The string chamber music program (also called Camarades) continues to develop. The requirements, policies and guidelines for this program are being revised. The string faculty is initiating the following opportunity for the upcoming auditions in September ‘10:

On Friday September 24th from 1pm in studio B860 every new incoming string student (performance majors only) are invited to audition for chamber music by joining the string faculty in a string quartet setting.

The choosen work this year is :

The parts are posted in PDF format on this Downloads page. You will be able to access these and print them out to practice it. Violinists can choose and prepare either 1st or 2nd violin part.

You will be evaluated on the basis of your playing, knowledge of the work, and your chamber music skills. Groups will then be formed by us.

We are sorry not to be able to extend the invitation to play with us to all students, as the time constraints are significant. For returning students, we already know your playing!

Please send any requests for groups which have collectively agreed on staying together or being pre-formed, and any repertoire wishes, by (September 15th) 2010, to at guiguisutre@gmail.com

Please be aware that although every effort will be made to honor these requests, it may be hard to guarantee that groups will end up exactly as everyone wishes. Other instruments (e.g. piano) may be added to the mix.

Aside from coaching groups, the string faculty will be advising ensembles in matters of repertoire choice, personnel choice and personnel issues, ‘Camarades’ concerts and outside performances, competitions etc.

We all would like to see the chamber music program be a central and prominent experience for all string students in the performance program. It will require a strong commitment from all involved, to allow for each ensemble and the program to flourish.

We look forward to playing with you very soon!

The String Faculty

soloist & former concertmaster of Toronto Symphony

May 19 (Wednesday)
3:30-5:30 PM, Orchestra Room

Internationally renowned violinist Jacques Israelievitch is one of the most distinguished performing artists in North America and abroad.  After making his debut on French National Radio at the age of eleven, Mr. Israelievitch went on to graduate from the Paris Conservatory at sixteen and was subsequently prizewinner at the International Paganini Competition.  His teachers include Henryk Szeryng, Janos Starker, William Primrose, and Josef Gingold.

As a soloist, Mr. Israelievitch has collaborated with Solti, Giulini, Slatkin, Davis, and Frühbeck de Burgos, appearing with many of the world’s major orchestras.  As a distinguished chamber musician, he has performed with Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, and Yo-Yo Ma, and is violinist for the twice Naumburg Award recipient New Arts Trio.

Mr. Israelievitch served as Concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a record-setting twenty years, and was formerly Assistant Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for six years and Concertmaster of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra for ten years.   He is currently chair of strings at the Chautauqua Institution and a full-time faculty member at York University in Toronto.  In growing demand as a conductor, he has been Music Director of the Koffler Chamber Orchestra since 2005.

Mr. Israelievitch’s discography features more than 100 albums including the Juno Award nominated Suite Hebraique and the first-ever complete recording of Kreutzer’s 42 Studies for solo violin.  He has premiered and recorded several concertos such as R. Murray Schafer’s The Darkly Splendid Earth: The Lonely Traveler.

In 2004, the French government named Mr. Israelievitch Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.  He is also the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the performing arts in Canada.

from http://www.israelievitch.com/jacques.html

by  Charles Fierro

For any arts organization, the fifth year is a significant landmark.  At that point they have demonstrated viability, established their reputation and developed a following.  Under the visionary leadership of its directors, Vatsche Barsoumian and Movses Pogossian, the Dilijan Chamber Music Series in Los Angeles has accomplished all this and more.  It is now one of the jewels of the Southern California arts scene.

This is due to the consistent quality of their performances as well as to their unique mission:  to present the classics of Western classical chamber music to Armenian-American audiences and to bring new Armenian music to a wider public.

No finer example of their success could be imagined than their concert of April 25 at Zipper Hall.  In a program for string instruments, compositions by two titans of Western music flanked three pieces by the revered composer/musicologist Komitas (1869-1935).  The futuristic complexities of two late Beethoven works (Grosse Fuge, Opus 133 and Cavatina from String Quartet, Opus 130) and J.S. Bach’s dazzling Goldberg Variations were the perfect foil for the profoundly moving Komitas songs arranged for string orchestra by Sergey Aslamazyan.

