Corelli: Concerto Grosso in G minor for Two Violins, Cello, Strings, and Continuo, Op. 6, No. 8, "Christmas Concerto"
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Kenneth Weiss
Ani Kavafian
Kristin Lee
Alexander Sitkovetsky
Matthew Lipman
Estelle Choi
Born in New York, Kenneth Weiss began his musical studies on piano. After attending the High School of Performing Arts he entered the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. It was through his studies on organ and harpsichord that he became aware of the vast early keyboard repertoire and decided to devote his professional life to it. He continued his studies with Gustav Leonhardt at the Amsterdam Conservatory and in 1985 settled in France, where he is still based today. Kenneth Weiss has worked as an accompanist, vocal coach, opera continuist, chamber musician, conductor, and soloist for several decades, performing extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia. A dedicated teacher, he is currently professor of chamber music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.
Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. She has performed with many of America’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. In the 2019-20 season, she continued her longtime association as an artist of the Chamber Music Society with appearances in New York and on tour. Last summer she participated in several music festivals, including the Heifetz International Institute and the Sarasota Chamber Music, Bridgehampton, Meadowmount, Norfolk, and Angel Fire festivals. She and her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian, have performed with the symphonies of Detroit, Colorado, Tucson, San Antonio, and Cincinnati, and have recorded the music of Mozart and Sarasate on the Nonesuch label. She is a Full Professor at Yale University and has appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall numerous times with colleagues and students from Yale. She has received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions award and has appeared at the White House on three occasions. Her recordings can be heard on the Nonesuch, RCA, Columbia, Arabesque, and Delos labels. Born in Istanbul of Armenian heritage, Kavafian studied violin in the US with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff. She received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School under Ivan Galamian. She plays the 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius violin.
A recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant as well as a top-prize winner of the International Naumburg Violin Competition and the Astral Artists’ National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Lee has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and many others. She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Emerald City Music in Seattle. Lee released her critically acclaimed debut solo album, American Sketches, on First Hand Records in November 2024. In 2026, she will collaborate with Grammy-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion, featuring a new commission by Vivian Fung. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul and Linda Gridley. She is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. Since his concerto debut at the age of eight, he has performed as soloist and chamber musician in many of the major venues around the world including Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Wigmore Hall in London. This season he will make his subscription debut with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, among other engagements. He is the Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wrocław, Poland, and is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Trio, which regularly performs throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and is recognized as one of the most important ensembles performing today. Sitkovetsky is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and plays the 1679 “Parera” Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.
American violist Matthew Lipman has made recent appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, American Symphony Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra. He has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall and the Zürich Tonhalle, and has recorded on the Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, Cedille, and Avie labels. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he performs regularly on tour and at Alice Tully Hall with CMS. An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and major prize winner at the Primrose and Tertis International Viola Competitions, Lipman is on faculty at Stony Brook University. He performs on a 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowicz viola.
Cellist Estelle Choi has been praised by the Los Angeles Times for “giving the impression that music and the room are a single living being.” She is a founding member of the Calidore String Quartet, which made international headlines when they won the Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. The Calidore is an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, BBC 3 New Generation Artist, recipient of the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, and alums of CMS’s Bowers Program. She serves on the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music as Associate Professor of Violin and co-directs the UD Graduate Fellowship Quartet Program and Calidore String Quartet Seminar. She studied with John Kadz and went on to work with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music and Ronald Leonard at the Colburn Conservatory.
Recorded live in Alice Tully Hall on December 10, 2019.
Video produced by Ibis Productions.