performance. More information is available at CaliforniaSymphony.org.

FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:

WHAT: California Symphony presents UNFINISHED BRUCKNER

California Symphony concludes its 2024-2025 season with a striking pair of unfinished masterpieces, each marking the pinnacle of achievement for the composers. Conducted by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, the orchestra performs the two surviving movements of Franz Schubert’s hauntingly beautiful Symphony No. 8. Declining health, hesitation over how to continue the piece, work overload, or even that the pages were completed but ultimately lost . . . theories abound, but no one really knows why Schubert never finished it. The three completed movements of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 conclude the program, showcasing his signature big symphonic sound, iconic themes, and brass fanfares. Featuring one of the largest ensembles to take the stage, Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9 makes a fittingly epic grand finale to California Symphony’s concert season.

California Symphony takes the stuffiness out of the concert experience: Take selfies at the photo booth, order a signature cocktail, and sip at your seat. Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by award-winning instructor Scott Foglesong, starting one hour before the show.

WHEN: Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30pm   
Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 4:00pm

WHERE: Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek

CONCERT:

Unfinished Bruckner
7:30pm, Saturday, May 3
4:00pm, Sunday, May 4
Donato Cabrera, conductor
California Symphony

PROGRAM:
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished)
Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (Unfinished)

TICKETS: Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under.

INFO: For more information or to purchase tickets, the public may visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, noon to 6pm).

PHOTOS: Available here.

About the California Symphony: 

Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera since 2013. It is distinguished by its vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area.

California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.

Since 1991, California Symphony's three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program has provided a composer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with the orchestra over three consecutive years to create, rehearse, premiere, and record three major orchestra compositions, one each season. Every Composer-in-Residence has gone on to win top honors and accolades in the field, including the Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Awards, and more.

The orchestra's nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds impacts students' trajectories by providing instruction for violin or cello and musicianship skills. Sound Minds has proven to contribute directly to improved reading and math proficiencies and character development, as students set and achieve goals, learn communication and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. Inspired by the El Sistema program of Venezuela, the program is offered completely free of charge to the students and families of Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, California.

Through its innovative adult education program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed, California Symphony provides lifelong learners a fun-filled introduction to the orchestra and classical music. Led by celebrated educator and California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong, these live classes are held over four weeks in the summer annually and are available to stream online year-round.

In 2017, California Symphony became the first orchestra with a public statement of a commitment to diversity. Its website is available in both Spanish and English.

Reaching far beyond the performance hall, since 2020 the orchestra's concerts have been broadcast nationally on multiple radio series through Classical California (KUSC/KDFC) and the WFMT Radio Network, reaching over 1.5 million listeners across the country.

For more information, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org.

California Symphony’s 2024-25 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.

April 25: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers Release World Premiere Recording of UP by D. Riley Nicholson

Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers Release
World Premiere Recording of UP by D. Riley Nicholson

Worldwide Digital Release Date: April 25, 2025

Listen: bit.ly/StreamSarahCahillReginaMyersUP
Press downloads available upon request.

Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com | Regina Myers: www.reginamusic.com
D. Riley Nicholson: www.rileynicholson.com

Bay Area-based pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers have recorded composer D. Riley Nicholson’s UP for two pianos, a work that they commissioned in 2020. The new recording of the 30-minute piece will be released digitally worldwide on April 25, 2025. Cahill and Myers gave the world premiere performance of the piece at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in September 2022, before recording UP there in 2024.

Nicholson writes of the work, “UP’s one unifying theme is simply that, ‘up.’ The piece moves ‘up’ in so many directions: literally, opening with an upward motif that gets pinged between pianos in a groovy, dizzying counterpoint; gradually with increasing frequency moving up the circle of fifths; with upbeat syncopations and tempi; constantly one upping itself with a burgeoning energy that trips over itself with virtuosic fits; and many other upward motions and themes. Loosely akin to a theme and variations, each movement is a different interpretation of the theme ‘up,’ and given the frenetic energy of every moment, tranquil interludes provide a necessary buffer between the movements, and give the performers a chance to catch their breath. Even with the addition of these palette cleansing interludes, the entirety of the work is a manic trip that both explores joyous energy and that darker underbelly of positivity when energy and motion become simply too much to be contained.”

Of their shared experience commissioning, performing, and now recording UP, Cahill and Myers say,

“When we first spoke with Riley about commissioning a new work from him, we had no idea that it would turn into an epic four-movement piece, which we have grown to know and love as a great work of artistic expression. UP reflects Riley's own style at the piano, with brilliant rapid passagework and interlocking patterns, and it took us several years to find our way into his stylistic approach with all its complexity and intricacy. It's a beautifully powerful piece, and even a global pandemic couldn't stop its path of coming into the world. We are so fortunate to work with Riley, both as a marvelous composer and as an excellent producer of this new album!”

“At this dark moment in time, we need joy – which is what this piece is all about.” says Nicholson. “And what a joy it is to collaborate with Sarah [Cahill] and Regina [Myers], who poured multitudes of energy and love into this incredibly virtuosic, mammoth work.”

Composer and pianist D. Riley Nicholson has composed and performed for a wide range of ensembles and mediums. Notable projects include One, for large string orchestra, which headlined Hot Air Music Festival in 2016. Nicholson composed, produced, and performed Shimmer, for piano, visuals, and electronics which toured nationally in 2018. Later that year, he was honored as the CAPMT Distinguished Composer of the Year. In 2019, his performance of the music of Julius Eastman was described as a “powerful, ingeniously wrought rendition” by the San Francisco Chronicle. That same year, Nicholson wrote a new work for Amaranth String Quartet. In 2021, Nicholson created original music for the Walking Distance Dance Festival (ODC Dance). In 2022, he wrote a full-length electroacoustic piece for David Herrera Performance Company. Currently, Nicholson is writing a new work for HARJO. He is also serving as the Executive Director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the longest running and preeminent festival dedicated to new music for orchestra, based in Santa Cruz, CA.

Hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, Sarah Cahill has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Gretna Arts, WoCo Festival, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass thirty compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings. Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  

Regina Myers performs as a solo artist and with ensembles around the Bay Area. She received a Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Master's in Piano Performance and Literature from Mills College, where she focused on new and experimental music under the guidance of pianist Marc Shapiro, ensemble leader and composer Steed Cowart and percussion master William Winant. In 2004 she founded the concert series, and now ensemble, New Keys: New Keys' mission is to surface and promote the newest and most innovative music for the piano. We challenge composers to explore the vast untapped potential of the piano and strive to craft the experience of a piano recital as both captivating and approachable for our audience. Before going on hiatus to rapidly and accidentally expand her family, Regina proudly taught piano to beloved students for 17 years. She has participated in the Hot Air, Switchboard, Garden of Memory Summer Solstice and SF Friends of Chamber Music SF Music Day music festivals and has had the honor of playing many concerts with the William Winant Percussion Group as well as the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. She can be heard on Luciano Chessa's album Petrolio, Danny Clay/Joseph Colombo LP (with New Keys) and on Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley on which she plays four-hand music by Terry Riley with her duo partner Sarah Cahill. Regina prides herself on expanding the reach of new music for piano by commissioning new works and organizing concerts for their premieres and recording. She relishes working with young and emerging composers as well as keeping seminal new music masterpieces alive.

Up Track List

1. Movement I [5:01]
2. Interlude I [1:55]
3. Movement II [5:10]
4. Interlude II [1:50]
5. Movement III [7:04]
6. Interlude III [3:20]
7. Movement IV [5:27]

Total Time: [29:47]

UP for two pianos, commissioned by Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers
Composer: D. Riley Nicholson
Pianists: Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers
Co-producers: D. Riley Nicholson, Sarah Cahill, and Regina Myers
Audio Engineers: Jason O'Connell and Emma Markowitz
Recorded at the Bowes Center, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 2024

OUT TODAY: Marcin and Hayato Sumino Unite On New Song I Wish – Out Today via Sony Music Masterworks

Single Artwork (Download)

Marcin and Hayato Sumino Unite On New Song

I Wish

Out Today via Sony Music Masterworks
Listen Here | Watch Here

The superstar guitarist and piano virtuoso deliver a new take on the Stevie Wonder classic

Guitar wunderkind Marcin and pianist-composer extraordinaire Hayato Sumino today release their new collaboration, a cover of Stevie Wonder’s 1976 Billboard No. 1 hit song, I Wish via Sony Music Masterworks – LISTEN HERE. Each a social media sensation with millions of followers tuning in to their captivating live performances, the two artists recorded the song live in-studio in Tokyo, their unique instrumental arrangement blending elements of jazz, funk, R&B, and soul in a showcase of their distinctive playing styles. Today’s track arrives alongside an accompanying music video for I Wish – WATCH HERE.

“Working with Hayato on I Wish was one of the most challenging and fun experiences,” notes Marcin. “We arranged the song in about two hours at Hayato’s studio in Tokyo, and two days later we were already recording it live in the studio! It was the first time I was tracking a true, live, jazz-style performance with another artist and Hayato is such a beast! I knew how crazy he was on the piano before, but actually seeing how he worked in the studio was so inspiring for me. Take 12 is the one that we used. It’s a fun and pure piece of music – just two friends from completely different continents jamming in a studio.

"I’m beyond excited to collaborate with my friend, the incredibly unique and charismatic guitarist, Marcin,” exclaims Hayato Sumino. “The blend of guitar and piano isn’t something you hear every day, which makes this project even more thrilling. The chemistry between us was absolutely electric!"

ABOUT HAYATO SUMINO

Hayato Sumino, known as ‘Cateen’, is an exceptional artistic phenomenon with nearly 1.5 million followers globally and over 200 million views on YouTube. His participation in the 2021 International Chopin Competition, where he reached the semifinals, caused a sensation, garnering over 8.5 million views on YouTube. In April 2024, Sumino made a spectacular debut at the Royal Albert Hall with his performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” capturing the spotlight both online and in the concert hall. His debut Sony Classical album, Human Universe, released in November 2024 to critical acclaim, showcases his multi-faceted talents with a diverse selection of works ranging from Bach, Handel, and Chopin to film composers like Hans Zimmer and Ryuichi Sakamoto, as well as Sumino’s own compositions and arrangements. A prodigious composer, Sumino effortlessly combines his diverse musical interests, spanning classical, jazz, film music, post-classical, and electronica. He is also in high demand for film and TV scores in Japan and is rapidly becoming a leading figure among the next generation of musicians for whom genre borders are no obstacle. This year, Sumino is set to make his performance debut at the Hollywood Bowl on July 22 and Carnegie Hall on November 18, further solidifying his rise on the global music scene.

