Sonic Spectrum II
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PROGRAM
Johannes Brahms Two Songs for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano, Op. 91 (1884)
Joel Thompson New Work for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano (New York Premiere) (2024)
Carlos Simon Sleep Well for Piano (2028)
Carlos Simon Lickety Split for Cello and Piano (2015)
Perry Goldstein Birding by Ear for Baritone, Violin, Cello, and Piano (New York Premiere) (2022)
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Jamie Barton
Randall Scarlata
Tamar Sanikidze
Gilles Vonsattel
Philip Setzer
Matthew Lipman
Paul Watkins
Critically acclaimed by virtually every major outlet covering classical music, American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton is increasingly recognized for how she uses her powerful instrument offstage — lifting up women, queer people, and other marginalized communities. In recognition of her iconic performance at Last Night of the Proms, Ms. Barton was named 2020 Personality of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards. She is also the winner of the Beverly Sills Artist Award, Richard Tucker Award, and BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Her 2007 win at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions launched a major international career that includes leading roles at the world’s most-loved opera houses, including the Met, Royal Opera House, Teatro Real, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Unexpected Shadows, her critically acclaimed album with composer and pianist Jake Heggie, earned a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.
Baritone Randall Scarlata has been praised by the New York Times as “an intelligent and communicative singer” with a “compelling desire to bring texts to life.” He has also been acclaimed for his “extraordinary vocal range and colour palette” and “ability to traverse so many different singing styles” (MusicWeb International). The Daily Telegraph (London) adds, “Randall Scarlata sings with the assurance of one with nothing to prove.”
Known for his versatility and consummate musicianship, Randall Scarlata’s repertoire spans five centuries and sixteen languages. A sought-after interpreter of new music, he has given world premieres of works by George Crumb, Paul Moravec, Richard Danielpour, Ned Rorem, Benjamin CS Boyle, Lori Laitman, Thea Musgrave, Samuel Adler, Hilda Paredes, Daron Hagen, Wolfram Wagner and Christopher Theofanidis. He regularly performs the major German song cycles with pianists such as Cameron Stowe, Gilbert Kalish, Jeremy Denk, Jonathan Biss, Inon Barnatan, Peter Frankl, and Laura Ward. He is a regular guest with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum, Lyric Fest, Chamber Music Northwest, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall Festival, the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival, among many others. In addition, Mr. Scarlata’s extensive recording catalog appears on the Chandos, Naxos, CRI, Gasparo, Arabesque, Bridge, Albany and Sono Luminus labels. His recording of Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Gilbert Kalish was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Vocal Solo.
Randall Scarlata has appeared on concert stages throughout Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Asia. He has been a soloist with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, and with the Pittsburgh, San Francisco, American, Sydney, Ulster, Tonkünstler, National, New World, and BBC Symphonies, as well as the early music groups Wiener Akademie, Grand Tour, Tempesta di Mare, and Musica Angelica, among others. Many of the world's great music festivals have sought him out as a soloist, including the Ravinia, Marlboro, Edinburgh, Norfolk, Vienna, Music at Menlo, Gilmore, Salzburg, Norfolk, Aspen, and Spoleto (Italy) festivals.
Mr. Scarlata is co-artistic director of the Alpenkammermusik Chamber Music Festival in Carinthia, Austria during the summer, and gives masterclasses throughout the United States and abroad. In 2019, he joined the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center, and the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. He has also served on the faculties of West Chester University and SUNY Stony Brook.
A “technically nimble and supportive pianist” (New York Times), Tamar Sanikidze has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages and serves as the Head of Voice Division, Director, Producer, and Principal Coach of the Butler Opera Center and Artistic Director of Butler Opera International Competition.
A graduate of the Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera and the Adler Fellowship at San Francisco Opera, Dr. Sanikidze regularly serves numerous music staff positions in San Francisco Opera and Los Angeles Opera working with James Conlon, Nicola Luisotti, Donald Runnicles, and Eun Sun Kim.
As official pianist for Operalia, Dr. Sanikidze has performed in Hungarian State Opera house in Budapest, La Scala in Milano, Galina Vishnevskaya's Opera Centre in Moscow, Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Royal Opera house in London, Dorothy Chandler Auditorium in Los Angeles, Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, São Carlos in Lisbon, and National Opera Theater in Prague.
