Elmar Oliviera, violin Elmar Oliveira is an American violinist whose remarkable combination of impeccable artistry and old-world elegance sets him apart as one of our most celebrated living artists. Oliveira remains the first and only American violinist to win the Gold Medal at Moscow's prestigious Tchaikovsky International Competition. He was the first violinist to receive the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and won First Prize at the Naumburg International Competition. Son of Portuguese immigrants, Oliveira was nine when he began studying the violin with his brother, John Oliveira and then attended the Hartt College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He holds honorary doctorates from both the Manhattan School of Music and Binghamton University. In 1997, the Prime Minister of Portugal awarded Elmar the country's highest civilian accolade, The Order of Santiago. Photo by Tucker Densley Oliveira has performed regularly at many of the most prestigious international concert venues. He has appeared with such esteemed Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Colorado, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as the Philharmonics of Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, New York, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Zürich Tonhalle, among many others. He has also made extensive recital tours of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East. Oliveira’s discography on Artek, Angel, SONY Masterworks, Vox, Delos, IMP, Naxos, Ondine and Melodiya ranges widely from Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works that are swiftly becoming pillars of the violin repertoire. His best-selling recording of the Rautavaara Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic won a Cannes Classical Award and was chosen as Gramophone's "Editor's Choice." He also received Grammy nominations for his recordings of both the Barber Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony and the Bloch and Benjamin Lees Violin Concertos under the baton of John McGlaughlin Williams. Other recording highlights include the Brahms and Saint-Saëns concertos with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, the Joachim Concerto with the London Philharmonic, the complete Brahms sonatas with Jorge Federico Osorio, and the rarely heard Respighi and Pizzetti sonatas with pianist Robert Koenig. Two projects of particular historical significance: The Miracle Makers: Stradivari · Guarneri · Oliveira, a coffee-table sized book and three-CD set which compares and contrasts thirty exquisite violins by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù; and a release of short pieces highlighting the Library of Congress Collection of rare violins on Biddulph Recordings, speak to Oliveira’s extreme dedication to preserving and highlighting the violin and critical makers of the past as well as those that are important to the development of the instrument today. In 2016 Elmar Oliveira announced the creation of the Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition. This competition - that takes place every three years - is open to any violinist of any nationality between the ages of 16-32 and offers critical career support in the form of artist management and public relations as well as cash prizes. The Inaugural competition took place at the Lynn Conservatory of Music, where Elmar Oliveira is Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, January 23 - February 5, 2017. The next competition will be held in January 2020. For more detailed information, please visit the web site www.elmaroliveiraivc.org . Additionally, Elmar Oliveira has founded the John Oliveira String Competition, an internal competition at the Lynn Conservatory of Music. The annual competition is open to all string students at the school. The competition was founded in memory of Elmar Oliveira's late brother, violinist John Oliveira. For more information, please visit www.john-oliveira.com . Oliveira Oliveira is passionate about expanding the role and repertoire of the violin as well as championing contemporary music and unjustly neglected works. He is a devoted teacher and promoter of young artists, and also keenly supports the art of contemporary violin and bow making.

Bucky PIzzarelli, guitar Pizzarelli began his professional career at 17 when he joined the Vaughn Monroe dance band in 1944. In 1951, he did his first recording as a sideman outside the Monroe orchestra with Joe Mooney. In 1952 Pizzarelli became a staff musician for NBC, playing with Skitch Henderson. In 1964, he became a member of The Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During his time spent performing for the Tonight Show, he accompanied guest bands and musicians playing through a variety of musical genres, including playing with Tiny Tim (after tuning the performer's ukulele) on the day that Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki on Carson's show. From 1956 to 1957, Pizzarelli used the stage name "Johnny Buck" and performed with The Three Suns pop music trio. During the following year, he and guitarist George Barnes formed a duo and recorded two albums, including a live performance in August 1971, at The Town Hall in New York City. Beginning in the 1970s, he began recording as a leader, issuing many tributes to musicians of the 1930s. He toured several times with Benny Goodman until Goodman's death in 1986. He performed with Benny Goodman at the White House in Washington, D.C., and he performed for presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and First Lady Pat Nixon. "Jersey Jazz Guitars" was the name of a 1985 concert held at the Rutgers University Nicholas Music Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The ticket featured Pizzarelli, Les Paul, Tal Farlow, and Pizzarelli's son, John. The concert was aired on New Jersey's public radio station as part of their three-part New Jersey Summerfare Series. Pizzarelli and Les Paul had performed together before, as they were neighbors and friends. The show aired for one hour in August 1985, with son John adding his vocals on two selections. Pizzarelli continued to play into his 90s, making several appearances even after a stroke in 2016, officially retiring after a final brief appearance with Michael Feinstein in 2018. He died of COVID-19 on April 1, 2020, in Saddle River, New Jersey. He had been battling several serious health problems in recent years.

