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SETH MORRIS, FLUTE Seth Morris serves as Principal Flute with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and previously held the same position with the Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet Orchestras. He also was a member of the New World Symphony and West Michigan Symphony and has performed with ensembles across the United States including the Houston, Detroit, and Pacific Symphony Orchestras, American Ballet Theatre, Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and the Dallas Winds. Seth was a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, as well as a member of the American Institute of Musical Studies Festival Orchestra in Graz, Austria, and performed at the Bay View Music Festival. A laureate of multiple competitions, Seth won first prize in the National Flute Association's Young Artist Competition, the James Pappoutsakis Memorial Competition, the Myrna W. Brown Artist Competition, and both the Kentucky Flute Festival's Young Artist and Collegiate Artist Competitions. In 2015, Seth won the bronze medal at the Ima Hogg Competition where he gave the Houston Symphony premiere of the Carl Nielsen Flute Concerto; other concerto performances include the Boston Chamber Symphony, the Bay View Chamber Orchestra, and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. In addition to performing, Seth has taught at numerous universities and festivals around the country including serving as guest professor at the University of Michigan and University of Texas at Arlington. He has been a Guest Artist or featured clinician for the Texas Music Festival, Texas Flute Festival, Houston Flute Fest, San Diego Flute Club, Long Beach Flute Institute, Floot Fire Houston, and Kentucky Flute Festival, and has served on the faculty for Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA and the Houston Youth Symphony. His articles have been published in The Flutist Quarterly and The Floot Fire Book: Advanced. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Seth went on to earn a Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Music in Music Education at the University of Kentucky, a Master of Music at the New England Conservatory, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Flute Performance degree at the University of Michigan. His teachers include Paula Robison, Amy Porter, Fenwick Smith, and Gordon Cole. Seth is a William S. Haynes Artist.

MIHAI MARICA, CELLO Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a First Prize winner of the “Dr. Luis Sigall” International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile and the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer, and is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. Last season, he joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Mr. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music where he was awarded master’s and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin ARCHANGELO CORELLI (1653-1713) Sonata in D minor, op. 5, no. 12, “La folia” April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin Historians often take Arcangelo Corelli as their point of departure when discussing sonatas because their influence and success was unprecedented. He published five sets each containing twelve sonatas: four collections of trio sonatas between 1681 and 1694 and one collection of violin sonatas, op. 5, in 1700. He had gained enormous recognition as a teacher, but his more profound influence came from the dissemination of his works, which coincided with the amazing boom in printing around 1700. His Opus 5 violin sonatas went through some forty-two editions by about 1815! Corelli’s models inspired new works based on them by such illustrious composers as J. S. Bach and Vivaldi as well as slavish imitations—with or without crediting him. The innovations that so impressed Corelli’s contemporaries may now sound predictable, but it is their very originality that so attracted his followers into using them so frequently as to become the norm. These include nimble violin writing (despite rarely exceeding the third position in range), ascending and descending passages based on first inversion chords or other harmonic patterns that gave tonality a “modern” sound, and chains of suspensions involving “leap-frogging” sequences in the trio sonatas. Though Corelli established the four-movement norm for a Baroque sonata—slow-fast-slow-fast—many of his sonatas contain three or five movements, and two of his most famous, the Ciaccona and this afternoon’s “La folia,” consist of one movement only. The folia (sometimes follia ), which originated as a dance or dance song in Portugal, had already become popular by the time it was first referred to in writing in the fifteenth century. Spanish and Italian examples appeared in the early seventeenth century—many for guitar—but it wasn’t until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that the harmonic pattern and melody became relatively standardized through Lully and his French colleagues, as well as in Spain, England, and Italy. Like the earlier folia, this popular type was as the basis for songs, dances, and variation sets. Corelli’s set of “Folia” variations from 1700, which he published in a place of honor as the last sonata in his Opus 5, contributed greatly to that popularity. Vivaldi paid overt homage to Corelli when he closed his twelve trio sonatas, op. 1, with a one-movement set of “Follia” variations, as did Rachmaninoff much later when he composed his Variations on a Theme by Corelli, op. 42. Following his simple presentation of the theme, Corelli offers twenty-three variations of widely varied figuration and character. Most follow the sixteen-measure pattern exactly, though several are halved to eight measures and the final dazzling variation is extended slightly for closure. The violin and continuo—in this case guitar—share the spotlight equally, trading off within variations or from one variation to the next. Anne Akiko Meyers commissioned Andy Poxon to make the present arrangement of the Sonata because she wanted a new take on the age-old melody. A brilliant former student of Jason Vieaux and a gifted composer in his own right, Poxon is also a respected solo performer, band member, and teacher who embraces multiple styles from classical to blues and rock. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 3, 2016: Ying Fang, soprano; Sean Lee, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Jesus soll mein erstes Wort from Cantata 171 for soprano, violin and continuo April 3, 2016: Ying Fang, soprano; Sean Lee, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord When Bach took the position of Kantor of the Thomasschule and civic music director in Leipzig in 1723, he set out to compose five cycles of cantatas, roughly sixty per year, for use in the city’s main churches. The two hundred or so that survive represent a remarkable achievement in inventiveness and quality. Bach typically chose his texts from a variety of poets, but in the summer of 1728 Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander), his chief librettist between 1725 and 1742, provided him with a full year’s series of texts. This, the fourth of Bach’s cycles, is often called the “lost” cycle, because only nine survive. Of these, Cantata 171, Gott, wie dein Name, written for New Year’s Day and the Feast of the Circumcision, was most likely first performed on January 1, 1729. The Gospel text for New Year’s Day (Luke 2:21) refers to the naming of Jesus when he was circumcised, so the poet’s expansion of the idea into a multimovement cantata revolves around the importance of his name for the Christian world. In the midst of a large-scale work for chorus, oboes, trumpets, and strings, Bach writes a beautiful, intimate soprano aria with lovely violin obbligato, in which the protagonist says that just as Jesus’ name shall be the first word uttered in the new year, so shall it be the last in the hour of death. Always a judicious recycler, Bach reworked this aria from “Angenehmer Zephyrus” (Pleasant zephyr) from his secular Cantata 205 (1725), where the elaborate violin phrases depicted a gentle zephyr wind. Bach changed the basically though-composed form, albeit with instrumental ritornellos, into a ternary form by keeping the first and middle sections as well as the closing ritornello basically unchanged, but making the third section an artfully modified return of the opening section. © Jane Vial Jaffe Text and Translation Jesus soll mein erstes Wort In dem neuen Jahre heißen. Fort und fort Lacht sein Nam in meinem Munde, Und in meiner letzten Stunde Ist Jesus auch mein letztes Wort. —Picander Jesus should be my first word spoken in the new year. On and on his name laughs in my mouth, and in my last hours Jesus is also my last word. Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio ANTON ARENSKY (1861-1906) Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio Arensky was influenced by some of the greatest figures of Russian music: Rimsky-Korsakov, his composition teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and Tchaikovsky, his colleague at the Moscow Conservatory, where Arensky taught upon his graduation. In turn he instructed other great Russians in Moscow, notably Rachmaninoff, Skryabin, and Glière. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1895, Arensky become director of the Imperial Chapel on Balakirev’s recommendation. From 1901 on, receiving a pension from the chapel, Arensky devoted himself to composing and to appearances as a conductor and pianist. Having been addicted to alcohol and gambling for some time, his life became more and more disorganized, according to Rimsky-Korsakov. He spent his final years in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Finland, where he died in 1906. Of his three operas, the first, Son na Volge (A dream on the Volga) achieved the greatest success, but his reputation generally rests on a few shorter works, such as the present D minor Trio, and short piano pieces at which he excelled. Arensky composed his D minor Piano Trio in 1894 and dedicated it to Karl Davïdov (1838–1889), who had been principal cellist of the St. Petersburg opera and later director of the conservatory there. The work might be classified in the “chestnut” category because of its familiarity, but this is a familiarity that is sensed even by one who is hearing the piece for the first time. The work evokes other composers in certain places—the trio of the Scherzo, for example, brings Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto to mind and the opening theme of the Finale suggests the “Polonaise” in the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Third Orchestral Suite. Despite these influences, Arensky’s Trio could not have withstood the test of time without its own distinct identity. The first movement, in the tradition of late German Romanticism, unfolds in a grand sonata form, with the striking feature of an adagio statement of the opening theme to close the movement. The imaginative Scherzo, placed second, frames a trio that shows the Russian-Slavic-German fondness for an idealized kind of waltz. The slow Elegia, its somber mood enhanced by muted strings, is the movement that particularly pays tribute to the memory of Davïdov. It follows ternary form with a varied return of the “A” section. The Finale, a real tour de force, immediately dispels the mood with its exuberant polonaise-like main theme. The coda unifies the entire work, recalling the theme of the middle section of the Elegia and the first theme of the first movement in its adagio setting before the fast-paced conclusion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ZUKERMAN TRIO Pinchas Zukerman, violin Amanda Forsyth, cello Shai Wosner, piano A prodigious talent recognized worldwide for his artistry, Pinchas Zukerman has been an inspiration to young musicians throughout his adult life. In a continuing effort to motivate future generations of musicians through education and outreach, the renowned artist teamed up in 2002 with four protégés to form a string quintet called the Zukerman ChamberPlayers. Despite limited availability during the season, the ensemble amassed an impressive international touring schedule with close to two hundred concerts and four discs on the CBC, Altara and Sony labels. Beginning in 2011 Zukerman, along with cellist Amanda Forsyth and pianist Angela Cheng, began offering trio repertoire as an alternative to the quintet works with the ChamberPlayers. In addition to piano trios by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Dvorak and Shostakovich, programs often include duo performances with various couplings including the Kodaly Duo. Invitations from major Festivals and venues led to the official launch of the Zukerman Trio in 2013. Since then, the ensemble has traveled around the globe to appear in Japan, China, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, South Africa, Istanbul, Russia, and throughout the United States. The Trio regularly performs at the Ravinia Festival, and has appeared at major festivals including the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Verbier, and Bravo! Vail. Beginning with the 2020 season, the trio has included pianist Shai Wosner alongside Zukerman and Forsyth. With a celebrated career encompassing five decades, Pinchas Zukerman reigns as one of today’s most sought after and versatile musicians – violin and viola soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. He is renowned as a virtuoso, admired for the expressive lyricism of his playing, singular beauty of tone, and impeccable musicianship, which can be heard throughout his discography of over 100 albums for which he gained two Grammy® awards and 21 nominations. Born in Tel Aviv, Pinchas Zukerman came to America in 1962, where he studied at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian. He has been awarded a Medal of Arts, the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence, and was appointed as the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative’s first instrumentalist mentor in the music discipline. A devoted and innovative pedagogue, Mr. Zukerman chairs the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, where he has pioneered the use of distance-learning technology in the arts. He currently serves as Conductor Emeritus of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, as well as Artistic Director of its Young Artist Program. Canadian Juno Award-winning Amanda Forsyth is considered one of North America’s most dynamic cellists. Her intense richness of tone, remarkable technique and exceptional musicality combine to enthrall audiences and critics alike. From 1999-2015, Amanda Forsyth was principal cellist of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, where she appeared regularly as soloist and in chamber ensembles. She is recognized as an eminent recitalist, soloist and chamber musician appearing with leading orchestras in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. As a recording artist she appears on the Fanfare, Marquis, Pro Arte and CBC labels. Pianist Shai Wosner has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity, and creative insight. His performances of a broad range of repertoire—from Beethoven and Schubert to Ligeti and the music of today—reflect a degree of virtuosity and intellectual curiosity that has made him a favorite among audiences and critics, who note his “keen musical mind and deep musical soul” (NPR’s All Things Considered ). Mr. Wosner is a recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He is on the faculty at the Longy School of Music in Boston. “The cleanly articulate performance was elevated by an uncommon passion, both in the tender Adagio and in the finale that shifts abruptly from sadness to joy.” – The Chicago Tribune “With Pinchas Zukerman’s matchless musicianship and charisma at its core, this is a trio made in heaven. Amanda Forsyth brings passion and formidable technique as a cellist, and pianist Angela Cheng is the dream accompanist who lives every note.” – Limelight

January 31, 2010 – Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Yoon Kwon, violin; Abraham Appleman, viola; Joel Noyes, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Gregory Zuber, xylophone; Gareth Icenogle, narrator CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921) The Carnival of the Animals January 31, 2010 – Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Yoon Kwon, violin; Abraham Appleman, viola; Joel Noyes, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Gregory Zuber, xylophone; Gareth Icenogle, narrator Camille Saint-Saëns started life as one of history’s most celebrated child prodigies. His extraordinary level of talent, temperament, and musical knowledge often invited positive comparisons with Felix Mendelssohn. Like Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns composed fluently from his earliest years and became renowned while still a boy as one of the greatest pianists and organists of his day. As adults, both composers became known for their total musicianship, conservative tastes, classically refined sensibilities, and flawless compositional technique. And, like Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns became a highly influential teacher and a well-educated polymath, whose extramusical interests ranged freely across such diverse fields as mathematics, botany, archaeology, poetry, literature, and astrology. Unlike Mendelssohn, however, Camille Saint-Saëns lived long enough to see his musical oeuvre become obsolete. His 86 years spanned two completely different musical eras, beginning during the time of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, and ending during the period of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Gershwin. The older he became, the more stubbornly he clung to the music of the past. He grew impatient with forward-looking composers such as Jules Massenet, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Vincent D’Indy, and his increasing prickliness often drew critical fire. Fortunately, his innate brilliance and sense of fun always attracted a devoted circle of friends and admirers. In 1886, while vacationing in a small Austrian village, he decided to amuse his friends by composing the delightful zoölogical fantasy The Carnival of the Animals. Although the piece was a hit with his colleagues, Saint-Saëns became concerned that it would be considered too frivolous by the public at large and might even harm his reputation as a “serious” composer. With the exception of the touching cello solo, The Swan, he allowed only private performances of The Carnival of the Animals during his lifetime. After his death in 1921, the piece was finally published, and it quickly became one of Saint-Saëns’ most popular works. Inside jokes abound, as Saint-Saëns often pokes fun at other composers by inserting sly, incongruous musical references into the various animals’ portraits. The Tortoise, for instance, takes the frenetic, high kicking Can-Can from Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld and transforms it into a laggardly dirge. Similarly, The Elephant lumbers through ponderous versions of Hector Berlioz’s delicate Dance of the Sylphs and Mendelssohn’s gossamer Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Nor is Saint-Saëns above poking fun at himself. In The Fossils he parodies his own maniacal waltz Danse Macabre, turning the original xylophone solo into a rackety, duple-meter skeleton dance. In the end, no one escapes entirely unscathed, least of all his critics, who are portrayed as asses in “People with Long Ears,” and whom we hear braying away toward the end of the whirlwind Finale. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

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ANNE AKIKO MEYERS, VIOLIN Violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers is one of the most in-demand violinists in the world. Regularly performing as guest soloist with the world’s top orchestras, she presents ground-breaking recitals and is a best-selling recording artist with 35 albums. Meyers is known for her passionate performances, purity of sound, deeply poetic interpretations, innovative programming and commitment to commissioning significant new works from living composers. Anne’s recent recording of Rautavaara’s Fantasia was the only classical instrumental work to be selected on NPR’s 100 best songs of 2017. Fantasia, Anne’s 35th recording, includes works for violin and orchestra by Rautavaara, Ravel and the Szymanowski Concerto No.1, recorded with Kristjan Järvi and the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2018, she will premiere a new violin concerto by Adam Schoenberg (which she commissioned) with the Phoenix and San Diego Symphony Orchestras. Anne will also return to Leipzig, Germany to premiere Rautavaara’s Fantasia with the MDR Leipzig Orchestra and has been invited by legendary composer, Arvo Pärt, to perform at the opening celebration of the new Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia. Earlier this year, Anne performed the world premiere of Fantasia by Einojuhani Rautavaara, a work written for her and considered to be the composer’s final masterpiece, with the Kansas City Symphony, conducted by Michael Stern. She performed recitals in Florida, New York, Virginia, Washington D.C., and returned to the Nashville Symphony to perform the Bernstein Serenade with Giancarlo Guerrero. In May, she headlined the Kanazawa Music Festival performing the Beethoven Concerto with cadenzas by Mason Bates with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, toured New Zealand with the Mason Bates Violin Concerto and New Zealand Symphony, and returned to Krakow and Warsaw, Poland to perform the Szymanowski Concerto and Jakub Ciupinski’s newly orchestrated Wreck of the Umbria. Other recent projects include a nationwide PBS broadcast special and a Naxos DVD featuring the world premiere of Samuel Jones’ Violin Concerto with the All-Star Orchestra led by Gerard Schwarz, the French premiere of Mason Bates Violin Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre de Lyon, and two new recordings-Naïve Classics celebrating Arvo Pärt’s 80th birthday and a box set of Anne’s RCA Red Seal discography on Sony Classics. Anne’s prior releases the Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album, debuted at #1 on the classical Billboard charts, as did Air: The Bach Album, and the Vivaldi was the recording debut of the Ex-Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri del Gesu violin, dated 1741, which was awarded to Meyers for her lifetime use. A champion of living composers, Meyers collaborates closely with many of today’s leading composers. She has expanded the violin repertoire by commissioning and premiering works by composers such as Mason Bates, Jakub Ciupinski, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Akira Miyoshi, Arvo Pärt, Gene Pritsker, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Somei Satoh, Adam Schoenberg and Joseph Schwantner. Anne has collaborated with a diverse array of artists outside of traditional classical, including jazz icons Chris Botti and Wynton Marsalis, avant-garde musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, electronic music pioneer Isao Tomita, pop-era act Il Divo and singer Michael Bolton. She performed the National Anthem in front of 42,000 fans at Safeco Field in Seattle, appeared twice on The Tonight Show and was featured in a segment on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann that became that show’s the third most popular story of the year. Anne has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS’ “The Good Wife”, NPR’s Morning Edition with Linda Wertheimer, All Things Considered with Robert Siegel and recently curated “Living American” on Sirius XM Radio’s Symphony Hall with host David Srebnik. She was on the popular Nick Jr. show Take Me To Your Mother with Andrea Rosen, and best-selling novelist J. Courtney Sullivan consulted with Anne for The Engagements and based one of the main characters loosely on her career. She also collaborated with children’s book author and illustrator Kristine Papillon on Crumpet the Trumpet where the character Violetta the violinist is played by Anne. Anne Akiko Meyers was born in San Diego and grew up in Southern California. She studied with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, Josef Gingold at Indiana University, and Felix Galimir, Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. She received the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Distinguished Alumna Award from the Colburn School of Music and is on the advisory council of the American Youth Symphony Orchestra.

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