News
Melissa White, along with her colleagues in Harlem Quartet and Imani Winds, won a Grammy for "Passion for Bach and Coltrane" in the category of Best Classical Compendium. The work was arranged and composed by Jeffrey Scott, and the recording is a collection of original arrangements and newly composed music tying together the work of legendary composer Johann Sebastian Bach and mid-20th-century jazz great John Coltrane. The recording also features orator and poet A.B. Spellman and jazz trio Alex Brown, Edward Perez, and Neal Smith.
Pianist Einav Yarden joins the Rockford (IL) Symphony February 10 for a performance of the rarely heard 1939 piano concerto by Viktor Ullmann, which has only been performed twice in the US. Viktor Ullmann and the pianist for whom he wrote the concerto were killed during the Holocaust, so the work was never performed as intended in the composer’s lifetime. Einav then travels to Washington state with the Bellingham Symphony to give the West Coast premiere of this work on February 25. Both performances are conducted by Yaniv Attar.
Cellist Tommy Mesa will be featured at the annual Sphinx Organization convening in Detroit, including in conversation and at a performance at Orchestra Hall on Friday, January 26. Tommy will perform Jessie Montgomery’s cello concerto, Divided, for which he has held soloist exclusivity since premiering the work in October 2022, together with Haydn’s C Major Cello Concerto with the Ann Arbor Symphony and conductor Earl Lee in Detroit on January 26 and in Ann Arbor on January 27. Details for the Sphinx convening, including Friday’s performance, can be found here.
As part of its 2024 annual conference, Chamber Music America will celebrate the legacy of the Cleveland Quartet with a concert and reception including performances by three quartets who received the coveted Cleveland Quartet Award, including our very own Borromeo String Quartet (1999) and Verona Quartet (2020). The concert takes place on Saturday, January 20 at 7pm and tickets are included in conference registration.
Tommy Mesa and Michelle Cann released their new album OUR STORIES today on Navona Records. Discovered in a Call for Scores initiated by the artists in partnership with Parma Recordings and the Sphinx Organization, the works on this recording are all by Black or Latinx composers including Carlos Carrillo, Andrea Casarrubios, Kevin Day, Mario Oyanadel, and Sebastian Quesada. Tommy and Michelle will tour extensively together next season.
Following concerts in September from Ibague, Colombia to Birmingham, Alabama, the Borromeo continues its fall touring closer to home. The quartet will appear at Concerts at the Point in Westport, MA on November 5, followed by Northampton’s Valley Classical Concerts on November 12. This Bartok-filled fall culminates with the quartet’s recording project and two concerts of the full Bartok cycle at Guarneri Hall in Chicago in December.
After performances in Canada in September, the Lysander Piano Trio continues its touring with performances at New Jersey’s Parlance Chamber Concerts (October 15), Virginia’s Feldman Chamber Music Society (October 16), and the Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg (October 17), performing their Sounds from the North program of works by Grieg, Amanda Maier, and Schubert. Learn more about the program here.
Israeli pianist Einav Yarden returns to the US for a fall tour, beginning on October 12 with the opening of the Kaufman Music Center’s Piano Dialogues series in NYC. The program will consist of Einav’s Bach: Father & Son program, followed by a discussion with Kaufman Center Artistic Director John Glover covering the Bach family musical lineage.
This is an exciting start to the season for violinist Melissa White, with the launch of a new residency with the Hartford Symphony and several orchestra debuts. Melissa’s upcoming performances include Florence Price’s Concerto No. 1 with the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra on September 30, Butterfly Lover’s Concerto with the Charlotte Symphony on October 6-8, and Price Concerto No. 1 with the Hartford Symphony October 20-22.
The Verona Quartet kicked off the 2023-24 season with their debut at Clarion Concerts in Pine Plains, NY, followed by an exciting tour of Hawaii, Following concerts with Honolulu Chamber Music Series (September 22), the quartet continues on to Hawaii Concert Society in Hilo (September 26), followed by a return residency with Eureka Chamber Music Series in Northern California September 28-October 1.
Today marks the release date of cellist Tommy Mesa’s new duo album with the bandoneonist and composer JP Jofre. You can listen to the album here.
Following their annual residencies at the Taos School of Music (June) and the Heifetz Music Institute (July), the Borromeo String Quartet looks forward to a string of performances to round out their summer festival season, including the Chautauqua Institution (July 31), Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival (August 2), and—following violist Melissa Reardon’s directing of the Portland Chamber Music Festival—Maverick Concerts (August 27), and Cooperstown Summer Chamber Music Festival together with flutist and Artistic Director Linda Chesis (August 29). See here for more details.
Ravinia Steans Institute alumnus, violinist Arnaud Sussmann, gave a recital at Ravinia with fellow RSMI alum Michael Brown on June 18. The rich program included works by Debussy, Mozart, Schulhoff, Weinberg and garnered an enthusiastic response by the audience. The recital will be broadcast on Chicago's classical station WFMT on July 31 at 8pm CT.
Huge applause to the Verona Quartet for debuting #1 this week on the Billboard traditional classical chart with their new album Shatter!! Check it out if you haven’t already, with music by Julia Adolphe, Reena Esmail, and Michael Gilbertson’s Pulitzer-nominated Quartet that her wrote for the Verona Quartet. The album also features the Hindustani vocalist Saili Oak! www.brightshiny.ninja/shatter
Melissa White has quite a week ahead! On June 20, she performs at London's Wigmore Hall with the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective together with violinist extraordinaire Hilary Hahn, and then on June 22 she gives her solo Carnegie Hall Debut (Zankel Hall) with works by Beach, Brahms, Garayev, and Grieg. More details about the Wigmore Hall concert here and Carnegie recital here.
Einav Yarden’s new album, BACH – FATHER AND SON, which was released by Challenge Records International on May 12, is now available on all streaming platforms in the US! It interweaves music by the genius father and his incredibly brilliant son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Yarden will tour this program in the US in October 2023 at venues including the Kaufman Music Center’s Piano Dialogues Series.
After giving the world premiere and subsequent tours of Jessie Montgomery’s cello concerto Divided this season, Tommy Mesa will continue as the work’s exclusive soloist through March 2025. Next season, Mesa will perform the work both on its own and paired with more traditional repertoire at orchestras including the Ann Arbor, Columbus, Greenwich, and Quad City symphony orchestras and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, among others. Deutsche Grammophon also recorded Mesa performing the work with the Sphinx Virtuosi earlier this spring, to be released next season.
Weill Recital Hall welcomes the Verona Quartet. This recital is the culminating event as part of their 2020 Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America. More details can be found here.
This wonderful program explores the evolution of tango, with influences from Africa, Italy, and Spain for piano trio alone followed by original works composed by JP Jofre in the second half. Their first performance kicks off in Tempe, AZ (April 16, 2023) followed by Dumbarton Concerts in Washington, DC (April 29, 2023). More info can be found here.