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Soovin Kim, violin Korean-American violinist Soovin Kim is an exciting player who has built on the early successes of his prize-winning years to emerge as a mature and communicative artist. After winning first prize at the Niccolò Paganini International Competition, Mr. Kim was recipient of the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. Today he enjoys a broad musical career, regularly performing repertoire such as Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, string quartets, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. In recent seasons he has been acclaimed for his “superb…impassioned” (Berkshire Review) performance of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto at the Bard Festival with the American Symphony Orchestra and a “sassy, throaty” (Philadelphia Inquirer) rendition of Kurt Weill’s concerto with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra. Other unusual concerto collaborations included Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto with conductor Maestro Myung-Whun Chung, the same Mendelssohn concerto with the Dallas Symphony and music director Jaap van Zweden, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Carnegie Hall. He has performed in past seasons with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the Seoul Philharmonic and Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra with Maestro Chung. For 20 years Soovin Kim was the 1st violinist of the Johannes String Quartet. Among their special projects was a two-season tour with the famed and now-retired Guarneri String Quartet in an unusual program including world-premieres of works by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Derek Bermel, and William Bolcom. Mr. Kim maintains a close relationship with the famed Marlboro Festival where he regularly spends his summers. He is well-known in Korea as a member of MIK, his ground-breaking piano quartet ensemble. He recently launched the exciting Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio with his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, and cellist Paul Watkins of the Emerson Quartet. Soovin Kim’s latest solo CD, Gypsy, was his third solo collaboration between American label Azica Records and Korea-based Stomp/EMI. They previously released a French album of Fauré and Chausson with pianist Jeremy Denk and the Jupiter Quartet, and Paganini's demanding 24 Caprices for solo violin which was named Classic FM magazine’s Instrumental Disc of the Month (“he emerges thrillingly triumphant…a thrilling debut disc.”). He made his first solo recording with Jeremy Denk for Koch-Discover in duo works by Schubert, Bartók, and Strauss. Mr. Kim also has six commercial chamber music recordings including an acclaimed live performance from the Marlboro Festival of Beethoven’s Archduke trio with pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the late cellist David Soyer. In 2019 his recording of Bach’s monumental solo sonatas and partitas will be released. Soovin Kim founded the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont in 2009. With its focused programming and exceptional artists the festival is “increasing its stature as one of this country’s summer chamber music meccas (Rutland Herald).” Mr. Kim and the Lake Champlain festival helped to create the ONE Strings program in Burlington which makes violin lessons part of the regular curriculum for every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grader. In May 2015 he received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Vermont in recognition of his contributions to the community. Soovin Kim dedicates much of his time to his passion for teaching. He has been on the faculties of Stony Brook University and the Peabody Institute, and now he teaches exclusively at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Mr. Kim studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein, and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Victor Danchenko and Jaime Laredo. Graduate of the Curtis Institute; studies at Cleveland Institute of Music. Studies with David Cerone, Donald Weilerstein, Victor Danchenko, Jaime Laredo.

