UW Faculty Quartet: Messiaen – 'Quartet for the End of Time'

• Rachel Lee Priday, violin
• Benjamin Lulich, clarinet
• Sarah Rommel, cello
• Craig Sheppard, piano

Faculty colleagues Rachel Lee Priday, violin; Benjamin Lulich, clarinet; Sarah Rommel, cello; and Craig Sheppard, piano, perform one of Olivier Messiaen's signature works, the Quartet for the End of Time, composed in 1940-41 during Messiaen's detention in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland.

About UW School of Music

http://music.washington.edu/

About Rachel Lee Priday, violin

Violinist Rachel Lee Priday (PRY-day) is a passionate and inquisitive explorer in all her musical ventures, in search of contemporary relevance when performing the standard violin repertoire, and in discovering and commissioning new works. Her wide-ranging repertoire and eclectic programming reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives.

Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, including the Chicago, Saint Louis, Houston, Seattle, and National Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Berlin Staatskapelle. Recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues including the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Musée du Louvre, Verbier Festival, Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and tours of South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Committed to new music, and making enriching community and global connections, Rachel takes a multidisciplinary approach to performing that lends itself to new commissions organically merging poetry, dance, drama, stimulating visuals and music. Recent seasons have seen a new Violin Sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone and the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “The Orphic Moment” in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals, and music. Rachel has collaborated several times with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But The Lonely Heart” during a week-long theatrical concert with Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted new music relationships and cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining new music premieres and educational outreach in the US, China, Korea and Vietnam.

Rachel began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York to study with iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, and continued her studies at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. Rachel holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried. Since Fall 2019, she serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Washington School of Music.

Recent and upcoming concerto engagements include the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, and Bangor Symphony. Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, she has performed with numerous orchestras across the country, such as the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, and New York Youth Symphony. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour.

Rachel has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, and The Strad. Her concerts have been broadcast on major media outlets in the U.S., Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous radio appearances on 98.7 WFMT Chicago radio, and American Public Media’s Performance Today. She been featured on the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.

Praised by the Chicago Tribune for her “irresistible panache,” Rachel Lee Priday enthralls audiences with her riveting stage presence and “rich, mellifluous sound.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “It’s not just her technique, although clearly there’s nothing she can’t do on the fingerboard or with her bow. What’s most impressive is that she is an artist who can make the music sing… And though her tone is voluptuous and sexy where it counts, she concluded the ‘Intermezzo’ with such charm that her listeners responded with a collective chuckle of approval as she finished.”

She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.

About Benjamin Lulich, clarinet

https://music.washington.edu/people/ben-lulich

About Sarah Rommel, cello

http://www.sarahrommelcello.com/

About Craig Sheppard, piano

Craig Sheppard is a renowned pedagogue whose former students hold positions in major universities and conservatories in this country and around the world, including England, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Known for his passion at the keyboard, allied to technical mastery and a deep commitment to both scholarly and historical perspectives, Sheppard celebrates more than fifty years on the international concert platform. He has performed his most recent projects, the 24 Préludes and Fugues of Shostakovich, Opus 87, and Bach's The Art of Fugue in New York, London, Shanghai, The Forbidden Concert Hall Beijing, Jerusalem, and Oslo, as well as numerous universities and conservatories in the U.S. His CDs of the Shostakovich met with critical acclaim in both national and international press. In the July, 2016 issue of Fanfare magazine, Peter Rabinowitz writes: "What's especially impressive is Sheppard’s sense of the music’s changing landscapes, his ability to shape its emotional trajectories. This is a set full of interpretive astuteness that repays repeated listening." Bryce Morrison writes in the February, 2016 issue of Gramophone: "…clearly at the zenith of his career, he achieves a brilliantly inclusive poise and brio that go to the very heart of Shostakovich. He ends the Fugue No. 24 in a blaze of maestoso glory and a storm of cheers. Finely recorded, this is a memorable issue."

In the April, 2011 issue of London's International Record Review of Sheppard’s Last Three Piano Sonatas by Franz Schubert, Robert Matthew-Walker noted: "It was Hans Keller who said that All great artists are, by virtue of what they do, also great teachers, and those who have heard Sheppard's recent recording on the Roméo label – particularly the complete Beethoven sonatas and Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, Books I and II – will know the truth of that statement. The City of Seattle and the students at its University are indeed fortunate to have him in their midst." Sheppard's recital début at the Berlin Philharmonic, featuring Chopin's 24 Préludes and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, caused one critic to enthuse: "The pianist revealed himself an intimate connoisseur of Bach’s soul." Following Sheppard's appearance at a recent Minnesota Beethoven Festival, the reviewer exclaimed: "With the recitals of Yo-Yo Ma and Craig Sheppard, the festival is off to a great start!"

Craig Sheppard was born in Philadelphia and graduated both the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, studying with Eleanor Sokoloff and Sasha Gorodnitzki respectively. He worked at the Marlboro Festival with Rudolf Serkin and Pablo Casals and in London with Ilona Kabos, Peter Feuchtwanger and Sir Clifford Curzon. He gave his New York début in January, 1972 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and six months later won the Silver Medal at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. Moving to London the following year, he played with all the major British orchestras on multiple occasions, as well as many on the European continent and many major orchestras in this country, working with conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Sir Georg Solti, Kurt Sanderling, James Levine, Michael Tilson Thomas, Aaron Copland, Yehudi Menuhin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Zinman and Leonard Slatkin. Sheppard taught at Lancaster University, the Yehudi Menuhin School, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in addition to giving masterclasses at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Sheppard returned to this country in 1993 as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington's School of Music, becoming a Full Professor in 2004. Sheppard's repertoire is eclectic, comprising forty-plus recital programs and over sixty concerti spanning all major eras of Western classical music. He has collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, José Carreras, Ida Handel, Sylvia Rosenberg, Victoria de los Angeles, Irina Arkhipova, the Cleveland, Bartók, and Emerson String Quartets, in addition to musicians of the younger generation, including Augustin Hadelich, James Ehnes, Stefan Jackiw, Richard O'Neill, Edward Arron and Johannes Moser. He travels frequently to Europe, the Far East, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and South America to give concerts and masterclasses.

In 2010, Sheppard co-founded the annual Seattle Piano Institute with colleague, Dr. Robin McCabe, a musical boot camp for gifted young pianists that includes frequent private lessons along with supervised practice in dedicated practice rooms, masterclasses and seminars. Sheppard's CDs can be found on the Roméo, AT-Berlin, Philips, Sony, and Chandos labels.