Zuill Bailey, cello
Zuill Bailey, cello. Photo by Diane Sierra. download

Zuill Bailey: Haydn in London and Peru

Last month Zuill Bailey returned for several appearances to the International Wimbledon Music Festival in London – a solo recital, a premiere of a new chamber work by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, a masterclass, and – to close the festival – performances of both the Haydn C Major and D Major concerti with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London.

This week finds Zuill in Peru once again bringing the Haydn Cti. to the stage in Lima via special presentations by TQ Producciones.

Watch a recent video, below, of Bailey performing solo Bach from the Northwest Bach Festival, where he is Artistic Director.

Zuill Bailey, Artistic Director of Northwest Bach Festival, plays J.S. Bach Suite for Solo Cello No. 2 in D minor Prelude Live in St. John’s Cathedral, one of the festival venues.

Rob Kapilow
Rob Kapilow - photo by John Johansen. download

Rob Kapilow in New York, Toronto, and DC

Conductor, educator, pianist and public speaker Rob Kapilow brought his renowned What Makes It Great?®  program to Merkin Hall this week, exploring Schumann’s Piano Quintet.

In January, Kapilow leads What Makes It Great?®  with the Toronto Symphony, exploring Mozart Symphony No. 40; appears at the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the University of Toronto; and joins the  Washington Performing Arts Society to delve into Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18, No. 1.

Juilliard Quartet on tour and at Lincoln Center

In the midst of a busy fall season, the Juilliard Quartet was hailed for the first of their two annual concerts at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall:

“Bittersweetness tinged the Juilliard String Quartet’s first Lincoln Center performance this season, an exhilarating, penetrating, often splendidly harrowing concert on Monday at Alice Tully Hall.”

“The Juilliard Quartet has an elegant way of passing musical torches. In 2013, Mr. Tapping played alongside the violist he was replacing, Samuel Rhodes, in quintets by Mr. Rhodes and Mozart. And on Feb. 22, the new cellist, Astrid Schween, will join the current members for Schubert’s String Quintet in C (D. 956) during Mr. Krosnick’s final appearance with the group at Tully Hall.”  – Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times, Nov. 24, 2015

The Juilliard Quartet welcomes the New Year with a European tour, performing concerts in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Spain and elsewhere.

Dawn Upshaw, soprano
Dawn Upshaw, soprano. Photo by Dario Acosta. download

Dawn Upshaw in collaborations and solo recitals

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

Ken-David Masur, conductor
Ken-David Masur, conductor. Photo by Beth Ross Buckley. download

Ken-David Masur leading concerts in Boston, Hong Kong, Moscow and Munich

“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
JACK Quartet - photo by Shervin Lainez. L to R: Jay Campbell, cello; John Pickford Richards, violin; Christopher Otto, violin; Austin Wulliman, viola. download

JACK Quartet in Madrid, New York, Bogota, Frankfurt and beyond

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).