As an active recitalist, she partners with Nadine Sierra, Thomas Hampson, Leah Crocetto, Lianna Haroutounian, and Quinn Kelsey. By special invitation, Dr. Sanikidze performed at the White House for President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
She frequently coaches for the Merola Opera Program, Wolf Trap Opera Center, as well as Young Artist Programs at Washington National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Teatro De’ll Opera di Roma, and Los Angeles Opera. In 2015 she joined the Lehrer Vocal Institute at the Music Academy of the West as Faculty Artist and Audition/Casting judge.
Dr. Sanikidze is the recipient of the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award for Excellence in Vocal Accompanying. She holds her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is an alumna of the Wolftrap Opera Center, Merola Opera Center, as well as the Music Academy of the West, Aspen Opera Center, Cleveland Art Song Festival, and SongFest.
Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is celebrated for his versatility and originality. He has been honored with an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and top prizes in the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, and has performed alongside world-renowned orchestras like the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg. He has performed recitals and chamber music at venues including Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Lucerne Festival, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music@Menlo. An advocate of contemporary music, he has premiered compositions in the United States and Europe, collaborating closely with composers Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. Recent milestones in his career encompass a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mostly Mozart, and a critically acclaimed recording of Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer’s music with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for Schweizer Fonogramm. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and a master’s degree from the Juilliard School. Vonsattel is Professor of Piano at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is on the faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Violinist Philip Setzer is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet. He has appeared as soloist with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony, Memphis Symphony, New Mexico Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Anchorage Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra. He also participated for three summers in the Marlboro Music Festival. His ideas and concepts led to the creation of the Emerson’s two highly praised collaborative theater productions: The Noise of Time, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2001 and directed by Simon McBurney; and Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy, co-created with writer-director James Glossman in 2016. Premiered at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Black Monk has been performed at the Tanglewood and Ravinia Festivals, Princeton University, Wolf Trap, and Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, Korea. He also tours and records in a piano trio with David Finckel and Wu Han. Philip Setzer was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and studied at The Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. Mr. Setzer currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook and Visiting Faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is also the Director of the Shouse Institute, a program for emerging artists of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. He plays a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in Brooklyn in 2011.
American violist Matthew Lipman has been praised by the New York Times for his “rich tone and elegant phrasing” and by the Chicago Tribune for a “splendid technique and musical sensitivity.” Recent seasons have included 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, Aspen Music Festival, and the Zürich Tonhalle; was invited by Michael Tilson Thomas to be a soloist at the New World Symphony Viola Visions Festival; and has appeared in chamber music with Anne-Sophie Mutter at the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and on Deutsche Grammophon Stage+. An alum of the Bowers Program, he performs regularly on tour and at Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he occupies the Wallach Chair. In 2022, he made his Sony Classical debut on The Dvořák Album, and his 2019 solo debut recording, Ascent, was released by Cedille Records, marking world premieres of the Shostakovich Impromptu and Clarice Assad Metamorfose. Additionally, he recorded the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by the late Sir Neville Marriner. An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and major prize winner at the Primrose and Tertis International Viola Competitions, he studied with Heidi Castleman at Juilliard and Tabea Zimmermann at the Kronberg Academy. Lipman is on faculty at Stony Brook University and performs on a 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowicz viola, made for him in New York.
Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a remarkably varied and distinguished career as soloist, chamber musician, and conductor. He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and in 2019 he was appointed Professor of Cello at the Yale School of Music. He has performed as concerto soloist with prestigious orchestras throughout the world under eminent conductors including Bernard Haitink, Paavo Berglund, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Mark Elder, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Charles Mackerras, Andris Nelsons, Edo de Waart, Hannu Lintu and Vasily Petrenko. A dedicated chamber musician, Paul was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 until 2013, when he joined the Emerson String Quartet. With the Quartet he has travelled extensively, performing at major international festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia, Edinburgh, Berlin, and Evian, and has collaborated with artists such as Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Evgeny Kissin, Renée Fleming, and Barbara Hannigan. He is a regular guest artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
He took first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, and has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra. In recent seasons he made his conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, and Omaha Symphony. His extensive discography as a cellist includes more than 70 recordings, including 18 solo albums for Chandos. His first recording as a conductor, of the Britten and Berg violin concertos with Daniel Hope, received a Grammy nomination.
Paul’s future plans include solo performances and recordings with, among others, Alessio Bax, Anthony Marwood, Lawrence Power, Leila Josefowicz, Edward Gardner, and Sir Andrew Davis. He is also in demand as a visiting teacher and has residencies this season at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.