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CUR_4056On December 10 at 7:30 pm, twenty-one-year-old cellist Gabriel Cabezas will join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as the featured soloist in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. One of the most popular cello works ever written, the First Cello Concerto is a profound expression of struggle and triumph, its sardonic humor giving way to elegiac beauty. Symphony Hall is located at 220 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. Tickets are available here or by calling 312-294-3000.

Cellist Gabriel Cabezas has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, the National Symphony of Costa Rica, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New World Symphony, and the Nashville Symphony, among others. Cabezas has been portrayed as “…an intense player who connects to the music naturally, without artifice, and brings a singing line to the cello” (David Stabler, The Oregonian) and his debut performance with the Cleveland Orchestra described as a “…remarkably poised and elegant account, with superb attention to phrasing, nuance and tonal coloration” (Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer).

A passion for chamber music and collaboration has taken him to Marlboro Music, Music@Menlo, Music from Angel Fire, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Bargemusic, and Chicago’s Symphony Center Presents series. His television appearances include performances with Yo-Yo Ma at “The Tavis Smiley Show” and “Good Morning America”, and with Béla Fleck in “From The Top – Carnegie Hall.”

2013-14 season highlights include a subscription debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as a return to Chicago’s International Beethoven Festival and the annual Sphinx Virtuosi national tour. Cabezas’ 2012-13 engagements included concerts with the Detroit Symphony, the Nashville Symphony and the National Symphony of Costa Rica, as well as appearances with Musicians from Marlboro, at the International Beethoven Festival, and ChamberFest Cleveland.

Formerly a recipient of an Education Grant by the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation, Cabezas has supported music outreach and education programs including Midori’s Partners in Performance, the Sphinx Organization, Costa Rica’s national SINEM music education program, and Chicago’s Citizen Musician movement. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Carter Brey. As a writer, Cabezas has been featured in Teen Strings Magazine and has been a contributing writer for Strings Magazine.

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WinnerGirl

Chicago, IL — The Chinese Fine Arts Society will present a free concert at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013 at 3:00 pm. The Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington in Chicago. For more information, visit www.ChicagoCulturalCenter.org or www.ChineseFineArts.org. The 29th Annual Music Festival in Honor of Confucius Winners Concert, also part of the Cultural Center’s Sunday Salon Series, features First Place winners — cellists, pianists, violinists and Chinese Instrumentalists, ranging in age from 8-25. This year’s concert is in honor of CFAS lifetime member, repeat MFHC winner, and Coordinator of this year’s competition, Mimi Liu, who tragically passed away earlier this fall. The Chinese Fine Arts Society has established a new scholarship in the Piano Youth Division in Mimi’s name.

Works by Prokofiev, Liszt, Chopin, and Haydn are presented side by side with traditional and contemporary Chinese compositions. Performing winners include Eriko Darcy, Piano; Ifetayo Ali, Cello; Ruijing Han, Guzhen; Yerin Yang, Piano; Sean Choi, Piano; Zachary Brandon, Violin; Richard Li, Cello; William Tan, Cello; Sean Lee, Violin; and Caleb Kim, Piano.

This festival introduces participants to the rich heritage of Chinese music through competitions and scholarships. From a storefront operation at its inception, attracting just a handful of participants, the Music Festival has become a very popular musical event for musicians of all ages in Chicago. Music teachers welcome it; young musicians look forward to participating in it; the packed audience at the Winners Concerts enjoy and appreciate it. Alumni of this popular program — including Rachel Barton Pine and Conrad Tao — have gone on to attend music conservatories, and many have developed successful professional music careers.

Every fall, hundreds of young musicians perform Chinese music selected from our required repertoire, as well as a western piece of their choosing, for a panel of judges. The top scoring performers in each age category play in the annual Winners Concert at prestigious Preston Bradley Hall in the Chicago Cultural Center. The required repertoire reflects the beauty and breadth of the Chinese musical tradition and proves to be challenging and inspiring for the contestants. Since 1984, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, a small, fully-independent arts organization has brought together people from diverse backgrounds around a common goal: to celebrate the beauty and majesty of traditional and contemporary Chinese music and art. CFAS is dedicated to promoting the appreciation of Chinese culture, enhancing cultural exchange and pursuing excellence in Chinese music, dance and visual arts. For further information about the Chinese Fine Arts Society contact 312-369-3197 or [email protected] and visit www.ChineseFineArts.org.

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Screen Shot 2013-10-01 at 4.51.14 AMPrelude Cocktail is a collection of “major works for short attention spans,” including two world premieres and newly arranged favorites curated and performed by American flute and marimba duo Lawler + Fadoul. This CD is currently available for sale at CDBaby and will soon be available on Amazon and on iTunes.

The duo, featuring Zara Lawler, flutes; and Paul J. Fadoul, marimba and vibraphone, is celebrating this release with a series of house concerts in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C.  Two public CD release concerts will be held on November 21, 2013, 7:30pm. at the Mansion at Strathmore (Shapiro Music Room) at Strathmore, Bethesda, MD; and at Edmonton Recital Society, Muttart Hall, Alberta College Conservatory of Music, Canada on November 27 at 7:30pm

Preludes are musical cocktails:  intriguing and intoxicating on their own, they also hold the promise of something more to come.  You might share cocktails before a big meal, just as a prelude often introduces a more substantial fugue.  Cocktails can be sweet (think of a Cosmo!), strong (gin martini), classic (Tom Collins, anyone?) or new and adventurous (what’s that one that is Red Bull and vodka?), and Lawler + Fadoul’s selections from four centuries of preludes are equally eclectic.  Prelude Cocktail includes two world premiere sets of preludes by American composers Katherine Hoover and Roshanne Etezady, as well as Lawler + Fadoul’s own brand new arrangements of favorites of the genre by Debussy, Gershwin, Bach, Chopin, Shostakovich and Scriabin.  Guest clarinetist, Christopher Grymes, joins the duo on two preludes and fugues by Shostakovich.

Lawler + Fadoul have performed in many of the United States’ most prestigiouslawler-fadoul-lounge-252x300 venues, including the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, Trinity Wall Street, and Vermont’s Yellow Barn Music School. Their Gronica Project is an ongoing program to increase the repertoire for their instrumentation both by commissioning new works from living composers and by creating their own arrangements of favorite works of the past. This CD is the culmination of the first years of the Gronica Project, which focused on preludes and fugues. (Lawler’s family coined the word gronica to describe a child’s main present at Christmas.)  Dedicated and creative educators, Lawler + Fadoul are teaching artists for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, and created Break it Down! for a week of Kinderkonzerts at the Kennedy Center in February 2013. They have worked as a duo since 2003.

Flutist Zara Lawler is known for innovative work 
that combines music, dance, theater, and poetry. In 2012 she staged the US première of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Il Cerchio Tagliato dei Suoni for 104 flutes at the Guggenheim Museum. She has performed her solo program, The Flute on its Feet, in venues across the US, with choreographer C. Neil Parsons. For many years, Lawler was flutist and Co-Artistic Director with Tales & Scales, touring the country performing works that integrated contemporary classical music with dance and theater, for children and family audiences. She studied at Juilliard with Carol Wincenc and Sam Baron.

Marimbist Paul J. Fadoul has performed solo and chamber music performances across North America and Spain, with such artists as Evan Ziporyn, Martin Bresnick, Robert van Sice, and the National Symphony Orchestra. He spends his summers in Newfoundland, where he composes, arranges and performs with the Canadian ensemble, Dark By Five. While touring with the educational ensemble Tales & Scales, he performed 200 shows annually, including solo performances with the Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Oregon symphonies. He graduated from the Yale School of Music and has taught at the Peabody Institute.

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MUSIC/WORDS, the acclaimed music-poetry series (NY, Chicago and LA), invites the audience to be moved by free associations, interplay of moods, genres and different mediums in its 6th season.

Faliks-PavlovaInna Faliks, left; Vera Pavlova, right

Brooklyn, NY – Pianist Inna Faliks, with poet Vera Pavlova, appear in Music/Words: Chopin edition on Sunday October 27th, 2013 at 4 pm at the Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture, Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY. Admission is Free. For more information, call (312) 787-7070.

