The King, The Cat, and the Fiddle!
Sun, Apr 14, 2024, 2:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
75 minutes, no intermission
Does the king really need live music at the palace? The fiddling cat knows the answer in the comical, fantastical story by Yehudi Menuhin and Christopher Hope with music by Bruce Adolphe.
For children who are curious, they can try out instruments featured in the program at our Instrument Petting Zoo from 1:00–1:50 PM, guided by CMS performing artists and teaching artists. Children will also have the opportunity to talk to the artists, ask questions, and take photographs at the Meet the Artists! booth prior to the performance from 1:00–1:30 PM.
All patrons, including small children sitting in laps, must have a ticket to enter. All performances are appropriate for ages 6+ as long as guests are not disruptive to other patrons' enjoyment of the performance. Please be aware that anyone causing a disturbance during a performance, regardless of age, will be asked by an usher to leave the hall.
Program
Bruce Adolphe
(b. 1955)The King, the Cat, and the Fiddle for Narrator, String Quintet, and Piano
(2019)Bruce Adolphe
Mika Sasaki
Kristin Lee
Clara Neubauer
Laura Liu
Andrew Byun
Lizzie Burns
Resident lecturer and director of family concerts for CMS since 1992, Bruce Adolphe is a composer of international renown, much of whose output addresses science, history, and the struggle for human rights.
Resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1992, Bruce Adolphe is a composer of international renown, much of whose output addresses science, history, and the struggle for human rights. His works are frequently performed by major artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Fabio Luisi, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Angel Blue, the Brentano String Quartet, the Washington National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Human Rights Orchestra of Europe, and over 60 orchestras worldwide. Among his most performed works are the violin concerto I Will Not Remain Silent, the violin/piano duo Einstein’s Light, and Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto.
Pianist Mika Sasaki is an imaginative and versatile soloist, chamber musician, and educator whose performances have taken her around the world. Her debut album, Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann, released on Yarlung Records in 2016, was highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as “illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between three Romantic souls,” Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Her performances have been broadcasted on WQXR, WFMT, KQAC, and Radio Sweden. She has appeared as concerto soloist with the Sinfonia of Cambridge, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, 92Y Orchestra, and, more recently, with the InterSchool Symphony Orchestra of New York, performing Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto. She is the pianist of Ensemble Mélange and appears regularly with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, Manhattan Chamber Players, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and with her duo partners. Her festival appearances include Music@Menlo, Tanglewood, Chigiana, Taos, Yellow Barn, Aspen, Focus!, Icicle Creek, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Caramoor, Shandelee, Weekend of Chamber Music, Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, and many others. An advocate of both old and new repertoire, she can be heard championing works from the Baroque to the present, and has commissioned chamber music and solo works by Max Grafe, Emily Cooley, Andrew Hsu, and Jonathan Dawe. An alumna of the Peabody Conservatory, Ensemble Connect, and the Juilliard School, Sasaki is now a faculty member at Juilliard. Her teachers have included Benjamin Pasternack, Gilbert Kalish, and Joseph Kalichstein.
Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. As a soloist, Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of the Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including those of Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin, and she is also the Founding Artistic Director of Emerald City Music (ECM). Her honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, the Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, the Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul and Linda Gridley.
Clara Neubauer first began playing the violin at the age of three years old, following in the footsteps of her older brother, Oliver, and her parents, both professional musicians. Ever since playing violin duos with her brother as a young child, she has loved playing chamber music with her family and friends! Now, she attends the Juilliard School, where she studies with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin and is a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship. In her free time, Clara loves to bake (her favorite dessert to make is peanut butter pie), play ping-pong, and go to the park.
Violist Laura Liu, a native of Miami, Florida, studies with Cynthia Phelps and Misha Amory at the Juilliard School. This season, Liu competed as a semifinalist in the Third Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition, where she received an Honorary Mention and the Pirastro Award for outstanding young talent. She will travel again to Prague to compete in the 74th Prague Spring International Music Competition. Previously, Liu competed as a finalist in the Juilliard School Viola Competition and was named a contestant in the Fifth Tokyo International Viola Competition. As an active chamber musician, Liu is a member of the Juilliard Honors Chamber Music program, and last month, her quartet Quatuor Caèl made their Alice Tully Hall and Peter Jay Sharp Theater debuts. She is a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship at the Juilliard School. In previous summers, Liu attended Taos School of Music, Kneisel Hall, Music Academy of the West, and the Heifetz International Music Institute. This season, she returns to both Taos as a member of Taos on Tour and Heifetz as a member of their Heifetz Ensemble-in-Residence (HEIR) program.
Andrew Byun has always loved to play the cello because it is the closest instrument to the human voice. He was inspired to play music thanks to his sisters who play piano and sing. He went to college at Northwestern University where he also studied philosophy, but now he focuses all his time on cello because it seems to only get harder by the day! He went to the Juilliard School for a master’s degree after college, which certainly helped him a great deal in figuring out how to play his instrument. He now attends the New England Conservatory in Boston to continue practicing the cello, hoping that he can one day really figure it out and communicate his love for music the best he can! Outside of music, Andrew loves to play basketball, watch movies, and travel!
Lizzie Burns is a sought-after and experienced bassist who performs regularly in chamber orchestras, continuo sections, rhythm sections, and new music ensembles. She has recorded for major motion picture soundtracks and record labels, has given dozens of world premieres, is a member of The Knights and A Far Cry, and is on faculty at the Hartt School of Music and the Mannes Conservatory at The New School. She draws inspiration from her colleagues and feels fortunate to work with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Century Chamber Orchestra, New Orchestra of Washington, New York City Ballet Orchestra, The Knights, and A Far Cry. As an experienced historical bassist she has performed with the Handel and Haydn Society and Teatro Nuovo. She has premiered compositions by Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Pauline Oliveros, Andy Akiho, and Jörg Widmann, among many others. She has recorded for the Sony Masterworks, Naxos, and Nonesuch record labels and can be heard on the soundtracks of popular motion pictures including the HBO series Succession. As an alum of Ensemble Connect, a rigorous two-year fellowship program based at Carnegie Hall, she is an experienced teaching artist who equally enjoys engaging with audiences from the stage of Carnegie Hall as she does performing in homeless shelters and incarcerated communities, and working with public school students in the Bronx. Burns attended New England Conservatory and Boston University. Her primary teachers were Don Palma and Ed Barker, to whom she is eternally grateful.