Month: November 2023

Curtis Faculty and Alumni Interviewed on Speaking Soundly

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Since its debut in 2022, the acclaimed podcast Speaking Soundly, hosted by David Krauss, principal trumpet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, has offered listeners a window into the soul of the world’s most renowned performing artists. Three of Curtis’s faculty members, mentor conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair Anthony McGill (Clarinet ’00), and Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies Midori, have been interviewed over the past year, along with alumni Joseph Conyers (Double Bass ’04), Ray Chen (Violin ’10), and Joseph Alessi (Trombone ’81).

The podcast features candid and compelling backstage conversations with today’s top musicians and is released weekly on Tuesdays through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at Artful Narratives Media. Follow Speaking Soundly on Instagram and Facebook.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Three-time GRAMMY Award-winning pianist and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the music and artistic director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain, and music director at the Metropolitan Opera where he’s just the third person to hold this position in the company’s 140-year history. In the episode—recorded backstage at Carnegie Hall—Yannick discusses the primary role of a conductor, his calm and friendly demeanor while on the podium (spoiler: he doesn’t know how to be mean!), how he became inspired to conduct at age 10, and why he reclaimed his love for the piano during the pandemic. Yannick shares the importance of taking every opportunity to perform seriously and his deep belief that music can connect and transform anyone who listens.

Listen on Spotify.

Midori

GRAMMY-nominated renowned violinist Midori is a visionary artist, activist, and educator who made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11. She reflects on her decision to “pursue a career in music as a performer” in her twenties, what she learned from mentors: famed violinist Isaac Stern and legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, and why she loves to practice after a performance. Midori shares about her foundation Midori and Friends, which has helped to provide music education to over 300,000 underserved youth in NYC, opens up about her love for her home-away-from-home (the dressing room), and David reminisces about the first time he heard her on the radio.

Listen on Spotify.

Joseph Conyers (Double Bass ’04)

Philadelphia Orchestra principal bass Joseph Conyers discusses his recent promotion and the unusual circumstances of his audition (it’s not every day that one competes with their own students!), reminisces about his early introduction to classical music through his mother, and reflects on the music of his childhood Black Baptist Church and its emphasis on joyful noise, not perfection. At the end of the interview, David calls Joseph “one of the most disciplined people he knows” for reasons you might not expect.

Listen on Spotify.

Ray Chen (Violin ’10)

International violin virtuoso Ray Chen is redefining the role of today’s classical soloist. Using social media, Ray aims to educate, enlighten, and entertain his audience before they get to the concert hall. He credits his grit and determination to his experience of being a first-generation immigrant and likens playing his ten-million-dollar Stradivarius violin to wielding Thor’s hammer.

Listen on Spotify.

Joseph Alessi (Trombone ’81)

Longtime principal trombonist with the New York Philharmonic and Juilliard faculty member Joseph Alessi discusses his musical childhood, the key to inspiring his students, and a recent health scare that jeopardized his career and caused him to consider a life without the trombone.

Listen on Spotify.

Anthony McGill (Clarinet ’00)

Avery Fisher Prize winner and clarinetist Anthony McGill is the first African-American to hold a principal chair in the New York Philharmonic’s 180-year history. He sees his high-profile position as an opportunity to inspire a new generation of diverse musicians. Anthony discusses his work as an artist and activist, the greatest experience of his life, and how Michael Jordan inspired him to strive for excellence.

Listen on Spotify.

Photo credits for top banner image: 1) Portrait of Yannick Nézet-Séguin courtesy of the Orchestre Métropolitain. 2) Photo of Ray Chen courtesy of the artist. 3) Photo of Anthony McGill by Todd Rosenberg. 4) Photo of Midori by Nigel Parry. 5) Photo of Joseph Alessi courtesy of the artist. 6) Portrait of Joseph Conyers by Chris Lee Photo.

