JWAL spring 2012 Newsletter is here
Find updates on conductors, news about soloists,  ensembles, Enchantment Theatre Company's latest creation for symphony family shows, and more -- all in a concise two-page PDF. Conductor news includes: Michael Butterman to the Cleveland Orchestra; Vladimir Verbitsky leads the Rochester Phil, Philip Mann with the New West Symphony and Aziz Shokhakimov returns to Milan. Also included: The Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio's Beethoven cycle gets a Triple, pianist Yakov Kasman plays Prokofiev in Paris, pianist Christopher Taylor will appear at the Met, and an invitation to meet with JWAL staffers in Dallas at the LAO. read more

Update on Chi Pianist Katherine Chi appeared twice with I Musici de Montréal at the newly inaugurated Salle Bourgie in downtown Montréal.  After entering Curtis at age 10 and winning the Honens, there is Prokofiev and Stockhausen in her broad palette. But it's Mozart that's "ineffable" and she performed the piano concerto #14 with the chamber orchestra (now under the Artistic Directorship of fellow Canadian Jean-Marie Zeitouni). Chi has now returned from a recital tour, including an appearance in Edmonton, to which she will return in October to perform the Chopin F Minor Piano Concerto with the Edmonton Symphony and conductor Gregory Vajda. And this season, the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted that she "gave the most incisive performance the Carpenter Theatre has seen this season.”[Rachmaninoff-Paganini Variations]  read more

ArtistWorks: New Jason Vieaux Academy Featured on China Central Television
The maverick online music teaching tool, ArtistWorks, launches the Jason Vieaux Guitar Academy in May, which brings a technological interface to 1-on-1 online study exchange between Vieaux and guitar students around the world. As featured on FoxNews and China Central Television this education trend uses Video Exchange technology to power over fourteen online music schools. Students who sign-up online have immediate access to anextensive series of guitar lessons and can also study directly with ArtistWorks teachers. Jason Vieaux is featured in the recent China Central Television news item. Watch
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Notable Review The Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio appeared at the Kennedy Center -- returning to the Fortas Chamber Music Series for a concert that included a new work by the trio's cellist, Clancy Newman.... and the Washington Post had this to say about the concert "Violinist Mark Kaplan and cellist Clancy Newman made a fine team, twining and dovetailing their lines to eloquent effect, not least in Schubert’s expansively lyrical writing. Underpinning the strings was pianist Yael Weiss’s liquid tone and unfailingly wise phrasing"  read more

New Artist We are delighted to announce the signing of Latin Grammy winner Fernando Otero. The exceptionally talented Argentinean pianist/composer/bandleader is acclaimed for his solo, chamber music, jazz and tango work. Otero’s 2010 CD, Vital, won the Best Classical Album award at the 11th annual Latin Grammy Awards and was hailed by the BBC as “Urbane and exotic, surreal and street-wise, and alive with invention and emotion.”  Tour programming includes solo and sextet work. Video

First Person: Seeing America Film & Television actor Bill Pullman will tour the show for selected dates in the 2012-2013 season. The show features photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, actor Bill Pullman, actress Lily Knight, and music by Ensemble Galilei. Photographs from the Met's collection include the iconic works of Evans, Curtis, Stieglitz, Strand, and Eakins. The soundtrack is the music of Ensemble Galilei – Bach, traditional music from Scotland and Ireland, and new compositions featuring fiddles, harp, viola da gamba, banjo, percussion and oboe. First Person: Seeing America. Latest Review. More...

This photo: Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975), Alabama Tenant Farmer, 1936. Gelatin silver print, 23.6 x 18.7 cm (9 5/16 x 7 3/8 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gift, 2000 (2000.329) © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sweetest Costumes: The New Zealand String Quartet definitely wins the prize in the "best-dressed bears" category when they don head-gear and fur coats for performances of their new"Goldilocks & The Three Bears" program. The show, which joins "Pineapple Rag" and "Talking Instruments" in their youth/education line-up is available on the quartet's July and November 2012 tours.

In other news, the quartet has also released the long-awaited CD "notes from a journey" which features compositions by New Zealand composers, including John Psathas, Ross Harris, Jack Body, Michael Norris and Gareth Farr with Richard Nunns. More...

News & Events:

Guitarist Jason Vieaux offered the "Gentilhombre" and some Vivaldi with the Buffalo Philharmonic in December. The Buffalo News noted "… most of the big crowd that turned out Saturday was there to see Vieaux… He plays melodies and accompaniments simultaneously, immediately distinguishable from each other. His playing is clear without being dry. And he has a tremendous dynamic range." More

Enchantment Theatre Company premieres Scheherazade with the Cleveland Orchestra, tours with the New Jersey Symphony. The company evokes the Rimsky-Korsakov score using masks, puppets, magic and movement. More...