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2026-2027 ARTIST ROSTER BENJAMIN APPL, BARITONE BENJAMIN BOWMAN, VIOLIN ALBERT CANO SMIT, PIANO ADAM COCKERHAM, THEORBO, BAROQUE GUITAR EVAN EPIFANO, BASSOON KATHERINE FONG, VIOLIN BILLY R. HUNTER, JR., TRUMPET CHELSEA KNOX, FLUTE TOMMY MESA, CELLO JOEL NOYES, CELLO ANNE SCHARER, FRENCH HORN WILLIAM SHORT, BASSOON SYLVIA DANBURG VOLPE, VIOLIN CLAY ZELLER-TOWNSON, BAROQUE BASSOON ZUKERMAN TRIO JAMES BAILLIEU, PIANO RUPERT BOYD, GUITAR STELLA CHEN, VIOLIN LILLIAN COPELAND, OBOE EMI FERGUSON, BAROQUE FLUTE BRAD GEMEINHARDT, FRENCH HORN COLEMAN ITZKOFF, BAROQUE CELLO KARA LAMOURE, BASSOON MILAN MILISAVLJEVIĆ, VIOLA WEN QIAN, VIOLIN DOV SCHEINDLIN, VIOLA JOHN UPTON, OBOE SARAH CROCKER VONSATTEL, VIOLIN KEVIN ZHU, VIOLIN DOUG BALLIETT, DOUBLE BASS MICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN, PIANO BRANNON CHO, CELLO KARI DOCTER, CELLO ELLIOTT FIGG, HARPSICHORD, ORGAN RICHARD GOODE, PIANO PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN MATTHEW LIPMAN, VIOLA PAUL HOLMES MORTON, THEORBO, BAROQUE GUITAR, BANJO ANTON RIST, CLARINET QIANWEN SHEN, VIOLIN VIANO QUARTET NANCY WU, ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER ITAMAR ZORMAN, VIOLIN

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January 18, 2026: Benjamin Beilman, violin; Jonathan Swenson, cello; Orion Weiss, piano JENÖ HUBAY (1858-1937) Carmen Fantasie based on themes from the opera of George Bizet for violin and piano January 18, 2026: Benjamin Beilman, violin; Jonathan Swenson, cello; Orion Weiss, piano Hungarian violinist and composer Jenő Hubay studied with his father and then with the great Joseph Joachim before traveling to Paris, where he became a close friend of Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps. Hubay taught at the Brussels Conservatory, Budapest Conservatory, and Budapest Academy of Music, and continued to tour almost annually. He and many of his pupils, including Eugene Ormandy, Zoltan Székely, and Joseph Szigeti helped to shape European violin playing. Seventeen-year-old Hubay was in the audience when Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen had its first performance in Paris on March 3, 1875, and after the performance he apparently began writing his Carmen fantasie brillante from memory. He featured his new work, completed in 1877, to a receptive audience when he made his Paris debut in 1878. He dedicated it to Vieuxtemps, whose own virtuosity he aptly captured. Bizet’s memorable Carmen themes have attracted many other arrangers, and the fantasies for violin by Sarasate and Waxman have become the most famous. Hubay’s work, however, might be called the most “fantastic” of these displays since it presents Bizet’s themes as motives and touchstones for his dazzling display rather than telling a story in chronological order. Hubay begins with the ominous fate motive and includes Micaela’s Act III aria, “A tu parle a mon mère”; Carmen’s ultra-famous Habanera, Escamillo’s Toreador Song, “Avôtre tost”—not included in the other fantasies; and the March of the Toreadors; as well as a remarkable cadenza that also touches on the Danse bohème. Unlike the opera, Hubay’s Carmen fantasie brillante concludes triumphantly. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 15, 2015 – Jeremy Denk, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin CHARLES IVES (1874-1954) Violin Sonata 1, S. 60 and Violin Sonata No. 4, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” S. 63 November 15, 2015 – Jeremy Denk, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin In his four violin sonatas, as in much of his music, Ives drew on scraps of hymns, popular songs, band tunes, patriotic songs, and ballads of nineteenth-century America, familiar from growing up in Danbury, Connecticut. These he combined with his own original blend of traditional and nontraditional harmonies, “wrong-note” dissonances, clusters, and very free counterpoint. The sonatas are groupings of many individual violin and piano movements that Ives worked on from c.1906 to 1919. Definite similarities exist among the violin sonatas. All are conceived in a three-movement form and all end with a large-scale coda based on a hymn tune, played by the violin in altered form. The First Sonata , which Ives assembled around 1914 or 1917 using some materials from as early as 1906, shows an intriguing unification by key scheme and motives that neither Second nor Fourth Sonata demonstrates; the Third again uses cyclic procedures. Not only does Ives preview the key of the next movement’s opening motive in both the first and second movements, but he also emphasizes two main keys across movements. Further, he brings back the first movement’s opening at the end of the third movement, and he plays on the melodic similarities between some of his borrowed tunes, such as “Shining Shore” in the first movement and “Watchman” in the third. Other remarkable features of the First Sonata are its types of cumulative settings—unusual even for Ives—in its first and third movement. Cumulative is the apt term, coined by scholar J. Peter Burkholder in