1996–1997 Festival Series
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Sharon Isbin, guitar
Friday, October 4, 1996
Sponsored in part through the generous support of GTE
Presented as part of the New Music & Art Festival
Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility, Sharon Isbin is considered one of the finest guitarists in the world. First-prize winner of the Toronto Competition, the first guitarist ever to win the Munich Competition, and a winner of the Queen Sofia Competition in Madrid, Isbin has given sold-out solo performances for many prestigious series including: the Great Performers Series in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Great American Orchestra Series in Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Celebrity Series in Symphony Hall, the Ambassador Auditorium Series in Pasadena, and the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. She has served as artistic director and featured performer of Carnegie Hall’s Guitarstream International Festival, the Ordway Music Theatre’s Guitarfest in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the nationally acclaimed radio series “Guitarjam.”
Quartetto Gelato
Sunday, November 17, 1996
With their breathtaking virtuosity, irrepressible energy and wit, Quartetto Gelato has won the hearts of audiences across their native Canada and the United States since the group burst upon the music scene four years ago. Their West Coast debut at the Oregon Bach Festival, in June 1995, elicited a rave typical of virtually every quartet Gelato perforamnce date: “part Peter Schickele, part Mozart in Brazil…but all musician…They play together without scores, and with the conversational ease of old friends. Very funny old friends…There’s a reason we call this ‘playing’ a concert, and that sense of play was never clearer than in Beall Hall on Monday night.” Since then Quartetto Gelato has played to sold-out halls from coast to coast including Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Sante Fe and San Francisco, where they were immediately re-engaged for the following two seasons.
Marilyn Horne, mezzo-soprano
Wednesday, December 4, 1996
One of America’s most beloved singers also continues to be one of the busiest. The 1995–96 season included recitals and orchestra concerts in New York City, Cleveland, Charleston, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. She also sang duet recitals with soprano Benita Valente in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. In January 1996, Horne returned to the Metropolitan Opera for six performances as Dame Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff. In July 1996, she was featured in orchestral performances and a recital at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. She has sung on the world’s most famous opera stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Barcelona’s Teatro Liceu, London’s Covent Garden, Venice’s La Fenice, Paris Opera, Chatelet and Champs-Elysees. She has performed well over 1,300 recitals.
Eddie Daniels, clarinet
Saturday, February 1, 1997
The Louise F. Rees Memorial Concert
Eddie Daniels is the rarest of rare musicians who is not only equally at home in both jazz and classical music but excels at both with breathtaking virtuosity. He has won the Downbeat Reader’s Poll for the last five years in recognitition of his many fine jazz receordings and at the same time has played the works of Mozart, Weber, Copland and others with symphony orchestras around the world. Daniels’ personal appearances reflect the diversity of his albums. He has performed at jazz festivals and clubs with his quartet and the music from Breakthrough with the Boston Pops for Public Television. In the classical field he has performed with orchestras including the London Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, Detroit Symphony and the Polish Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Vermeer, Orlando, Suk and Composers String Quartets in concerts throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
Lou Conte, artistic director
Sunday, February 9, 1997
Widely recognized as Chicago’s premiere dance company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago maintains a distinctive repertoire which includes works by world-class choreographers Twyla Tharp, Daniel Ezralow, Bob Fosse, James Kudelka, Kevin O’Day, Margo Sappington and Mauricio Wainrot. A living archive for significant choreographic works and an innovative force in dance ,the company combines classical ballet technique, theatrical jazz and contemporary dance to create an unparalleled artistic style.
Gil Shaham, violin, and
Orli Shaham, piano
Wednesday, March 5, 1997
The Lois M. Nitschke Memorial Concert
Violinist Gil Shaham is internationally recognized by noted critics and leaders of the world’s most celebrated symphonic ensembles as a veteran virtuoso of the instrument. Since his 1981 debut with the Jerusalem Symphony conducted by the late Alexander Schneider, he has been acclaimed consistently for his performances with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and hte San Francisco, Montreal and Detroit symphonies. Recitals and orchestral engagements have taken him to music captals worldwide, and his summer festival appearances have included the Hollywood Bowl, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Aspen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
Orli Shaham has been recognized as an exceptionally gifted artist since the age of five, when she was awarded her first scholarship for musical study from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. At that time, she was a student of Luisa Yoffe at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, and two of her performances were soon broadcast on Israeli Radio. At age seven, she came to New York with her family and began to study with Nancy Stessin. One year later, she was accepted at the Juilliard School as a scholarship student of Herbert Stessin. In 1995 Orli Shaham’s talent was further acknowledged by the Gilmore Festival, which selected her via an anonymous, noncempetitive process as one of its 1995 Young Artist Award winners. The award included a recital and a concert engagmenet at the 1996 Gilmore Festival, as well as a substantial scholarship for further education and career development.