The conductorless 16-member UCLA Camarades String Ensemble delivered the Beethoven Grosse Fuge and Komitas pieces with panache and sensitivity.  Violinists Guillaume Sutre and Movses Pogossian, violist Paula Karolak and cellist Antonio Lysy revealed the heartfelt emotion in the Beethoven Cavatina.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations (in a remarkable transcription for string trio by Dmitry Sitkovetsky) sounded so completely idiomatic that one did not at all miss their original setting for harpsichord.   Pogossian, Sutre and Lysy brought exhilarating tempos and authoritative virtuosity to the performance.

It was a stimulating concert experience, one that bodes well for the future of the Dilijan Series.  At its conclusion, this writer, like the rest of the audience, left the hall energized with renewed optimism.

Charles Fierro is a concert pianist and Professor Emeritus of Music at California State University, Northridge.

NEW DATE!

Friday May 7, 3-4:30pm

Popper Theatre

Violin Masterclass by Martin Chalifour

Concertmaster of LA Phil

MARTIN CHALIFOUR began his tenure as Principal Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1995. The recipient of various grants and awards in his native Canada, he graduated with honors from the Montreal Conservatory at the age of 18 and then moved to Philadelphia to pursue studies at the Curtis Institute of Music.

In 1986 Chalifour received a Certificate of Honor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow; he was a laureate of the Montreal International Competition the following year. Since then he has concertized extensively, playing hundreds of concerto performances from a repertoire of more than 50 works. He has appeared as soloist with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Neville Marriner, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Outside the U.S., he has appeared as a guest soloist with the Auckland Philharmonia, the Montreal Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Malaysian Philharmonic, among others.

Chalifour began his orchestral career in 1984 with the late Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, playing as Associate Concertmaster for six years. Subsequently he occupied the same position for five years in the Cleveland Orchestra, where he also served as Acting Concertmaster under Christoph von Dohnányi. While in Cleveland, Chalifour taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a founding member of two chamber ensembles, Myriad and the Cleveland Orchestra Piano Trio.

Chalifour is a frequent guest at several summer music festivals. Maintaining close ties with his native Quebec, he has returned there often to teach and perform as soloist with various Canadian orchestras. Chalifour and two of his Philharmonic colleagues, Joanne Pearce Martin and Peter Stumpf, met in 1981 while all three were studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; they have joined forces to form the Los Angeles Philharmonic Piano Trio.

Martin Chalifour is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

from http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/artist-detail.cfm?id=64

Professor at the University of British Columbia

May 7 (Friday)
3:30-5:30 PM, SMB 1151

ERIC WILSON was awarded the Bronze Medal (1971) in the Geneva International Competition and co-winner of the Morris Loeb Prize for Strings (1973) at the Juilliard School. Eric Wilson was solo cellist of the Ensemble of New York in residence at the Lincoln Centre, New York. He was also a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet that won in 1978 the prestigious Walter W. Naumberg competition Prize for Chamber Ensemble.

Wilson has performed with such eminent artists as Menahem Pressler and Walter Trampler and with the Boston Chamber Soloists, New York Chamber Soloists, Lyric Piano Quartet, Quartet Canada, Pro Arte Quartet and the Melos Quartet. As guest artist, Wilson has appeared at the Wolf Trap; Newport (R.I.); Katonah (N.Y.); Banff, Alberta; Scotia; Meadow Brook and Vermont Mozart Festivals among others.

With pianist Patricia Hoy, Professor Wilson has performed extensively and received critical acclaim with the release of their CD of Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano and Stephen Chatman’s Sonata for Cello and Piano. In March 2004, Wilson gave a series of masterclasses and recitals in Taiwan including lectures at the National Teacher’s University in Taipei and a recital at the Taiwan National Theatre, also in Taipei.

from http://www.music.ubc.ca/faculty-and-staff/full-time-faculty-biographies/professor-eric-wilson.html