KUSC: Behind the Festival Uniting Classical and Electronic Music
The worlds of classical and electronic music come together this weekend in Little Tokyo. It’s all part of a concert and community arts festival hosted by the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Chamber Orchestra and dreamed up by YMF music director Yuga Cohler and composer Stefan Cwik. The event will combine the music of Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, and LA-based DJ and electronic musician Flying Lotus in a unique concert experience.
KUSC
Brian Lauritzen
The worlds of classical and electronic music come together this weekend in Little Tokyo. It’s all part of a concert and community arts festival hosted by the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Chamber Orchestra and dreamed up by YMF music director Yuga Cohler and composer Stefan Cwik. The event will combine the music of Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, and LA-based DJ and electronic musician Flying Lotus in a unique concert experience. Yuga Cohler tells me it’s an outgrowth of how young people consume music today.
Yuga Cohler: I grew up studying and playing classical music. But I also grew up with the internet: I had Napster when it came out and I’ve been exposed to a lot of different types of music just because it’s so available. My thought is that any art form sort of has to have both value and relevance to the current age. It’s important that people who consume the art are able to derive something of value from it. So for me, what that means in a classical music context is two things: first of all, I do believe that classical music has a lot to offer in terms of depth of emotion, complexity of structure, the subtleties involved with it, the amount of passion and commitment that it demands. I also believe that there’s a lot that all sorts of other types of music have to offer in those areas and also in terms of relevance, in terms of reflecting our current society’s thoughts and values. I think it provides a useful mirror into what our society is today. So, finding the intersection point between those two—of the values that classical music has to offer and the values that other types of music have to offer seems to me a very natural thing to do.
Read the full interview here.
Quarterfinalists Announced for the 2nd Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition
The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition (SISIVC) has announced the 36 quarterfinalists invited to participate in the live competition rounds in Shanghai beginning August 10, 2018. The candidates were chosen from a total of 174 applicants and hail from ten countries.
The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition (SISIVC) has announced the 36 quarterfinalists invited to participate in the live competition rounds in Shanghai beginning August 10, 2018. The candidates were chosen from a total of 174 applicants and hail from ten countries.
The chosen candidates will compete in three rounds over the course of three weeks for a grand prize of $100,000 – the largest monetary prize of any international music competition – with a second and third prize of $50,000 and $25,000, respectively. Additionally, a prize of $10,000 will be awarded for the best performance of the Chinese work – Qigang Chen’s La joie de la souffrance. Furthermore, in honor of Isaac Stern, $10,000 will be awarded as an Isaac Stern Prize to an individual – in any field and from any part of the world – who is deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of humanity through music.
The fifteen-member jury of the Competition comprises esteemed violinists and pedagogues including co-chair David Stern (son of Isaac Stern), Maxim Vengerov, Daniel Heifetz, and Vera Tsu Weiling.
The candidates are as follows:
Yurina Arai, Japan
Marie Bégin, Canada
Jiayi Chen, China
Yige Chen, China
Ellinor D’Melon, Jamaica
Hiu Sing Fan, Hong Kong, China
Mone Hattori, Japan
Shucong He, China
Valerie Kim, United States
Alina Kobialka, United States
Miyeon Lee, South Korea
William Lee, Taiwan, China
Quanshuai Li, China
Po-Yu Lin, Taiwan, China
Ruifeng Lin, China
Zhen Liu, China
Petr Lundstrem, Russia
Ashley Park, United States
Diana Pasko, Russia
Eva Rabchevska, Ukraine
Arsenis Selalmazidis, Greece
Dmitry Smirnov, Russia
Ji Won Song, South Korea
Olga Šroubková, Czech
Sophia Su, United States
Anna Tanaka, Japan
Yun Tang, China
Chang Yuan Ting, Canada
Diana Tishchenko, Ukraine
Chieri Tomii, Japan
Jacqueline Tso, United States
Jiazhi Wang, China
Runyin Zhang, China
Alex Zhou, United States
Jin Zhou, China
Nancy Zhou, United States
About the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition
Founded in 2015, Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition (SISIVC) is Shanghai’s first world-class violin competition. The Competition takes its name from Isaac Stern to commemorate the musical spirit of Maestro Stern by which a young generation of musicians can be inspired and motivated.
Along with a grand prize of $100,000 USD – the highest monetary award of any international music competition, a jury of renowned artists and a unique performance process, the Competition leverages the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra platform with extensive resources around the world – including close cooperation with famous orchestras, such as China Philharmonic Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The Competition also provides promising contestants with great opportunities including arranging concert tours, album recording and introductions to world-class music agencies, enabling prosperous careers and encouraging winners to embrace their artistic dreams.
For more information on #SISIVC2018, please visit: www.shcompetition.com. Please follow SISIVC on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat, Weibo and YouTube.
Playbill: Shanghai Quartet Performs in Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society's Winter Festival
Finckel is especially excited about the Shanghai Quartet, which performs in the final concert of the festival, the program originally played on March 26, 1827 (March 27). “The Shanghai really is as fine a string quartet as one can hear. I’m very gratified that they’re coming to do this,” he says. There’s another notable aspect of this particular program: Beethoven died the same day.
Playbill
Gail Wein
Finckel is especially excited about the Shanghai Quartet, which performs in the final concert of the festival, the program originally played on March 26, 1827 (March 27). “The Shanghai really is as fine a string quartet as one can hear. I’m very gratified that they’re coming to do this,” he says. There’s another notable aspect of this particular program: Beethoven died the same day.
The last piece on the program is Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2. “This was one of the works that Beethoven officially introduced himself to Vienna, his first published work,” says Finckel. “He decided to make a go of chamber music as his way to put his foot forward.”
