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Summer Solstice Festival 2009
Guest Artists

Jacques Després JACQUES DESPRÉS Piano

Jacques Després’ extraordinary musical talent was noticed as early as 1964 by legendary Canadian conductor Wilfred Pelletier. Since his winning of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra competition in 1978, Després has led a varied artistic life. He has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras, recitalist, collaborative artist, lecturer, educator and musical director of the Summer Serenades at Stony Brook University in New York. This imaginative series won an enormous following due in large part to his lucid pre-concert lectures, performances and creative programming.

Worldwide critical accolades have noted in Després’ musical approach a rare combination of virtuosity and artistic integrity. Després’ repertoire is broad and eclectic. Most notable are his two world premiere recordings of the Joseph Martin Kraus complete piano works and The New Goldberg Variations with cellist Tanya Prochazka. The Kraus performances, on Naxos, received widespread critical acclaim. Després followed this with a two compact disc album of Kraus’ complete chamber music works, also on Naxos, on which he served as editor.

Highlights of the past few seasons include performances of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 and appearances in Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Seattle, Montreal, New York, Chicago, Reno, and Sacramento. He was invited to present master classes at leading institutions in North America as well as the Central Conservatory in Beijing. He served as judge and chairman of many competitions in Canada and abroad. Since his appointment in 2000 as Professor of Piano with the Department of Music at the University of Alberta, Jacques Després has worked with some of the most talented Canadian and foreign students. As recently as a month ago, one of his students became the first music performance doctoral student in Canada to receive the Vanier scholarship from SHHRC.

Després graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and holds a doctorate from the University of Stony Brook. He also received the Artist Diploma with Distinction from Indiana University as a student of Gyorgy Sebok.
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Alexander Fiterstein ALEXANDER FITERSTEIN Clarinet

Alexander Fiterstein is one of he world’s exceptional young clarinet players. Recently awarded a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is also a first-prize winner of the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions (YCA). He has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Polish Kammerphilharmonie, the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Tokyo Philharmonic and the China National Symphony Orchestra. In recital, Mr. Fiterstein has appeared on the “Music at the Supreme Court” Series, at the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, the 92nd Street “Y”, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Louvre in Paris, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and the Tel-Aviv Museum.

Mr. Fiterstein was a member of the prestigious Chamber Music Society II of Lincoln Center (2004-6). He participated in the Marlboro Music Festival for four summers and toured with Musicians from Marlboro. He also appeared at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany and at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival. He has performed chamber music with Daniel Barenboim, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax, Elena Bashkirova and the American, Borromeo, Daedalus, Fine Arts, Jerusalem, and Mendelssohn String Quartets. He has also appeared with Ensemble Wien-Berlin.

Alexander Fiterstein has worked with composers such as John Corigliano and Osvaldo Golijov. He has had pieces written for him by Samuel Adler and Mason Bates, among others. He performed the American premiere of Henrik Strindberg’s Clarinet Concerto “Minne” and Birtwistle’s “Pulse Shadows.”

Fiterstein was born in Belarus, raised in Israel, and now lives in New York. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Juilliard School. He is currently on the faculty of Kean University in New Jersey.
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Dr. Robert Greenberg

DR. ROBERT GREENBERG Speaker

Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954 and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978. He received a BA in music from Princeton University and a PhD in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley and has composed over 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles.

In addition to having performed, taught, and lectured extensively across North America and Europe, Dr. Greenberg is currently Music Historian-in-Residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994, and is a faculty member of the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

He has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Chautauqua Institute, the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

He has been profiled in many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, and the Christian Science Monitor. For many years, he was the resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s “Weekend All Things Considered” and presently plays that role on NPR’s “Weekend edition, Sunday.”

In May 1993, Dr. Greenberg recorded a 48-lecture course entitled “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” for the Teaching Company/Great Courses Program of Chantilly, Virginia. Formerly associated with the Smithsonian Institute, the Teaching Company is the pre-eminent producer of college level courses-on-media in the United States. Twelve further courses, including “Concert Masterworks,” ”Bach and the High Baroque,” ”The Symphonies of Beethoven” and “How to Listen to and Understand Opera” have been recorded since, totaling over 500 lectures.
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Ara Gregorian ARA GREGORIAN Violin/Viola

Violinist and violist Ara Gregorian is equally accomplished as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He has appeared in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Merkin Hall, and has performed as soloist with the Boston Pops and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras as well as with numerous orchestras throughout the United States. Mr. Gregorian is the founder and Artistic Director of the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival of eastern North Carolina and has appeared at the Santa Fe, El Paso, Skaneateles, Cactus Pear, Wintergreen, and Garth Newel festivals.

He made his recital debut in 1996 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and has also performed as a recitalist at Detroit’s Henry Ford Centennial Library and Harvard University’s Payne Hall. He has collaborated with such artists as Andre-Michel Schub, the Brentano Quartet, and members of the Cleveland Quartet, and has recorded for New York’s WQXR radio station, National Public Radio, and the Kleos label. Mr. Gregorian is a member of the chamber music ensemble, Concertante, which has toured throughout the major cities of the United States and China and maintains residencies at Merkin Hall in NYC and at the Whitaker Center for the Performing Arts in Harrisburg, PA.

Mr. Gregorian studied with Joseph Fuchs and Harvey Shapiro at the Juilliard School where he received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. He also studied with Robert Mann while pursuing his doctoral degree from Stony Brook University. He has been a member of the violin and viola faculty at East Carolina University since 1998 and currently resides in Greenville, NC and New York City.
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Marina Hoover MARINA HOOVER Cello

In her thirteen years as founding cellist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Marina Hoover played in over 1,000 concerts around the world. She has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and has appeared at numerous international music festivals, most notably the Spoleto Festival USA, where the St. Lawrence has long been Resident Quartet. As a soloist, she has made appearances with orchestras in both North and South America, including the Toronto Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, Yale Chamber Orchestra, Curtis Orchestra, and the Belo Horizonte Symphony in Brazil.

Her recordings include a Juno award-winning recording of the Schumann String Quartets No. 1 and 3 and the Grammy-nominated Yiddishbuk, both with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. She recently released on the Centaur label a recording of works by Chopin, Liszt, and Strauss, performed with pianist Patricia Tao.

Born in Edmonton, Ms. Hoover studied under David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music and obtained a Master's at Yale under Aldo Parisot. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University, a visiting Professor of cello at the University of Toronto (2002-2003), a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Alberta (October 2005), and Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre in 2006.

Ms. Hoover currently maintains an active performing schedule of both solo and chamber music. Recent performances include appearances with the Chicago String Quartet, Chicago Chamber Musicians, faculty members from Northwestern University, the Music Institute of Chicago, and with fellow Summer Solstice musicians Patricia Tao and Jasmine Lin, as Trio Voce.
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Yeesun Kim YEESUN KIM Cello

Hailed by the New York Times for her “focused intensity” and “remarkable” performances, cellist Yeesun Kim enjoys worldwide acclaim as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. A founding member of the Borromeo String Quartet, Ms. Kim has performed in over 20 countries, in many of the world’s most illustrious concert halls and festivals.

Since making her orchestral debut at the age of 13 with the Korean Broadcasting Service Symphony, Ms. Kim has appeared at such premier venues as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, the Library of Congress and Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Her international appearances have included performances throughout Europe and Asia, including the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Opera Bastille in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, Suntory Hall and Casals Hall in Toyko and the Saejong Cultural Center in Seoul. Currently living in Boston, Ms. Kim enjoys returning to her native Korea, where she is frequently invited to perform as soloist with the Korean Symphony, give recitals and teach.

A much sought-after chamber musician, Ms. Kim has performed at such festivals as Spoleto, in the U.S. and Italy, Ravinia, Marlboro, Santa Fe, La Jolla, the Prague Spring Festival, the Stavanger Festival in Scandinavia and the Evian and Divonne Festival in France. In addition to her extensive concert schedule with the Borromeo Quartet, she has concertized with members of the Guarneri and Juilliard String Quartets and appears frequently as a member of the Pamela Frank-Yeesun Kim-Wu Han piano trio.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, with advanced degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music, Ms. Kim currently serves on the faculty of the New England Conservatory in the cello and chamber music departments.

Recipient of the Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and Lincoln Center’s Martin Segal Award as a member of the Borromeo Quartet, Ms. Kim has garnered numerous awards individually as well, including winner of the Ewha and Jungagng National Competitions in Korea and the Seoul Young Artists Award for achievement in music and academics.
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Nicholas Kitchen NICHOLAS KITCHEN Violin

Nicholas Kitchen is one of the most active and innovative performers in the music world today. He is a solo violinist, chamber musician, teacher, video artist, technology innovator and arts administrator.

Born in Durham, North Carolina, Nicholas Kitchen grew up in a family of musicians. At 16, Nicholas began studying at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Here he worked with David Cerone and coached with such musicians as Felix Galimir and Mieczslaw Horsowski, but very importantly he spent five years working intensively with the great violinist and conductor Szymon Goldberg.

Nicholas now performs on Mr. Goldberg’s violin, the Guarneri del Gesù, which joined its twin, the “Kreisler” Guarneri, in the collection of the Library of Congress. The Goldberg violin was given to the Library on the condition that Nicholas play and travel with the instrument during his career and that the Library of Congress and Nicholas attempt to carry on the extraordinary artistic approach of Mr. Goldberg.

At the end of his studies at Curtis in 1989, Nicholas joined his schoolmates and founded the Borromeo String Quartet, which quickly won prizes at the Evian International Quartet Competition and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York. Since these first successes, the Quartet has been in great demand, regularly performing 100 concerts a year. The Quartet received the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the Martin S. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Nicholas has performed in many of the world's most illustrious concert halls: the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Dvorak Hall in Prague, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, to name just a few. Nicholas has taught at the New England Conservatory of Music since 1992, where the Borromeo Quartet is Quartet-in-Residence.

Nicholas has recorded for numerous record companies: Image Recordings, Denon, Bridge, Arabesque, Albany, Centaur, and others. In 2003 he began Living Archive, a recording venture devoted to capturing and communicating the essence of live music.
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Jasmine Lin JASMINE LIN Violin

Jasmine Lin began violin studies at age four. Since then she has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of Brazil, Symphony Orchestra of Uruguay, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and in recital in Chicago, New York, Nova Scotia, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo. She was a prizewinner in the International Paganini Competition and took second prize in the International Naumburg Competition. The New York Times describes her as an "unusually individualistic player" with "electrifying assertiveness" and "virtuostic abandon."

As a chamber musician, Ms. Lin has been a participant of the Marlboro Music Festival and the Steans Institute for Young Artists at Ravinia, and has toured extensively in the United States as part of the Chicago String Quartet, in China as part of the Overseas Musicians, and in Taiwan as a member of Taiwan Connection Music Festival.

Ms. Lin is a founding member of the Formosa Quartet, which won first prize in the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition, and recently released a critically acclaimed recording on the EMI Debut Series. The Quartet performs in major venues around the world including the Chicago Cultural Center, the Library of Congress, Caramoor Festival, Cornell University, and Maui Classical Music Festival, BBC In Tune, and Wigmore Hall.

Ms. Lin is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. She gave her New York debut in Merkin Hall, where the program included her poetry set to music. Her poem "The night of h's" received an Editor's Choice Award from the International Poetry Foundation, and her poetry/music presentations have been featured in Chicago and on radio in Taipei. In the 1999-2000 season, she was Second Assistant Concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In addition to her activities with the Formosa Quartet, she is a member of Trio Voce, as well as a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, whose Composer Perspectives series won the ASCAP award for adventuresome programming. She teaches at Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago Lab School and is a proud native of Chicago.
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Richard Raymond RICHARD RAYMOND Piano

Richard Raymond is a music lover’s dream. His playing is reminiscent of history’s great pianists. Its depth, passion, virtuosity and individuality combine to set him apart from others of his generation.

Richard Raymond has won virtually every award there is to win in Canada. In 1990 he won the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Competition, as well as the “International Stepping Stone” of the Canadian Music Competition. In 1991 he captured all the top prizes in the CBC’s Young Performers Competition and in 1992 he became the second Canadian to win the prestigious Montreal International Competition. Soon after, he won the Chamber Music Prize at the Van Cliburn Competition, the first award ever to go to a Canadian in this competition. Mr. Raymond received major prizes at the prestigious 1998 William Kapell International Piano Competition (United States) and the 1999 Vianna da Motta Competition (Portugal). He was one out of four winners in the 2003 International Web Concert Hall Competition.He is the 1998 recipient of the prestigious Virginia Parker Prize awarded by the Canada Council.

Richard Raymond’s performances with the Montreal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, and essentially every major orchestra in Canada have been met with great excitement. Recitals, festival appearances and chamber music engagements have taken him across Canada to Italy, Taiwan, France and the United States. He has produced five CDs for the Analekta and Musica Viva labels. His second CD, dedicated to the works of Franz Liszt, was nominated Best CD of the year at the 1998 East Coast Music Awards. Mr. Raymond was nominated Artist of the Year at the 1998 OPUS Awards in Montreal.

Mr. Raymond studied with Leon Fleisher, Marc Durand and John Perry. He has a Master’s degree from the Université de Montreal and an Artist Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto and the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. He is currently Chair of the Piano Area and Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal.
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Patricia Tao PATRICIA TAO Piano

Pianist Patricia Tao, founding member of the Guild Trio for ten years, leads an active career as performer, teacher, and concert organizer. As pianist of the Trio, she performed throughout the United States and Europe, with performances in major cities throughout North America. With the Trio, she won the USIA (United States Information Agency) Artistic Ambassador competition, resulting in a seven-country European tour. The Trio was also awarded the position of Trio-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center.

As a soloist, Dr. Tao toured the United States for Columbia Artist’s Community Concerts series and in 1990 was re-invited as an “Artistic Ambassador” for the USIA, with recitals in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. Recent solo performances include recitals in Alberta, Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 414 with string quartet at the Winspear Centre, and concerto performances with a traditional Chinese instrument orchestra in Hong Kong.

Dedicated to the performance of new works, Dr. Tao, with the Guild Trio, commissioned and premiered numerous works, including William Bolcom’s Spring Trio, Sheila Silver’s To the Spirit Unconquered, which she recorded on the CRI label, and Harvey Sollberger’s From Winter’s Frozen Stillness. She has also recorded a solo piano cd on the Arktos label as well as a recently released recording on the Centaur label with cellist Marina Hoover.

An avid chamber musician, Patricia Tao is a member, with violinist Jasmine Lin and cellist Marina Hoover, of Trio Voce and regularly performs in a duo with Ms. Hoover. In 2002 Dr. Tao launched the Hear’s to your Health concert series at the Walter Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Tao received her doctorate from Stony Brook, after studies at Harvard and Indiana Universities. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia and since 2002, has taught at the University of Alberta, where she is Associate Professor of Music.
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Marcus Thompson MARCUS THOMPSON Viola

Marcus Thompson has appeared as viola soloist, recitalist and chamber music player in series throughout the Americas, Europe and the Far East. He was featured as soloist with the Symphony Orchestras of Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and the Czech National Symphony. He has recorded the Bartók Viola Concerto and the Bloch Suite with the Slovenian Radio Symphony, and the Tibor Serly Concerto, Jongen Suite and Françaix Rhapsodie with the Czech National Symphony, both conducted by Paul Freeman.

Mr. Thompson has received critical acclaim for performances of the John Harbison Viola Concerto with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and with the Chicago Sinfonietta, and for performances of the Penderecki Viola Concerto in Boston and London. His solo repertoire includes the recent — Ligeti, Overton, Schnittke — as well as the exotic, with works by Ariosti, Vivaldi and Hindemith performed on the viola d’amore.He has been a guest of the Audubon, Borromeo, Cleveland, Emerson, Jupiter, Muir, Orion, Shanghai, and Miami String Quartets, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a frequent participant in chamber music festivals in Amsterdam, Anchorage, Dubrovnik, Montreal, Seattle, Sitka, Los Angeles, Okinawa, Portland, and Vail.

Mr. Thompson, who is violist and Artistic Director of the Boston Chamber Music Society, earned a doctorate degree at the Juilliard School following studies with Walter Trampler, and is an alumnus Young Concert Artists. Born and raised in the Bronx, NYC, he currently lives in Boston where, as the Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, he founded and leads programs in chamber music and performance study at MIT. He also serves on the viola faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music.
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