Elizabeth Hainen Named Artistic Director of the USA International Harp Competition

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Curtis congratulates Elizabeth Hainen, Maryjane Mayhew Barton Chair in Harp Studies and principal harpist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, on her appointment as the new artistic director of the USA International Harp Competition. Founded in 1989 by Susann McDonald, this prestigious triennial harp competition—sponsored by Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington and Lyon and Healy Harps—recognizes the accomplishments and fosters the careers of gifted young harpists worldwide. Accompanying the announcement of Ms. Hainen’s new leadership role, harpist Emmanuel Ceysson has also been named associate artistic director of the competition.

Hailed by the Washington Post for her “unusual presence with silky transparency” and by the New York Times for her “earthy solidarity,” Ms. Hainen’s virtuosic performances and diverse programming choices have thrilled audiences across the world and locally with The Philadelphia Orchestra for over twenty-five years. In addition to her role at Curtis, she also serves as the artistic director for Harp at Temple University’s Boyer School of Music. Ms. Hainen has appeared as a concert soloist with the City of London Sinfonia, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Bulgaria National Radio Orchestra, the Mexico State Symphony, and she has appeared regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As founding artistic director of the Lyra Society, an organization to promote new works for the harp and educate young harpists, she has provided educational outreach to hundreds of school children in urban Philadelphia.

Read the official statement about Ms. Hainen’s appointment HERE.

Visit Elizabeth Hainen’s official website.

Photos of Ms. Hainen courtesy of the artist, Chris Lee Photography, and Amanda Stevenson.

Curtis Appoints Michael Sachs to the Trumpet Faculty

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Press Contacts:
Patricia K. Johnson | patricia.johnson@curtis.edu | (215) 717-3190
Ryan Scott Lathan | ryan.lathan@curtis.edu | (215) 717-3145

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PHILADELPHIA, PA—November 14, 2023—The Curtis Institute of Music is proud to announce that celebrated musician and distinguished teacher Michael Sachs will join Curtis’s trumpet faculty beginning in fall 2024, as the school celebrates its centennial year.

“We are thrilled to welcome Michael Sachs to the Curtis faculty,” says Roberto Díaz, president and CEO. “Our students will benefit greatly from his extraordinary experience as an outstanding musician, advocate for expanding the repertoire, and a dedicated teacher.”

A member of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1988, Mr. Sachs is currently celebrating his 36th season with the orchestra and is the longest-serving principal trumpet in the organization’s history. He recently received the International Trumpet Guild’s highest honor, the ITG Honorary Award, given annually to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the art of trumpet playing. In addition to his extensive experience as a Cleveland Orchestra principal, Mr. Sachs is a venerable teacher, having served on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and leading summer festivals.

Mr. Sachs will join Curtis’s celebrated faculty of world-renowned, actively performing musicians, helping the school’s talented young students to develop into extraordinary artists and creators. He will share his experiences with the next generation of artists through individualized lessons and personalized study, chamber coachings, and orchestral training,

“Throughout my career, I have come to believe that there is nothing more important to me than sharing all that I have learned about the trumpet—and about life—with students. I truly look forward to being a part of the legendary culture of excellence at Curtis,” says Mr. Sachs.

About Michael Sachs
Praised by critics for exemplifying “how brass playing can be at once heroic and lyrical” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Cleveland Orchestra Principal Trumpet Michael Sachs is recognized internationally as a leading soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, teacher, author, and clinician. He is the longest-serving principal trumpet in Cleveland Orchestra history, and recently received the International Trumpet Guild’s highest honor, the ITG Honorary Award, given annually to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the art of trumpet playing.

