4th Season, 2019-20

Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 3pm

Del Sol String Quartet 

Benjamin Kreith & Samuel Weiser, violins

Charlton Lee, viola

Kathryn Bates, cello

Works for string quartet by Terry Riley, Huang Ruo, Elena Kats-Chernin, Michael Harrison

Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Del Sol String Quartet shares living music with an ever-growing community of adventurous listeners.

Del Sol was founded in 1992 at Banff Centre for the Arts.The Quartet has performed on prominent concert series nationwide, including the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, Other Minds Festival, and Santa Fe Opera; and internationally in Switzerland, France, China, South Korea, Canada and Mexico. The Quartet conducts an active educational program in the San Francisco Bay Area, in addition to regular residencies at universities and music schools across the country.

The New York Times praised Del Sol’s recent recording, Scrapyard Exotica:  “See if your foot can stay still once you put on this funky disc of rhythmically infectious…music played by the adventurous Del Sol String Quartet.” Released in 2017, Del Sol’s ninth album “Dark Queen Mantra” features world premiere recordings of music by Terry Riley and Stefano Scodanibbio.  SF Chronicle says, “The evening began with ravishing performances of two of Riley’s string quartets from the 1980s, “G Song” and “The Wheel and Mythic Birds Waltz,” both of which the quartet — performing, astonishingly, from memory — imbued with a full helping of sinuous charm.”

delsolquartet.com

Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 3pm

Jarring Sounds

Adam Cockerham, theorbo

Danielle Sampson, mezzo-soprano

Songs for lute and voice from the 17th century by Henry Purcell  and others

This duo, dedicated to the intimate blend of plucked strings and voice, debuted at the Berkeley Early Music Festival in 2016.

Adam Cockerham specializes in theorbo, lute and baroque guitar, performing with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, the Mostly Mozart Festival, Tenet Vocal Artists, Four Nations Ensemble, Artek, New York Baroque Incorporated, New Vintage Baroque, the Academy of Sacred Drama and J415. Adam also persues an interest in 17th-century Italian opera, serving as assistant conductor for dell’Arte Opera Ensemble’s production of Cavalli’s La Calisto and working with companies such as Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik and Ars Minerva. Adam is presently a doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School.

Danielle Sampson, a nationally recognized interpreter of early music, has been praised for her “youthful and light timbre” (Classical Voice North America) and “a compassionate calm and a warm, glowing tone” (Boston Globe). She appeared in the Boston Early Music Festival’s productions of Monterverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea, and performs with such groups as Early Music Vancouver, San Francisco’s Black Box Baroque, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, American Bach Soloists, Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Danielle currently resides in Seattle.

Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 3pm

Ensemble 1828

Nicole Oswald, violin

Alison Lee, piano

Isaac Pastor-Chermak, cello 

This exciting young ensemble, dedicated to the challenging and fascinating repertoire for piano trio, debuted in 2019. Their first season featured the works of Franz Schubert, whose last and most productive year was 1828 - hence their name. The trio was praised for “rhetorical uniqueness….throbbing energy….unmistakable freshness…a thoroughly engaging journey” in a June Rehearsal Studio blog post.

Violinist Nicole Oswald plays with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and is finishing her master of music degree at the Carnegie Mellon School of Music. Pianist Alison Lee was a featured soloist with the Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra after winning their 2019 National Young Artists Competition. She has also appeared with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Alison holds a doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota, and did her undergraduate degree at Oberlin Conservatory.Isaac Pastor-Chermak is Principal Cellist of Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony; Associate Principal Cellist of the Stockton Symphony and of Opera San Jose, as well as playing with numerous other orchestras in the Bat Area and beyond. He spends his summers at the Eisenstadt Classical Music Festival in Austria, where he is Assistant Principal Cellist, and the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, as Principal Cellist.

program:

• Astor Piazzolla, Spring from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

• Leonard Bernstein, Piano Trio

• Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op.97 ("Archduke")

CANCELLED due to COVID

Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 3pm.

Ben Opie, oboe and Peter De Jager, piano

Sonatas for oboe and piano by Camille Saint-Saëns, Francis Poulenc, Edmund Rubbra,  York Bowen

Ben Opie and Peter de Jager are two of Australia’s most beloved and adventurous performers. They have performed together at leading concert halls and festivals around Australia including the Melbourne Recital Centre, Ukaria, Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and many more. But the duo’s exploits together also include journeys to rural Australia, performances in abandoned gold mines, and ‘alley-way’ performances in Melbourne. Ben and Peter are dedicated to finding new ways to connect with listeners.

In 2015 their debut album, French Sonatas, was released to great critical acclaim, named ‘album of the week’ by several radio broadcasters. Their second album, featuring repertoire from English composers, will be released in 2020. 

Ben Opie is the Artistic Director of the Peninsula Summer Music Festival in Victoria, Australia. Peter de Jager was the winner of the inaugural Australian International Chopin Competition, and received 2nd prize in the 2016 Australian National Piano Award.  His performance of Chris Dench's 100-minute Piano Sonata’ was named Performance of the Year' at the 2017 Australian Music Centre's Art Music Awards.