NEW!

collectif9 combines the power of an orchestra with the crispness of a chamber ensemble, performs in concert halls and varied spaces and attractes diverse audiences. Montreal’s cutting-edge classical string band, collectif9 is known for energized, innovative arrangements of classical repertoire. Performances employ lights, staging, and amplification more commonly seen at rock acts, and the audience enjoys a genre-bending classical performance. collectif9 is on a mission to bring this exciting repertoire to new audiences and revels in the “sheer joy in playing great music with full commitment”. In concert from Vancouver to Los Angeles and San Francisco to Shanghai“Their eagerness to break the mold while upholding the highest performance standards make collectif9 a model for 21st century classical music ensembles.” [Oregon Arts Watch] We are proud to announce our collaboration with Latitute 45 Arts to bring collectif9 on tour. More…

For Selected Dates:

Stellar pianist Olga Kern joins the Dalí Quartet for selected dates on tour through 2021. The Cliburn Gold Medal-winning pianist and the Dalí — well-known for Classical Roots, Latin Soul — will perform major piano quintets this season on tour from British Columbia to Southern California and on into the Midwest. Next season, selected concert dates are available for programs that include a choice of the towering Shostakovich piano quintet and the beloved Brahms quintet, as well as the Dvorak and Schumann quintet — all paired with a variety of exciting Latin and Classical quartet repertoire. “Together, theirs was an eager, thunderous performance.” KC Studio More…

Acclaimed cellist Amit Peled joins the Fischoff winning Fry Street Quartet for performances of the great Schubert two-cello quintet. Selected 2020/21 season dates are available. Peled, cited by the American Record Guide as having “the flair of the young Rostropovich” will join the Fry Street Quartet, cited for its “technical precision and scorching spontaneity” in The Strad and hailed as “a triumph of ensemble playing” by the New York Times. The program is drawn from Vienna’s rich masterworks: Mozart’s delightful G Major quartet K. 387, followed by the haunting and passionate 3rd quartet of Alban Berg from 1910, straddling the end of romanticism and the beginning of the 20th century. The Cello Quintet in C was written in the last year of Schubert’s short life, and remains one of the most sublime works of art ever created.

Grammy-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux embarks on a new project with Billboard’s top-selling violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. These two internationally acclaimed artists join forces on tour to offer exciting programs featuring works of Bach, Paganini, Corigliano, Bartok, Falla, Glass, Ciupinski, Jobím, Duke Ellington and more. Their duo debut at the Green Music Center received two rave reviews, including these comments in Strings Magazine: “By this point, the audience had grown accustomed to Vieaux’s flawless and seemingly effortless technique. That did not, however, make it any less extraordinary. It was also here that Meyers demonstrated her prowess as a “vocal” musician, making use of texture and vibrato to color her playing as a singer would.” Read the full review   Following their terrific performance at the Eastern Music Festival (where Jason also gave Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with conductor Jose-Luis Novo) the Classical Voice of North Carolina reports that Meyers “wowed the audience” and that “Vieaux is a complete master of the guitar”. Performing John Corigliano’s ‘Lullaby for Natalie’, which was written for Ms. Meyers, the critic also had this to say: “This is indeed a gorgeous piece and a marvelously intimate arrangement….The gentle performance completely mesmerized the audience.” More about Jason Vieaux

Christopher Taylor celebrates the Beethoven 250th anniversary during the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons with performances of the Franz Liszt transcriptions of all the Beethoven 9 Symphonies. Individual works are available, as is the entire set. “What is remarkable is not that it makes the piano sound like an orchestra but that the reduction really sounds like piano music — on a grand scale, but pianistic nevertheless” writes the Boston Musical Intelligencer, which continues: “The way this version of a symphony that everyone knows and loves could best succeed is with dancelike lightness and momentum, and Taylor managed that feature completely, with unfailing and often effortless energy.”

Nordic Voices and the Gryphon Trio will join forces for selected dates in a program that includes a newly commissioned work by acclaimed Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan for piano trio and six voices. In this fascinating concert program, audiences will hear the “ringing, clear timbres and impressive blend” of Nordic Voices and the “virtuosity” of the Gryphon Trio [Gramophone] in Ryan’s new work, Scar Tissue, which features the haunting words of Giller Prize winning poet Michael Redhill. Works from the piano trio and from the Voices, including Gesualdo and Victoria, intensify the scene. More…

32 Bright Clouds: Beethoven Conversations Around the World  is the creation of pianist Yael Weiss. This global music-commissioning and performing project is born from a need to respond to current social and political environments in the US and worldwide with a personally meaningful and purposeful musical endeavor. Thirty-two newly commissioned short piano works are brought to the stage in performance alongside Beethoven’s cycle of 32 Piano Sonatas. The new works are commissioned from composers in 32 different countries, focusing primarily on countries of conflict and unrest where creative efforts often face insurmountable challenges. More…

NEW TO THE ROSTER

Conductor Robert Franz Joins the Roster. We are delighted to announce that acclaimed conductor Robert Franz has joined our distinguished roster of conductors. Music Director of the Windsor Symphony and Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Franz also serves as Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony. He is busy as a guest conductor whose recent engagements include The Cleveland Orchestra, the Baltimore, Phoenix and St. Louis Symphonies, and the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Italy. A dedicated music educator, advocate for arts education, winner of awards for musical excellence and champion of community partnerships, Franz celebrates his 10th anniversary with the Houston Symphony this year and has been honored as the first member of the Houston Symphony conducting staff with the Raphael Fliegel Award for Visionary Leadership. Press Release.  Read more…

CD RELEASE: Conductor Andrew Constantine  leads the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in a gorgeous new recording Elgar: The New England Connection – Enigma Variations – and George Chadwick’s Symphonic Sketches just released on Orchid Classics. The critics approve. Of Chadwick’s Symphonic Sketches, ClassicalSource.com remarks: “The whole work is most persuasively presented by Constantine and BBCNOW…” And about Elgar’s Enigma Variations ClassicalSource.com notes that Constantine “leads an impressive account of Elgar’s masterpiece – deeply-felt (not least ‘Nimrod’), insightful, vividly detailed, expressively glowing – one to shortlist, and as superbly played as it is recorded: I have returned to it several times with undiminished admiration.”
” a top notch release” Read more…              Video Sampler

NEW TO THE ROSTER

The American Opera Projects production of AS ONE is now available on tour. This winning coming-of-age story on a transgender theme is for two singers and quartet by Laura Kaminsky, with librettist Mark Campbell and filmmaker & librettist Kimberly Reed. The mezzo-soprano and baritone depict the experiences of the sole transgender protagonist, Hannah, as she endeavors to resolve the discord between her self and the outside world. Premiered at BAM with the Fry Street Quartet, Sasha Cooke and Kelly Markgraf, the New York Times hails AS ONE for its “winning humor” and “satisfying emotional arc.” And the Los Angeles Times notes: “The real secret of the opera’s success… is that under everything lays a winning coming-of-age story.”  Video. More…

NEW TO THE ROSTER

Award-winning violinist Eunice Kim joins our roster. Jonathan Wentworth Associates is delighted to announce the addition of Eunice Kim to our roster of world-class soloists. A young artist with a unique voice, violinist Eunice Kim has been proclaimed “just superb” by The New York Times and “a born performer” by Epoch Times. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Astral Award-winning violinist has been featured soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Louisville Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others, and has recorded George Tsontakis’s Unforgettable with the Albany Symphony, now released on Naxos Records. As a guest artist with Curtis on Tour, she has performed in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Germany with violist Roberto Díaz, and appeared at both the Library of Congress and the United Nations for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. More…

Everybody Wants to Rule the World!– the latest from Grammy-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux and virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Julien Labro on accordina. This live performance of the epochal new wave hit by Tears for Fears gets a jazzy turn by these two masters of arrangement and improvisation. “We always try to pick repertoire from different genres, things that you might not expect our combination of instruments to play,” says Julien. And for the Piazzolla lovers, the duo’s arrangement of Escualo with Julien on accordion has been personalized a bit, “we’ve come up with a version that touches on Reggae and a little Beyoncé.” More…

Aziz Shokhakimov has won the Nestlè and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award at the 2016 Salzburg Festival. Three finalists were selected from a shortlist of eight candidates, drawn from 65 applicants overall. Each of the finalists conducted the Salzburg Camerata during the Award Concert Weekend, and a jury led by Chairman Dennis Russell Davies and Honorary President Plácido Domingo selected Aziz Shokhakimov as the winner. In addition to the cash prize, Aziz will conduct the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in a Salzburg Festival concert at the Felsenreitschule concert hall next August. Nestlè Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said, “The ‘Nestlè and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award’ shows once again how meaningful it is to give young conductors the opportunity to present their talent as part of a festival as renowned as the Salzburg Festival. We are happy to support this initiative, unique throughout the world in its kind, and thereby boost the careers of these young talents, introducing them to a broad public through the Award“.

More about the award     More about Aziz Shokhakimov

Acclaimed violinist Mark Kaplan’s much anticipated 2-CD set of complete solo Bach is released on the Bridge label. Praise for Kaplan’s “extraordinary lyricism” quickly followed. “It is as if every note, every phrase of these monumental works has something to say to Kaplan and, in turn, he has something to say to you about them.” [ArtMusicLounge] Kaplan, who plays a 1685 Stradivarius, is sought after for his Bach performances and lectures at venues as diverse as Indiana University, UCLA, New York’s Bargemusic, Oxford University and the Philharmonie in Cologne. Kaplan enjoys a wide and varied career as a soloist, chamber musician and distinguished educator. He has performed with nearly every major orchestra in the principal cities of Europe, North America, the Far East and Australia. He tours worldwide and records with the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio, exploring the masterworks of the piano trio repertoire as well as new works by Lera Auerbach, Fred Lerdahl and others. Kaplan’s previous recordings include violin concerti of Paganini, Wieniawski, Bartok, Dohnanyi, Nono, Lalo, Berg and Stravinsky with such esteemed ensembles as the London Symphony and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Read more.

NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts series features Jason Vieaux & Yolanda Kondonassis, guitar & harp. The duo gives lushly detailed performances of gorgeous new works in a twenty-minute live presentation behind Bob Boylen’s desk. Hear Jason & Yolanda create a compelling unity from their two instruments on NPR Music’s iconic and eclectic Tiny Desk series.

Azica Records has released Together, the new CD from Yolanda Kondonassis & Jason Vieaux. The gorgeous CD is comprised entirely of original works for harp and guitar including two world premieres of works commissioned by Jason and Yolanda: Knock on Wood, by Keith Fitch, and Hypnotized, by Gary Schocker. Hear the interview and samples from WRCJ Detroit.