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After Summer dates at Tanglewood, Chautauqua and Ravinia (where she performed with the chamber orchestra The Knights), soprano Dawn Upshaw has launched into a busy Fall season.

She kicked things off with fellow soprano-explorers Lucy Shelton and Tony Arnold at Brooklyn’s Roulette in the opening concert of the Resonant Bodies Festival, singing songs by Sheila Silver and a Shawn Jaeger chamber music setting of poems by Wendell Berry.

“Dawn Upshaw can’t help but be reassuring, even when her material is melancholy. Earnest and all-American, she radiates fireside-chat warmth.” – Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2015

Upshaw then collaborated withSo Percussion, singing an eerie cycle of American traditional songs by George Crumb, The Winds of Destiny, at Bard College, and for the opening of the Da Camera of Houston season.

She returned to a traditional song recital with her regular duo partner Gil Kalish, singing a program of works by Ravel, Schubert, Janáček, Bolcom, and more for the Celebrity Series of Boston.

“…That intimate quickening of the space on this particular occasion was due first and foremost to the artistry of Dawn Upshaw. As is well known by her many admirers, this soprano has a gift for distilling the expressive essence of each song and presenting it with a sense of urgency and directness…limpid, open, gleaming.” – Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe, Oct. 19, 2015

“On the podium, he cuts a figure both streamlined and angular, and his taut podium gestures convey a wiry intensity;”

so wrote The Boston Globe when Maestro Ken-David Masur led the first of two last-minute subscription weeks with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last winter, substituting for indisposed guest conductors as the BSO’s Assistant Conductor.

In spite of the high stakes, Masur had fine successes in programs of Berlioz, Saint-Saens and Rimsky-Korsakov, and Debussy, Anatoly Liadov and Stravinsky.

He then led a summer BSO concert at Tanglewood, and next month leads the BSO in a regularly-scheduled subscription week, Nov 5-10, with a program featuring Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, Liszt’s Totentanz (with Louis Lortie) and the American premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Mannequin (a BSO co-commission).

Leaving Symphony Hall behind for a month, Masur leads concerts in Hong Kong with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; in Munich, as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Münchner Symphoniker; and in Moscow where he is a frequent guest with the National Philharmonic of Russia.

These international dates follow a Summer debut with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, where Masur led a program of Beethoven, Schubert and Dvorák.

JACK Quartet enjoyed Summer dates at the Ottawa Chamberfest, the Music Academy of the West, in Lucerne and at the Salzburg Festival, before returning home to New York for the opening of the Miller Theatre season, performing a “a dazzlingly off-the-wall evening of music, video and performance art” by the Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen:

“This ensemble proved that it remains one of the most fiercely adventurous and undaunted new-music groups in the business.” – Corinna da Fonseca-Wolheim, THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 18, 2015

Early this month JACK joined John Luther Adams celebrations at Miller Theatre, and led a special marathon of new and recent works for the American Composer Orchestra’s SONiC Festival, collaborating with So Percussion, Caroline Shaw, Derek Bermel and other stars of the new music scene.

This week, JACK performs concerts in Bogota, Columbia, and on Oct. 29 at the Smithsonian, JACK joins forces with the Lightbulb Ensemble to perform new music for strings, American gamelan, and the two ensembles combined.

Next month they perform in Madrid and Frankfurt, and open the American Music Project‘s festival in collaboration with Anthony McGill. And as Artists-in-Residence atBoston University, JACK Quartet performs concerts, offers masterclasses, a composer’s forum, and much more, throughout the season.

And the New York Philharmonic has just announced that JACK Quartet will open their 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL with a concert of New York and world premieres (learn more here).