CONNECT WITH HAYATO SUMINO:
Website | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | X

HAYATO SUMINO 2025 TOUR DATES

JAPAN

Thurs, March 20 | Tokyo, JP | Sumida Triphony Hall
Sat, March 22 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Sat, April 5 | Kanagawa, JP | K Arena Yokohama
Fri, April 11 | Aichi, JP | Aichi Prefectural Art Theater
Sat, April 12 | Aichi, JP | Aichi Prefectural Art Theater
Sun, May 4 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Mon, May 5 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Tues, May 6 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Fri, May 9 | Miyagi, JP | Hitachi Systems Hall Sendai
Sat, May 10 | Miyagi, JP | Hitachi Systems Hall Sendai
Thurs, May 15 | Ishikawa, JP | Ishikawa Ongakudo
Tues, May 27 | Tochigi, JP | Utsunomiya Bunkakaikan
Wed, May 28 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Mon, September 15 | Kanagawa, JP | Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall
Tues, September 16 | Tokyo, JP | Suntory Hall
Thurs, September 18 | Aichi, JP | Aichi Prefectural Art Theater
Sat, September 20 | Saitama, JP | Tokorozawa Cultural Center

TAIWAN

Sun, April 25 | Taipei, TW | National Theater & Concert Hall

NORTH AMERICA

Sat, March 29 | Washington, DC | Blues Alley
Sun, March 30 | Washington, DC | Blues Alley
Tues, July 22 | Los Angeles, CA | Hollywood Bowl
Sun, November 16 | Chicago, IL | Concert Hall at Symphony Hall
Tues, November 18 | New York, NY | Carnegie Hall

EUROPE

Tues, June 3 | Bergen, NO | Toldsalen
Sun, June 8 | Warsaw, PL | NFM, Sala Czerwona ORLEN
Mon, June 30 | Ruhr, DE | Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr Great Hall
Fri, July 4 | Rheinfelden, CH | Hotel Schützen
Sat, July 5 | Rheinfelden, CH | City Church of St. Martin
Fri, July 18 | Lübeck, DE | Musik-und Kongresshalle, Konzertsaal
Fri, August 22 | Amsterdam, NL | The Concertgebouw
Sun, November 2 | Brussels, BE | Bozar

ABOUT MARCIN

Named “one of the most talented guitarists of his generation” by Guitar World, Marcin is one of the pioneers of a new percussive style, rooted in flamenco and classical. With nods from Rolling Stone, Billboard, Guitar World, Premier Guitar and more, plus a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and his first-ever cover for Total Guitar, Marcin continues to captivate millions of fans and followers with his show-stopping guitar style across multiple platforms. In a few short yet explosive years, Marcin’s virtuosic technique has been championed by the likes of Tom Morello, Paul Stanley, Madonna, BTS’ Jungkook, Timbaland, Ty Dolla $ign and Wyclef Jean, to name a few. In 2022, Marcin launched a signature guitar with Ibanez Guitars as ambassador for the Japanese brand. The electrifying performances by this Polish-born musician extend far beyond the screen, with his first global headlining tour selling out across Asia and Europe in weeks. Marcin now gears up to take his debut album, Dragon in Harmony (Sony Masterworks), on the road with his first-ever North American headline tour kicking off in September – tickets on sale now.

CONNECT WITH MARCIN:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

MARCIN – SOLO DRAGON
2025 HEADLINE TOUR DATES

EUROPE

Mon, March 17 | Paris, France | La Maroquinerie
Tues, March 18 | London, UK | Islington Assembly Hall
Thurs, March 20 | Birmingham, UK | O2 Institute2 Birmingham
Fri, March 21 | Manchester, UK | Gorilla
Sun, March 23 | Dublin, IE | The Button Factory
Tues, March 25 | Bristol, UK | The Lantern
Wed, March 26 | Brighton, UK | Dukes at Komedia Picturehouse
Thurs, March 27 | Amsterdam, NL | Melkweg
Sat, March 29 | Brussels, BE | La Madeleine
Mon, March 31 | Stuttgart, DE | Im Wizemann
Wed, April 2 | Frankfurt, DE | Das Bett
Thurs, April 3 | Cologne, DE | Club Volta
Sat, April 5 | Hamburg, DE | KENT Club
Sun, April 6 | Berlin, DE | Gretchen
Mon, April 7 | Vienna, AT | WUK
Wed, April 9 | Prague, CZ |Palác Akropolis
Thurs, April 10 | Munich, DE | Backstage
Sat, April 12 | Rome, IT | MONK Rome
Sun, April 13 | Milan, IT | Legend Club
Mon, April 14 | Zurich, CH | Papiersaal
Wed, April 16 | Barcelona, ES | La Nau
Thurs, April 17 | Madrid, ES | Sala Villanos
Fri, April 18 | Lisbon, PT | LAV – Lisboa Ao Vivo

TURKEY

Wed, May 14 | Ankara, TR | Yenimahalle Nazim Hikmet Kültür Merkezi
Thurs, May 15 | Izmir, TR | Ahmed Adnan Saygun Sanat Merkezi
Fri, May 16 | Istanbul, TR | Zorlu PSM

NORTH AMERICA

Mon, June 30 | Montreal, QC | Montreal Jazz Festival
Sun, September 1 | Vancouver, BC | The Pearl
Mon, September 2 | Seattle, WA | Washington Hall
Tues, September 3 | Portland, OR | Aladdin Theatre
Thurs, September 5 |San Francisco, CA |Bimbo's 365 Club
Fri, September 6 | Los Angeles, CA | Fonda Theatre
Sun, September 8 | Denver, CO | Meow Wolf
Tues, September 10 | Minneapolis, MN | Fine Line Café
Wed, September 11 | Chicago, IL | Park West
Fri, September 13 | Quebec City, QC | Palais Montcalm
Sat, September 14 | Toronto, ON | The Concert Hall
Tues, September 16 | Boston, MA | Royale
Wed, September 17 | New York, NY | Irving Plaza
Fri, September 19 | Washington, DC | Howard Theatre

April 25: Composer Thomas Newman Records His First Ever Ballet Score Of Mice And Men – to be Released on Sony Classical

Composer Thomas Newman Records His First Ever Ballet Score Of Mice And Men 
to be Released on Sony Classical

Album Release Date: April 25, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

From Academy Award-nominated and GRAMMY Award-winning composer Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Skyfall) comes the premiere recording of his debut ballet score, Of Mice and Men. Composed for The Joffrey Ballet’s critically acclaimed 2022 production and choreographed by Cathy Marston, Newman’s evocative music explores themes of loneliness and the aspiration for a new life in the face of hardship. The Sony Classical album will be released on April 25, 2025 and is available for pre-order now. Accompanying today's announcement is the release of the single Bucking Grain - listen here.

“One of the things that has always interested me about writing music for film is a sense of empathy towards characters and an ability to relate to story,” says Newman. “So, in some ways it's not much different working on a ballet based upon a classic novel, because I still have to put myself in the mindset of a place and time, and have the music express character, as much as that character is going to be expressed through bodily movement.”

Of the working relationship with Thomas Newman, choreographer Cathy Marston says, “we had a fabulous collaboration that extended over two years due to the pandemic, with almost weekly Zooms. I was struck by how he uses textures I’ve not discovered with other composers—it wasn’t just about rhythm, tempo, and melody, but about the music’s role in storytelling. There were no shortcuts with him. I was amazed by the intimate working relationship we could build, even over a screen.”

Newman’s score incorporates elements of folk music, designed to fit both the characters and the world they inhabit. “California still evokes a feeling of dust and weeds, but it’s not quite Texas or the South,” Newman explains. “At the same time, you accept these sounds—high string guitars, mandolins, and country fiddle—as part of the story. It’s about finding groove and rhythm that best express the movement and emotion of the piece." Newman himself conducts the recording which features full symphony orchestra and instrumental solos from collaborators Steve Tavaglione, George Doering, Luanne Homzy and Rick Cox.

Thomas Newman is an acclaimed composer best known for his scores for more than eighty film and television projects including The Shawshank Redemption, Angels in America, Little Women, American Beauty, Finding Nemo, Skyfall, 1917, Scent of a Woman, WALL-E, Bridge of Spies and Elemental. His work has earned him numerous nominations and awards, including fifteen Academy Award nominations and six Grammy Awards.

Of Mice and Men had its world premiere at The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago in 2022, choreographed by Cathy Marston. The ballet, inspired by John Steinbeck’s novel, explores the themes of friendship, loneliness, and the American Dream. The production received widespread acclaim. The score, nearly an hour of music in total, comprises 16 short movements.

May 30: Simone Dinnerstein Releases Complicité - Music of J.S. Bach - First Single Out Today

Simone Dinnerstein Releases Complicité
Music of J.S. Bach

Dinnerstein’s First Recording with her Ensemble, Baroklyn
Featuring Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo soprano
and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore

Plus a Bach Recomposition by Philip Lasser

Worldwide Digital Album Release Date: May 30, 2025

First Single – J.S. Bach’s Chorale Herr Gott – Released Today
Listen Here: https://lnkfi.re/DinnersteinBaroklynHerrGott

“Dinnerstein is an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity. These attributes, combined with elegance and grace, lend her music-making its captivating beauty.” – The Washington Post

Review downloads & CDs available upon request.

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

March 14, 2025 – ​​On May 30 2025, pianist Simone Dinnerstein releases her new album, Complicité, on the Supertrain Records label. This is her first recording with the string ensemble she founded and directs, Baroklyn (the ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough), and features the music of J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser. The first single, Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617, is out today. Listen here.

Complicité also includes Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053 and his chorale Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arranged by Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String. Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore, join Dinnerstein and Baroklyn on this deeply felt recording, which embodies Dinnerstein’s artistic vision that music should always be creative and new.

Of the album title, Dinnerstein says, “Complicité is a term that I first heard from my son, who studied the teachings of the French theatre practitioner, Jacques Lecoq. Three important ideas that Lecoq communicated to his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness), and disponsibilité (openness). I was so intrigued by these ideas, and the different exercises that my son learned in order to cultivate these skills within ensemble acting, that I decided to try a Lecoq approach with my own musical ensemble, Baroklyn.”

