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| Mihae Lee |
The Essex Winter Series will launch its 39th season on January 10 with a performance by the Juilliard Quartet with pianist Mihae Lee at 3pm at Valley Regional High School in Deep River. This series founded by Fenton Brown in 1978 with a mission to bring the finest music, in live performance, to the Connecticut River Valley and Shoreline Region during the winter months. This concert series is renowned not only for their world-class artistic quality, but also for their extraordinary variety and friendly, informal atmosphere. Programs in the past have ranged from an intimate solo guitar recital to a full symphony orchestra. Programming includes both instrumental and vocal music performances and the Stu Ingersoll Jazz concert is an annual occurrence as is the Fenton Brown Emerging Artists concert presenting young performers.
The first concert of this season will feature one of the country's most revered string quartets. This performance is part of the quartet’s international tour of America, Europe, and Asia in celebration of its 70th season. The Juilliard String Quartet will perform two favorites from the classical repertory, Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 135, and will then be joined by Essex Winter Series artistic director and pianist Mihae Lee in the monumental F minor Piano Quintet of Brahms. The JSQ members are violinists Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Joel Krosnick, who will perform his 41st and final season with the quartet before his retirement later in 2016.
“I am thrilled that the Juilliard Quartet will appear on the series, and I’m honored to perform with them, especially in Joel’s last season with the group,” says Mihae Lee. “They have such a fantastic history of performing old and new music at the highest level, and bringing great young players into the group over the years. The audience will really have a wonderful time – this concert should not be missed!”
Tickets, all general admission are $35, $5 for full-time students, and may be purchased on the EWS website, www.essexwinterseries.com, or by calling 860-272-4572.
About the Artists:
The Juilliard String
Quartet, widely known as the quintessential American string quartet,
celebrates the 2015/16 season, the Quartet’s 70th, with concert tours in North America,
Europe and Asia; performances of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1 and a new
work by Richard Wernick commissioned for them by the Philadelphia Chamber Music
Society; and concerts honoring cellist Joel Krosnick at New York’s Alice Tully Hall,
the Ravinia Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, featuring the Schubert
Cello Quintet with guest cellist Astrid Schween who succeeds Mr. Krosnick in
the fall of 2016. The Quartet also celebrates a groundbreaking new interactive
app on Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, released in 2015 by
Touchpress and the Juilliard School.
Founded in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet was the first
ensemble to play all six Bartok quartets in the United States, and its
performances of Schoenberg’s quartets helped establish the works as cornerstones
of the modern string quartet literature. The Quartet’s recordings of the Bartok
and Schoenberg Quartets, as well as those of Debussy, Ravel and Beethoven won
Grammy Awards, and in 2011 the Quartet became the first classical music
ensemble to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2014 Sony Classical reissued the Quartet’s
landmark recordings of the first four Elliott Carter String Quartets together
with the recently recorded Carter Quartet No. 5, making a complete historical document.
Over its seven decades, the Quartet has made manifest the credo of
its founders to “play new works as if they were established masterpieces and
established masterpieces as if they were new.” In addition to Carter and
Wernick, the Quartet’s 2015/16 season repertoire features Schubert’s
Quartettsatz, Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet, the Debussy Quartet and
Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 135. Their collaborations also include the Brahms Piano
Quintet with Mihae Lee, as well as the Brahms G major Sextet with cellist Marcy
Rosen and former Juilliard Quartet violist Samuel Rhodes. Last season they
toured North America, Asia and Europe with typically varied programming including
Shulamit Ran’s Quartet No. 2, “Vistas”, works by Webern, Berg, Martinu and Elgar,
as well as Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. In 2013 they premiered the
String Quartet No. 3, “Whereof man cannot speak . . . ” by Jesse Jones.
Devoted master teachers, the members of the Juilliard String
Quartet offer classes and open rehearsals when on tour. At The Juilliard
School, where they are the String Quartet in Residence, all are sought-after
members of the string and chamber music faculty. Annually in May, they are
hosts of the 5-day internationally recognized Juilliard String Quartet Seminar.
In performance, recordings and incomparable work educating and
training the major quartets of our time, the Juilliard String Quartet has
carried the banner of the United States and The Juilliard School throughout the
world.
Praised
by Boston Globe as “simply dazzling,” Artistic Director and pianist Mihae Lee has been captivating
audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia in solo recitals
and chamber music concerts with her poetic lyricism and scintillating
virtuosity. She has performed in such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy
Center, Jordan Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Academia Nationale de Santa Cecilia
in Rome, Warsaw National Philharmonic Hall, and Taipei National Hall.
An
active chamber musician, Ms. Lee is a founding member of the Triton Horn Trio
with violinist Ani Kavafian and French hornist William Purvis and was an artist
member of the Boston Chamber Music Society for three decades.
Her
recordings of Brahms, Shostakovich, Bartok, and Stravinsky with the members of
BCMS were critically acclaimed by High Fidelity, CD Review, and Fanfare
magazines, the reviews calling her sound “as warm as Rubinstein, yet virile as
Toscanini.”
Ms. Lee
has appeared frequently at numerous international chamber music festivals including
Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Groningen, Festicamara (Colombia), Great Woods, Seattle,
OK Mozart, Mainly Mozart, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Rockport,
Sebago-Long Lake, Bard, Norfolk, Mostly Music, Music Mountain, Monadnock, and
Chestnut Hill Concerts. In addition to many years of performing regularly at
Bargemusic in New York, she has been a guest artist with the Chamber
Music
Society of Lincoln Center, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae; has
collaborated with the Tokyo, Muir, Cassatt, and Manhattan string quartets; and
has premiered and recorded works by such composers as Gunther Schuller, Ned
Rorem, Paul Lansky, Henri Lazarof, Michael Daugherty, and Ezra Laderman.
In
addition to her concert career, Ms. Lee maintains her commitment to give back to
her community and help many worthy charities. At the invitation of the Prime Minister
and the First Lady of Jamaica, she has organized and performed in concerts in
Kingston and Montego Bay to benefit the Jamaica Early Childhood Development Foundation.
For many years she brought world-class musicians, both classical and jazz, to
perform in fund-raising concerts for the Hastings Education Foundation outside
of New York City, and she recently launched an annual Gala Concert for the Community
Health Clinic of Butler County, a free health clinic outside of Pittsburgh.
Born in
Seoul, Korea, Ms. Lee made her professional debut at the age of fourteen with the
Korean National Orchestra after becoming the youngest grand prizewinner at the prestigious
National Competition held by the President of Korea. In the same year, she came
to the United States on a scholarship from The Juilliard School Pre-College, and
subsequently won many further awards including First Prize at the Kosciuszko Foundation
Chopin Competition, the Juilliard Concerto Competition, and the New England
Conservatory Concerto Competition. Ms. Lee received her bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from The Juilliard School and her artist diploma from the New England
Conservatory, studying with Martin Canin and Russell Sherman. She has released
compact discs on the Bridge, Etcetera, EDI, Northeastern, and BCMS labels. Most
recently, Ms. Lee was appointed Music Director of the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival
in Maine.
