Dover Quartet

“Few young American ensembles are as exciting and accomplished as the Dover Quartet.” – The New Yorker

“From start to finish, everything was absolutely flawless…The Dover Quartet could play anything for us, and we would ask for more. Quartets that play with such technical quality these days can be counted on the fingers of one hand… An amazing, beautiful quartet.” – La Press

Named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine, the GRAMMY® nominated Dover Quartet has followed a “practically meteoric” (Strings) trajectory to become one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world. In addition to its faculty role as the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Dover Quartet holds residencies with the Kennedy Center, Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Artosphere, and the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. The group’s awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. It’s prestigious honors include the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award.

Program includes performances of:

Haydn: Quartet in C major, Op. 76, No. 3 (Emperor)
Amy Beach: Quartet for Strings, Op. 89
Mendelssohn: Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 44, No. 3

Yi Qun Xu & Yoon Lee

Praised for displaying “great poise and masterful technique” and possessing “an amazing rich tone” by The Day, cellist Yi Qun Xu has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States. A native of China, she came to the U.S. after winning multiple top prizes in Chinese national cello competitions. Yi Qun is the recipient of the 2022 Presser Music Award and the first-prize winner of the 2021 New York International Artists Cello Competition. She is a member of the cello and chamber music faculty at The Juilliard School Pre-College’s Music Advancement Program, and she serves as Joel Krosnick’s teaching assistant at The Juilliard School. She has performed for community engagement events for communities throughout the United States and China.

The Special Prize winner of the Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition, Yoon Lee is a solo pianist, chamber musician, and teacher active in the New York metropolitan area. Yoon is a faculty of SUNY Purchase and Heifetz International Music Institute, as well as a staff pianist of The Juilliard School. Her performance of Beethoven has been described as “equal to Beethoven’s virtuosic demands” by New York Concert Review. She has been on the stages of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Château de Fontainebleau, and Seoul Arts Center, and featured on WQXR and KBS, and has played for studios and master classes by Itzhak Perlman, Leonidas Kavakos, Steven Isserlis, Frans Helmerson, and David Geringas. Yoon received DMA from Manhattan School of Music and a Graduate Diploma from The Juilliard School. She is an Artistic Director of Noree Chamber Soloists.

Marian Anderson String Quartet

On September 30, 1989, the members of the Marian Anderson String Quartet, then known as the Chaminade Quartet, came together; unaware that they would soon change history. In 1991, the Quartet won the International Cleveland Quartet Competition, becoming the first African American ensemble in history to win a classical music competition. Since then, the quartet has performed throughout the United States and Europe including concerts through the Da Camera Society, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 1993, the Marian Anderson String Quartet performed at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center as part of the 52nd presidential inaugural celebration. In 2008 the Quartet received the Guarneri String Quartet Award from Chamber Music America (CMA). The award provided the funding for an extensive outreach project featuring the Marian Anderson String Quartet and benefiting the inner-city school children of Seattle, Washington. From 2006-2015 the quartet founded and ran the Marian Anderson String Quartet Community Music School and the summer Community Music Institute in Bryan, TX. Residencies, concerts, and talks have included: The National Gallery of Art (2015), Brown University as the Heimark inaugural artists-in-residence at the Center for the Study for Slavery, and Justice (2016), TedxBlinnCollege (2016) and The Quad City Arts in Iowa (2019).

Valencia Baryton Project

“Delightfully inventive… The trio prove themselves a well attuned team, always alert to the music’s mercurial nature.” – The Strad

“The three musicians play music passionately with audible enthusiasm and introduce the listener to an instrument that is as rare as it is interesting. A discovery for curious ears!” – Online Merker

“One can maximize the minimal without driving out the elegance, the dance-like, the intimacy and the immediacy, for which there is no better instrument than the baryton. Which in turn is perfectly demonstrated by the Valencia Baryton Project. … Apparently small music can be this big. You can’t get enough of it.” – Die Welt

A string trio with four instruments? A harpsichord hiding behind the cello? The Valencia Baryton Project has dedicated itself to the performance of music written for an ancient and little-known instrument, the baryton. A cross between the viol da gamba and lirone, with 10 resonating and plucked strings down the back of the instrument, the baryton gives the traditional string trio an entirely new dimension.

The Valencia Baryton Project was formed by colleagues from the opera of the Palau de les Arts and the Orchestre Nationale Montpellier with the vision of performing the nearly 160 works written by Franz Joseph Haydn as well as compositions by other composers, both modern and classical. At the heart of the ensemble is the traditional formation in trio – baryton, viola, and violoncello – for which Haydn wrote 123 works of outstanding beauty during his time as the court composer for the Prince Esterhazy of Austria.

With Matthew Baker, one of only a handful baryton performers in the world, the Valencia Baryton Project has delighted audiences in North, Central and South America as well as Europe with what is considered to have been the pinnacle of aristocratic instruments of the classical era. Their work has been described as ‘beautifully polished’ (Musicalifeiten) and “delightfully inventive” (The Strad). They have been featured in publications and programs such as Berklee Now (USA), Radio Nacional de España, BBC 3 (UK), Die Welt (Germany), and Classic FM (UK) amongst others.

Narek Arutyunian & Steven Beck

Eliot Fisk

“I consider Eliot Fisk as one of the most brilliant, intelligent and gifted young musical artists of our times, not only amongst guitarists but in all the general field of instrumentalists. His clear and flexible technique, his noble style of interpreting the beauty of the classic compositions as well as the colourful music of today, put him at the top line of our artistic world.” – Andrés Segovia

Guitarist Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous and virtuosic repertoire. He is also celebrated for his willingness to take art music into unusual venues (schools, senior centers, and even logging camps and prisons!). After nearly 50 years before the public, he remains as his mentor Andres Segovia once wrote, “at the top line of our artistic world.” Fisk has performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Rochester Symphony, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Pro Arte Orchestra, and many others. He has also performed with a dizzying array of chamber music colleagues including flutist, Paula Robison; clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman; cellist Yehuda Hanani; violinists Ruggiero Ricci, Gidon Kremer and Joshua Bell, the Shanghai, Juilliard, Miro, Borromeo and Arditti String Quartets.

Eliot Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andres Segovia and also studied interpretation with the legendary harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale University, from which he graduated “summa cum laude” in 1976, and where, directly following his own graduation in 1977, he founded the guitar department at the Yale School of Music. Described by one New York Times headline as a “Fiery Missionary to the Unconverted”, Eliot Fisk is Professor at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches in 5 languages, and in Boston at the New England Conservatory where in 2010 he received the Krasner Award as “Teacher of the Year.”

SPONSORS

UNDERWRITER

CONCERT SPONSOR

Bobbi Mason

SUPPORTERS
$50 – $100

Duane Christenson

Mark and Nancy Hadlich

Jan Jelliff

Jim & Melanie Popejoy

Alice R. Senechal