Special Contributor: Anne Stevens & Cameron Waterman III Fund in the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation

Windscape’s Children’s Concert Underwriter: Anne Stevens & Cameron Waterman III Fund in the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation

Program

J.S. Bach

The Art of the Fugue for String Quartet & Wind Quintet, BWV 1080, arr. Samuel Baron c. 1960

[Orion]”... the musicians managed to seduce the rustling, coughing, whispering audience into utterly silent awe.”
New York Times

[Windscape] “For many, the names of the players who make up the woodwind quintet Windscape will have a certain aura – that of the fabulously skilled, much sought-after, and usually footloose New York musician who can tackle anything – repeat, anything.”
Boston Globe

Artist Biographies

Daniel Phillips, Violin
Todd Phillips, Violin
Steven Tenenbom, Viola
Timothy Eddy, Cello

The Orion String Quartet is one of the most sought-after ensembles in the United States. Since its inception, the Quartet has been consistently praised for the fresh perspective and individuality it brings to performances, offering diverse programs that juxtapose classic works of the standard quartet literature with masterworks by living composers. They remain on the cutting edge of programming with their wide-ranging commissions from composers Chick Corea, David Del Tredici, Alexander Goehr, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Marc Neikrug, Lowell Libermann, Peter Lieberson and Wynton Marsalis, and enjoy a creative partnership with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. With over fifty performances a year, the members of the Orion String Quartet – violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips (brothers who share the first violin chair equally), violist Steven Tenenbom and cellist Timothy Eddy – have worked closely with such legendary figures as Pablo Casals, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin, András Schiff, members of TASHI and the Beaux Arts Trio, as well as the Budapest, Végh, Galimir and Guarneri String Quartets. The Orion serves as Quartet-in-Residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and New York’s Mannes College of Music and is the Resident Quartet at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. “A noisy standing ovation is nothing rare, and these players certainly deserved theirs after the stellar performance. But silence can be an even better indicator of a powerful performance. After the Adagio in the Mendelssohn, the musicians managed to seduce the rustling, coughing, whispering audience into utterly silent awe.” The New York Times, 2007

During the 2009-2010 season, the Orion embarks on a United States tour with pianist Peter Serkin, which includes concerts at Duke Performances, Yale School of Music, McCarter Theatre, University of Chicago Presents, Stanford Lively Arts, Chamber Music Napa Valley, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Hamilton College of the Performing Arts, Eastman School of Music, and New York City’s 92nd Street Y. The quartet presents two concerts at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, one of which welcomes features David Krakauer in the New York premiere of David Del Tredici’s Magyar Madness for clarinet and string quartet, a CMS co-commission. Other notable collaborations this season include performances at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society with violist Ida Kavafian and cellist Peter Wiley, and at Da Camera of Houston, again with Ms. Kavafian, along with pianist Sarah Rothenberg. Additional concerts are slated for Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society and Haverford College, among others. The Orion began the 2009-2010 season with visits to the Lofoten Music Festival in Norway, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. This season the Orion releases The Early Quartets on KOCH, marking the final installment of the ensemble’s complete Beethoven quartet series.
In 2008-2009, the Orion Quartet performed the complete Beethoven quartets in London as part of the inaugural season of King’s Place, the first performance hall to be built in London in almost 30 years. Also of interest was a tour of the Far East, with performances in Taiwan and Korea. Additionally, the Quartet was honored to participate in the inaugural re-opening of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in February 2009.

The ensemble has achieved an enviable reputation for its interpretations of Beethoven’s string quartets, and has recently recorded the complete quartets for KOCH International Classics. The Middle and Late volumes were released over the past two years and received high praise from critics. The Strad called the Orion’s performances “powerfully persuasive,” BBC Music Magazine called the first volume “richly rewarding,” and Strings called the late quartets, “thoughtful, deeply felt, meticulously executed performances.” Outside of the recording studio, the ensemble first performed the entire cycle for the innovative Beethoven 2000 series of free concerts at Alice Tully Hall in May 2000, with additional outreach activities in four boroughs of New York City. Presented in conjunction with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Beethoven 2000 supported six New York community arts organizations in honor of their contribution to children’s education. The Quartet has subsequently performed the complete Beethoven cycle in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Deerfield (MA), Indiana University in Bloomington, Santa Fe, and San Juan, PR. A critically lauded, five-concert performance cycle in Pittsburgh took place over a period of only three days. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said, “The ensemble’s performances had the seemingly infinite attention to detail – from the voicing of a chord to the nuance of a phrase – that results from their long and loving exploration of Beethoven’s quartets.”

The Quartet’s recordings reflect its musical diversity. In addition to the final volume of the Beethoven quartets, the Orion released Leon Kirchner’s complete string quartets on Albany Records. Past recordings include Wynton Marsalis’s first classical composition for strings, At the Octoroon Balls (String Quartet No. 1) for Sony Classical, Dvo?ák’s “American” String Quartet and Piano Quintet with Peter Serkin and Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Guarneri String Quartet, both on Arabesque.

The members of the Quartet maintain a strong dedication to the next generation of musical artists and serve on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard School, Queens College, Rutgers University and the Bard College Conservatory of Music where they teach private lessons, give chamber music classes and offer intensive coaching programs for young professional string quartets. They have also served as faculty members of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall and the Summer Institute for Advanced Quartet Studies in Aspen. Since 1993, the Quartet has maintained a summer residency at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival which included a three-year project of commissioned quartets by Danish composer Per Nørgård, John Harbison and Chick Corea. The Quartet also premiered Marc Neikrug’s piano quintet as part of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival which was subsequently recorded with Corea’s The Adventures of Hippocrates and John Harbison’s Quartet No. 4 for KOCH in 2006.

Heard on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, the Orion has also appeared on PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts, and three times on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America. In October 2004, they participated in the first WNYC Radio collaboration with BBC World Service’s popular syndicated program, Music Party. This special performance heard in New York and over 40 countries worldwide features works by Haydn, Beethoven, Ravel, Bartók, Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis. Additionally, the Quartet was photographed with Drew Barrymore by Annie Leibovitz for the April 2005 issue of Vogue.

The Orion String Quartet gained immediate attention in the classical music world when its founding members, each with distinguished solo and chamber music careers, officially formed the ensemble in 1987. The Quartet chose its name from the Orion constellation as a metaphor for the unique personality each musician brings to the group in its collective pursuit of the highest musical ideals.

WINDSCAPE

Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Randall Ellis, oboe
Alan R. Kay, clarinet
Frank Morelli, bassoon
David Jolley, horn

Created in 1994 by five eminent woodwind soloists, WINDSCAPE has won a unique place for itself as a vibrant, ever-evolving group of musical individualists, an “unquintet”, which has delighted audiences throughout the US, Canada, and Asia. WINDSCAPE’s innovative programs and accompanying presentations are created to take listeners on a musical and historical world tour—evoking through music and engaging commentary vivid cultural landscapes of distant times and places.

As Artists-in-Residence at the Manhattan School of Music, the members of WINDSCAPE are master teachers, imparting not only the craft of instrumental virtuosity, but also presenting a distinctive concert series hailed for its creative energy and musical curiosity. The series offers the perfect setting for the ensemble to devise new, sometimes startling programs and to experiment with new arrangements and repertoire combinations. Popular programs which have emerged from this process in recent seasons include “The Roaring 20’s”, “The Fabulous 50’s”, “The Young Titan: Beethoven Comes to Vienna”, and “East Meets West: The Music of Japan and the Impressionists”.

Recent seasons included performances at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, in San Francisco, Portland, OR, and at Wolftrap in Vienna, VA. Windscape has also performed at the Caramoor Festival, in Madison, WI, Charlottesville, VA and Reno, NV, in addition to other cities around the US. Recent highlights include their Kennedy Center debut, tapings for NPR’s “Performance Today” and Minnesota Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday”, a performance “Live From Glenn Gould Studio” for CBC-Toronto, and a tour of New Zealand.

Windscape has given concerts and master classes in Boston, New York, San Francisco, College Park, Des Moines, Omaha, and Winter Park, FL. Esteemed chamber musicians with whom they have collaborated include Eugene Istomin, Andre Michel Schub, John Kimura Parker, Jeremy Denk, and Anne-Marie McDermott.

WINDSCAPE records for Arabesque Records. The ensemble’s debut recording, “The Roaring 20’s”, features music by Louis Armstrong, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and George Gershwin. WINDSCAPE’s most recent CD release features works of Maurice Ravel.

---

Return to 2010/11 Series Index