Friday, January 25, 2019
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THE THURNAUER SCHOOL OF MUSIC
411 East Clinton Ave, Tenafly NJ 07670
A Musical Celebration of Black History Month
Sat, Jan 26, 2019
7:00 PM
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The
Thurnauer Chamber Music Series featuring artistic director, violinist Sharon
Roffman opens its 26th season with a program "A Musical Celebration
of Black History Month".
The program
features music by Florence Price, Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de St. Georges,
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Harry
Burleigh, J. Rosamund Johnson, William Grant Still, George Walker, and
Margaret Bonds and lyrics by Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and James
Weldon Johnson.
The
performance features guest artists Jasmine Wilson, mezzo-soprano; Doori Na,
violin; Melissa Reardson, viola;Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Thomas Sauer,
piano.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Violinist Sharon Roffman, prizewinner in the 2003 Naumburg Foundation
International Competition, made her solo debut with the New Jersey Symphony
in 1996. Since then, Ms. Roffman has forged a unique career distinguished by
her versatility; she is equally sought after as a soloist, chamber musician,
orchestral leader and music educator. In February 2018, Ms. Roffman was
appointed concertmaster of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Ms. Roffman made her
Carnegie Hall debut as a soloist in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins with
Itzhak Perlman playing and conducting in 2004; she has performed all over the
world as a guest concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Scottish
Chamber Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, the BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre
Philharmonique de Radio France, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,
Orchestre d’Auvergne, Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne, and Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra, principal 2nd of Die Deutsche
Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Estonian Festival Orchestra, and as a
frequent guest member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Mahler Chamber
Orchestra. Ms. Roffman was “Violon Solo” of Orchestre National du Capitole de
Toulouse from 2016-17 and a member of Orchestre National de France from
2009-2011.
As a chamber musician,
Ms. Roffman has collaborated with members of the Guarneri quartet, Juilliard
Quartet, Brentano Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Avalon Quartet, and Miami
Quartet among others, was a member of the critically acclaimed contemporary
music ensemble counter)induction, and spent several summers performing at the
Marlboro Music Festival.
Passionate about
combining performance and education, Ms. Roffman is the founder and artistic
director of ClassNotes, a chamber music ensemble and non-profit organization
dedicated to introducing public school students to classical music through
interdisciplinary school residencies and performances. In 2015, Ms. Roffman
premiered a new concerto by Bruce Adolphe (I Will Not Remain Silent) with the IRIS Orchestra and Michael Stern
conducting, and created The
Prinz Project – an online interdisciplinary curriculum and
outreach initiative to accompany the concerto. In 2018, Ms. Roffman performed
Bernstein’s Serenade with the Kansas City Symphony and created an accompanying website for
audiences to explore the work in more detail. Ms. Roffman also created
an online elementary school curriculum about
the relationship between music and art for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and
regularly teaches in elementary schools across Australia both live and via
video conferencing. Ms. Roffman is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the
Cleveland Institute of Music; her former teachers include Itzhak Perlman,
Donald Weilerstein, Peter Winograd, Robert Lipsett, Patinka Kopec and Nicole
DiCecco.
Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan is a member of the Horszowski
Trio with violinist Jesse Mills and pianist Rieko Aizawa. The trio has
performed across the United States, India, Japan, and in Hong Kong, and records
for Bridge Records. For eleven seasons, as a founding member of the
Daedalus Quartet, he performed around the world. Mr. Ramakrishnan is an
artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and is on the faculty of
the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Grammy nominated violist Melissa Reardon is an internationally renowned performer whose solo and chamber playing spans all musical genres. As a member of the Ensō String Quartet since 2006, Melissa has toured both nationally and internationally. (This is the final season for the quartet, with its last performances scheduled for the summer of 2018.) Melissa is also a founding member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), and is a sought-after collaborative musician. .
Jasmine Wilson is an American vocalist, poet,
and educator based in New York. She trained in classical vocal
performance at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she also hosted
and produced several Canadian radio programs. She has also taught music and
English as a Second Language in France and Canada. Jasmine enjoys combining
her international experience in music and media production into thoughtful
educational exchanges in the arts. In New York, Jasmine regularly
performs classical works by underrepresented female composers and composers
of color as a vocalist with The Dream Unfinished (TDU), an activist
orchestra. Through TDU, she has collaborated with Lincoln Center, Carnegie
Hall, and the DiMenna Center. Internationally, Jasmine has appeared with
Canadian funk/R&B bands What It Is, the Morphtet, Freak Motif, and
Kalmunity. While in Montreal, Jasmine hosted SOUL PERSPECTIVES on CKUT
90.3 FM, as well as produced multiple radio programs for CJAD 800 Radio and
the Kelly Alexander Show. She currently is a Community Engagement Specialist
at New York's PBS Station, WNET.
A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, violinist Doori Na has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, Riverside Symphony, New Music Project of Argento Chamber Ensemble, New Chamber Ballet, and Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach. Pianist Thomas Sauer is highly sought after as soloist and chamber musician in a wide range of repertoire. With his long-time duo partner Colin Carr, Mr. Sauer has appeared at the Wigmore Hall (London), the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Bargemusic (New York City), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), and Princeton University, among many other venues. He has performed with members of the Juilliard String Quartet at the Library of Congress and given numerous concerts with the Brentano String Quartet. Mr. Sauer has performed at many of the leading festivals in the United States and abroad, including Marlboro, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, Chamber MusicNorthwest, and Taos, as well as Lake District Summer Music (England), Agassiz (Canada), Festival des Consonances (France), and Esbjerg Chamber Music Festival (Denmark). Mr. Sauer serves on the faculties of Mannes and Vassar Colleges, and was the founder and director of the Mannes Beethoven Institute, a highly regarded summer program that ran for fifteen seasons.
3 Questions with Sharon Roffman
What inspired you to create a concert featuring Afro-American and Afro-European composers? There are a lot of great composers out there who, historically, have not always gotten the recognition that they deserve. With this concert and our spring concert of all female composers, I wanted to shine a light and share some fantastic music written by people who reflect the diversity of the communities we live in.
How
did choose the repertoire for the program?
Like always, I listened and listened and listened to lots of music and picked the pieces that I loved the most and would personally want to listen to. I had to make some really tough choices because there is so much interesting music out there!
What can you tell us about the pieces or composers featured?
Our singer Jasmine Wilson is singing two songs by two different composers based on texts by Langston Hughes, so it’s always interesting to see what choices composers make with their music to bring out the meaning of the texts. One of the pieces that I absolutely HAD to program was the Lyric for Strings by George Walker, who died only a few months ago, and was the first African American to win a Pulitzer prize for music. It is one of the most beautiful pieces you will ever hear. There is a piece by Harry Burleigh who worked closely with the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak when he lived in New York, and inspired Dvorak to use more African-American themes in his music. The piece we are playing for string quartet is based on songs he heard being sung in the plantations, in the era of slavery. And finally we will end the concert with a classic arrangement of Lift Every Voice and Sing by William Grant Still. When I ordered the music, I called the phone number of the publishing company and was excited to realize that I was speaking with William Grant Still’s daughter! The Chamber Music Series is made possible by generous contributions from Eva Holzer and the Konikow Chamber Music Fund
For tickets or more information about the Thurnauer School of Music
please call 201-408-1465.
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Sat,
Jan 26
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM |
$16.00
Member
$20.00 Public |
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Labels: Black History Month, music, Sharon Roffman, Thurnauer Chamber Music Series, Thurnauer Music School