Dinnerstein’s recounting of the recording process for the second aria of Bach’s Cantata 170 reflects this. She writes in the album’s liner notes, “In order to communicate most fully, we arranged the ensemble so that as much as possible, everyone could see each other. The strings and oboe d’amore formed a semi-circle around the piano, facing me. Jennifer was nestled into the piano, just to my right. That was particularly important in the opening and closing parts of this aria, which consist of a long phrase performed only by the unison strings and myself. The strings stop for breath every couple of notes, almost like someone crying and catching themselves. I asked the strings if they could move around the semi-circle one at a time, each playing a few notes and passing it to the next person during the breath. It is remarkable to hear this musical line divided between eight players, each with their own particular sound and inflection. If you listen closely, you can hear the music move from the left speaker to the right.”

Philip Lasser’s recomposition of Air on the G String also illustrates Dinnerstein’s signature approach to the music of Bach. She writes, “I asked Philip Lasser if he might write a continuo realization for me of the Air on the G String, but as an independent piece of music, like a jazz improvisation, that would happen simultaneously with the performance of the original air by the strings. What Philip wrote is truly a striking composition on its own, and it acts as a lens through which we see Bach’s music in a new light. This composition feels like a new medium – one piece of music inside another.”

Read Simone Dinnerstein’s extensive liner notes for Complicité here.

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” 

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY Award.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera.

The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.

Philip Lasser is a composer with both French and American cultural roots. His music creates a unique sound world that blends the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities with the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music. Recent commissions include works written for Anton Mejias, Simone Dinnerstein, Emmanuel Music, The American Brass Quintet, Natalie Dessay and Ensemble Connect, Juilliard415 and Cantori New York. His works have been performed worldwide by artists such as Susanna Phillips, Midori, Simone Dinnerstein, Jan Vogler, Chad Hoopes, Zuill Bailey, Natalie Dessay, Elizabeth Futral, Sasha Cooke, Lucy Shelton, Brian Zeger, Frank Almond, Margo Garrett, and Cho-Liang Lin and many others as well as by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder, Shreveport and Colorado Symphonies, and the MDR Leipzig and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestras.

Track List: 

Complicité
Release Date: May 30, 2025 | Supertrain Records
Music by J.S. Bach & Philip Lasser 

Simone Dinnerstein, director and piano
Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano
Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore

Baroklyn
Violin: Rebecca Fischer, concertmaster; Gabby Diaz, Miki-Sophia Cloud, Monica Davis, Heidi Braun-Hill, Colleen Jennings, Gabriel Boyers
Viola: Jessica Thompson, Celia Hatton
Cello: Alexis Gerlach, Julian Müller
Bass: Lizzie Burns

1. J.S. Bach: Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617 (arr. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn)
2-4. J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053
5. J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn)
6-10. J.S. Bach: Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust (with continuo realization by Philip Lasser)
11. J.S. Bach/P. Lasser:  In the Air 

Album Credits:

Produced by Silas Brown
Engineered by Silas Brown and Doron Schachter Mastered by Silas Brown
Recorded at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA on September 16-18, 2024
Steinway Piano
Barbara Renner, piano technician
Cover painting by Simon Dinnerstein Montecasino Daisies, 2002
oil on wood panel, plexiglass palette, 23 1⁄4 x 44 1⁄4
Photographs by Doron Schachter
Graphic design by Ana Garlock
Executive Producer for Supertrain Records: Richard Guérin
© + ℗ 2025 Supertrain Records

March 28: Deutsche Grammophon Releases The Art of Memory - First Solo Album from Pianist Anton Mejias - Music by J.S. Bach & Philip Lasser

Deutsche Grammophon Releases The Art of Memory

First Solo Album from Finnish-Cuban Pianist Anton Mejias

Featuring J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II

Interwoven with the World Premiere Recording of
Philip Lasser’s Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory

Worldwide Digital Album Release Date: March 28, 2025
Stage+ Film Premiere: March 22, 2025 (Watch) 

“Technique is not an issue for Mejias; he can do everything effortlessly … (and) plays astonishingly virtuosic and fast . . .  It is no surprise Mejias is highly sought after as a pianist worldwide.” – Süddeutsche Zeitung 

“The hypnotically iridescent colors in a new piece by composer Philip Lasser, that cast the strongest spell.” – The Washington Post

Review downloads available upon request

​​On March 28, 2025, Deutsche Grammophon releases Finnish-Cuban pianist Anton Mejias' first solo album, The Art of Memory, featuring the world premiere recording of Philip Lasser's Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory, a companion piece to Book II of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

On this bold, live recording from the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Mejias deftly interweaves Lasser and Bach, taking listeners on a journey that reveals both composers' music in a new light. In addition to the digital album release, Mejias’ filmed performance at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele will premiere on Stage+ on March 22, 2025, a production by Bernhard Fleisher Moving Images & Dorn Music for Deutsche Grammophon. Lasser’s Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory was co-commissioned for Mejias by the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and Newport Classical.

J.S. Bach has fascinated Anton Mejias, who is considered one of the most exciting talents on the international classical scene, since his childhood. He says, “In performing Bach I strive to emphasize the incredibly rich emotional side and the heart of the music, without overlooking the intellectual side and the style of the music. The most beautiful thing is that these two sides belong together and it is not about one or the other, but about the fact that both can enrich the other enormously.”

Of his companion piece for Book II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, an exploration of memory in music, composer Philip Lasser writes, “I began my Twelve Preludes many years ago with the idea of creating a set of works wherein as we went from one to the next, each prelude would collect remembrances of the past preludes until, at last, we reach the twelfth, which would be entirely made up of memories. . . I began to realize that this was a metaphor for human memory. With each new day, we become richer with new events, emotions, apperceptions; and yet, we receive the new only through the filter of our own personal experience which is then nothing more than a sum of our past remembrances. . . I am deeply honored that Anton Mejias has taken the bold move to perform and record my Preludes inside Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and I hope that my work nests quietly in Bach’s great work and offers yet another rhythm to the mastery of his unfolding of time.”

Born in 2001, Anton Mejias made his recital debut at the age of eight, and by ten, he had already learned the entire Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Since then he has added the complete French and English Suites, all six partitas, and the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, to his repertoire. In August 2023, Anton Mejias made his US debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl under conductor Tarmo Peltokoski. He has played with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra Manchester. Mejias made his debut with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen at Musikfest Bremen in 2024 performing Beethoven with conductor Tarmo Peltokoski, where he was awarded the Musikpreis Bremen sponsored by Deutschlandfunk.  He has performed Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and has toured extensively with baritone Matthias Goerne. For more information: www.dornmusic.com/portfolio/anton-mejias

Philip Lasser is a composer with both French and American cultural roots. His music creates a unique sound world that blends the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities with the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music. Recent commissions include works written for Anton Mejias, Simone Dinnerstein, Emmanuel Music, The American Brass Quintet, Natalie Dessay and Ensemble Connect, Juilliard415 and Cantori New York. His works have been performed worldwide by artists such as Susanna Phillips, Midori, Simone Dinnerstein, Jan Vogler, Chad Hoopes, Zuill Bailey, Natalie Dessay, Elizabeth Futral, Sasha Cooke, Lucy Shelton, Brian Zeger, Frank Almond, Margo Garrett, and Cho-Liang Lin and many others as well as by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder, Shreveport and Colorado Symphonies, and the MDR Leipzig and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestras. For more information: www.philiplasser.com

Track List:
The Art of Memory: Anton Mejias, Piano
Release Date: March 28, 2025 | Deutsche Grammophon
J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
Philip Lasser’s Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory

1: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 870/1 [2:39]
2: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 1 in C Major, BWV 870/2 [1:30]
3: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 871/1 [1:16]
4: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 871/2 [2:17]
5: Lasser: Prelude 1[1:12]
6: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 3 in C-Sharp Major, BWV 872/1 [1:43]
7: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 3 in C-Sharp Major, BWV 872/2  [1:55]
8: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 4 in C-Sharp Minor, BWV 873/1 [3:57]
9: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 4 in C-Sharp Minor, BWV 873/2 [2:07]
10: Lasser: Prelude 2 [0:45]
11: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 5 in D Major, BWV 874/1 [2:28]
12: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 5 in D Major, BWV 874/2 [2:56]
13: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 6 in D Minor, BWV 875/1 [1:47]
14: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 6 in D Minor, BWV 875/2 [1:56]
15: Lasser: Prelude 3 [1:13]
16: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 7 in E-Flat Major, BWV 876/1 [2:33]
17: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 7 in E-Flat Major, BWV 876/2 [1:26]
18: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 8 in D-Sharp Minor, BWV 877/1 [1:55]
19: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 8 in D-Sharp Minor, BWV 877/2 [3:21]
20: Lasser: Prelude 4 [1:13]
21: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 9 in E Major, BWV 878/1 [2:07]
22: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 9 in E Major, BWV 878/2 [2:57]
23: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 10 in E Minor, BWV 879/1 [1:53]
24: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 10 in E Minor, BWV 879/2 [2:42]
25: Lasser: Prelude 5 [1:59]
26: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 11 in F Major, BWV 880/1 [2:55]
27: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 11 in F Major, BWV 880/2 [1:48]
28: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 12 in F Minor, BWV 881/1 [2:12]
29: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 12 in F Minor, BWV 881/2 [1:37]
30: Lasser: Prelude 6 [1:38]
31: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 13 in F-Sharp Major, BWV 882/1 [2:44]
32: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 13 in F-Sharp Major, BWV 882/2 [2:18]
33: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 14 in F-Sharp Minor, BWV 883/1 [3:05]
34: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 14 in F-Sharp Minor, BWV 883/2 [4:24]
35: Lasser: Prelude 7 [1:38]
36: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 15 in G Major, BWV 884/1 [1:10]
37: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 15 in G Major, BWV 884/2 [1:25]
38: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 16 in G Minor, BWV 885/1 [2:45]
39: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 16 in G Minor, BWV 885/2 [2:23]
40: Lasser: Prelude 8 [1:24]
41: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 17 in A-Flat Major, BWV 886/1 [3:26]
42: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 17 in A-Flat Major, BWV 886/2 [2:06]
43: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 18 in G-Sharp Minor, BWV 887/1 [1:40]
44: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 18 in G-Sharp Minor, BWV 887/2 [4:22]
45: Lasser: Prelude 9 [1:43]
46: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 19 in A Major, BWV 888/1[1:44]
47: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 19 in A Major, BWV 888/2 [1:05]
48: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 20 in A Minor, BWV 889/1 [1:49]
49: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 20 in A Minor, BWV 889/2 [1:28]
50: Lasser: Prelude 10 [1:37]
51: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 21 in B-Flat Major, BWV 890/1 [3:43]
52: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 21 in B-Flat Major, BWV 890/2 [1:41]
53: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 22 in B-Flat Minor, BWV 891/1 [2:07]
54: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 22 in B-Flat Minor, BWV 891/2 [3:01]
55: Lasser: Prelude 11 [2:08]
56: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 23 in B Major, BWV 892/1[1:45]
57: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 23 in B Major, BWV 892/2 [3:09]
58: J.S. Bach: Prelude No. 24 in B Minor, BWV 893/1 [1:48]
59: J.S. Bach: Fugue No. 24 in B Minor, BWV 893/2 [1:34]
60: Lasser: Prelude 12 [2:34] 

Total Running Time: 2:25:21 

Album Credits:
Piano: Anton Mejias
Executive Producer: Tanja Dorn
Executive Producer: Bernhard Fleischer
Produced by Romualdas Urba
Recorded by Stefan Folprecht
Digital Editing Engineer: Romualdas Urba
Mixing Engineer: Romualdas Urba
Mastering Engineer: Romualdas Urba
A&R: Valerie Groß
PCM: Joe Davies
Creative: Lars Hoffmann
(C) 2025 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin

Recorded live on May 18, 2024 at Palais im Großen Garten, Dresden, presented by the Dresdner Musikfestspiele. Philip Lasser’s Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory was co-commissioned for Anton Mejias by the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and Newport Classical.

April 25: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs with Lincoln Symphony Orchestra Led by Music Director Edward Polochick

Photo by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution here

GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs as Guest Soloist with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra

Featuring Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major
Conducted by Music Director Edward Polochick

Friday, April 25, 2025 at 7:30pm
Lied Center for Performing Arts | 301 N 12th St | Lincoln, NE
Tickets & Information

“lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance” – The New Yorker

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

Lincoln, NE – On Friday, April 25, 2025 at 7:30pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic,” will be the featured guest soloist with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major. The concert will take place at the Lied Center for Performing Arts (301 N 12th St) and will be conducted by LSO Music Director Edward Polochick. Dinnerstein’s performance is part of a thrilling program that also includes Beethoven’s Egmont Overture performed side-by-side with the Lincoln Youth Symphony and the world premiere of Tightrope, a new work by LSO’s Composer-in-Residence Elena Ruehr.

The Washington Post has called Simone Dinnerstein “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

While Dinnerstein has come to be recognized and celebrated for her appreciation of music by J.S. Bach, she has also brought bold and expressive artistry to the work of Brahms in performances for over 10 years –– including the other of Brahms’ two piano concertos, No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15. Brahms’ second piano concerto is a newer addition to her repertoire –– one which Dinnerstein has been excited to perform throughout this season.

“I have been eagerly anticipating collaborating with Ed Polochick and Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra on this masterpiece,” says Dinnerstein. “This concerto is a mammoth work of chamber music, and Ed’s sensitive and masterful leadership will create the ideal partnership.”

About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” is the featured soloist with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Edward Polochick. Dinnerstein will perform Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. in B-flat Major. The concert will also include a performance of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture by the Lincoln Youth Symphony and the world premiere of Tightrope, a new work by LSO’s Composer-in-Residence Elena Ruehr.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist GRAMMY®-nominated Simone Dinnerstein
Conducted by Music Director Edward Polochick
Presented by Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra
What: Music by Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, and LSO Composer-in-Residence Elena Ruehr
When: Friday, April 25, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Lied Center for Performing Arts 301 N 12th St. Lincoln, NE 68508
Tickets and information: www.lincolnsymphony.com/tightrope

May 30: Anna Lapwood Unveils Firedove New Album to be Released on Sony Classical – First Single Limina Luminis Out Today

Anna Lapwood Unveils Firedove
New Album to be Released on Sony Classical

First Single Limina Luminis
Out Today - Listen

Album Release Date: May 30, 2025
Pre-Order Now

One of the most gifted and visionary artists of her generation, Anna Lapwood, releases her brand-new album, Firedove, May 30, 2025 on Sony Classical. Pre-order is available now. It is the follow-up to Lapwood's acclaimed album Luna.

The lead track is the captivating Limina Luminis, commissioned for and first performed at the 2023 BBC Proms, composed for Anna by Italian composer Olivia Belli. The single is out today – listen here.

“This piece was part of my first solo recital at the BBC Proms, and I’ve played it in nearly every concert since, because I love it so much.” Anna says.

Already renowned for introducing the organ to new generations of music fans through her extraordinary interpretations of both classical and contemporary works, Anna Lapwood has become known to millions through viral TikTok videos, high-profile collaborations an sold-out live concerts.

Anna recorded her new album Firedove through the night at Nidaros Cathedral, a spectacular Gothic masterpiece founded in the 11th century in Trondheim, Norway.

“I wanted to create an album where the listener doesn’t quite know where it’s going to go next,” Lapwood says. “There are lots of little easter eggs in there that you wouldn’t expect – even the first appearance of the choir – and a through-line of flight and spreading wings, because this does feel as though I’ve found what I want to say as an artist. I’m very proud of it.”

Firedove effortlessly demonstrates Anna’s open-minded approach to music, one where a Vierne scherzo can sit alongside a rendition of Robbie Williams’ Angels, and Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude and Fugue with Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love.

The repertoire choices on her album clearly indicate that it is Anna’s most personal record to date. She is no stranger to blending classical music with pop having performed with RAYE, Florence & The Machine & Aurora, even finding time to give Tom Cruise an impromptu organ lesson during a late-night rehearsal at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Anna was appointed Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridgeshire when she was 21, the youngest person ever to hold that position at either an Oxford or Cambridge University College. Now, nine years later, she is stepping down to pursue her live and recording career full time.

On Firedove Anna Lapwood brings a breath of fresh air into classical musical making. “Since I started focusing on the music I loved and stopped worrying about what others felt I ‘should’ be doing, I have fallen in love with the organ again in a completely new way” she says.

The results are staggering, and Anna’s intense musical passion is evident throughout Firedove. An intoxicating listen.

Firedove Track list

1. Bells of Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim
2. The Bells of Notre Dame (from Hunchback of Notre Dame Soundtrack) | Alan Menken
3. Time (From Inception Soundtrack) | Hans Zimmer
4. Flight - Intro | Rachel Portman
5. Flight | Rachel Portman
6. Limina Luminis | Olivia Belli
7. Firedove | Julie Cooper
8. Come to me | Ivo Antognini
9. Make You Feel My Love | Bob Dylan
10. Angels | Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers
11. Northern Lights | Ola Gjeilo
12. Murmurations | Poppy Ackroyd
13. Naiades | Louis Vierne
14. Prelude et fugue sur le nom d'Alain Op.7 : I Prelude | Hania Rani
15. Glass | Maurice Duruflé
16. Prelude et fugue sur le nom d'Alain Op.7 : II Fugue | Maurice Duruflé

April 8: Telegraph Quartet Return to California for Performance at San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet

Telegraph Quartet at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Performing the Music of
Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Joseph Suk

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm
Barbro Osher Recital Hall
200 Van Ness Avenue | San Francisco, CA
Tickets and More Information

“soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail ... an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape.”
– San Francisco Chronicle

www.TelegraphQuartet.com

San Francisco, CA – On Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The San Francisco Chronicle as having "tonal warmth and communicative urgency,” will be presented in concert by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in Barbro Osher Recital Hall (200 Van Ness Avenue). The award-winning ensemble will give its first performance at SFCM since departing their post as Quartet-in-Residence at the end of the 2023-2024 season. For this special return concert, the Telegraph Quartet will collaborate in performance with some of SFCM’s current students. The program will feature Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 2 “Concussion Theory,” with cellist Alex Kim; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 74 “Harp” and Josef Suk’s Piano Quintet with SFCM students violinist Mathea Goh and pianist Jon Lee.

The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Known for their technical aptitude and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet bring their innate musical chemistry and acuity to a program of works that express a wide range of emotions in response to people and events that were deeply meaningful, impactful, or inspiring to each of the composers.

Beethoven composed his “Harp” quartet during a time of great external trauma for the world, during a French attack on Vienna, and internal trauma for himself: over an 11-year-long struggle with hearing loss, which inevitably kept him from fully experiencing the finished piece. In spite of these harrowing circumstances, the “Harp” Quartet is one of Beethoven’s most melodious compositions.

Much of Joseph Suk’s Piano Quintet exudes an energized and frenetic quality –– often calling for a balance of expressive performances and concentrated precision. Though fresh and invigorating, the music tends to reflect compositional qualities of Johannes Brahms, to whom the piece is dedicated, as well as echoing influence from his teacher, fellow Czech composer, (and eventual father-in-law!) Antonin Dvořák.

Kenji Bunch explains that his String Quartet No. 2, Concussion Theory, “explores many aspects of the historically unprecedented plight of the 1930s Dustbowl and the highly unorthodox experiments the nation tried in order to address it. The first movement, No Man's Land, presents a dire scene of the parched, barren earth of the Great Plains, with a scorching sun and only a rustling of tumbleweed to interrupt the desolate stillness. Black Sunday recalls a battered, downtrodden community church gathering in 1935 on the day of one of the worst dust storm of that era blacked out an area spanning five states. The third movement, Concussion Theory, depicts the blazing fireworks of explosives fired into the heavens above, followed by A Gentle Rain, a fantasy of cathartic rainfall; a bittersweet, would-be outcome of this experiment that, alas, in reality never actually occurred.”

The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released in 2023 on Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “In the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”

More about Telegraph Quartet: The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. This first volume features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “…full of elegance and pinpoint control…” Divergent Paths follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten.

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.

For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Concert details:

Who: Telegraph Quartet with SFCM students cellist Alex Kim, violinist Mathea Goh, and pianist Jon Lee.
Presented by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Joseph Suk
When: Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Barbro Osher Recital Hall, 200 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102
Tickets and information: https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/chamber-music-tuesday-6-telegraph-quartet/20250408

Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, which the San Francisco Chronicle describes as having “soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail” and being “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape,” is presented by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The concert will feature Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major, Op. 74 “Harp,” Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 2 “Concussion Theory,” with SFCM cellist Alex Kim; and and Josef Suk’s Piano Quintet with SFCM violinist Mathea Goh and SFCM pianist Jon Lee. Through this performance, the Telegraph Quartet presents music that showcases a wide range of emotions in response to people and events that were deeply meaningful, impactful, or inspiring to each of the composers.

April 17: Telegraph Quartet Perform at Carnegie Hall as Part of Naumburg Looks Back – Presented by The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation

Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet

The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation 
Presents Naumburg Looks Back
Featuring the Telegraph Quartet at Carnegie Hall

Performing the Music of
Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Mieczysław Weinberg

Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 7:30pm
Carnegie Hall | Weill Recital Hall | 57th St. and 7th Ave. | NYC
Tickets: www.carnegiehall.org, CarnegieCharge 212.247.7800, or the Carnegie Hall Box Office

“full of elegance and pinpoint control” – The New York Times

www.TelegraphQuartet.com

New York, NY – On Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The San Francisco Chronicle as having "tonal warmth and communicative urgency,” will be presented by The Walter Naumburg Foundation in the Foundation’s celebrated series Naumburg Looks Back, which brings back past winners in concert. The program takes place at Carnegie Hall in Weill Recital Hall (57th St. and 7th Ave.)

For this concert, the Telegraph Quartet will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major, Op. 74 “Harp,” Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 2 “Concussion Theory,” and Mieczysław Weinberg's String Quartet No. 6 in E minor, Op. 35. The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Known for their technical skill and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet brings innate musical chemistry and acuity to music that evokes a wide range of emotions in response to events – from highly individual, to national, and even global in scope – that were deeply meaningful, impactful, or inspiring to each of the composers, directly shaping the character of each piece.

Beethoven composed his “Harp” quartet during a time of great external trauma for the world, during a French attack on Vienna, and internal trauma for himself over an 11-year-long struggle with hearing loss, which inevitably kept him from fully experiencing the finished piece. In spite of these harrowing circumstances, the “Harp” Quartet is one of Beethoven’s most melodious compositions.

Kenji Bunch explains that his String Quartet No. 2, Concussion Theory, “explores many aspects of the historically unprecedented plight of the 1930s Dustbowl and the highly unorthodox experiments the nation tried in order to address it. The first movement, No Man's Land, presents a dire scene of the parched, barren earth of the Great Plains, with a scorching sun and only a rustling of tumbleweed to interrupt the desolate stillness. Black Sunday recalls a battered, downtrodden community church gathering in 1935 on the day of one of the worst dust storm of that era blacked out an area spanning five states. The third movement, Concussion Theory, depicts the blazing fireworks of explosives fired into the heavens above, followed by A Gentle Rain, a fantasy of cathartic rainfall; a bittersweet, would-be outcome of this experiment that, alas, in reality never actually occurred.”

During World War II Mieczysław Weinberg fled his homeland of Poland and having failed to convince his family to come with him, almost all of them were murdered in the concentration camps. His String Quartet No. 6 contains an innocent mundanity that erupts throughout the work into desperation, sorrow, and tragic indignation as he dealt with the ramifications of his exile and learned to live warily in his newfound home of the Soviet Union. The work, which was banned in Stalin’s USSR and was never performed in Weinberg’s lifetime, is now being championed by the Telegraph Quartet.

The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released in 2023 on Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”

More about Telegraph Quartet: The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. This first volume features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “…full of elegance and pinpoint control…” Divergent Paths follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten.

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.

About The Walter W, Naumburg Foundation

The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, founded in 1926 by Walter W. Naumburg, next year embarks on its centenary year holding the distinction of being the world’s longest running classical music competition. Today it continues in the pursuit of ideals set out by Mr. Naumburg. His desire to assist gifted young musicians in America has made possible a long-standing program of competitions and awards in solo, chamber music performance and commissions. It was Mr. Naumburg’s firm belief that such competitions were not only for the benefit of new stars but would also be for those talented young musicians who would become the prime movers in the development of the highest standards of musical excellence in America, and throughout the world today. Visit www.naumburg.org

For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Concert details:

Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by The Walter Naumburg Foundation
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Mieczysław Weinberg
When: Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Weill Recital Hall, 57th St. and 7th Ave., New York, NY 10019
Tickets and information: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2025/04/17/The-Telegraph-Quartet-0730PM

Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, which the San Francisco Chronicle describes as having “soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail” and being “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape,” is presented by The Walter Naumburg Foundation in a special performance at Carnegie Hall as part of Naumburg Looks Back. The ensemble will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major, Op. 74 “Harp,” Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 2 “Concussion Theory,” and Mieczysław Weinberg's String Quartet No. 6 in E minor, Op. 35. Through this performance, the Telegraph Quartet presents music that showcases a wide range of emotions in response to events –– from highly individual, to national, and global in scope –– that were deeply meaningful, impactful, or inspiring to each of the composers.

Newport Classical Continues Free Community Concerts with Two Spring Performances in April and May

Ji Su Jung (left) and Rasa String Quartet (right). Photo of Rasa String Quartet by Titilayo Ayangade; photo of Ji Su Jung courtesy of the artist. Available in high resolution here.

Newport Classical Continues Community Concerts with Two Spring Performances
Free, Casual, and Welcoming to All

Presented by BankNewport

Ji Su Jung’s Percussion Playground
Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Great Friends Meeting House | 21 Farewell Street | Newport, RI

Rasa Quartet and Percussion
Sunday, May 18, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Newport Craft Brewing Lawn | 293 JT Connell Highway | Newport, RI 

Information & Registration: www.newportclassical.org

Newport, RI – Newport Classical announces two spring concerts as part of the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Community Concerts Series featuring Ji Su Jung’s Percussion Playground on Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 2:30pm at Great Friends Meeting House (21 Farewell Street) and Rasa Quartet and Percussion on Sunday, May 18, 2025 at 2:30pm on the Newport Craft Brewing Lawn (293 JT Connell Highway). Audiences can look forward to enjoying these casual, engaging, and welcoming concerts right in their Newport neighborhoods. Newport Classical’s Community Concerts Series is free and open to the community; advanced registration is requested but not required for both performances. 

On April 27, experience the mesmerizing artistry of percussionist Ji Su Jung at the historic Great Friends Meeting House. The first solo percussionist to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Jung has captivated audiences nationwide, performing with top orchestras at renowned venues including the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. Known for her depth, lyricism, and dazzling virtuosity, Jung transforms the marimba into an instrument of extraordinary expression. With a blend of traditional and contemporary music, this concert showcases the boundless possibilities of percussion in classical music and beyond. Join Newport Classical for this free, family-friendly performance in an afternoon of music and community right in the heart of Newport.

On May 18, Newport Classical welcomes the Rasa String Quartet (Emma Powell and Maura Shawn Scanlin, violin; Kiyoshi Hayashi, viola; Mina Kim, cello) and percussionist Brian Shankar Adler to Newport Craft. Enjoy a joyful outdoor concert celebrating each artists’ musical roots spanning from evocative Indian ragas and mysterious Argentine tangos to spirited Celtic fiddle tunes. This collaboration evokes the feelings of home and comfort inherent in our earliest musical memories, while also exploring the rhythmic connection across a wide array of genres. The program culminates in a brand-new work for string quartet and percussion by Brian Shankar Adler, inspired by this unique collaboration. Don’t miss this free, family-friendly concert on the lawn of Newport Craft, overlooking the Pell Bridge, where music and storytelling come together for a delightful afternoon.

These concerts are generously presented as part of the BankNewport Community Concerts Series with additional support from the NewportFed Charitable Foundation. 

Up next, the Newport Classical Chamber Series continues with oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, who joins forces with acclaimed pianist Michael Stephen Brown in music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and more, on March 21. On April 25, Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) presents the music of Bach and Messiaen, alongside works by Grieg and Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, with pianist Anna Polonsky. Pianist Orion Weiss, known for his “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post), returns to Newport for a solo recital of Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations on May 16. On June 13, the GRAMMY®-nominated Norwegian Trio Mediaeval, who captivate audiences with their crystalline voices, closes the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Chamber Series with an enchanting evening of Norwegian and Swedish traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads.

The 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-22, 2025, with programming to be announced on March 25.

For Newport Classical’s complete concert calendar, visit www.newportclassical.org/concerts

About Newport Classical:
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.

Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 56 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of music in Newport County, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.

Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”

In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, and Clarice Assad.

May 9: Pentatonix Powerhouse Kevin Olusola Announces Debut Solo Album Dawn Of A Misfit on Sony Music Masterworks – Debut Single & Music Video Out Now

Album Artwork (Download)

Pentatonix Powerhouse Kevin Olusola Announces Debut Solo Album Dawn Of A Misfit

Singer, Cellist, and Beatboxer Shares 
Debut Single and Music Video for Dark Winter
Listen | Watch

Album Showcases Works by a Wide Range of Women Composers
Album Release Date: April 25, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

Kevin Olusola, the dynamic singer, cellist, and beatboxer best known for his work with the 3x-GRAMMY® Award-winning a cappella group Pentatonix, will release his debut solo album, Dawn of a Misfit, on May 9, 2025 via Sony Music Masterworks. The record is available to pre-order and pre-save here.

The multi-faceted artist previews his new LP with the electrifying lead single Dark Winter, out now, which blends samples from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and symphonic strings with Olusola's potent beatbox percussion, 808s & elastic R&B hooks."

The song introduces a bit of edge for a musician often recognized for exuberant joy—and the music video for Dark Winter directed by Ron Jaramillo, follows in that spirit, following Olusola and his “Misfit Mafia” as they destroy objects from the classical tradition, including cellos, paintings, and statues. “My misfits and I are completely demolishing them,” Olusola says. “We don’t have to destroy the past, but we have to break the things that have been traditional or stereotyped in us to become exactly who we’re called to be. I want to shatter boundaries, only to bring all the pieces back together with a newfound harmony.” The official music video for Dark Winter is out now – watch here

Dawn of a Misfit follows two EPs: The Renegade, which explored classical music and celloboxing, and Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, which delved more into pop influences. This new LP seamlessly blends elements from both projects while continuing to expand his already-vast musical canvas. Dawn of a Misfit draws on his classical virtuosity and the graceful soulfulness of his vocals, partly fueled by his Nigerian and Grenadian heritage. While recording the new album, he was influenced by a diverse range of artists, including Sting, multi-hyphenate artist Jon Batiste, Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, American singer and actor Harry Belafonte, country-rap artist Shaboozey, cellist Jacqueline du Pré, pianist Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr., and Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The wide-ranging album touches on spirituality, fatherhood, and being a first-generation person in a Western country, all while fusing classical, pop, R&B, and hip-hop. It even includes a nod to Pentatonix with “Kevin’s Fifth,” a fan-favorite expansion on Beethoven’s 5th that he often performs during their live shows. The beloved quintet—who broke out after winning NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011—have released 12 albums in total, including 2022’s GRAMMY-nominated Holidays Around the World. More recently, they starred in the #1 Netflix rom-com Meet Me Next Christmas.

KEVIN OLUSOLA - DAWN OF A MISFIT

Tracklisting

1. Dark Winter
2. Hallelujah (I Don't Think About You)
3. I Feel Misunderstood
4. Crazy
5. Like Us
6. Smile
7. A Change Is Gonna Come
8. Have I Told You
9. Love, Leigh & Kaia
10. Kaia's Swan
11. Showdown
12. Hymn for Christian
13. Kevin's Fifth

PR Photo (Credit Xavier Sotomayer) Download

ABOUT KEVIN OLUSOLA
As one-fifth of multi-platinum-selling a cappella phenomenon Pentatonix, the multi-faceted artist, Kevin Olusola defies stereotypes by reimagining classical musicianship through a modern sonic and lyrical lens, all the while balancing his dynamic background of Nigerian and Grenadian heritage. With his debut solo album, Dawn of a Misfit, out May 9, 2025 via Sony Music Masterworks, Olusola uses his love of classical music as the backdrop to tell his story as a first-generation person growing up in a Western country. He hopes to unlock entry points for those unfamiliar with the classical genre and reach those in and outside the Black diaspora who may still be finding themselves through life’s hardships. “My purpose is to spread love far and wide with the unique frequency l've been given. I want to shatter boundaries, only to bring all the pieces back together with a newfound harmony,” Olusola says. “I hope my music makes you feel comfortable in who you are and the love you want to portray to the world.”

Follow Kevin Olusola
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | YouTube

Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com.

Ariel Quartet Embarks on Monumental Beethoven String Quartet Cycle - Three Albums over Two Years - Volume One out April 4 on Orchid Classics

Ariel Quartet Embarks on Monumental Beethoven String Quartet Cycle Three Albums over Two Years

Culminating in 2027
Honoring Beethoven’s Legacy 200 Years After His Passing

Volume One to be Released Worldwide on April 4, 2025
On Orchid Classics

"A gripping and often very subtle reading, setting ear-melting tenderness against seething passion with a deft and precise touch" – The Washington Post 

“the Ariel’s performance showed that when the minutiae of quartet playing are thoughtfully considered and perfectly executed, the sum of a quartet is indeed greater than its parts” – The Strad

Review CDs and downloads available upon request. 

Pre-Save/Order: https://orchid-music.lnk.to/BeethovenQuartetsVol.1EM 

Ariel Quartet: www.arielquartet.com/the-cycle

Upcoming Performances: www.arielquartet.com/schedule

The Ariel Quartet (Alexandra Kazovsky, violin; Gershon Gerchikov, violin; Jan Grüning, viola; and Amit Even-Tov, cello) – distinguished by its virtuosity, probing musical insight, and impassioned performances – will release the complete Beethoven String Quartets over two years, culminating in 2027, the 200th  anniversary of Beethoven’s death. The Quartet will release the first volume of the series on April 4, 2025 on the Orchid Classics label, with subsequent volumes arriving in November 2025 and June 2026, and a special box set release in March 2027. Volume one of the cycle includes Beethoven’s Op. 18 string quartets over 2 CDs – on CD 1, String Quartet in F major, Op.18 No.1; String Quartet in D major, Op.18 No. 3; and String Quartet in B-flat major, Op.18 No. 6; and on CD 2, String Quartet in G major, Op.18 No. 2; String Quartet in C minor, Op.18 No. 4; and String Quartet in A major, Op.18 No. 5. The first single from the album, a selection from Op. 18 No. 5, will be released on March 7.

Formed when the members were just teenagers studying at the Jerusalem Academy Middle School of Music and Dance in Israel, the Ariel Quartet has a long history with the quartets of Beethoven. His String Quartet in C minor, Op.18 No.4 was the very first piece that the group tackled together as thirteen year olds, and the members credit the work for hooking them on the genre, for life.

Of Beethoven’s Op. 18 set, composed between 1798 and 1800, the Ariel writes, “Quartets were traditionally published in sets of six, and fittingly, Op.18 became the last great quartet set of the classical period: we hear a young Beethoven proving himself on the battleground of his teachers and peers, Haydn and Mozart, while signaling a bold move toward new musical horizons. . . Zooming in and familiarizing ourselves with Haydn’s and Mozart’s quartets of the time, we quickly understand that Beethoven’s set – while adhering to the same rules and principles – is distinctly ‘Beethovenian.’ While this impression can be broken down into factors such as motive-driven development, emotional contrasts, his characteristic expanded harmonic language, structural experimentation etc., the big achievement was his ability to unify these elements into a compositional language that expresses extraordinary emotional depth.” 

In 2013 to mark its 15th anniversary, the Ariel Quartet performed its first complete Beethoven cycle – a milestone for the group, which has been performing Beethoven’s music since its inception. Since then, the Ariel has performed the complete cycle on six occasions throughout the United States and Europe. They view the complete quartets as part of their personal life-long journey reflected in Beethoven’s music – works that are interwoven with the evolution of the string quartet genre as well as the group’s own genesis story. 

The Quartet writes:

“A happy accident kickstarted our group in 1998, when we were thirteen years old, at a school for music and dance. Amidst stretching ballerinas and improvising jazz pianists, we were simply assigned to play together. Our teacher spoon-fed us repertoire just beyond our ability, knowing we were about to discover the addictive magic of playing string quartets. We spent our teenage years rehearsing in the school attic, immersing ourselves in the rich string quartet repertoire while learning to navigate both the music and our evolving relationships.

Today, 27 years in and with three founding members still on board, our mission is to breathe life into the bread and butter of the string quartet repertoire while shining a spotlight on the compelling music of our time. This commitment led us to perform the complete Beethoven cycle before any of us turned 30.

Our unusual journey has been fundamental in shaping who we are. Beyond the demands of our shared professional path, we have walked together as friends who have truly become family. From late-night debates about tempo and sight-reading marathons to raising our children alongside one another while balancing an international concert career, we have shared every stage of life. This closeness has created a deep and unique bond that continues to shape our identity, both on stage and beyond.”

More about the Ariel Quartet: The Ariel Quartet was named a recipient of the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award, granted by Chamber Music America in recognition of artistic achievement and career support. Recent highlights include the Quartet’s sold-out Carnegie Hall debut, a series of performances at Lincoln Center together with pianist Inon Barnatan and the Mark Morris Dance Group, as well as the release of a Brahms and Bartók album for Avie Records. In 2020, the Ariel gave the U.S. premiere of the Quintet for Piano and Strings by Daniil Trifonov, with the composer as pianist for the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati. The Quartet serves as the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where they direct the chamber music program and present a concert series in addition to maintaining a busy touring schedule in the United States and abroad.

The Ariel Quartet regularly collaborates with today’s eminent and rising young musicians and ensembles, including pianist Orion Weiss, cellist Paul Katz, and the American, Pacifica, and Jerusalem String Quartets. The Quartet has toured with cellist Alisa Weilerstein and performed frequently with pianists Jeremy Denk and Menahem Pressler. In addition, the Ariel served as Quartet-in-Residence for the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia Festival, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, and the Perlman Music Program, as well as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Festival.

Formerly the resident ensemble of the Professional String Quartet Training Program at the New England Conservatory, from which the players obtained their undergraduate and graduate degrees, the Ariel was mentored extensively by acclaimed string quartet giants Walter Levin and Paul Katz. It has won numerous international prizes in addition to the Cleveland Quartet Award: First Prize at the prestigious Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition in Graz/Austria, Grand Prize at the 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Székely Prize for the performance of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, and Third Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. About its performances at the Banff competition, the American Record Guide described the group as “a consummate ensemble gifted with utter musicality and remarkable interpretive power” and noted, in particular, their playing of Beethoven’s monumental Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, as “the pinnacle of the competition.”

The Ariel Quartet has received significant support from the American-Israel Cultural Foundation, Dov and Rachel Gottesman, and the Legacy Heritage Fund. Most recently, they were awarded a grant from the A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation.

Follow the Ariel Quartet:
www.instagram.com/arielquartet
www.facebook.com/ArielQuartet

ALBUM TRACK LISTING: 

Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets Vol. 1
Ariel Quartet
Orchid Classics | Release Date: April 4, 2025

DISC 1

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Quartet in F major, Op.18 No.1
1. I Allegro con brio
2. II Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato
3. III Scherzo. Allegro molto
4. IV Allegro 

String Quartet in D major, Op.18 No.3
5. I Allegro
6. II Andante con moto
7. III Allegro
8. IV Presto

String Quartet in B-flat major, Op.18 No.6
9. I Allegro con brio
10. II Adagio ma non troppo
11. III Scherzo. Allegro
12. IV La Malinconia: Adagio – Allegretto quasi Allegro

DISC 2

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Quartet in G major, Op.18 No.2
1. I Allegro
2. II Adagio cantabile – Allegro – Tempo I
3. III Scherzo: Allegro
4. IV Allegro molto quasi presto 

String Quartet in C minor, Op.18 No.4
5. I Allegro ma non tanto
6. II Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto
7. III Menuetto. Allegretto
8. IV Allegro

String Quartet in A major, Op.18 No.5
9. I Allegro
10. II Menuetto
11. III Andante cantabile
12. IV Allegro

Ariel Quartet:
Alexandra Kazovsky, violin
Gershon Gerchikov, violin
Jan Grüning, viola
Amit Even–Tov, cello

Recorded at Robert J. Werner Recital Hall, University of Cincinnati College- Conservatory of Music on 16-18 September 2022 (Nos.1-3) & 13-16 September 2023 (Nos.4-6)
Producer: Jesse Lewis
Recording Engineers: Shauna Barravecchio & Jesse Lewis
Editing Engineer: Shauna Barravecchio, Caroline Shaffer Robin & Frank Shaw Mix Engineer: Jesse Lewis
Immersive Producer: Jesse Lewis
Immersive Mixing and Mastering Engineer: Christopher Moretti
Mastering Engineer: Christopher Moretti
Cover & booklet photography: Neda Navaee

© 2025 Orchid Music Limited

April 25: Violinist Esther Abrami to Release New Album Women on Sony Classical – Music Video for Valse Di Fantastica by Yoko Shimomura Out Now

Acclaimed Violinist Esther Abrami to Release Women
New Album on Sony Classical

Music Video for Valse Di Fantastica by Yoko Shimomura
Out Now - Watch Here

Out Today
Album Showcases Works by a Wide Range of Women Composers
Album Release Date: April 25, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

Celebrated violinist and social media sensation Esther Abrami announces the release of her highly anticipated new album Women set for release on April 25, 2025 via Sony Classical and available for pre-order now.

A tribute to women composers across history and a range of genres, Women showcases the exceptional talent of 14 remarkable composers, spanning newly composed works and rediscovered masterpieces. The album features Oscar winners Rachel Portman and Anne Dudley, as well as new arrangements of compositions by historic composers such as Pauline Viardot, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Teresa Carreño or Ethel Smyth. Women also includes Transmission, an original composition by Esther Abrami, who has arranged several pieces on the album. At its heart is the world-premiere recording of Ina Boyle’s Violin Concerto, a breathtaking, late-Romantic composition. Esther Abrami carefully chose each piece on Women not only for its musical brilliance but also for the emotional connection it holds for her, highlighting the often-overlooked voices of women in classical music.

“For as far back as I can remember, the only classical music I ever came across was written by male composers.  I studied classical music for over 15 years in some of the top music schools and conservatoires in the world. During those years I never played a single piece written by a woman. It wasn’t that I actively avoided them - I simply didn’t know they even existed! Nobody talked about them, nobody played their music, no one ever introduced me to their compositions. It took stepping out of my formal education to question this reality. ‘Did any women ever compose classical music?’ Turns out they did! Just when I thought I knew all about the main classical composers, I discovered a hidden treasure. I spent months researching, drawn into a whole new world of music and stories from women left in the shadows of history. This album is my tribute to them. Women is a journey through centuries of music, told through the voices of women who composed, fought, lived, and created despite the odds. The stories of these women inspired me to create; they showed me the importance of leaving your mark for future generations to discover. I hope Women can inspire a new generation of young girls to compose.”

Throughout her career, Esther Abrami has been dedicated to celebrating and amplifying the voices of women composers. From her popular podcast Women in Classical, where she interviews influential musicians, composers and women working in classical music to her EP Spotlight, dedicated to women composers, Abrami continues her mission to highlight and elevate women’s contributions to classical music. With her new album Women, she is taking another major step towards breaking down barriers and redefining the landscape of the genre.

Women brings together an extraordinary lineup of collaborators, including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Irene Delgado-Jiménez, pianist Kim Barbier, harpist Lavinia Meijer, and the Esther Abrami Quintet. 

“I felt extremely lucky working with such an incredible orchestra and musicians on a project that is so personal. Hearing my own composition brought to life by a whole orchestra is a memory I will never forget.”

Esther Abrami - Women - Tracklist:

1) March of the Women* (Ethel Smyth / Esther Abrami)
2) Valse Di Fantastica* (Yoko Shimomura)
3) Flowers* (Miley Cyrus)
4) Hai Luli! (Pauline Viardot) with Lavinia Meijer and the Esther Abrami Quintet
5) Wiegala (Ilse Weber) with the Esther Abrami Quintet
6) Corta Jaca (Chiquinha Gonzaga) with the Esther Abrami Quintet
7) Medhel an Gwyns* (Anne Dudley)
8) O Virtus Sapientiae (Hildegard von Bingen) with the Esther Abrami Quintet
9) Apple Tree* (Rachel Portman)
10-12) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (To the Memory of My Mother)* (Ina Boyle)
13) Mi Teresita ‘Little Waltz’* (Teresa Carreño) 
14) Lua Branca (Chiquinha Gonzaga) with Kim Barbier
15) Solitude (Rita Strohl) with Kim Barbier
16) Transmission* (Esther Abrami)

* Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Irene Delgado-Jiménez

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Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com.

Esther Abrami – WOMEN - Track by Track Stories

The stories of these women inspired Esther Abrami to create. They showed her the importance of leaving a mark for future generations to discover. She hopes Women can inspire a new generation of young girls to compose.

March of the Women – Ethel Smyth, recomposed by Esther Abrami

A voice appears in the introduction to Esther Abrami’s album saying, “You have to make more noise.” Not just any voice, but the voice of Emmeline Pankhurst, a leading figure in the suffragette movement fighting to obtain women’s right to vote. The sample is taken from an original recording of a speech given by Emmeline in Hyde Park, London in 1908 and Esther Abrami incorporated it into her arrangement of “March of the Women.”

For the music, Esther was inspired by composer Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), who was also a warrior for women’s rights and wrote “March of the Women,” which became the official anthem of the suffragettes. It is said that after being arrested and imprisoned for activism, Ethel met a group of women, also arrested for the same cause, who were singing her anthem. One can picture Ethel in a prison cell, standing in front of a small window, conducting a group of women during their daily prison walk using all she had with her… a toothbrush!

Valse Di Fantastica – Yoko Shimomura

For those who enjoy gaming, this composition might sound familiar. This incredible piece was written for the video game Final Fantasy XV! Like many teenagers, Esther Abrami played video games growing up, and Yoko Shimomura (*1967) was one of the first female composers she ever heard—though she didn’t realize it at the time.

Flowers – Miley Cyrus, arr. Esther Abrami

“Flowers” adds a pop touch to this classical album. Being independent, living life on one's own terms, and working towards realizing a dream career isn't easy. This song by Miley Cyrus (*1992) gave Esther motivation and energy, representing a modern statement of female empowerment.

“Hai Luli!“ – Pauline Viardot, arr. Jan-Peter Klöpfel

Pauline Viardot (1821–1910) was a remarkable figure of the 19th century, often regarded as an “influencer” of her time. She was immensely popular and well-connected with the most significant artists of her era. Viardot had the ability to significantly impact the careers of those around her. Her Parisian salon regularly hosted luminaries such as Chopin, Liszt, the Schumanns, and her close friend George Sand, who also introduced Pauline to her future husband. Unlike many, he supported and financed Pauline’s musical career.

Regarded as a piano prodigy, Pauline took lessons with Franz Liszt from an early age and it is known that her hands would tremble during these lessons—not out of nervousness, but because of her admiration for him, a sentiment shared by many girls of the time. Viardot grew into become a legendary opera singer and composed over 450 pieces (for comparison, Chopin composed only 300 pieces in his lifetime). Esther considers ‘Hai Luli!’ to be one of Viardot’s most beautiful songs.

Wiegala– Ilse Weber, arr. Esther Abrami

“Wiegala” is a haunting lullaby written by Jewish composer and poet Ilse Weber (1903–1944). In 1942, she was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she worked as a nurse. Without medicine to ease the children’s suffering, she used music—singing and composing lullabies to comfort them. When the children were sent to Auschwitz, she voluntarily accompanied them, and it is said that they sang “Wiegala” as they entered the gas chambers. Her husband, who survived the Holocaust, buried her music in the ground and later recovered it, ensuring that her voice would not be lost to history. Ilse Weber sacrificed her life out of pure altruism, and her music serves as a poignant reminder of the resilience of the human spirit.

Corta Jaca – Chiquinha Gonzaga, arr. Jan-Peter Klöpfel

Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847–1935) was a trailblazer. Born in 19th-century Brazil, she faced a difficult choice imposed by her husband: music or marriage. She chose music, a scandalous decision at the time. Gonzaga became the first woman in Brazil to conduct an orchestra and composed over 2,000 pieces, including the music that became the official hymn for the Brazilian Carnival. As the daughter of a Black slave, she fought for the abolition of slavery and women’s rights, selling her music to support these causes. Gonzaga was also a pioneer in copyright law, founding the first company to protect and advocate for composers’ rights, long before it became standard practice. “Corta Jaca” is a Brazilian tango and one of her most famous works, known for causing quite a scandal due to its title, which apparently had a sexual innuendo.

Medhel an Gwyns – Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley (*1956) is one of the very few women to have won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. Esther Abrami had the incredible experience of working directly with her in arranging the music from the Netflix show Poldark for violin and orchestra. “Medhel an Gwyns” has a folk music influence, which Esther felt inspired to express through her violin.

O Virtus Sapientiae – Hildegard von Bingen, arr. Penelope Axtens

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) is the earliest composer featured on this album, having lived during the Middle Ages. She is one of the first identifiable composers in the history of Western music. Hildegard was not only a composer but also a medieval nun, healer, writer, and visionary. She wrote music as well as one of the first known medical texts on women's health, openly discussing topics like menstruation and female pleasure in an era when such subjects were unspeakable. Hildegard was an extremely powerful figure, exchanging letters with Henry II, King of England, and Emperor Frederic I, both of whom held her in high regard. “O Virtus Sapientiae” offers a glimpse into her world, where spirituality and music were inseparable.

Apple Tree – Rachel Portman

Rachel Portman (*1960) is the first female composer to win an Oscar for Best Original Composition. “She is one of my biggest musical inspirations and I am honored to have collaborated with her on all my albums so far!,” says Esther. “Apple Tree” is a very sweet piece of music with a touch of nostalgia, personally reminding Esther of childhood moments in the countryside of southern France.

