Avery Waite Quartet w/Danni Lee & Caroline Shaw

• Avery Waite, cello
• Kim Mai Nguyen, viola
• Ling Ling Huang, violin
• Caroline Shaw, violin
• Danni Lee Parpan, voice

Join us for an evening of music by composer/violinist Caroline Shaw and singer-songwriter Danni Lee. Caroline will perform alongside violinist Ling Ling Huang, violist Kim Mai Nguyen, and cellist Avery Waite.

Light refreshments will be served. Doors at 6:30pm – seating is limited so arrive early!

About Ringdown Music

Ringdown's music is like calling your first love on a rotary telephone, percussively tearing out the hammers from a 1924 vintage upright, and flinging each of them into space while you wait for every heartache you've ever felt to quietly return. Collaborators Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee—who between the two of them have a Pulitzer Prize, a handful of Grammys, and a "Best Drum Major" Award—describe Ringdown as an electronic cinematic pop duo from Portland, Oregon. Others have described Ringdown as the love child of Johannes Brahms and Brandi Carlile—if they were born in the same century and if Brahms was a queer woman. You decide.

About Avery Waite, cello

Juilliard-trained Cellist Avery Waite is an active performer, teacher, composer, and arts advocate. Excited by the transformative impact of music education and cultural exchange, he is involved in a wide range of education programs, social justice initiatives, and cultural diplomacy projects. Avery has lived and taught overseas at music programs in the Middle East, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean and is very involved with the El Sistema movement both abroad and in the USA. He is Executive Director of MusAid, a non-profit specializing in global music education and has led teaching trips to El Salvador, Belize, and Jamaica. In addition to his work with MusAid, Avery has worked in Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkmenistan with the State Department program American Voices.

As a performer, Avery has appeared in concert at Avery Fisher Hall, The Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, MoMA, and Carnegie Hall, and has performed solo in Europe, Asia, and North America. Avery has been a featured performer on Sesame Street and was also recently selected to perform in concert with Itzhak Perlman at the Perlman Music Program. Avery is also an active composer and arranger. Inspired and moved by his most recent experience teaching in Afghanistan, he has done extensive arranging of traditional Afghan folk music. Selections from these arrangements were recently performed at the Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston (SC) and at The Juilliard School. Avery completed his undergraduate studies at Oberlin Conservatory in 2010 and received a Masters degree from The Juilliard School in 2012.

About Kim Mai Nguyen, viola

Originally from France, Kim Mai Nguyen is a Juilliard-trained violist, music educator, and arts advocate based in Portland, Oregon. With a driven personality and a passion for music, she is a dynamic and charismatic performer in music ranging from the baroque to the contemporary, as well as world music. As an artist involved in world citizenship, she has performed as a soloist and taught in Afghanistan, Belize, France, Guatemala, Iraq, Jamaica, Prague, Vietnam, and the United States. Hailed by the New York Times, Kim Mai “gave colorful, committed readings that illuminated the variety of styles offered” at the MoMa Summergarden Series in New York City with the New Juilliard Ensemble.

Kim Mai plays with the Oregon Symphony and the Oregon Bach Festival. She is an active musician both in Europe and in the United States. She was appointed principal of the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in Charleston, SC, and has participated in numerous music festivals such as the Castleton Festival, New York String Seminar, and Tanglewood Music Center. She has experience working with distinguished conductors including Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Williams, and Jaap van Zweden.

Dedicated to education, community activism and cultural diplomacy, Kim Mai has participated in numerous projects around the world. Most recently, she co-directed orchestra workshops in Lebanon and Iraq with American Voice, a state department sponsored organization providing cultural exchange through meaningful arts initiatives. Following a successful workshop with the National Youth Orchestra of Belize, she joined the staff of MusAid Organization, a non-profit that provides musical institutions in under-resourced parts of the world with volunteer music teachers and donated instruments and materials. In 2013, She was a string faculty member with the National Youth Orchestra of Jamaica, an El Sistema inspired program serving students in the slums of Kingston.

About Ling Ling Huang, violin

Ling Ling Huang is a violinist and writer. Committed to expanding the concepts of tradition, Ling Ling is an active presence in the New York musical scene, appearing on stages from Carnegie Hall to National Sawdust. Her debut novel, Natural Beauty, was published in April 2023 by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Constance Wu and Drew Comins are producing a series adaptation.

About Caroline Shaw, violin

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist.

Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This year's projects include the score to Fleishman is in Trouble (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker's The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of The Crucible (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, a new stage work LIFE (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust), the premiere of Microfictions Vol. 3 for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang's silent film Moby Dick co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (Evergreen and The Blue Hour), the score for Helen Simoneau's dance work Delicate Power, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (co-created immersive theatrical work with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, La Jolla Music Society).

Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, TV series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton's America, and More Perfect.

Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

About Danni Lee Parpan, voice

Danni Lee is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter based in Portland, OR. Her latest album, Truth Teller (October 2021), has her focusing her efforts on distorted electric tenor ukulele and rule-breaking how instruments are "supposed" to be played. Known for her live performance energy and witty stage banter, Danni Lee's live shows have been described as equal parts stand-up comedy and live music. Whether you laugh or cry – or both – her emotionally driven lyrics will be stuck in your head for weeks and weeks.