Events

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New York, NY — Experience a powerful evening of music as Orchestra for People presents Azarashvili, Mozart and Elgar on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at 7:30 PM at NYC’s Merkin Hall. Under the baton of conductor Hahnsol Kim, the program introduces a vibrant dialogue between Georgian and European masterworks, featuring acclaimed soloists Sandro Sidamonidze (cello) and Sam Boutris (clarinet) in a bold and moving lineup that bridges centuries and continents.

 

A highlight of the evening is the U.S. Premiere of Vaja Azarashvili’s Cello Concerto, performed by Sandro Sidamonidze. This concert introduces American audiences to one of Georgia’s most significant contemporary voices, music noted for lyricism, clarity, and emotional depth. Also featured are Mozart’s iconic Clarinet Concerto with Sam Boutris, the dramatic Symphony No. 40, and Edward Elgar’s virtuosic Introduction and Allegro for Strings.

 

The performance takes place at Merkin Hall, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY. Tickets are $25, with discounted $15 student tickets available by calling the box office at 212-501-3330. Visit www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org for tickets. 

 

Complete Program:

VAJA AZARASHVILI – Cello Concerto (U.S. Premiere)

W.A. MOZART – Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622

Intermission

W.A. MOZART – Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550

EDWARD ELGAR – Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Op. 47

 

According to Hahnsol Kim, Founder of Orchestra for People: “This program beautifully captures what we hope to share with our audience as musicians. From the U.S. premiere of Azarashvili’s Cello Concerto to Mozart’s beloved Clarinet Concerto and symphony number 40, cherished by listeners for generations, it reflects what we value most at Orchestra For People: giving voice to music and musicians who deserve to be heard. With Azarashvili’s concerto performed in the U.S. for the first time, this concert celebrates the artistry of remarkable young musicians whose voices should resonate far beyond the stage.” 

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Beginning December 17th at 7:30 PM, pianist Sara Davis Buechner premieres “Of Pigs and Pianos” — the new one-woman show of her extraordinary life story in music and words. This theatrical and musical evening consists of excerpts from her recently-completed autobiography, illustrated with luminous piano performances, visual imagery and dramatic narration.

Ms. Buechner is one of America’s most well-known classical pianists, as well as one of the first transgender women to transition mid-career (in the 1990s).

She now shares her own tale of courage and integrity in the face of overwhelming personal and professional obstacles, to LGBTQA+ groups around the world, and opens that story in a delightful and absorbing new way with this unique showcase for her astounding talents.

Featuring piano music of Haydn Mozart, Chopin, Ferruccio Busoni, Federico Longás, Yukiko Nishimura, Péter Wolf, and Sara Davis Buechner herself.

Held on the 3rd floor of Manhattan’s TheaterLab, 357 West 36th Street (between 8th-9th Avenues), the show runs 1’15”, and will be presented four times without intermission: December 17th (7:30 PM); December 18th (two shows: 2 PM and 7:30 PM); and December 19th (5:00 PM with a post-show reception). 

Tickets are $30 general admission; $15 for students, seniors, and members of the LGBTQAI+ community, and are available at theaterlabnyc.com. 

Complete program (subject to change):
◇ 1 Péter Wolf: Adagio (from Wolf-Temperiertes Klavier – The Wolf-Tempered Clavier)
◇ 2 Wolfgang Mozart:  Sonata in F major KV. 332 (Adagio)
◇ 3 Franz Josef Haydn: Serenade in C major (transcription by Mieczyslaw Münz)
◇ 4 Frédéric Chopin: Sonata in B minor op. 58 (Allegro maestoso)
◇ 5 Federico Longas: Aragón
◇ 6 Ferruccio Busoni: Elegy no. 3 “Meine Seele bangt und hofft zu dir”
◇ 7 Sara Davis Buechner: Canción para dos niñas (from Escenas callejeras del Bronx)
◇ 8 Yukiko Nishimura: Hide-and-Seek (Etude no. 6)
◇ 9 Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in G minor K. 8

“Of Pigs and Pianos” starring Sara Davis Buechner, is written by Ms. Buechner with Sal Trapani; directed by Sal Trapani; designed by Phillip Baldwin; and produced by Ms. Buechner in association with Orietta Crispino of TheaterLab and Yamaha Artist Services New York under the direction of Bonnie Barrett.

For more information about the program, please visit the TheaterLab website,
or contact them at either: (212) 929-2545 or [email protected]

For more about Sara Davis Buechner, please visit saradavisbuechner.com

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On Friday, October 15th, 2021 at 8pm Notes for Growth Foundation presents Tremün: Celebrating Indigenous Roots — their debut concert at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City. Tickets are $15-30 and are available for purchase at carnegiehall.org.

This concert will feature the premiere of nine new works by Latinx composers Patricio Molina, Ramón Catalan, Aina Sandoval, Carlos Zamora, and Sebastian Vergara in collaboration with Mapuche poets Roxana Miranda Rupailaf and María Lara Millapan, amplifying their powerful poetry to a new audience in New York City. The compositional style is accessible, using indigenous rhythms, stylistic motifs, and stories.

Performers include Notes for Growth Ambassadors and internationally acclaimed BIPOC musicians Sonya Headlam, soprano, Alejandro Mendoza, violin, and Enriqueta Somarriba, piano, among others. The concert concludes with legendary opera singer Verónica Villarroel in a performance that is the first of its kind, in which Ms. Villarroel will perform folk songs of indigenous peoples from the north of Chile.

This concert is poised to show Notes for Growth’s mission dedicated to equity, sustainability, and music education. (Biographies of all composers and performers are available upon request.)

Tremün means “growth” in Mapudungun, the language of native Chilean people known as the Mapuche. Tremün is a celebration of music by and inspired by indigenous peoples around the world including Peru, Mexico, Jamaica, and Chile.

Dr. Patricio Molina, Chilean-Syrian composer and pianist, is a Dreamer immigrant to the US. He graduated this spring from Rutgers University with his second of two doctorates, a Ph.D. in Music Composition, after a D.M.A. in Piano Performance, the first double-doctorate in the history of the university. He was recently named a Cleveland Institute of Music 2021 Future of Music Faculty Fellow.

His studies of Arabic music inspired by his heritage influenced a recently commissioned piece with the New Jersey Youth Symphony in collaboration with the creation of a new app designed for his music by Nokia Bell Labs.

Dr. Molina is the co-founder and president of Notes for Growth, whose mission to create access to music education for all children regardless of their circumstances has donated nearly 30 pianos and other instruments to institutions providing free music education in Chile, the NYC Metropolitan area, and worldwide. 

The program includes several world premieres, such as: 

• Kelülwe by Patricio Molina
Patricio Molina, piano

• Kuruf by Sebastian Vergara
Daniel Lamas, viola
Enriqueta Somarriba, piano

• El Condor Pasa Variation by Patricio Molina
Alejandro Mendoza, violin
Patricio Molina, piano

• Otoño en Tierra del Fuego by Aina Sandoval
Daniel Lamas, viola
Darwin Cosme Sanchez, flute
Claudia Peñailillo, clarinet
Enriqueta Somarriba, piano

• Nocturne Elegie for clarinet and piano
Claudia Peñailillo, clarinet
Ramon Catalan, piano

• Kecha Tregüfle by Patricio Molina (in Mapudungun)
Sonya Headlam, voice
Alejandro Mendoza, violin
Patricio Molina, piano

For more information, please visit Notes For Growth’s website

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Humanity First: We Are All In This Together

Jenny Q Chai incorporates her exceptional artistry with striking visual elements, including NASA data visualizations, to highlight climate change and COVID-19 challenges. Includes two Bay Area premieres.

Sponsored by San Francisco’s Ross McKee Foundation and featured as part of their Piano Break series, Bay Area and Shanghai based pianist Jenny Q Chai will perform a free evening length concert on Friday, May 7, 2021 at 5:00 pm, Pacific time (8:00pm Eastern time).

This concert will last under an hour and will be broadcast by way of rossmckeefoundation.org/event/jenny-chai-2021-05-07. Pre-registration is not required.

At the conclusion of every Piano Break, the audience can meet the artist and ask questions in a live Zoom Green Room: rossmckeefoundation.org/zoom .