Highlights of Mr. Sachs’s many solo appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra include the world premieres of John Williams’s Concerto for Trumpet and Wynton Marsalis’s Concerto for Trumpet—both written for and dedicated to Mr. Sachs—as well as Michael Hersch’s Night Pieces for Trumpet and Orchestra and Matthias Pintscher’s Chute d’Etoiles. In addition, he was the featured soloist for the U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem. Other solo appearances include those with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

From 1988 until 2023, Michael Sachs served as chair of the brass division and head of the trumpet department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also taught at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He has served on served on the faculty of leading summer festivals—including Aspen Music Festival, National Brass Symposium, National Orchestral Institute, Summer Brass Institute, and Summit Brass—and regularly presents master classes and workshops throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Mr. Sachs is the author of numerous publications with the International Music Company, Theodore Presser, and Carl Fischer Music. From 2008 to 2014, he served as editor of the “Inside the Orchestra Section” column for International Trumpet Guild Journal. Committed to the evolution of quality equipment, Mr. Sachs was extensively involved in the acoustic design and play-testing for Bach Stradivarius trumpets.

Originally from Santa Monica, California, Mr. Sachs attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history before continuing studies at the Juilliard School. His former teachers include Ziggy Elman, Mark Gould, Anthony Plog, and James Stamp. Prior to joining the Cleveland Orchestra, Michael Sachs was a member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

About the Curtis Institute of Music
At Curtis, the world’s most talented young musicians develop into exceptional artists, creators, and innovators. With a tuition-free foundation, Curtis is a unique environment for teaching and learning. A small school by design, students realize their artistic potential through intensive, individualized study with the most renowned, sought-after faculty. Animated by a learn-by-doing philosophy, Curtis students share their music with audiences through more than 100 performances each year, including solo and chamber recitals, orchestral concerts, and opera—all free or at an affordable cost—offering audiences unique opportunities to participate in pivotal moments in these young musicians’ careers. Curtis students experience a close connection to the greatest artists and organizations in classical music, and innovative initiatives that integrate new technologies and encourage entrepreneurship—all within a historic campus in the heart of culturally rich Philadelphia. In this diverse, collaborative community, Curtis’s extraordinary artists challenge, support, and inspire one another—continuing an unparalleled 100-year legacy of musicians who have led, and will lead, classical music into a thriving, equitable, and multidimensional future. Learn more at Curtis.edu.

Portrait of Michael Sachs courtesy of the artist. Photo of Mr. Sachs with the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of conductor Franz Welser-Möst taken from the world premiere performance of Wynton Marsalis’s Concerto for Trumpet; Roger Mastroianni.

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Celebrating Native American Heritage: Raven Chacon

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As Curtis continues its celebration of Native American History Month, we highlight Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon, one of the six extraordinary composers whose works are featured in Ensemble 20/21’s sold-out November 18 concert, “Music of the Earth.”

Born in 1977 in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona, award-winning Diné composer and artist Raven Chacon studied at the University of New Mexico (BA, 2001) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 2004). A former member of the interdisciplinary art collective Postcommodity (from 2009 to 2018), the 2023 MacArthur Fellow is an internationally renowned solo performer of experimental noise music and a remarkable visual artist whose chamber music compositions and site-specific opera Sweet Land, with fellow composer Du Yun—exploring the history and the American myth of Manifest Destiny—have been met with widespread acclaim.

Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music—the first Native American in the award’s 105-year-history—for his epic work Voiceless Mass, scored for pipe organ, chamber orchestra, and sine tones, Chacon’s work has been exhibited, performed, or been presented at venues such as the Kennedy Center, the 2022 Whitney Biennial, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, and the Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway. His work is praised for exploring “relationships among sound, space, and people…[as he breaks] open musical traditions and activates spaces of performance where the histories of the lands the United States has encroached upon can be contemplated, questioned, and reimagined.” In addition to his own musical and artistic endeavors, since 2004, Chacon has mentored more than three hundred Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP).

Visit Raven Chacon’s official website.

This month, Ensemble 20/21 is excited to feature Raven Chacon’s 2016 composition, The Journey of the Horizontal People, which was originally commissioned for the Kronos Quartet’s 50 For The Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire project.