his 1983 doctoral dissertation, referring to the manner in which Ives introduces motives that he elaborates and combines until he presents the final “accumulated” setting toward the conclusion. Here in the First Sonata Ives bases his first movement primarily on the hymn “Shining Shore,” which has a contrasting middle section. He not only lets its main theme accumulate through the movement, but similarly treats a countermelody made from the hymn’s contrasting melody. Further, he begins with an introduction that returns at the end, encapsulating the cumulative setting. The slow movement, like much of Ives’s Second Sonata, draws on what is commonly referred to as his “Pre-First” Violin Sonata, which he may have begun as early as c. 1901–02 and worked on at various times between 1908 and 1913. Here, as in that slow movement, he freely varies “The Old Oaken Bucket” in its outer sections and bits of the Civil War tune “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” in its livelier middle section. The loud violin passage at the end previews the main theme of the third movement. In the third movement’s cumulative setting—even more ingenious than in the first—Ives starts to treat fragments from the tune “Work Song” and interrupts this “development” by beginning a different cumulative setting as a middle section (on the tune “Watchman”). He then resumes the initial setting and takes it to its full-blown conclusion—thus creating a unique three-part form. Ives jotted down the following colorful description of the First Sonata on his score: “This sonata is in part a general impression, of kind of reflection and remembrance of the peoples’ outdoor gatherings in which men got up and said what they thought, regardless of the consequences—of holiday celebrations and camp meetings in the [18]80s and 90s—suggesting some of the songs, tunes, and hymns, together with some of the sounds of nature joining in from the mountains in some of the old Connecticut farm towns. “The first movement may, in a way, suggest something that nature and human nature would sing out to each other—sometimes. The second movement, a mood when ‘The Old Oaken Bucket’ and ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching’ would come over the hills, trying to relive the sadness of the old Civil War Days. And the third movement, the hymns and the actions at the farmers’ camp meeting inciting them to ‘work for the night is coming.’” * * * Ives assembled the material of the Fourth Sonata between 1911 and 1916. It was the only violin sonata for which he actually supervised publication: he had it privately lithographed in 1914–15 in a four-movement version. It was later republished in 1942, without the fourth movement and with certain revisions of the other movements. The omitted movement became the finale of the Second Sonata. The Fourth Sonata, Ives said, was “an attempt to write a sonata which Moss White, then about twelve years old, could play. The first movement kept to this idea fairly well, but the second got away from it, and the third got in between. Moss White couldn’t play the last two and neither could his teacher.” The 1942 publication provided Ives’s vivid commentary on the work, taken “mostly from remarks written on the back of some of the old music manuscripts,” which is quoted extensively here for his unique description of his own childhood experiences and how they influenced the work’s construction: “This sonata . . . called ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’ . . . is shorter than the other violin sonatas, and a few of its parts and suggested themes were used in organ and other earlier pieces. The subject matter is a kind of reflection, remembrance, expression, etc., of the children’s services at the outdoor summer camp meetings held around Danbury and in many of the farm towns in Connecticut, in the [18]70s, 80s, and 90s. . . . “The first movement (which was sometimes played last and the last first)—was suggested by an actual happening at one of these services. The children, especially the boys, liked to get up and join in the marching kind of hymns. And as these meetings were ‘outdoor,’ the ‘march’ sometimes became a real one. One day Lowell Mason’s ‘Work for the Night Is Coming’ got the boys going and keeping on between services. . . . In this movement . . . the postlude organ practice [Ives was an accomplished organist] . . . and the boys’ fast march got to going together, even joining in each others’ sounds, and the loudest singers and also those with the best voices, as is often the case, would sing most of the wrong notes. . . . The organ would be uncovering ‘covered 5ths’ breaking ‘good resolutions’ faster and faster and the boys’ march reaching almost a ‘Main Street Quick-step’ when Parson Hubbell would beat the ‘Gong’ on the oak tree for the next service to begin. Or if it is growing dark, the boys’ march would die away, as they marched down to their tents, the barn doors or over the ‘1770 Bridge’ between the Stone Pillars to the Station. “The second movement is quieter and more serious except when Deacon Stonemason Bell and Farmer John would