24. French Ingenuity
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:46 |
| 2. | Franck: Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano | 00:28:42 |
| 3. | Saint-Saëns: Le carnaval des animaux for Ensemble | 00:29:01 |
| 4. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
Program
Franck Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano
Benjamin Beilman, violin; Alessio Bax, piano
Saint-Saëns Le carnaval des animaux for Ensemble
Michael Stephen Brown, piano; Lucille Chung, piano; Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet; Daniel Ching, William Fedkenheuer, violin; John Largess, viola; Joshua Gindele, cello; Scott Pingel, double bass; Ayano Kataoka, Ian Rosenbaum, percussion
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Benjamin Beilman
Alessio Bax
Michael Stephen Brown
Tara Helen O'Connor
Jose Franch-Ballester
Miró Quartet
Ayano Kataoka
Ian David Rosenbaum
Benjamin Beilman’s 2025–26 season highlights include appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Antwerp Symphony, Solistes Européens Luxembourg, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Nashville Symphony. He will also curate, stage, and lead two chamber music programs at Sun Valley Music Festival, and continue his ongoing recital partnership with pianist Steven Osborne. In the summer, he embarks on a month-long tour of Australasia, including appearances with the Sydney Symphony, Tasmanian Symphony, West Australian Symphony, and Auckland Philharmonia. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Ida Kavafian and Pamela Frank, and with Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy. He has received many prestigious accolades including a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a London Music Masters Award. He has also recorded works by Stravinsky, Janácek, and Schubert for Warner Classics, and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. Beilman performs with the ex-Balakovic F. X. Tourte bow (c. 1820), and plays the “Ysaÿe” Guarneri del Gesù from 1740, generously on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
Alessio Bax catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions. He has appeared with more than 150 orchestras, including the London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston, Dallas, and Sydney Symphonies, and the NHK Symphony in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden. He released his 11th Signum Classics album, Italian Inspirations, whose program was also the vehicle for his solo recital debut at New York’s 92nd Street Y as well as on tour. He and his regular piano duo partner, Lucille Chung, have given recitals at Lincoln Center and were featured with the St. Louis Symphony and Stéphane Denève. This season he makes his debut with the Milwaukee Symphony, and will return for the fourth time for two recitals at the historic Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Last summer he made return appearances at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival with the Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi conducting. At age 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, and after further studies in Europe, he moved to the United States in 1994. A Steinway artist, he lives in New York City with pianist Lucille Chung and their daughter, Mila. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program and on the faculty at the New England Conservatory.
Michael Stephen Brown is a composer and pianist hailed by the New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” The 2026 Andrew Wolf Award Winner and a recent fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, he is also a recipient of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Brown performs internationally and receives commissions from orchestras, soloists, and festivals around the world. Recent highlights include a recital at Alice Tully Hall for CMS, and collaborations with cellist Nicholas Canellakis and violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Kristin Lee, and Arnaud Sussmann. He is currently composing The Carnival of Endangered Wonders, a CMS-led project co-presented by a consortium of US presenters. His first album devoted entirely to his music, Twelve Blocks, will be released in February 2026. Brown is also composing the score for Angeline Gragasin’s upcoming film Look But Don’t Touch and lives in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinways, Octavia and Daria.
Tara Helen O’Connor, recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, was the first wind player to participate in CMS’s Bowers Program. A regular performer at major music festivals around the country, she is also the Co-Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico, the Artistic Director of the Essex Winter Series, a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, and a founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning New Millennium Ensemble. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings, and Bridge Records, and can be heard on numerous film and television soundtracks. She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion, St. Lawrence, and Emerson String Quartets. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, O’Connor is on faculty at Yale School of Music. Additionally, she teaches at Bard College and the Manhattan School of Music.
Clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester is a captivating performer of “poetic eloquence” (The New York Sun) and “technical wizardry” (The New York Times). He plays regularly at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, the Skaneateles Festival, Camerata Pacifica, and Music from Angel Fire. He has also appeared at the Usedomer Musikfestival in Germany, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Cartagena Festival Internacional de Música in Colombia, and the Young Concert Artists Festival in Tokyo, Japan. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Santa Barbara Orchestra, and numerous Spanish orchestras. Winner of the 2004 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, he was presented in debut recitals in New York and in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center. In 2008, he won a coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant. He was awarded the Cannes Midem Prize, which aims to introduce artists to the classical recording industry. With the Chamber Music Society, he has recorded Bartók’s Contrasts on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Born in Moncofa, Spain into a family of clarinetists and Zarzuela singers, Mr. Franch-Ballester graduated from the Joaquin Rodrigo Music Conservatory. He earned a bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Donald Montanaro and Pamela Frank. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program.
The Miró Quartet is one of America’s most celebrated string quartets, praised as “furiously committed” by The New Yorker and recognized for its “exceptional tonal focus and interpretive intensity” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Marking its 30th anniversary in 2025, the quartet has performed on the world’s most prestigious concert stages, earning accolades from critics and audiences alike. Based in Austin, Texas, and thriving on the area’s storied music scene, the quartet takes pride in finding new ways to communicate with audiences of all backgrounds while cultivating the longstanding tradition of chamber music. They were members of CMS Two (now the Bowers Program) from 2001 to 2003. Since 2003, they have served as the quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music. They were members of CMS Two (now the Bowers Program) from 2001 to 2003.
The Miró Quartet’s newest album, an acclaimed recording of Ginastera’s complete string quartets, was released on Pentatone in July 2025. Among its many previous recordings for a variety of global labels, the quartet was nominated for a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for its album Home (Pentatone, 2024) featuring two new commissions by Kevin Puts and Caroline Shaw, as well as works by George Walker and Samuel Barber. It was also nominated for a 2024 Grammy Award for its album House of Belonging, created in collaboration with Austin-based choral group Conspirare.
The quartet’s recent and upcoming projects include Here on Earth with pianist Lara Downes, the premiere of a new version of Kevin Puts’s Credo, and collaborations with composers Steven Banks, Tamar-Kali, and Gabriel Kahane, as well as soprano Karen Slack and the Isadore Quartet.
The Miró Quartet took its name and its inspiration from the Spanish artist Joan Miró, whose Surrealist works—with subject matter drawn from the realm of memory, dreams, and imaginative fantasy—are some of the most groundbreaking, influential, and admired of the 20th century.
The first percussionist to be chosen for The Bowers Program, Ayano Kataoka is known for her brilliant and dynamic technique, as well as the unique elegance and artistry she brings to her performances. Together with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the American Museum of Natural History, she gave the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe's Self Comes to Mind for cello and two percussionists, based on a text by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and featuring interactive video images of brain scans triggered by the live music performance. She presented a solo recital as part of the prestigious B to C (Bach to Contemporary) recital series at the Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall, which was broadcast nationally in Japan on NHK television. Other highlights include a performance of Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto for Percussion Solo and Chamber Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall, a theatrical performance of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale at the 92nd Street Y with violinist Jaime Laredo and actors Alan Alda and Noah Wyle, and performances of Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at the Chamber Music Society with pianists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki. Her performances can be also heard on Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New World, New Focus, and Albany recording labels. A native of Japan, Kataoka began her marimba studies at age five, and percussion at 15. She received her artist diploma degree from Yale School of Music, where she studied with marimba virtuoso Robert van Sice. She is currently a full professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Praised for his “spectacular performances” (Wall Street Journal), and his “unfailing virtuosity” (Chicago Tribune), Grammy-nominated percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. As a passionate advocate for contemporary music, he has premiered over 100 new chamber and solo works. He has collaborated with and championed the music of established and emerging composers alike. He was nominated for three Grammy awards in 2021 for his performances on albums of music by Andy Akiho and Christopher Cerrone, including two nominations for Seven Pillars, an album by Sandbox Percussion released on Aki Rhythm Productions, a record label he co-founded with Akiho in 2021. In 2012 he joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) as only the second percussionist selected in its history, and has performed regularly with CMS since then. He is a founding member of Sandbox Percussion, the Percussion Collective, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Bridge, Innova, Naxos, and Starkland labels and is on faculty at the Mannes School of Music and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Rosenbaum performs with Pearl/Adams instruments, Vic Firth mallets, and Remo drumheads.