Celebrated pianist Inna Faliks is the founder and curator of the award-winning interdisciplinary series Music/Words, which explores the connections between poetry and music. She is joined by Vera Pavlova, one of Russia’s most important contemporary poets, whose first poetry collection in English, If There Is Something to Desire, was a bestselling title in 2010. Faliks will perform works by Chopin.

In this performance, Vera Pavlova’s passionate, sensuous poetry, with English translations, will intersect with selections of Frederic Chopin, including the Sonata # 2 in B flat minor. Music/Words has been featured in regular live broadcasts on WFMT Radio in Chicago, in collaboration with Poetry Foundation, at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, and at UCLA in Los Angeles.

The series MUSIC/WORDS was recently praised by Lucid Culture as being “surreal, impactful, and relevant” and was described as “a throwback to the Paris salons of the late 1800s.” It celebrates links between poetry and music by presenting collaborations between exciting solo performers and acclaimed contemporary poets in the form of a live recital/reading. Music/Words partnerships have included some of the most celebrated American poets.

Inna Faliks created the series in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration.

According to Faliks, “I pair performers together based on their personalities and styles, and encourage them to choose the poems and music in varied ways that are strongly and intuitively connected.”

Pianist Inna Faliks has set herself apart in thousands of performances as a sincere, communicative and direct performer whose virtuosity, power and risk taking serve the depth, intelligance and poetry of her interpretations. Inna’s command of standard solo and concerto repertoire is highlighted by her love of rare and new music, and interdisciplinary and audience-involving programs and lectures. These include her award winning Music/Words, where she alternates music with readings by contemporary poets, her program of piano music of the poet Boris Pasternak (on MSR Classics Sound of Verse, which drew comparisons to Argerich and Cliburn), 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg – new variations on Bach’s Aria , music of women composers, and many other programs. She makes sure to present programs that include both beloved crowd pleasers and music that is new and challenging, creating an adventurous, moving and involving experience for the audience. She is a musical omnivore. Faliks debuted as a teenager with the Chicago Symphony and at the Gilmore Festival to rave reviews, and has been exciting and moving audiences worldwide since then. She is Associate Professor of Piano at UCLA, and her new Beethoven disc on the MSR Classics label has just been released. www.innafaliks.com

Please visit www.verapavlova.us for poet bio.

 

 

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Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 9.59.42 AMOn Sunday November 17th at 8pm, conductor Paolo Bortolameolli will lead the Zephyrus Project Orchestra in a performance of RiteNow: A Centennial Celebration of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This one-time-only performance will take place at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street (corner of College & Grove), New Haven, CT. Admission is free. Complete info is at www.RiteNowProject.com.

RiteNow will include works by composers Fay Kueen Wang, Justin Tierney, Matthew Welch, Benjamin Wallace, Daniel Schlosberg, Gleb Kanasevich, Polina Nazaykinskaya, and Paul Kerekes. Production designer Solomon Weisbard will create an immersive environmental design, and costumes will be created by Ksenia Zhuleva.
Composers kickstarter LONG
In the wake of its riotous premiere, Igor Stravinsky’s monumental Rite of Spring, became a beacon of inspiration for countless
composers, performers, choreographers, dancers and visual artists. This work stunned listeners with its passion, focus, ingenuity and vehemence. Its influence continues, inspiring these musicians to present RiteNow: a celebration of the centenary of “The Rite’s” infamous premiere.
The Rite of Spring is famous for the way that it is put together – blocks of music, or “tableaux” that bump up right next to one another. RiteNow will celebrate the 100th birthday of Stravinsky’s piece by featuring eight short selections inspired by it. These will then be assembled just like the “tableaux” in the “Rite” into one memorable piece for an orchestra of massive proportions (approximately 120 players).
Praised by composer George Crumb for his “sensitive and insightful interpretation”, conductor Paolo Bortolameolli brings a visual, synthetic and collaborative approach to music that is infused by his fascination for and interplay among the arts. With his passion for connecting the 21st century audience to the concert stage, Mr. Bortolameolli enjoys conducting orchestral music, working with youth orchestras, collaborating with today’s composers and lecturing.
Further information, including composer bios, is available at www.RiteNowProject.com.