get up and get the boys excited. But most of the movement moves around a rather quiet but old favorite hymn of the children [“Jesus Loves Me”], while mostly in the accompaniment is heard something trying to reflect the outdoor sounds of nature on those summer days—the west wind in the pines and oaks, the running brook—sometimes quite loudly—and maybe towards evening the distant voices of the farmers across the hill getting in their cows and sheep. “But as usual even in the quiet services, some of the deacon-enthusiasts would get up and sing, roar, pray, and shout but always fervently, seriously, reverently—perhaps not ‘artistically’—(perhaps the better for it). . . . At times these ‘confurorants’ would give the boys a chance to run out and throw stones down on the rocks in the brook! (Allegro conslugarocko!)—but this was only momentary and the quiet Children’s Hymn is sung again, perhaps some of the evening sounds are with it—and as this movement ends, sometimes a distant Amen is heard—as the mood of the Day calls for it. . . . “The third movement is more in the nature of the first. As the boys get marching again some of the old men would join in and march as fast (sometimes) as the boys and sing what they felt, regardless—and—thanks to Robert Lowry—‘Gather at the River.’” * * * In 1914 Ives invited accomplished German violinist Franz Milke to try out his First and Second Violin Sonatas, before he made revisions several years later. As the composer reported, “He didn’t even get through the first page. He was all bothered with the rhythms and the notes, and got mad. He said ‘This cannot be played.’ . . . He couldn’t get it even after I’d played it over for him several times.” This, coming after Ives had experienced a number of similar reactions to his music, prompted him to wonder, “Are my ears on wrong?” Though they still contain challenges, his violin sonatas have long been recognized by performers and listeners alike as among the most original and important pieces of violin music by an American composer. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano Bach composed seven manualiter toccatas, BWV 910–916, whose designation toccata refers to pieces that display a keyboardist’s dexterity and manualiter means “hands only” as opposed to those requiring pedals. Therefore these pieces were to be played on a keyboard instrument other than organ—such as the harpsichord in the eighteenth century. Bach never collected these toccatas under a single title, but they represent the culmination of the genre, begun in the sixteenth century and in Bach’s case likely influenced by early Baroque German models comprised of several distinct contrasting sections. Precise dating has proved impossible, but scholars typically designate a range of “?before 1708” to “before 1714,” which places them before or during his tenure at the court of Weimar. The date often given for the D major Toccata, BWV 912, is “before 1710,” with an early version possibly dating from c. 1707. That could have been during Bach’s year in Mühlhausen, June 1707–June 1708, or in Arnstadt where he was organist from 1703 to 1707. In June 1708 Bach took up the post of court organist at Weimar, where Duke Wilhelm Ernst is said to have greatly enjoyed Bach’s playing, so it is likely that Bach himself performed his toccatas for his employer. It is equally possible that they could have been played by one or more of his talented students, but there is no specific evidence that he intended them for teaching, as he did with other works (mentioned above in connection with the French Suites). The D major Toccata, like the other six, closes with a fugue and like all but one (G major, BWV 916) opens with an improvisatory prelude. This brief lively opening is striking for its similarity to the D major organ Prelude and Fugue, BWV 532, which may date from around the same time, especially as to its to ascending scales, which Bach extends locally and employs in dramatic descents in the extended Adagio transition to the first fugue. Prior to that, however, the prelude brings on a captivating Allegro that unfolds with rondo-like recurring passages. Modulatory excursions into the minor mode and similar journeys in the ensuing recitative-like Adagio prepare for the first fugue in F-sharp minor. This fugue offers a somewhat introspective exploration of that key with three expositions of the simultaneous subject/countersubject pair, seamlessly connected by two brief episodes. Following another dramatic declamatory transition, the final fugue gallops along in 6/16 meter much like a perpetual-motion gigue until its final arresting bars. For the C minor Toccata, BWV 911, scholars suggest a date of “before 1714,” which was the year Bach added the title and rank of Konzertmeister to the post of court organist that he had begun at Weimar in 1708. Thus its earliest performers were likely the same as for the D major Toccata above and the other manualiter toccatas, that is, Bach himself or possibly his sons or students. The C minor Toccata begins with an improvisatory, ornate-style introduction, followed by a relatively short Adagio, maintaining a lamenting mood. The main portion of the piece consists of a massive fugue, interrupted by a recitative-like passage, after which Bach introduces a second subject and launches into a double fugue (treatment of his two subjects in contrapuntal combination). A majestic adagio passage brings Bach’s mighty work to a close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2017 AT 3 PM Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano; Warren Jones, piano BUY TICKETS WARREN JONES, PIANO “His playing was a marvel, as always.” – San Francisco Chronicle ISABEL LEONARD, MEZZO-SOPRANO “Isabel Leonard sings with beguiling tenderness in moments of composure, but her voice throbs with penetrating intensity.’ – The New York Times FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS On April 23 , Parlance’s 10th-anniversary season will arrive at a celebratory conclusion with the return of the Met’s ravishing mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard , one of the most charismatic and fast-rising vocal stars of our time. Her sold-out Parlance debut in 2014-15 was one of the highlights of our past seasons. Isabel will be joined by the masterful collaborative pianist Warren Jones , a great favorite of our audience since his debut appearance in the winter of 2008. Don’t miss this glittering final event of Parlance Chamber Concert’s 10th-Anniversary season! PROGRAM Hector Berlioz Les nuits d’été Program Notes Jules Massenet The Letter Scene from Werther Program Notes Jules Massenet Va! Laisse couler mes larmes from Werther Program Notes Frédéric Chopin Four Mazurkas, Op. 67 for piano Program Notes Enrique Granados Canciones amatorias Program Notes Gioachino Rossini Canzonetta spagnuola Program Notes Isabel Leonard performs Rosina’s aria from Rossini’s Barber of Seville: Isabel Leonard performs Cherubino’s aria from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: Isabel Leonard performs Falla’s Polo on Parlance Chamber Concerts:

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March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904) String Quartet No. 13 in G major, op. 106 March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet Dvořák endured three homesick years in New York as director of the National Conservatory of Music, with one blissful sojourn in his beloved Czechoslovakia for the summer of 1894. When he again returned home for the summer of 1895, nothing could persuade him to return to America, yet despite feeling “inexpressibly happy,” he was unable to compose anything new for several months. Then in a great rush in November and December he completed the G major Quartet, op. 106, followed by the A-flat major, op. 105. The Bohemian Quartet gave the first performance of Opus 106 in Prague on October 9, 1896. The G major Quartet shows the composer embarking on a new path, and one wonders what would have followed these last two quartets had he lived beyond sixty-three years. Would he have developed a “late” style by continuing to work in short fragmented motives instead of extended melodic lines, and let his building of these motives increasingly dictate his forms? Would he have made even more bold harmonic experiments? Here in one of Dvořák’s finest first movements, he creates a first theme area from brief gestures—repeated leaps, trills, oscillating descending triplets and alternating chords—and a second idea that one commentator aptly described as “a funny little unison bear-dance motive.” The second theme, though more lyrical, also consists of fragments, based on a repeating four-note motive. His harmonic explorations here and his transformation of materials as he develops and recapitulates show consummate skill. The slow movement is one of chamber music’s most beautiful. Dvořák treats his poetic main theme—which shows a remnant of American influence in its pentatonic configuration—in a series of rich, free variations, alternating major and minor modes as he loved to do. The freedom of his conception, shaped more by pauses and pacing than by cadential divisions, lends an originality to his form and allows him to build to a impressive climax. In the galloping scherzo, Dvořák delights in certain unexpected features, such as the crazy duet between viola and cello that serves as an accompaniment to a new statement of the main theme. Another surprise is the “false” trio, in which the lyrical pentatonic melody first presented by the viola shows a kinship with the second movement’s main theme. The “real” trio introduces a gently rocking pastoral theme, punctuated by trills and fleeting arpeggios. The finale begins with a slow anticipation of its jolly, syncopated main theme. With great structural freedom, Dvořák strings together a series of themes that includes a more extended exploration of his slow introduction, which in turn brings a chain of developmental reminiscences from his first movement. It is fascinating to see Dvořák making further developments across movements, rather than including a development section proper. He rounds out the movement with a lusty recall of his exuberant main theme. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 20, 2022: Steven Banks, Saxophonist-Composer Xak Bjerken, Piano, Principal Strings of The Met Orchestra STEVEN BANKS (1993) Come As You Are for tenor saxophone and piano November 20, 2022: Steven Banks, Saxophonist-Composer Xak Bjerken, Piano, Principal Strings of The Met Orchestra For several years, I have wanted to write a piece that was dedicated to my immediate family (my mother and three sisters) and the influence of my upbringing on my understanding of music and life in general. When preparing the program for my Young Concert Artists debut recital, it dawned on me that there would be no better time than this to share a work that bears such personal significance. When I think back to my childhood, and especially the beginnings of my journey in music, the church is at the center of so much. We were regular church-goers, my grandfather was a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church, and the church provided us with an incredible community that was very important to my family in the good times and the bad. The church taught me about the transformative and awesome power of music. In an effort to honor both my family and the church, I decided to write a four-movement work in which each movement would be dedicated to a different family member and take inspiration from their favorite Negro spiritual or sacred song. At its core, Come As You Are is an expanded arrangement or setting of these four songs. As a more direct reference to the music played in the church that I grew up going to, the song Total Praise, which is typically sung by a choir, serves as a sort of connective tissue throughout the entire piece. The titles of each movement come from lyrics from Total Praise. The text of each song is vital in understanding the expressive nature of each movement. However, the form and melodic content of each song have been either been expanded, rearranged, or manipulated in a way that is meant to make the message clear when played on instruments that, obviously, can not convey the actual words. Below, I’ve listed the movement titles along with the song that they draw inspiration from. Lift My Eyes (My Lord, What A Morning) Times of the Storm (Wade in the Water) Strength of My Life (His Eye Is On the Sparrow) Lift My Hands (I Still Have Joy) When interpreted through the lens of classical music, these movements are configured in a way that is intended to align with a slightly deviant four-movement sonata form that composers like Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and many others used in several of their works. In this form, the first movement is an allegro, the second movement is a scherzo or dance, the third movement is an adagio, and the last movement is another fast one, perhaps with a dance feel or including a theme and variations. Come As You Are was conceived of with this in mind, but is not rigidly connected to it. Through the lens of African-American sacred music, the first two movements, Lift My Eyes and Times of the Storm, are inspired by traditional Negro spirituals. It is important to note that spirituals often contained text that was Biblical on the surface, yet deeply personal or communicative in intention. My Lord, What A Morning and Wade in the Water are no exceptions to this tradition. In this spirit, I aimed to strike a balance between the surface-level meaning of these spirituals and what they might have meant for the people that sang them. There may seem to be striking dichotomies in character that are reflective of these varied meanings. The second two movements, Strength of My Life and Lift My Hands, are inspired by songs that are more common in religious practices today. In these, I have tried to make a musical depiction of the lyrics in a way that conveys the message of each song from my perspective. As I wrote this piece, I realized that one of its purposes was to bring together different facets of my own life experience. As a classical musician, the vast majority of my colleagues have little knowledge or understanding of Black culture or how it influences my music-making. As a Black man from North Carolina, many of my family and friends don’t have a true sense of what I do and love as a classical performer and composer. I have also spent an incredible amount of time and energy on keeping these worlds separate and trying to show up in each as if the other didn’t exist. This “two-ness” is akin to a concept called double consciousness that W.E.B. Dubois introduced at the turn of the 20th century in his book The Souls of Black Folk. He outlines this concept, roughly, as having two simultaneous identities. One of these might be described as uniquely American, while the other is uniquely Black. As a composer, I strive to let my internal musical voice be “ok” and to follow it where it wanders, trusting that this amalgamation of experiences is leading me in a direction that is uniquely mine and informed by my various interests and identities. Come As You Are is a significant landmark on this journey to musical individuation. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes