SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2017 AT 3 PM LOS ANGELES GUITAR QUARTET BUY TICKETS LOS ANGELES GUITAR QUARTET “The world’s hottest classical ensemble or its tightest pop band? However it helps you to think about the LAGQ, keep the emphasis on superlatives for its unrivaled joy, technical élan and questing spirits.” — Los Angeles Times “Ensemble guitar playing doesn’t doesn’t come any better.” — The Kansas City Star FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS On November 19 , the Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet will offer a varied program of classical favorites, tracing a broad dramatic arc and emotional journey. For three decades, the LAGQ has set the standard for expression and virtuosity among guitar ensembles. Their acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past while their interpretations from the contemporary realm continually break new ground. The highlight of the program will be Road to the Sun , written for the LAGQ by guitar legend Pat Metheny. This six-movement work is a journey through the musical worlds of Metheny, including jazz, groove, ballad, rock and expressionist elements. Not to be missed! PROGRAM Music from the Time of Cervantes (arr. W. Kanengiser) Anonymous (17th century) Jácaras Antonio Martín y Coll El Villano Antonio Martín y Coll Diferéncias Sobre Las Folias Juan Arañéz Chacona (“La Vida Bona”) Juan de Encina Oy Comamos Program Notes Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, BWV 1051 Program Notes Three Brazilian Pieces Hermeto Pascoal Da Sábado pra Dominguihnos Hermeto Pascoal A Lenda do Caboclo Baden Powell Samba Novo Program Notes Opals Phillip Houghton Opals Program Notes Pat Metheny Pat Metheny Road to the Sun Program Notes Watch the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet play a Tarantella: Watch the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet play music from the time of Cervantes:

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SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2023 AT 4 PM ALL BRAHMS BUY TICKETS BORIS BERMAN, PIANO “The most remarkable aspect of Mr. Berman’s playing was its poetical refinement and intense musicality. His technical resources appear to be virtually limitless.” — The New York Times PAUL WATKINS, CELLO “Britain’s finest cellist, Watkins’ account [of the Elgar concerto] seems the best to have appeared on disc for years. It has intensity, presence and warmth.” — The Guardian ETTORE CAUSA, VIOLA “One can hear his prodigious sonority right from the very first seconds…with his deep and warm voice, sometimes dark and flamboyant but always profound and golden” — Diapason FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Three of the most celebrated musicians of our time, pianist Boris Berman, violist Ettore Causa, and cellist Paul Watkins, will collaborate in an afternoon of sumptuous music by Johannes Brahms. PROGRAM Johannes Brahms Sonata in E minor for cello and piano, Op. 38 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Sonata in E-flat for viola and piano, Op. 120, No. 2 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Three Intermezzos for piano, Op. 117 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Trio in A minor for viola, cello, and piano, Op. 114 Program Notes Watch pianist Boris Berman perform Brahms’s Intermezzo Op. 117, No. 1: Watch cellist Paul Watkins perform Brahms’s Cello Sonata in E Minor: Hear violist Ettore Cause perform Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 1:

October 15, 2023: Lysander Piano Trio Amanda Maier (1853-1894) Piano Trio in E-flat October 15, 2023: Lysander Piano Trio During the all-too-short span of her life, Amanda Maier excelled in two male-dominated fields—as a solo violinist and as a composer. Although little is known about her childhood, clearly her musical talent was recognized early and she enrolled at age sixteen in the Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien in Stockholm. She became the first woman to earn the elite Musikdirektör diploma, receiving the highest possible grades in harmony, counterpoint, history and aesthetics, violin, organ, and piano. Her organ skills had merited her a place in the Academy’s even more exclusive Artistklass. Maier continued her education in Leipzig, studying violin with Engelbert Röntgen, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and composition with conductor/composer Carl Reinecke and professor Ernst Friedrich Richter. She became a regular of the Röntgen household, participating in their many musical gatherings and eventually marrying Engelbert’s son Julius, who had become the love of her life. She also socialized and made music with many other renowned Leipzig musicians, including Clara Schumann and Edvard Grieg. Maier’s earliest surviving compositions, including the Piano Trio, date from this Leipzig period. The later 1870s also saw her performing and touring in an ensemble as a violinist, highlighted by a performance for King Oscar II in Malmö in 1876. The following year Maier returned home to Sweden, but after her father died, she returned to Leipzig where her life felt centered. The couple had to spend two years visiting between Leipzig and Amsterdam after Julius accepted a piano teaching position in the Dutch capital while she maintained her performing schedule in Leipzig and on tours in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. After their marriage in 1880 Maier settled in Amsterdam, and one year later their son Julius II was born, who was to become a violinist. The following year she suffered the first of three debilitating miscarriages, but in 1886 their second son Engelbert was born, who later became a cellist. Besides caring for her sons—whose early music education she oversaw—she continued to perform, though less frequently and rarely in public. Just after Engelbert was born, Maier fell ill with the lung disease that would plague her for the rest of her life. She also suffered from painful recurring eye trouble that often required her to wear dark glasses or a patch. Maier continued her musical activities during good spells between attacks, but they naturally lessened. When the devastated Röntgen wrote of her death to their good friends the Griegs, Edvard wrote back saying, “She was one of my favorites!” In the years after Maier’s death, concerts featured her works in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands, but she and her music gently faded from public awareness. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in her music, with recordings and publications of works such as her Piano Quartet and Violin Concerto, which she had performed with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in one of the pinnacles of her career. Going back to late April 1874, the diaries of both Julius and Amanda had made copious mentions of the Piano Trio, showing great pride and that they consulted on compositional details. They gave the first of many private performances on May 20, 1874, with cellist Julius Klengel (cousin of Julius Röntgen) at the Röntgen’s Leipzig home. Amanda wrote home to one of her favorite professors at the Stockholm Academy about another performance on June 7, saying: Everything has gone as well as I could have wished, and I believe I have made significant progress. . . . I performed . . . Mendelssohn’s concerto, and, among other pieces, a Trio for piano, violin and cello that I have recently composed. My Trio has been well received and sounds wonderful; they say here in Leipzig that my music has a ‘national’ flavor—a Nordic one, that is—which seems to be all the rage here. Jumping forward more than 140 years, Maier’s great-grandson Reinier Thadiens, who was living in Southern France, saw a list of her “lost works” and found the manuscript of her Piano Trio in a pile of music he had inherited. He immediately notified Swedish cellist and scholar Klas Gagge, who published it in 2018 through the Swedish Musical Heritage project and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The world premiere—that is, the public premiere—took place on April 20, 2018, performed in Umeå, Sweden, by violinist Cecilia Zillacus, cellist Kati Raitinen, and pianist Bengt Forsberg. In the first movement, Maier immediately contrasts her forthright opening idea with a quiet phrase in Classic-era style. She proceeds not like Mozart or Haydn, however, but aligns with Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms—those Romantic composers with a classical bent. The expressive second theme is related to the first but has more harmonic instability. Her development section, which journeys through distant harmonies on a scheme similar to Schubert’s E-flat Trio, D. 929, reaches several dramatic peaks before the climax that launches the recapitulation. Taking some Romantic “liberties,” she waits until the coda to bring back her second theme in the main key. The dancelike outer sections of Maier’s Scherzo consist of miniature self-contained sonata forms, much like Brahms’s Scherzo in his Horn Trio of 1865. The songful contrasting central trio section is particularly lovely. Led off by a lyrical cello melody, the slow movement is particularly poignant, with considerable opportunities for contrapuntal intertwining between the violin and cello. The broad three-part form includes a shortened and varied return of the opening and coda. The finale blossoms quickly from a gentle but sprightly opening to surging phrases brimming with Romantic vigor. Maier was clearly aware of some Romantic composers’ cyclic procedures, shown in her recalling of the slow movement. Throughout Maier has delighted in modulating excursions, so it comes as no surprise that she introduces a false reprise before returning “home” for a rousing finish. Return to Parlance Program Notes

INON BARNATAN, PIANO Pianist Inon Barnatan has rapidly gained international recognition for engaging and communicative performances that pair insightful interpretation with impeccable technique. Described by London’sEvening Standard as “a true poet of the keyboard”, Mr. Barnatan performs a diverse range of repertoire, encompassing both classical and contemporary composers, with the variety of the pieces he performs reflected in his being equally valued as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Since moving to the United States in 2006, Mr. Barnatan has made his orchestral debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Houston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, and has performed in New York at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum and Alice Tully Hall. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, an honor reflecting the strong impression he has made on the American music scene in such a short period of time. In addition to his American appearances, Mr. Barnatan has appeared as a soloist with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of New Europe, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields as a conductor and soloist. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Barnatan recently completed three seasons as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program. In 2009 he curated a festival of Schubert’s late solo piano, songs and chamber music works for the Society, the first musician other than the Society’s Artistic Directors to be invited to program concerts. ‘The Schubert Project’ program has also been performed at the Concertgebouw, the Festival de México, and at the Library of Congress. Other chamber music performances include the complete Beethoven piano and violin sonatas at the Concertgebouw, the Bergen International Festival in Norway, the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, the Delft and the Verbier Festivals and the Lyon Musicades. His rigorous U.S. festival schedule has included a broad range of concerts at the Spoleto Festival USA, the Aspen and Bridgehampton Music Festivals, and the Santa Fe and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals. He has collaborated with musicians such as Liza Ferschtman, Miriam Fried, Martin Fröst, Gary Hoffman, Janine Jansen, the Jerusalem String Quartet, Ralph Kirshbaum, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer and Alisa Weilerstein. In 2008 he received the Andrew Wolf Memorial Award in Rockport, awarded every two years to an exceptional chamber music pianist. Mr. Barnatan’s 2011-12 season appearances include a solo performance as part of the Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, chamber music appearances in New York and a U.S. tour with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and West Coast recitals including opening the Music@Menlo Winter Series and performances at the Portland Piano International. He will make orchestral appearances with the Billings, Chattanooga, Eugene, Jacksonville and Oregon Symphony Orchestras and the Nordwestdeutschen Philharmonie with repertoire spanning a wide range of composers, including Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. In February 2012 he will embark on an eight-city European tour with cellist Alisa Weilerstein, preceded by concerto and chamber performances in Israel, and he will also undertake a three-week concerto and recital tour of South Africa in November. In 2012, Mr. Barnatan will release his second solo recording, Darkness Visible featuring wide-ranging but thematically-related works: Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, Thomas Adés’s Darknesse Visible, Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, Ronald Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy and Ravel’s La Valse. Intrigued by the fact that all of these works were inspired by other works of art (Ravel’s Gaspard is based on three poems by Aloysius Bertrand; Darknesse Visible is based on a John Dowland song; Debussy was inspired by a Verlaine poem; Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy is based on the Benjamin Britten opera; and La Valse is inspired by a story by Edgar Allen Poe), Mr. Barnatan examines how different characteristics of darkness are represented in music. These works will be performed by Mr. Barnatan at his solo recitals this season. Passionate about contemporary music, Mr. Barnatan regularly commissions and performs music by living composers, including works by Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, George Crumb, Avner Dorman, Kaija Saariaho and Judith Weir among others. Last season, he participated in Carnegie Hall’s “Making Music: James MacMillan” series, performing the composer’s Piano Sonata and chamber piece Raising Sparks. Mr. Barnatan’s debut CD of Schubert piano works was released on Bridge Records in 2006. London’s Evening Standard wrote: “The young, Israeli born pianist Inon Barnatan is a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative… This is musicianship of the highest caliber.” Gramophone recommended the recording in its November 2006 award issue, calling Barnatan “a born Schubertian” and praising the CD’s “sensitivity, poise and focus.” His second CD of works for piano and violin by Beethoven and Schubert with violinist Liza Ferschtman was described by All Music Guide as “a magical listening experience.” Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three after his parents discovered he had perfect pitch, and he made his orchestral debut at eleven. His studies connect him to some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied with Professor Victor Derevianko, who himself studied with the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, and in 1997 he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Maria Curcio – who was a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel – and with Christopher Elton. Leon Fleisher has also been an influential teacher and mentor and in 2004 he invited Mr. Barnatan to study and perform Schubert sonatas as part of a Carnegie Hall workshop, an experience that has had a lasting resonance for Mr. Barnatan. In 2006 Mr. Barnatan moved to New York City, where he currently resides in a converted warehouse in Harlem. For more information about Mr. Barnatan visit www.inonbarnatan.com or visit his page on Facebook.

MICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN, PIANO Winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Brown has recently performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the National Philharmonic, NFM Leopoldinum, and the North Carolina, Wichita, Grand Rapids, New Haven, and Albany Symphonies; and recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center. Brown is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing frequently at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. This season he opens the Society’s season with Bach and Mendelssohn concertos, and makes European recital debuts at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Mallorca. He was selected by András Schiff to perform on an international tour making solo debuts in Berlin, Milan, Florence, Zurich’s Tonhalle and New York’s 92nd Street Y. He regularly performs recitals with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, Music in the Vineyards, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise. As a composer, he recently toured his own Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) around the US and Poland with several orchestras. He was the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Residency Award recipient. He has received commissions from the Gilmore Piano Festival, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra; the New Haven and Maryland Symphony Orchestras; Concert Artists Guild, Shriver Hall; Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe; pianists Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich; and a consortium of gardens.
 A prolific recording artist, his latest album Noctuelles, featuring Ravel’s Miroirs and newly discovered movements by Medtner was called “a glowing presentation” by BBC Music Magazine. He can be heard as soloist with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot in the music of Messiaen, and as soloist with the Brandenburg State Symphony in music by Samuel Adler. Other albums include Beethoven’s Eroica Variations; all-George Perle; and collaborative albums each with pianist Jerome Lowenthal, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and violinist Elena Urioste. He is now embarking on a multi-year project to record the complete piano music by Felix Mendelssohn including world premiere recordings of music by one of Mendelssohn’s muses, Delphine von Schauroth. Brown was First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, a winner of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (formerly CMS Two), a recipient of the Juilliard Petschek Award, and is a Steinway Artist. He earned dual bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. Additional mentors have included András Schiff and Richard Goode. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. He will not reveal which is his favorite, so as not to incite jealousy. In his spare time, he learns Italian, carves stumps into coffee tables, and plays a lot of Mendelssohn.

May 19, 2019: Friedrich Heinrich Kern, glass harmonica WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Adagio in C, K. 617a for glass harmonica May 19, 2019: Friedrich Heinrich Kern, glass harmonica Please see the Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, for background on the glass armonica and Marianne Kirchgässner. Mozart most likely composed the brief, lovely Adagio in C major for glass armonica virtuoso Marianne Kirchgässner in late 1791, about the same time he composed the K. 617 quintet for her. In only twenty-eight measures (fifty-six, counting repeats), Mozart perfectly shows off the instrument’s ethereal qualities. The piece unfolds in rounded binary form, that is, two sections, each repeated, the second of which opens with contrasting material followed by a return to the opening music. Mozart incorporates elegant little embellishments when this opening returns. As with K. 617, Friedrich Heinrich Kern plays the Adagio on the verrophone, a modern version of the glass armonica. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet PHILLIP HOUGHTON Opals November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Phillip Houghton (b. 1954) is one of the most recorded and influential Australian guitars composers. His work expresses a distinctly Australian aesthetic, reflecting the country’s vast landscapes and mystical “dreamtime” Aboriginal legends. He is famously a synesthete, wherein he sees very specific colors when he hears musical tones and timbres. “Opals” (1993, revised 2014) is a three-movement work for guitar quartet, and it attempts to capture the myriad glints and sparkles emanated by Australia’s opalescent national gemstone. In the score, there are detailed notes describing the particular colors and sheens that the music attempts to evoke. The composer provided the following notes for each movement: Rather than being pitch-black, the Black Opal is a stone of fantastic colour. Electric reds, purples, blues and greens of every shade predominate and refract and collide, in a fiery rainbow of splinters of brilliant light against a dark matrix. One could say that the opal is “made” from water, and, in the “Water Opal” movement, I imagined a kaleidoscope of colour in and against a transparent “water matrix”…colours floating, bleeding into each other. Against a white matrix the lighter colours of the White Opal are brilliant and translucent. Evident in this stone is what is called “pinfire” (glittering points of red and green) and the “rolling flash” (which describes the effect of layers of colour which, ripple abruptly and sparkle through the stone when the stone is moved). © William Kanengiser Return to Parlance Program Notes

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2018 AT 8 PM CANDLELIT HAYDN: THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF CHRIST BUY TICKETS CHIARA STRING QUARTET “The performances had shape and grace and ample room to breathe, but they never lacked mystery or intensity.” — The Boston Globe “The Chiara’s deeply personalized performance felt so vital” — The New York Times FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS “Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near the infinite.” — Thomas Carlyle Regardless of culture or style, music has always been experienced as a direct pathway to the spirit. In Haydn’s own description of his great wordless oratorio, he wrote, “Each movement is expressed by purely instrumental music in such a fashion that it produces the deepest impression in the soul of even the most uninstructed listener .” Haydn’s timeless masterpiece of spiritual music was conceived as a multimedia event combining special lighting, spoken words, and music. On Saturday , February 17 at at 8 PM the highly acclaimed Chiara String Quartet will recreate the candlelit ambience of the 1787 premiere in Cádiz’s Oratorio de la Santa Cueva. At 7:00 PM , Artistic Director Michael Parloff will introduce the work and its history in a half-hour multimedia preview. Haydn explained the origin of the work in the preface to the 1801 edition: “Some fifteen years ago I was requested by a canon of Cádiz to compose instrumental music on the Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross. It was customary at the Cathedral of Cádiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn darkness. At midday, the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and fell to his knees before the altar. The interval was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits.” — Franz Joseph Haydn PROGRAM Joseph Haydn The Seven Last Words of Christ for string quartet Program Notes Watch the Chiara String Quartet perform Ravel’s String Quartet (1st mvt) from memory: Watch Part 1 of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ (Zemlinsky Quartet):

ALEX BROWN, JAZZ PIANO Setting the tone for the second decade of the 21st century, pianist Alex Brown kicked it off with a feature article in the January 2010 issue of Keyboard magazine. His reputation continues expanding via his notable performances with everyone from innovative saxophonist Miguel Zenon to the legendary Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. A member of Paquito D’Rivera’s ensemble since 2007, he shared in that ensemble’s 2010 Grammy nomination for D’Rivera’s album, Jazz-Clazz. Of Brown’s 2010 debut CD with his own ensemble, Pianist, DownBeat magazine proclaimed it “A really fine record that leaves you wanting more.” This just a year after his 2009 graduation with a Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory where he studied with Danilo Perez and Charlie Banacos, among others. Due to his diverse influences, classical, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean, and Brazilian styles all co-mingle—naturally and infectiously—in Brown’s music. Doubtlessly, this versatility contributed to his collecting an array of student and young composer awards from ASCAP, DownBeat magazine, and BMI, propelling him towards a professional career. Now in Alex Brown’s rear-view mirror are appearances at top jazz venues and festivals, including: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, Birdland, Blue Note in New York (and Tokyo), Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., the Telluride Jazz Celebration, and Israel’s Red Sea Jazz Festival.

SIR JAMES GALWAY, FLUTE The living legend of the flute, Sir James Galway is regarded as both the supreme interpreter of the classical flute repertoire and a consummate entertainer whose appeal crosses all musical boundaries. Sir James has made himself a modern musical master, whose virtuosity on the flute is equaled only by his limitless ambitions and vision. Through his extensive touring, over 30 million albums sold, and his frequent international television appearances, Sir James has endeared himself to millions worldwide and is a tireless promoter of the arts. Still sharing his love of performing, Sir James opened his 2014/15 season receiving the coveted Gramophone Classical Music Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the classical music industry, in a star-studded ceremony in London. His concert schedule opened with a tour through Asia, Canada, and the U.S., incorporating his educational work alongside his concert performances. A long-awaited South American tour will be preceded by a special Birthday Tribute Concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in aid of Music Education and Autism. A return to Europe saw Sir James performing a JS Bach tribute in London, closing the year with his annual New Year’s Eve concert in Switzerland. The New Year brought in more educational work and a tour of South Africa with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. The first South African Galway Flute Festival concluded with a spectacular Starlight Classics concert in Cape Town, incorporating flute students from the festival. Spring brought in a return to the U.S. with concerts in NY and LA to name a few, followed by a return to various performances throughout Europe. Sir James devoted most of the summer to his educational outreach programmes, including First Flute, his online Flute education community. In celebration of Sir James’ legacy to music, Sony Classics has honored the “Master of the Flute” with the release of a special box set containing 71 CDs—all his recordings for Sony/RCA (available at Amazon.com). Belfast born, Sir James studied in London and Paris before embarking on his orchestral career in such prestigious orchestras such as the Sadlers Wells and Royal Covent Garden Operas, The BBC, Royal Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, before taking up the coveted position of solo flautist with the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan. Since launching his successful career as a soloist in 1975, his busy touring schedule sees him performing with the world’s leading orchestras and most prestigious conductors. From Galway’s lips have come definitive treatments of classical repertoire and masterworks by Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart. He also features contemporary music in his programs, including new flute works commissioned by him and for him by composers such as Adamo, Amram, Bolcom, Corigliano, Heath, Lieberman, and Maazel. Recent commissions include a concerto “Linen & Lace” by Bill Whelan (composer of Riverdance); concerto by Elaine Agnew “Dark Hedges” commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for the Royal Albert Hall Proms, and a Double Flute concerto for 2 flutes written especially for Sir James and Lady Galway by the Northern Irish Composer, Philip Hammond. Alongside his busy performing schedule he makes time to share his wisdom and experience with the young through the 10-day “Galway Flute Festival” he holds each year with his wife, Lady Jeanne Galway, in Switzerland and the USA. Through these, and the numerous other classes they hold worldwide throughout the year, they are able to have a hands-on mentoring of the students they meet ( www.galwayflutefestival.com ). Launched in December 2013, is the ground breaking “First Flute. ” Sir James’ online Educational Network is geared for students, teachers, and music lovers, allowing them to have first-hand access to Sir James’ invaluable expertise ( www.firstflute.com ). Sir James continues commissioning new works for the flute, publishing articles, flute studies, and books. To celebrate his legacy and commitment to flute players all over the world, he has recently collaborated with Nagahara Flutes of Boston who have created a special “James Galway Nagahara flute series”; as part of their 125th Anniversary, William S. Haynes have also produced a James Galway Q Series edition. A discography of over 70 CDs with BMG Sony Classics and Deutsche Grammophon ranging from the great classics such as Mozart and Bach, his performing on the sound track of Lord of the Rings (Return of the King), and his recording of “O’Reilly Street” with the Cuban timba group, Tiempo Libre, reflects his mastery of musical diversity. Sir James has played for such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, President Clinton, President George W. Bush, President George H.W. Bush, President Mary McAleese, President Michael D. Higgins, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, Prince Charles, HRH The Princess Royal, The Empress of Japan, The Queen of Norway, Queen Sofia of Spain, Princess Diana, TRH The Earl and Countess of Wessex, TRH The Duke and Duchess of Kent, President Shimon Peres and most recently, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and shared the stage with an amazing array of entertainers including Stevie Wonder, Henry Mancini, John Denver, Elton John, The Chieftains, Ray Charles, Joni Mitchell, Jessye Norman, Cleo Laine, and Andrea Bocelli. He performed with Pink Floyd in their memorable concert at the Berlin Wall, was part of the Nobel Peace concert in Norway and performed at the G Seven summit hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace. He also devotes much of his free time supporting charitable organizations such as SOS, FARA, Future Talent, Youth Music (UK), The Caron Keating Foundation, Lorin Maazel’s Châteauxville Foundation, Shimon Peres Peace Center educational project and UNICEF, with which he holds the title of special representative. He is also Ambassador to the European Brain Council. Among the many honors and awards for his musical achievements are: the Gramophone 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award; the Grammy President’s Merit Award; Classic Brits Lifetime Achievement Award; The Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame; The National Concert Hall Dublin Lifetime Achievement Award, and numerous gold and platinum CDs. In December 2009, Sir James was awarded the honor of being made the first Artist Laureate of the Ulster Orchestra. He has been honored twice by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with The OBE in 1979 and again in 2001 with a Knighthood for his services to music. Sir James lives with his wife and family in Switzerland and currently plays on the 20K “Galway” Nagahara Flute, especially commissioned for him.