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (To the Memory of My Mother) – Ina Boyle

“I think it is most courageous of you to keep going with such little recognition. All I can say is that it sometimes does finally come.” This quote comes from composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in a letter to his student Ina Boyle (1889–1967). Ina lived during a challenging time, between two world wars, and received countless rejections for her compositions, yet she never stopped writing. This is the first-ever professional recording of her violin concerto, a piece Ina dedicated to her mother, based on a poem and filled with deep emotions. It is astonishing to think that she spent her entire life in a small Irish village, composing symphonies that the world is only now beginning to discover. Esther hopes that today is the day when “it does finally come” for Ina Boyle.

Mi Teresita / Little Waltz – Teresa Carreño, arr. Esther Abrami

Teresa Carreño (1853–1917), known as “The Lioness of the piano,” was one of the greatest piano virtuoso of her time. She was humorously described as a musician with “a male head, male fingers, and a female heart.” Born in Venezuela, she was a true child prodigy, invited at the age of nine to perform for President Lincoln at the White House. Admired by Liszt, Brahms, and Rubinstein, Carreño led a whirlwind life, marrying four times and constantly touring due to her remarkable performing career. Despite her immense fame as a performer, her compositions were often overlooked and forgotten, likely due to the fact that she was a woman from South America. “Mi Teresita,” a waltz inspired by Venezuelan rhythms, was written for her daughter.

Lua Branca – Chiquinha Gonzaga, arr. Esther Abrami

Another piece by Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847–1935), “Lua Branca” translates to “White Moon.” It features a very seductive melody, and the first time Esther Abrami hummed it, she knew she had to arrange it for the violin. Listening to this piece, one might imagine traveling all the way to the streets of Brazil.

Solitude – Rita Strohl, arr. Esther Abrami

Rita Strohl (1865–1941) decided at one point in her life to completely isolate herself from the world, moving away from society to be left with only music and solitude. She spent her days composing tirelessly. This piece resonates deeply with Esther Abrami, reminding her of the beauty found in countless hours spent alone, completely alone, with only her violin and music for company.

Transmission – Esther Abrami

Esther Abrami's grandmother was a violinist who stopped her career when she got married. Esther knows her grandmother never imagined that her only granddaughter would one day take up the instrument she had left behind. This piece is Esther's way of continuing her grandmother's story while also telling her own. “Transmission” represents the passing of music through generations. This is the first time Esther has ever recorded one of her own compositions.

March 21: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performing Music of Lou Harrison in Detroit

Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill

Pianist Sarah Cahill: Music of Lou Harrison
Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live! Series

Friday, March 21, 2025 from 7:00-8:30pm
Detroit Institute of the Arts | Rivera Court | 5200 Woodward Ave. | Detroit, MI
More Information

“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music.” – NPR Music

Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concer

Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com

Detroit, MI – On Friday, March 21, 2025 from 7:00-8:30pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, returns for her third performance at the Detroit Institute of the Arts as part of its Friday Night Live! series in DIA’s Rivera Court (5200 Woodward Ave.). The concert is free and open to the public. Cahill presents Lou Harrison: A Celebration, highlighting the pioneering American composer’s groundbreaking contributions to 20th-century music. Known for his exploration of alternative tunings, international influences, and innovative instruments, Harrison’s work comes to life in this performance featuring several of his solo piano works as well as his enchanting Varied Trio performed by Cahill with percussionist Douglas Perkins and violinist Yvonne Lam, and two movements, Stampede and Round, from his otherworldly, gamelan-infused Grand Duo performed with Lam.

Sarah Cahill worked closely with Lou Harrison (1917-2003) during his lifetime and has championed many of his works for piano. In 1997, she was chosen to premiere his Festival Dance for two pianos with Aki Takahashi at the Cooper Union and worked with Harrison in rehearsals. She was also chosen to perform his Dance for Lisa Karon, discovered only a few years ago and not heard since its premiere in 1938, and she performed his Varied Trio, both piano concertos, and a number of solo and chamber works on her 2017 Lou Harrison tour celebrating his centennial year, with concerts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Orlando, Miami, Hawaii, Tokyo and Fukuoka in Japan, and more. In fall 2019, Cahill performed Lou Harrison's exuberant Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan in two Berkeley performances and at the ICA Boston. She also performed and recorded the work with Gamelan Galak Tika at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“It's always exciting to perform Lou Harrison's vibrant music, and this concert covers almost six decades of his extraordinary compositional life. He is a hero to me and so many others, not only for his kindness and radiant spirit, but also for his tireless activism for human rights, LGBTQ rights, and environmentalism. I was very fortunate to know him and work with him. Many of the scores on this concert are unpublished, gathered from him and his friends and colleagues, and from his biographer Bill Alves. I'm especially thrilled to perform with Doug Perkins and Yvonne Lam!

More about Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).

Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Metropolitan Museum, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.

Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), returns for her third performance at the Detroit Institute of the Arts as part of its Friday Night Live! series in DIA’s Rivera Court (5200 Woodward Ave.). The concert is free and open to the public. Cahill presents a Lou Harrison: A Celebration, highlighting the pioneering American composer’s groundbreaking contributions to 20th-century music. Known for his exploration of alternative tunings, international influences, and innovative instruments, Harrison’s work comes to life in this performance featuring several of his solo piano works as well as his enchanting Varied Trio performed by Cahill with percussionist Douglas Perkins and violinist Yvonne Lam, and his otherworldly, gamelan-infused Grand Duo performed with Lam.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill with percussionist Douglas Perkins and violinist Yvonne Lam
Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts, Friday Night Live! Series
What: Music of Lou Harrison When: Friday, March 21, 2025 from 7:00-8:30pm
Where: Rivera Court, 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202
Tickets and information: www.dia.org/events/friday-night-live-sarah-cahill-music-lou-harrison

April 8: The Jupiter Quartet Presented by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society

Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/jupiter-string

The Jupiter String Quartet 
Presented by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society

Performing Music by
Franz Joseph Haydn, Caroline Shaw, and Johannes Brahms

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm
Mary Seaton Room, Kleinhans Music Hall
3 Symphony Circle | Buffalo, NY
Tickets and Information

“technical finesse and rare expressive maturity” – The New Yorker

www.jupiterquartet.com

Buffalo, NY – On Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Jupiter String Quartet – internationally acclaimed winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) – will be presented in concert by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society in the Mary Seaton Room of the Kleinhans Music Hall (3 Symphony Circle.). There will be a pre-concert talk at 6:45pm. 

Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and performing all across the nation, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Brought together by ties both familial and musical, the Jupiter Quartet has been performing together since 2001. Exuding an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous, the Quartet celebrates every opportunity to bring their close-knit and lively style to audiences. Their connections to each other and the length of time they’ve shared the stage always shine through in their intuitive performances.   

The Jupiter Quartet brings its well-honed, gracefully intertwined musical chemistry to three works composed from the turn of the 19th century to the present day. Each work embraces the unique attributes of its respective compositional form to create clever juxtapositions between texture and emotion, heightening the intensity of the performance. The program includes String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, Hob.III: 82 by Franz Joseph Haydn; Entr’acte by Caroline Shaw; and String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. The Jupiter Quartet’s lively and expressive playing style will showcase the dramatic tensions and strong emotions driving the music of this program.

“We are so pleased to return to play again for the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, one of our favorite venues.” says the Jupiter Quartet. “We have prepared a lively and engaging program that mixes a wonderful late Haydn quartet, full of clever interplay; a lovely contemporary work by the brilliant Caroline Shaw; and Brahms’s classically dramatic Quartet in C Minor. We hope the audience will enjoy the variety of moods and styles showcased in these three great works.”

Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2 is the last of his many works in this genre. Considered by many to be the “grandfather of the string quartet,” Haydn developed the form over many years, experimenting with more dramatic structures and particularly with a more equal treatment of the four voices, instead of the first-violin dominated texture often heard earlier.

Caroline Shaw says of Entr’acte: “Entr’acte is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of [Haydn’s] Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.”

Brahms’s first string quartet was composed in a painstaking process over the course of several years. The work’s four movements are presented in the form of two outer movements fueled by torment and anxiety, and two inner movements framed by a more delicate and calm musical aesthetic.

More About Jupiter String Quartet: The Jupiter Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program. 

Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two. 

The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert. 

The quartet's latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by GRAMMY-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The Arts Fuse acclaimed, “This joint album from the Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet is striking for its backstory but really memorable for its smart program and fine execution.” The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon. In fall 2024, the Jupiter Quartet will record their next album with Judith Sherman, featuring the world premiere recordings of Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Stephen Taylor’s Chaconne/Labyrinth, and Kati Agócs's Imprimatur, which were all composed for the Jupiters.

The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.

For more information, visit www.jupiterquartet.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: The Jupiter Quartet, described by The New Yorker as an ensemble with “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” is presented in concert by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society. The ensemble will perform a concert program featuring music that embraces the unique attributes of its respective compositional form to create clever juxtapositions between texture and emotion, heightening the intensity of the performance. Featured works on the concert program will include: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, Hob.III: 82 by Franz Joseph Haydn; Entr’acte by Caroline Shaw; and String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. There will be a pre-concert talk at 6:45pm.

Concert details:

Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society
What: Music by Franz Joseph Haydn, Caroline Shaw, and Johannes Brahms
When: Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30pm, Pre-concert talk at 6:45pm
Where: Mary Seaton Room, Kleinhans Music Hall, 3 Symphony Circle, Buffalo, NY 14201
Tickets and information: www.bflochambermusic.org/index.php/season#jupiter

April 11: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections in Richmond

Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: https://www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein

GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Reflections

A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection

Presented by The Modlin Center for the Arts at University of Richmond

Friday, April 11, 2025 at 7:30pm
Camp Concert Hall | 453 Westhampton Way | Richmond, VA
Tickets and More information

“colorful and idiosyncratic” – The New York Times

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

Richmond, VA – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” performs on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 7:30pm at Camp Concert Hall (453 Westhampton Way), presented by The Modlin Center for the Arts at University of Richmond.

Dinnerstein – who is celebrated for her Bach recordings – will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.

“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”

Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades – including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.”

Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.

Dinnerstein released her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer’s 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.

About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: GRAMMY-nominated® pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will perform a program of Baroque-era inspired works in a concert presented by The Modlin Center for the Arts at University of Richmond. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by the Mobile Chamber Music Society
What: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Friday, April 11, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Camp Concert Hall, ​​453 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173
Tickets and information: www.modlin.richmond.edu/events/page.html?eventid=22755&informationid=casData