Entitled Humanity First: We Are All In This Together, the concert includes the following works:

Jarosław Kapuściński — Oli’s Dream
György Ligeti — Musica Ricercata No.1 with NASA global warming data visualizations
György Ligeti — Musica Ricercata No.7 with NASA global warming data visualizations
Milica Pavlovic* — Paranosic Bubble (in trouble) with bubble machine and lights
Stephen Sondheim — Into the Woods (arrangement by Andy Akiho)
(with paintings by Camryn Connolly)
Jarosław Kapuściński — Side Effects, with photography by Kacper Kowalski

This will be Ms. Chai’s first solo virtual concert, her first concert designed during the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. and her first concert in 2021. *Work by Pavlovic is a Bay Area Premiere.

In Chai’s words, “Globally, we are experiencing the same kind of difficulties, and yet trying to survive, to adapt, to thrive and to hold on to hope. It is a heightened time for us to remember to unite together as earthlings. We must take care of our earth, global health systems, strategizing, communications and planning, in order to survive together.” Last year, Chai gave a TEDx talk, When Classical Music Meets Technology. Chai believes that art needs to reflect the current state of our world, and to raise awareness in people about social issues.

For many years, Chai has been creating thematic programs for issues to reflect our current society, such as her global warming program Acqua Alta which she toured and performed for six years. The works in the May 7th concert by Ligeti, Pavlovic and Kapuschinski’s Side Effects originate from this program. Chai’s performance of the Ligeti works use NASA’s data visualization on global warming’s effect on water. Side Effects is an AI interactive intermedia piece with visuals shot by aerial photographer/pilot Kacper Kowalski, about the earth as its seasons change from summer to winter. The remaining works address humanity: Oli’s Dream is also AI interactive, as it types out a poem about our hopes and dreams with tenderness. The Into the Woods arrangement mirrors how Chai felt about the messiness of being in the US during the pandemic under the Trump administration. 

For more about Jenny Q Chai, please visit jennychai.com
For more about the Ross McKee Foundation, visit rossmckeefoundation.org

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On Monday, December 7th, 2020 from 6 to 7:30pm PT, Fulcrum Arts presents an interactive session with Peter McDowell, going over the basic principles of how to raise money for a project as an individual artist or small artist collective. Peter puts particular emphasis on virtual events, as he has just completely two successful online fundraisers. This is recommended for artists of all kinds, and is particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event is $5 and is online. Click here to RSVP.

Fulcrum Arts is based in Pasadena, CA, and champions creative and critical thinkers at the intersection of art and science to provoke positive social change and contribute to a more vibrant and inclusive community. They are dedicated to building cultural equity into the very structure and fabric of the organization at all levels ensuring that underrepresented populations and voices are included and heard. Fulcrum Arts supports creative practices that incorporate broader, non-western, and Indigenous traditions that resonate within the nexus of art, science, and social change to expand, define, and further human achievement.

Fulcrum Arts’ Emerge fiscal sponsorship program increases the capacity of independent artists, collectives, and small arts organizations by offering financial management, fundraising consulting, and the ability to seek funding through fiscal sponsorship. Our goal is to provide artists with the necessary tools to create sustainable practices, while allowing them to remain independent, dynamic, and responsive to the shifting social and economic contexts in which they live and work.

For more information, please visit fulcrumarts.org

ABOUT PETER
Peter McDowell is an arts management expert with more than two decades of experience serving artists and organizations at the highest level. Currently Director of Development for American Friends of the Louvre in Los Angeles, he has held leadership positions at Opera America, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and most recently as managing director of the Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird. His firm, Peter McDowell Arts Consulting, offers a wide range of strategic career services for performing artists. As a publicist, Peter has garnered press coverage for his clients in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, and many other important outlets.

Peter is in demand as a speaker and workshop leader on diverse topics in career development and arts entrepreneurship. He has been an invited presenter at the Manhattan School of Music, Northwestern School of Music, Eastman School of Music, The Colburn School, Chamber Music America, and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP). He is also a documentary filmmaker and is currently at work on his full-length feature, Jimmy in Saigon. He is a recently graduated International Fellow from the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. He received his undergraduate degree in French from the University of Illinois and his Masters in Business – Arts Administration from the University of Wisconsin.