The Curtis community mourns the loss of celebrated violinist and pedagogue Geoffrey Michaels (’60), who passed away at age 79 on Saturday, February 17, due to complications from Parkinson’s disease at the Samaritan Center in Voorhees, New Jersey. Born in 1944 in Perth, Australia, Mr. Michaels began taking violin lessons at age five and, at 14, became the youngest winner of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s concerto competition, touring as a soloist and performing with quartets and orchestras throughout the country. At age 16, he was invited to attend Curtis and studied with the school’s director, Efrem Zimbalist; and virtuosic violinist, violist, and conductor, Oscar Shumsky. Soon after, he was welcomed as a member of the renowned Curtis String Quartet and later cofounded the Liebesfreud Quartet.
In a career full of many notable accomplishments, Mr. Michaels won the fourth annual Emma Feldman Competition in 1970 in Philadelphia and was a finalist in the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris, the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he played Mr. Zimbalist’s composition, “Coq d’Or Fantasy.” Other highlights include performing the U.S. premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso, broadcast through the radio program Voice of America; Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa and Fratres—both presented live at Lincoln Center. Throughout his career, Mr. Michaels also made appearances at the Kennedy Center, the Academy of Music, and other prestigious venues across the globe.
Beyond the stage, Mr. Michaels served as a professor at the University of British Columbia and Florida State University while maintaining teaching affiliations with Princeton University, the New School of Music, and Swarthmore College. In 1986, he discussed the importance of participating in community outreach programs in the New York Times: “I feel that I am no use as a teacher unless I am consistently engaged in the business of actually playing. Almost everything I have to say is based on my own experience with the instrument.”
Our heartfelt sympathies and condolences go out to Mr. Michaels’s family, friends, colleagues, and former students.
To read more about Geoffrey Michaels’s life and legacy read this tribute in the Philadelphia Inquirer and at the Violin Channel.
Photo credits: 1.) Banner image of Mr. Michaels courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Mr. Michaels’s family. 2.) Courtesy of the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster. 3.) Mr. Michaels and his Liebesfreud Quartet colleagues; courtesy of the ensemble. 4.) Image of Mr. Michaels and the Curtis String Quartet in 1968; Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mr. Vitalij formed his first progressive metal band in 1993, Atlantis Rising. In 1995, he was sent to the United States on a recommendation by Sir James Galway to continue his studies at Curtis with Gary Graffman (Piano ’46). Mr. Graffman is quoted as saying, “Vitalij is a powerful, elegant, and communicative artist…an amazing musician.” His band was renamed and refashioned into Artension, which released a series of albums on the Shrapnel label. Kuprij also released several solo albums and also worked with the groups Ring of Fire and the Vivaldi Metal Project.
I don’t know that I would necessarily describe them as feminist works of art—which is not to say that they are misogynistic. Operas are not created to exist in a vacuum. They’re created to be done over and over again, and so I believe that both pieces welcome the feminist perspective.
Poulenc started mulling over turning Apollinaire’s play into an opera in the ’30s, and he finished it after World War II, which was the same period that Weill and Brecht were swiftly creating Seven Deadly Sins. The double bill is gently rooted in the 1930s through our props and costumes, and the scenery is more of an abstract modular canvas for the storytelling. We aren’t rigidly adhering to period precision, but our baseline for the silhouette of the main story points is the 1930s for both shows, and some of our props pass through from Mamelles into Seven Deadly Sins to further make that link.
While at Curtis, Mr. Marsalis practiced trumpet for “five to six hours daily,” and this passion and discipline ultimately led to summers spent as a Tanglewood Fellow under the baton of Leonard Bernstein (Conducting ’41) and being mentored by pianist and Curtis faculty member Rudolf Serkin at both Tanglewood and the Marlboro Music Festival. He then secured titled chairs in the New Orleans Symphony, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfonica de Tenerife, the Barcelona Symphony, and the Richmond Symphony. In Europe, after winning international auditions in the Canary Islands and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra as principal trumpet, he began to establish a global presence, working with some of the world’s leading soloists and conductors before coming back to Philadelphia and founding one of America’s premier large brass ensembles.
After completing a one-year trial period, Mr. Marsalis was awarded the principal trumpet position with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. During his tenure as principal trumpet with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, he was appointed head of the trumpet department at the Escuela Superior de Musica de Catalunya (ESMUC), Spain’s leading music conservatory. He has recently been invited to give master classes at the Julliard School, the North Carolina School for the Arts, the National Trumpet Competition, and the International Trumpet Guild Conference.
Mr. Marsalis recently stopped by his alma mater: “I brought my daughter to visit the pictures on the wall from graduation with the help of Shea Scruggs (Oboe ’04) [director of institutional research and musician experience/chief enrollment officer] and Kei Fukuda [musician life cycle manager]. As she begins her journey with music, science, and the arts, it was a thrill for my kiddo to see me (with hair) and all of the venerable and beloved friends and colleagues from the Curtis Institute.”
Speaking on the guitar concerto, Mackey shared: “The classical guitar is the most ridiculously soft instrument. The best place to listen to the classical guitar is playing it, so we need to amplify that detail. With the third movement of Aluminum Flowers, the starting point was my appreciation of the sound of Carlos Santana and his singing tone. There’s this one tune, in particular, Samba Pa’ Ti. In Aluminum Flowers, the [Santana-esque tune] is amplified and distorted lyrically. The first movement is classical guitar. The second movement has this delay pedal that the guitarist has to keep up with. The fourth movement uses a crazy [prepared] guitar that I invented!”
The afternoon concludes with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s impassioned, intensely personal Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 (“Pathétique”). Composed in the final year of his life—in the ever-rippling wake of a traumatic marriage years earlier, as he continued to grapple with depression, artistic self-doubt, and societal pressures regarding his sexual orientation—this turbulent work captures the Russian Romantic composer’s psychological turmoil and disillusionment with life right before his physical health began to suddenly decline. Subtitled “Patetitčeskaja,” or “passionate” in English, at the suggestion of his brother Modest and dedicated to his nephew Bob Davydov, the symphony premiered in St. Peterburg on October 28, 1893, only nine days before Tchaikovsky’s mysterious death at age 53. In numerous letter correspondences, he deemed it “the best thing I ever composed or shall compose,” an emotional symphony enrobed in shadows—brooding, euphoric, tense, and frighteningly explosive—yet conceived and delivered to the world without the knowledge that his death would follow mere days after he conducted its first performance. The invisible force of Fate that had relentlessly pursued his Fourth and Fifth symphonies is met head-on here in his Sixth, with an unexpectedly solemn finale that defies nineteenth-century conventions and forgoes orchestral pyrotechnics as the steady heartbeat in the low double basses slows, and the audience is left with nothing but silence.
Robert Spano (Conducting ’85)—conductor, pianist, composer, and teacher—is known worldwide for the intensity of his artistry and distinctive communicative abilities, creating a sense of inclusion and warmth among musicians and audiences that is unique among American orchestras. After twenty seasons as music director, he continues his association with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as music director laureate. An avid mentor to rising artists, he is responsible for nurturing the careers of numerous celebrated composers, conductors, and performers. As music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2011, he oversees the programming of more than 300 events and educational programs for 630 students and young performers. Principal guest conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra since 2019, Spano began his tenure as music director in August 2022, and will continue there through the 2027–28 season. He is the tenth music director in the orchestra’s history, which was founded in 1912. In February 2024, Spano was appointed music director of the Washington National Opera, beginning in the 2025–26 season, for a three-year term; he is currently the WNO’s music director designate.
James Ra’s music has been described as “coursing with adrenaline-pumping energy.” In Japan, when the Curtis Chamber Orchestra took his Concerto Grosso No. 1 on tour, they wrote: “the Concerto Grosso No. 1 had a tremendous impact on the audience. Its themes of love, life, and death were dramatically expressed.” This work subsequently aired on National Public Radio. The Philadelphia Inquirer has called him “a composer to watch.”
Through her impeccable musicianship, compelling stage presence, and commitment to commissioning and performing new musical works, JIJI has solidified her reputation as a top 21st century guitarist. In 2021, The Washington Post selected JIJI as “one of the 21 composers/performers who sound like tomorrow,” and The Kansas City Star recently described her as “a graceful and nuanced player.” In recent seasons, JIJI has presented solo recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; Lincoln Center; 92nd Street Y; Caramoor; Green Music Center; and the National Art Gallery, among other distinguished venues. Her performances have been featured on PBS (On Stage at Curtis), NPR’s From the Top, WHYY-TV, FOX 4-TV, Munchies (the Vice Channel), The Not So Late Show (Channel 6, Kansas), and Hong Kong broadcast station RTHK’s The Works. In 2016, she became the first guitarist in 30 years to secure first prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition.