THE COLORADO QUARTET AND DA CAPO CHAMBER PLAYERS WILL PERFORM COMPOSITIONS BY BARD UNDERGRADUATES May 15th concert also features Luis Garcia-Renart and Joan Tower

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-The Bard Music Program presents a special performance of new compositions by Bard students performed by the Colorado Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, Luis Garcia-Renart, and Joan Tower, as well as Bard students on Tuesday, May 15. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in Olin Hall and is free and open to the public.

"This annual concert is a unique chance for the Bard students to have their compositions performed by world-renowned performers-The Colorado Quartet, who are artists-in-residence at Bard, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and Luis Garcia-Renart," according to Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music at Bard, who will also be performing some works. She continues, "As this annual program has become increasingly popular for both the Bard and Hudson Valley communities, this year we decided to move the concert from the smaller Blum Hall to Olin in order to accommodate the growing audience."

Some of the students whose work will be performed are Christopher Canney, Matthew Casuccio, Ting Ting Cheng, Ryan Doxtader, Tucker Fuller, Ehren Hansen, Troy Herion, Amy Hondo, Chandler Litterst, Andrew Schulze, Sergei Tcherepnin, and Dylaina Young.

For further information, call the Music Program at 845-758-7250.

The Colorado Quartet has been at the forefront of the international music scene since winning both the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 1983; they enjoy a reputation for combining musical integrity, impassioned playing, and lyrical finesse. Currently based in the New York City area, the Colorado Quartet appears regularly in major halls around the globe including tours of more than 20 countries and regular appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The quartet plays often in New York, appearing at the Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as the Great Performers at Lincoln Center series and at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. They have also been featured on radio and television worldwide. Their critically acclaimed recordings include a CD of contemporary compositions on Albany Records and, on Parnassus Records, a CD of Brahms's quartets. The ensemble's interpretation of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" and the Mendelssohn F-minor Quartet received the 2001 CMA/WQXR Record Award. A recording titled Chamber Music of Henry Cowell, on the Mode label, appeared on the 1999 Top Five list in Gramophone Magazine.

The Quartet is equally at home performing standard and newer works and has premiered pieces by such leading composers as Ezra Laderman and Karel Husa, as well as composers of the younger generation. They have received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation.

The members of the Colorado Quartet-violinists Julie Rosenfeld and Deborah Redding, violist Marka Gustavsson, and cellist Diane Chaplin-are known as inspiring and well-respected teachers and have held residencies at the Oberlin College Conservatory, Philadelphia's New School of Music, and the Banff Centre in Canada. They have also given master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, Indiana University, and Cleveland Institute of Music. They are the founders and artistic directors of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute, a two-week festival held each June in Falmouth, Massachusetts, that features young quartets from around the world.

The Da Capo Chamber Players were awarded the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1973. The group is widely acclaimed for its virtuosity, stimulating programs, and openness to a wide spectrum of styles in new music. Its dedication to working with composers is matched by commitment to rehearsing each piece as a living, moving, breathing entity, rather than a fixed blueprint. The Da Capo Chamber Players are flutist Patricia Spencer (associate professor of the arts at Bard), clarinetist Jo-Ann Sternberg, violinist Eva Gruesser, cellist André Emelianoff, and pianist Lisa Moore.

Luis Garcia-Renart is a professor of music at Bard College and also serves on the faculties of Vassar College, the Piatigorsky seminars at the University of Southern California, and Yale University's summer programs in chamber music. He was born in Barcelona and studied at the Music School of the National University and the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico. From 1951 until 1956, his cello studies were supervised by Pablo Casals. He also studied directly with Casals in France and in Puerto Rico until 1960, when he won a scholarship to study at the Conservatory of Moscow with Rostropovich and Khachaturian. Garcia-Renart attended the conservatories of Bern and Basel, Switzerland, and Trossingen, Germany, where he was a pupil of Sándor Veress and Sándor Vegh. Prizes awarded Garcia-Renart include the Casals International Contests in Paris in 1956, Xalpa in 1959, and Israel in 1961. He also received the Harriet Cohen Cello Prize in London in 1959. He is the artistic director of the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra. In addition to conducting, Garcia-Renart performs frequently as a soloist in recitals and chamber concerts nationally and abroad.

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music, is one of the most highly regarded composers in the United States today. In 1998, the year of her 60th birthday, more than 20 concerts were presented in her honor throughout the country. Tower received the Delaware Symphony's Alfred I. duPont Award for Distinguished American Composers and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1990 was the recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Tower, whose orchestral works have been commissioned and performed around the world, is currently composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City. Recent commissions include works for percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony Orchestra, pianist John Browning, the Emerson and Tokyo Quartets, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and violist Paul Neubauer. Tower recently conducted the Anchorage Symphony and University of Southern California orchestras. She was active as pianist with the 1973 Naumburg Award-winning ensemble the Da Capo Chamber Players, which she founded. She was composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and is currently coartistic director of the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and composer-in-residence at the Institute at Deer Valley in Utah. Her most recent recording is Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman (Koch International Classics), with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, conductor.

(5.01.01)

This event was last updated on 05-02-2001

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