39. American Voices
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:46 |
| 2. | Sanchez-Gutierrez: Trio-Variations for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano | 00:18:59 |
| 3. | Lewis: The Mangle of Practice for Violin and Piano | 00:16:11 |
| 4. | Tower: White Water for String Quartet | 00:22:33 |
| 5. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
Program
Sánchez-Gutiérrez Trio-Variations for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano
Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Gloria Chien, piano
Lewis The Mangle of Practice for Violin and Piano
Yura Lee, violin; Thomas Sauer, piano
Tower White Water for String Quartet
Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violin; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello)
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Tara Helen O'Connor
Alexander Fiterstein
Gloria Chien
Yura Lee
Calidore String Quartet
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.
Alexander Fiterstein is recognized as one of today’s most exceptional clarinetists. He has been praised by the New York Times for possessing a “beautiful liquid clarity,” and the Washington Post wrote, “Fiterstein treats his instrument as his own personal voice, dazzling in its spectrum of colors, agility, and range. Every sound he makes is finely measured without inhibiting expressiveness.”
A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and a first prize winner of the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition, he performs with orchestras and chamber groups throughout the world. He appeared as a soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, China National Symphony Orchestra, Czech Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Vienna Chamber Orchestra. A dedicated performer of chamber music, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists and regularly performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Among the highly regarded artists he has performed with are Daniel Barenboim, Emanuel Ax, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Pinchas Zukerman and Steven Isserlis. Fiterstein has made several recordings for Naxos, Bridge, and Orchid Classics. He graduated from the Juilliard School and is now Chair of Winds and Professor of Clarinet at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
Pianist Gloria Chien has a diverse musical life as a performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard. In 2009 she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, and the following year was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Co-Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in 2020, and were named the recipients of the 2021 Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music from CMS. Ms. Chien received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from New England Conservatory, where she was named the Advisor for the prestigious Institute for Concert Artists in 2024. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; a Steinway Artist; and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Violinist/violist Yura Lee is a multifaceted musician, as a soloist and as a chamber musician, and one of the very few that is equally virtuosic on both violin and viola. She has performed with major orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She has given recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. At age 12, she became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by National Public Radio. She is the recipient of a 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the first prize winner of the 2013 ARD Competition. She has received numerous other international prizes, including top prizes in the Mozart, Indianapolis, Hannover, Kreisler, Bashmet, and Paganini competitions. Her CD Mozart in Paris, with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award. As a chamber musician, she regularly takes part in the festivals of Seattle, Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, and Caramoor. Her main teachers included Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai. An alum of CMS's Bowers Program, Lee is on the faculty at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog Nugget.
The Calidore String Quartet has been recognized for achieving an extraordinary cohesion of individual artistry and collective expression—as the Washington Post wrote, “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one.” Their artistry reflects a profound engagement with both the classical canon and the evolving language of 21st-century chamber music.
The Calidore has performed at many of the world’s greatest concert halls, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Wigmore Hall, and festivals such as the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, and Caramoor. Collaborators have included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Joshua Bell, Anthony McGill, Marc-André Hamelin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, David Finckel and Wu Han, the Emerson String Quartet, and Quatuor Ébène, among others.
Dedicated advocates for today’s music, the Calidore has premiered works by Caroline Shaw, John Williams, Anna Clyne, and Gabriela Montero, to name a few. During the 2025–26 season, they gave the world premiere of a new quartet, Arietta by Mark-Anthony Turnage, at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
In 2026, the Calidore released an all-American album, American Tapestry on Signum Records, featuring music by Samuel Barber, Wynton Marsalis, Erich Korngold, and John Williams. In 2025, they unveiled a landmark box set of the complete Beethoven string quartets, recorded for Signum following their live cycle at CMS during the 2024–25 season.
Formed in 2010 at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, the Calidore has won top prizes at major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs. In 2016, they won the Grand Prize of the inaugural M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition as well as the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. Additional honors include the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, and selection as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists. They are alums of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Currently the Distinguished String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Delaware, the Calidore has also held residencies at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan, and Stony Brook University.