Read more here.
The Pacer: Percussion Collective to Visit UTM
The Percussion Collective is made up of world-renowned musicians who have studied under the direction of Robert Van Sice at Yale University over the past decade and are now preforming and teaching all around the world.
The Pacer
On March 17 UTM will be hosting the Yale Percussion Collective directed by Robert Van Sice. Sice will also be giving a free percussion concert at 7:30 p.m. in the Fulton Theatre located in the Fine Arts building as well as a masterclass at 2:30 p.m. featuring Reich Drumming and Cage Story.
The group is made up of world-renowned musicians who have studied under the direction of Robert Van Sice at Yale University over the past decade and are now preforming and teaching all around the world.
Shane Jones, Assistant Professor of Percussion/Co-Director of Percussion Studies says, “The Percussion Collective [with] Robert Van Sice brings its star lineup of percussionists into the world with an energetic program featuring two masterpieces for six players. Steve Reich’s Sextet is a cornerstone of the repertoire, comprised of five continuous movements ranging from lush, to jarring, to groovy and everything in between.”
Read the full preview here.
ClassicsToday: Big Boxes - Gerard Schwarz Delivers the Goods on Naxos
This has got to be the most intelligent, comprehensive, and well-earned big box tribute to a living conductor yet assembled
ClassicsToday
David Hurwitz
This has got to be the most intelligent, comprehensive, and well-earned big box tribute to a living conductor yet assembled...
There’s too much music in this set for me to be able to describe it all. Suffice it to say that all of it is worth hearing, all of it is extremely well done, and all of it reveals Gerard Schwarz to be one of the most capable, smart, musicianly, and versatile artists before the public. He deserves the recognition, and Naxos has done him proud.
Read the full review here, available to ClassicsToday subscribers.
BBC Music Magazine: Yeethoven - Kanye Hear Us, Ludwig?
Beethoven and Kanye West are not two names you'd expect on the same concert bill, let alone spliced together. But conductor Yuga Cohler and his Young Musicians Foundation Debut Chamber Orchestra have had other ideas.
BBC Music Magazine
Beethoven and Kanye West are not two names you'd expect on the same concert bill, let alone spliced together. But conductor Yuga Cohler and his Young Musicians Foundation Debut Chamber Orchestra have had other ideas.
Read more in the February issue, available here.
Juilliard String Quartet gets new first violin
The Juilliard String Quartet has today announced that its first violinist since 2011, Joseph Lin, will step down in September 2018 and the Greek-born Juilliard graduate Areta Zhulla will be taking over.
The Strad
The Juilliard String Quartet has today announced that its first violinist since 2011, Joseph Lin, will step down in September 2018 and the Greek-born Juilliard graduate Areta Zhulla will be taking over.
Zhulla will join existing members Ronald Copes (second violin), Roger Tapping (viola) and Astrid Schween (cello), and will also be taking a full-time position on the Juilliard faculty.
Zhulla has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Asia. She was a member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center, artistic director of the Perlman-Genesis Violin Project at the Israel Conservatory, and has been on the chamber music faculties of Juilliard’s Pre-College Division and the Perlman Music Program, as well as being a teaching assistant to Itzhak Perlman in Juilliard’s College and Pre-College divisions.
Read the full article here.
International Piano: One to Watch - Yekwon Sunwoo
First prize-winner at last year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo has a wise head on him for one so young, building a busy international career with care and consideration. Stephen Wigler talks to a pianist who is devotes to learning even as he excels as a master of his instrument.
International Piano
Stephen Wigler
First prize-winner at last year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo has a wise head on him for one so young, building a busy international career with care and consideration. Stephen Wigler talks to a pianist who is devotes to learning even as he excels as a master of his instrument.
Read the full article in the March/April 2018 issue, available here.
The New York Times: Watch Ping-Pong Make Its New York Philharmonic Debut with Maestro Long Yu
Michael Landers and Ariel Hsing, table tennis champions in their early 20s, are featured as the Ping-Pong-playing soloists in Andy Akiho’s energetic concerto “Ricochet,” which will have its American premiere on Tuesday as part of the Philharmonic’s Lunar New Year gala. And yes, this is the first time a Ping-Pong table has been onstage at David Geffen Hall.
The New York Times
Joshua Barone
Michael Landers and Ariel Hsing, table tennis champions in their early 20s, are featured as the Ping-Pong-playing soloists in Andy Akiho’s energetic concerto “Ricochet,” which will have its American premiere on Tuesday as part of the Philharmonic’s Lunar New Year gala. And yes, this is the first time a Ping-Pong table has been onstage at David Geffen Hall.
The concept attracted early fans, including the Chinese conductor Long Yu, who led the piece’s premiere in Shanghai in 2015 and will conduct the Philharmonic concert on Tuesday.
“I’m interested in any crazy, creative idea beyond normal imagination,” he said. “Classical music needs more like this.”
Read more here.
CNN Money Switzerland: Chinese Star Maestro Long Yu - A Life for Classical Music
Maestro Long Yu appears on CNN speaking about his musical influences.
CNN Money Switzerland
He grew up during China‘s Cultural Revolution, when Western classical music was banned. Today, Long Yu is the artistic director and chief conductor of the China Philharmonic and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and one of China‘s most successful and celebrated conductors. The New York Times even called him "the most powerful figure in China’s classical music scene". He's also a cultural ambassador promoting cooperation between East and West, and was the first who ever conducted a Chinese orchestra at the Vatican. Yu talks to Martina Fuchs about his life, the growing audiences of classical music in a rapidly changing China, and his role as a cultural diplomat.
Watch the interview here.