The Journey of the Horizontal People, Composer Notes

“The Journey of the Horizontal People is a future creation story telling of a group of people traveling from west to east across the written page, contrary to the movement of the sun but involuntarily and unconsciously allegiant to the trappings of time. With their bows, these wanderers sought out others like them, knowing that they could survive by finding these other clans who resided in the east, others who shared their linear cosmologies. It is told that throughout the journey, in their own passage of time, this group became the very people they were seeking.” –Raven Chacon

 

Ensemble 20/21 presents “Music of the Earth,” this Saturday, November 18, 2023, at 7:30 p.m., in Gould Rehearsal Hall at the Curtis Institute of Music. The eclectic program features selections that celebrate the sights and sounds of the natural world, with works by Raven Chacon, John Luther Adams, Allison Loggins-Hull, Gabriella Smith (’13), Gulli Björnsson, and Luciano Berio. This sold-out concert features the talents of Curtis’s extraordinarily gifted musicians under the batons of mezzo-soprano Micah Gleason, the Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellow, who will be conducting and singing Berio’s Folk Songs from the podium.

You may join the waitlist should seats become available at Curtis.edu.

Photo Credits: 1.) Portrait of Raven Chacon; Adam Conte/Courtesy of the artist and NPR. 2.) Image courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 3.) Raven Chacon accepts the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger; Eileen Barroso/Columbia University.

 

 

Congratulations to Curtis’s 2024 GRAMMY Nominees!

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The nominees for the 2024 GRAMMY Awards were announced on Friday, November 10. Among those honored are several celebrated faculty and alumni of Curtis who are in the front rank of musicians worldwide.

Under the category of Best Orchestral Performance, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Karina Canellakis (Violin ’04), was nominated for Bartók: Concerto For Orchestra.

Curtis Mentor Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin received a nomination for Price: Symphony No. 4; Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Maestro Nézet-Séguin was also nominated under the Best Opera Recording category with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus for Blanchard’s Champion, featuring Eric Owens (Opera ’95), director of vocal studies and Curtis Opera Theatre.

In the same category, baritone Jarrett Ott (Opera ’04) earned a nomination as part of the the cast of John Corigliano’s The Lord of Cries, with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Odyssey Opera, and Gil Rose. The opera tells the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair Anthony McGill (Clarinet ’00) is nominated alongside the Pacifica Quartet, of which violist Mark Holloway (’05) is a member, for their collaborative album American Stories for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. The Catalyst Quartet, featuring alumna Abi Fayette (Violin ’17, CAF ’20), was nominated in the same category for Uncovered, Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still & George Walker. The first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Mr. Walker attended Curtis from 1941 to 1945.

Alumna Yuja Wang (Piano ’08) and conductor Teddy Abrams (’08) of the Louisville Orchestra were nominated for Best Classical Instrumental Solo album for The American Project, featuring the world premiere of Abrams’s Piano Concerto and Tilson Thomas’s You Come Here Often?.

The work of the late composer, pianist, vocalist, and Curtis alumnus Julius Eastman (Piano ’63) was featured on Wild Up’s album, Julius Eastman, Vol. 3: If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? with conductor Christopher Rountree. The Los Angeles-based ensemble, a modern musical collective featuring Curtis alumna JiJi (Guitar ’15), was also nominated last year for its second entry of a seven-volume anthology celebrating the music and legacy of Mr. Eastman.

In the same category, Curtis faculty members Imani Winds were nominated, among other groups, for the album Passion for Bach and Coltrane, produced by Mark Dover, clarinetist for the acclaimed wind quintet.

Curtis faculty member and double bassist Edgar Meyer‘s piece “Motion” from the album As We Speak with Béla Fleck, and Zakir Hussain, featuring Rakesh Chaurasia, was nominated for Best Instrumental Composition.

A number of Curtis alumni are also members of the ensembles nominated across many categories.

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

VIEW ALL NOMINEES

The 66th GRAMMY Awards will take place on Sunday, February 4, 2024. View the Premiere Ceremony at live.grammy.com.