SCHUMANN STRING QUARTET Erik Schumann Ken Schumann Liisa Randalu Mark Schumann The Schumann Quartet has reached a stage where anything is possible, because it has dispensed with certainties. This also has consequences for audiences, which from one concert to the next have to be prepared for all eventualities: “A work really develops only in a live performance,” the quartet says. “That is ‘the real thing’, because we ourselves never know what will happen. On the stage, all imitation disappears, and you automatically become honest with yourself. Then you can create a bond with the audience – communicate with it in music.” This live situation will gain an added energy in the near future: Sabine Meyer, Menahem Pressler, Andreas Ottensamer and Anna Lucia Richter are among the quartet’s current partners. A highlight in the 19/20 season is its three-year residency at the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center in New York City, which began back in December 2016. Furthermore, the quartet will go on tour twice in the US, will give guest performances at festivals in Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands and will also perform concerts in the big musical metropolises of London, Munich, Madrid, Hamburg and Berlin. In addition, the ensemble is part of the opera production “Inferno” at Opera Frankfurt and is looking forward to their annual concerts as part of its long-term residency at the “Robert-Schumann-Saal” in Düsseldorf. Its album “Intermezzo” (2018 | Schumann, Reimann with Anna-Lucia Richter and Mendelssohn Bartholdy) has been hailed enthusiastically both at home and abroad and received the award “Opus Klassik“ in the category quintet. It is celebrated as a worthy successor to its award-winning “Landscapes” album, in which in which the quartet traces its own roots by combining works of Haydn, Bartók, Takemitsu and Pärt. Among other prices, the latter received the “Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik”, five Diapasons and was selected as Editor’s Choice by the BBC Music Magazine. For its previous CD “Mozart Ives Verdi”, the Schumann Quartet was accorded the 2016 Newcomer Award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards in London. The three brothers Mark, Erik and Ken Schumann have been playing together since their earliest childhood. In 2012, they were joined by violist Liisa Randalu, who was born in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, and grew up in Karlsruhe, Germany. Those who experience the quartet in performance often remark on the strong connection between its members. The four musicians enjoy the way they communicate without words: how a single look suffices to convey how a particular member wants to play a particular passage. Although the individual personalities clearly manifest themselves, a common space arises in every musical work in a process of spiritual metamorphosis. The quartet’s openness and curiosity may be partly the result of the formative influence exerted on it by teachers such as Eberhard Feltz, the Alban Berg Quartet, or partners such as Menahem Pressler. Teachers and musical partners, prestigious prices, CD releases – it is always tempting to speculate on what factors have led to many people viewing the Schumann Quartet as one of the best in the world. But the four musicians themselves regard these stages more as encounters, as a confirmation of the path they have taken. They feel that their musical development over the past two years represents a quantum leap. “We really want to take things to extremes, to see how far the excitement and our spontaneity as a group take us,” says Ken Schumann, the middle of the three Schumann brothers. They charmingly sidestep any attempt to categorise their sound, approach or style, and let the concerts speak for themselves.

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May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Tzigane, rapsodie de concert May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano On one of his many performing tours to England, Ravel attended a private soiree in 1922 at which Hungarian violin virtuoso Jelly d’Arányi played the composer’s Duo with cellist Hans Kindler. As the evening progressed Ravel asked her to play a Gypsy melody, then another, until the party finally broke up at five o’clock in the morning. Though that occasion planted the seed for his Tzigane, rapsodie de concert (Gypsy, concert rhapsody), it took another two years for him to complete the piece because of numerous intervening projects such as his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The child and the sorceries). As it turns out, Ravel completed the brilliant, challenging Tzigane just days before Arányi and pianist Henri Gil-Marchex were to premiere it on April 26, 1924, in London. Her sensational performance dazzled the audience and critics—all but one, who expressed confusion over whether the composer was parodying Hungarian Gypsy violin music or launching a new style with more warmth than his previous works had shown. On November 24 that year Arányi also premiered Ravel’s orchestrated version, this time in Paris with Gabriel Pierné conducting the Concerts Colonne orchestra. While Ravel had been working on Tzigane he had sought technical advice from his violinist friend Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. “Come quickly,” he telegrammed her, “and bring the Paganini Caprices with you.” This speaks volumes about the kinds of feats expected of the violinist in this one-movement piece. The colorful but spare orchestral accompaniment prominently features the harp ingeniously combined with the solo violin. The opening “cadenza” for the unaccompanied violin sounds improvisatory and declamatory, beginning, in the instrument’s sultry lowest range and progressing through slides, trills, octave passages, and harmonics, all the while calling for the kinds of changes and bending of tempo so characteristic of Gypsy music. Toward the end of the cadenza the accompaniment sneaks in quietly but with an unexpected harmony. The violin and piano together launch the dancelike main section of the piece, which varies ideas from the cadenza and introduces two new themes—a sprightly patter first given to the piano and a swaggering theme marked “grandiose.” Ravel creates an effect of humorous suspense by slamming on the brakes several times during his brilliant drive to the close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

December 19, 2017: Alessio Bax, piano; Lucille Chung, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in C major, K. 521 December 19, 2017: Alessio Bax, piano; Lucille Chung, piano Four-hand piano music—two players at one keyboard—first surfaced in England in the early seventeenth century and became immensely popular in the mid-eighteenth century. As children/teenagers in the 1760s, Mozart and his gifted older sister Maria Anna (Nannerl) greatly popularized four-hand playing all over Europe through the tours they were taken on by their father Leopold. A famous painting of the Mozart family from about 1780 depicts the two showing crosse-hand technique at the keyboard, their father standing by with violin, and a portrait of their recently deceased mother on the wall. Wolfgang apparently wrote his first four-hand sonata, K. 19d, in London in 1765 when he was nine years old. Nannerl also mentioned in a letter of 1800 that she had other similar four-hand works in her possession, some of which may have been even earlier works, but all of which regrettably are lost. Wolfgang returned to the genre in 1772 with the D major Sonata, K. 123a (K. 381), probably influenced by seeing circulating manuscripts of Charles Burney’s four-hand sonatas even before they were printed in 1777 as the first published set of piano duets. Mozart went on to complete three more, of which the present C major Sonata of 1787 was the last. In Mozart’s day it was customary for the woman to play primo (the higher part, often with the melody) and the man secondo (the lower part, often with the bass support)—Wolfgang and his sister always played thus and perhaps instigated the custom. (From 1769 onward, having reached marriageable age, Nannerl was no longer permitted to perform in public.) Charles Burney, famous for his observations on musical life in many European countries, requested that a lady who wished to play piano duets should remove the hoops from her skirt, and not be embarrassed if her left hand occasionally grazed the gentleman’s right. Today’s piano-duet players—as in the case of Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung—like to change up who plays which part for any number of reasons. In his own thematic catalog, Mozart dated the C major Sonata May 29, 1787, which happened to be the very day he received word of the death of his father Leopold. He shared the sad news that day with one of his best friends, Viennese court official and amateur musician Gottfried von Jacquin, at the same time asking him to “have the goodness to give the sonata to my lady, your sister [Franziska, one of Mozart’s most talented pupils], with my compliments—but she might have a go at it immediately, for it is a bit difficult.” Evidently Mozart was eager to play it with her! Several months earlier he had nicknamed Franziska “Signora Dinimininimi” (related to diminutio and minim), no doubt referring to her skill at playing fast notes. As it turned out, when Mozart published the piece the following year, he dedicated it to some other members of the Jacquin circle, Babette and Nanette Natorp, the young daughters of a wealthy Viennese merchant. Babette was also a pupil of Mozart’s and later married Gottfried and Franziska’s older brother Josef Franz. The C major Sonata breathes grace and elegance, much like Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which he composed just two months later—and in great contrast to the more brilliant character of the F major four-hand Sonata composed just ten months before. The C major Sonata’s sparkling first movement opens by contrasting a forthright idea in octave unison with a more delicate response that alternately highlights the secondo and primo parts. Mozart begins his elegant second theme with a distinct three-note pickup to a dotted idea related to the movement’s opening pronouncement, into which he injects darting fast-note decorations. His development section is a fascinating excursion through new ideas and keys that includes storm and brief melancholy before winding up to a full recapitulation. The middle movement ambles sweetly in its outer sections, which surround a more agitated central section. Each of these sections takes on the binary form of a traditional dance-suite movement—two halves each repeated, except for the return to the opening section which is reprised without repeats. The final rondo shows Mozart’s mastery of understatement in its genial refrain. Its subtle charms provide a great foil for the remarkable yet still seemingly effortless virtuosity of its intervening episodes. Mozart’s ingenuity shows up in some wonderfully unexpected harmonic diversions in the episodes and even in the coda, which Mozart caps with emphatic chords. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Deh vieni non tardar (from Le Nozze di Figaro) February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano The Marriage of Figaro has often been described as the perfect comic opera because it combines engaging entertainment with exquisite musical construction. Mozart had complained to his father in 1783 of having read hundreds of plays, none suitable as a comic opera subject. In late 1785, after aborting several attempts to set existing Italian librettos, he eagerly turned to Beaumarchais’s play Le mariage de Figaro, ou La folle journée (The marriage of Figaro, or The crazy day) once it became clear that Lorenzo da Ponte would write him a libretto. That Mozart composed at “breakneck speed” suggests an imminent production at Vienna’s Burgtheater that December, but the opera was not produced until May 1, 1786. It seems that censors needed time to ascertain that enough adjustment had been made to the politically subversive elements that had caused the play to be banned throughout the Hapsburg empire. Apparently, there were also delays owing to machinations by da Ponte’s rival Abbé Casti and Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri, as well as problems with procuring dancers and a cast change for the Countess. In the end it was a success, to the point that after the third performance the emperor had to limit encores to keep the opera from lasting all night. Yet Figaro did not achieve its full measure of success until it was produced in Prague the following year, leading to the commission Don Giovanni. Mozart had been writing with such zeal in part because knew that banned subject matter would attract an audience. Further, he could count on familiarity with the characters from Giovanni Paisiello’s greatly successful opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), based on the first of Beaumarchais’s trilogy—and, he was certain he could outdo his rival. As in the play, all of the action takes place in one day, the marriage day of Figaro and Susanna, servants to Count and Countess Almaviva. The main strand of the plot concerns the Count’s flirtations with Susanna in connection with the droit du seigneur (his supposed right as a noble to have his way with her on her first night of marriage) and her clever foiling of his advances. The eventual humiliation of this member of the aristocracy by his “inferiors”—even in its toned down guise—greatly appealed to the rising middle-class audience. Woven into the web are myriad subplots involving Figaro and Marcellina (the Count’s housekeeper), Dr. Bartolo’s desire for revenge on Figaro, the Countess trying to regain her husband’s love, and the womanizing young page Cherubino. For the Vienna revival in 1789, Mozart wrote two replacement arias specifically for Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, da Ponte’s mistress, who—unlike Nancy Storace, the original Susanna—had no comedic acting skills though she had a beautiful voice. In Act 2, Susanna dresses Cherubino as a girl to take her place and compromise the Count. The original “Venite, inginocchiatevi” requires a great deal of comedic acting, so Mozart instead substituted a “stand-and-sing” aria, “Un moto di gioia” (A feeling of joy) for Ferrarese, saying, “The little aria I have written for her I believe will please, if she is capable of singing it in an artless manner, which I very much doubt.” The strophic (several verses sung to the same music) aria is indeed very pleasing, and lovely to hear, since it is rarely used in modern performance. The great “Deh vieni, non tardar” (Oh, come, do not delay) was Susanna’s other aria that Mozart had to replace (which he did with “Al desio” [At the desire], an elaborate rondo showcase). With that substitution, the 1789 audience missed out on one of his most masterful arias—happily included on this afternoon’s program and in most performances of the complete opera. The crucial situation in Act II when Susanna sings “Deh vieni” called for multiple layers of meaning, which Mozart admirably achieved. Susanna and the Countess are disguised as each other to entrap the Count. Figaro has found out about their scheme, but Susanna knows he knows and that he is hiding in the bushes. Thus, as she sings of her love, supposedly for the Count, she is actually singing seductively to Figaro, though he suspects otherwise and becomes jealous. Mozart acknowledges Susanna’s being disguised as the Countess by giving her music more usually suited to noble characters than servants, including preparing it with an extended accompagnato recitative. He also provides the perfect mix of tender longing and mischief. © Jane Vial Jaffe Texts and Translations Aria SUSANNA Un moto di gioia Mi sento nel petto, Che annunzia diletto In mezzo il timor! Speriam che in content Finisca l’affanno Non sempre é tiranno Il fato ed amor. —Lorenzo da Ponte Recitative accompagnato SUSANNA Giunse alfin il momento che godrò senz’affanno in braccio all’idol mio. Timide cure, uscite dal mio petto, a turbar non venite il mio diletto! Oh, come par che all’amoroso foco l’amenità del loco, la terra e il ciel risponda, come la notte i furti miei seconda! Aria Deh, vieni, non tardar, oh gioia bella, vieni ove amore per goder t’appella, finché non splende in ciel notturna face, finché l’aria è ancor bruna e il mondo tace. Qui mormora il ruscel, qui scherza l’aura, che col dolce sussurro il cor ristaura, qui ridono i fioretti e l’erba è fresca, ai piaceri d’amor qui tutto adesca. Vieni, ben mio, tra queste piante ascose, ti vo’ la fronte incoronar di rose. —Lorenzo da Ponte Aria SUSANNA An emotion of joy I feel in my breast, which proclaims delight in the midst of fear! I hope that in contentment distress will end; not always tyrannical are fate and love. Accompanied recitative SUSANNA At last the moment has come when I can rejoice without worry in my lover’s arms. Timid cares, coming forth from my breast, do not come to disturb my delight! Oh, how it seems to the amorous fire, the congeniality of this place, that earth and heaven respond, as the night furthers my designs! Aria Oh, come, do not delay, oh beautiful joy, come where love calls you to enjoy, until night’s torches do not shine in the sky, while the air is still dark and the world quiet. Here the stream murmurs, the light plays, which with sweet whispers restores the heart, here little flowers laugh and the grass is fresh, here everything entices to love’s pleasures. Come, my dear, hidden among these bushes, I want to wreathe your brow with roses. Return to Parlance Program Notes

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YING FANG, SOPRANO Soprano Ying Fang has been hailed by the New York Times for her “pure and moving soprano, phrasing with scrupulous respect for the line and traveling with assurance through the mercurial moods,” as well as “singing with a fresh, appealing soprano and acting with coquettish flair.” She is blooming as a well-rounded singer. Ms. Fang has most recently performed Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro conducted by Gary Thor Wedow and directed by Stephen Wadsworth at The Juilliard School. She sang the title role in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide conducted by Jane Glover. She sang The Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel, Barbarina in the season opening new production of Le Nozze di Figaro conducted by James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera. She has performed Cleopatra in Wolf Trap Opera Company’s 2014 production of Giulio Cesare. She has been featured in The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School’s production of “A concert of comic operas” conducted by James Levine, in which she sang Konstanze, Teresa, and Adina. Ms. Fang made her Metropolitan Opera debut in their 2013–14 season, singing the role of Madame Podtochina’s Daughter in Shostakovich’s opera The Nose. The roles she performed include: Contessa di Folleville in Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims with Wolf Trap Opera Company, the title role in Mozart’s opera Zaide with the New World Symphony; Bellezza in Handel’s oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with the Juilliard 415 under the baton of William Christie at Alice Tully Hall. She was also heard in the role of Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with the Aspen Opera Theater Center, and gained acclaim: “Soprano Ying Fang sang Pamina with a creamy tone and marvelous specificity in each moment” (The Aspen Times). She also did Maria in Bernstein’s West Side Story with the Aspen Opera Theater Center. She made her Alice Tully Hall debut performing Handel’s motet Silete Venti with conductor Steven Fox leading the Juilliard 415. She sang the soprano solo in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Filene Center in Wolf Trap. In Juilliard opera productions, she has been featured as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Fanny in Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio, and The Spirit of the Boy in Britten’s Curlew River. A native of Ningbo, China, Ms. Fang is the recipient of Martin E. Segal Award, Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, The Rose Bampton Award of The Sullivan Foundation, The Opera Index Award of The 2013 Opera Index Vocal Competition and 1st Prize Award of 2013 Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition. She won one of China’s most prestigious awards, the 2009 7th Chinese Golden Bell Award for Music. One of the youngest singers ever accorded this honor, she has been hailed as “the most gifted Chinese soprano of her generation” (Ningbo Daily). Ms. Fang holds a master’s degree from The Juilliard School and a bachelor’s degree from The Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is a member of The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and The Artist Diploma in Opera Study program at Juilliard.

KENNY WASHINGTON, JAZZ DRUMS One of the many young hard-bop revivalists to have arrived on the scene in the late ’70s and early ‘80s, Washington has been in particular demand by much older musicians, playing with such legendary veterans as Lee Konitz, Betty Carter, Johnny Griffin, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, and Tommy Flanagan. Born in Brooklyn, Washington studied with the former Dizzy Gillespie drummer Rudy Collins and attended New York’s LaGuardia High School for Music & Art. Washington worked with Konitz while still in his teens, recording with the saxophonist’s nonet in 1977. He worked with Carter from 1978-9 and Griffin from 1980. A prolific freelancer, Washington has compiled an enormous discography, performing on dozens of sessions by many of jazz’s most prominent figures. Washington has a strong interest in jazz history; he’s written liner notes for and/or helped prepare classic jazz re-releases by Art Blakey and Count Basie, among others. He’s also taught jazz drumming at the New School in New York City, and worked as an announcer at the New Jersey jazz radio station WBGO.