Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival presents the Cassatt String Quartet & Pianist Ursula Oppens
$30
- Muneko Otani, violin
- Jennifer Leshnower, violin
- Rosemary Nelis, viola
- Gwen Krosnick, cello
- Ursula Oppens, piano (guest artist)
- Victoria Bond, host
Tania León — Ethos
Wang Jie — Song for Mahler in the Absence of Words
Joan Tower — Dumbarton Quintet
Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival presents the world-renowned Cassatt String Quartet with guest pianist Ursula Oppens.
The highlight of the program is Victoria Bond’s Blue and Green Music, which the quartet recorded for Albany Records and is based on a Georgia O'Keefe painting of the same title. Other works on the program include Tania Leon's Ethos and Joan Tower's Dumbarton piano quintets and Wang Jie's Songs for Mahler in the Absence of Words for piano quartet.
The concert will explore facets of contemporary music by living composers, all of whom will be present to discuss their works on stage with host and creator Victoria Bond.
About Cassatt String Quartet
Hailed for its "mighty rapport and relentless commitment," the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for nearly four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing's Central Conservatory. The Quartet's prolific discography—featured three times in Alex Ross's "10 Best Classical Recordings" column in The New Yorker—includes over forty recordings, for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels.
The Cassatt Quartet's 2023-2024 season has included major performances and recordings of works by Tania León, Victoria Bond, Adolphus Hailstork, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, and Daniel S. Godfrey; their annual residencies at the Seal Bay Festival and Cassatt in the Basin!; hometown concerts in the New York area, including at Symphony Space and Bargemusic; and appearances at Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Music Mountain.
The CSQ is named for the great Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.
https://www.cassattquartet.com/About Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival
Inspired by Pierre Boulez "Perspective Encounters" series, composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts in 1998. With 26 years of concerts, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented over 300 new works by more than 200 composers. Each program highlights the music of living composers, all of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers.
https://cuttingedgeconcerts.org/About Muneko Otani, violin
About Rosemary Nelis, viola
About Gwen Krosnick, cello
About Ursula Oppens, piano (guest artist)
Ursula Oppens, a legend among American pianists, is widely admired particularly for her original and perceptive readings of new music, but also for her knowing interpretations of the standard repertoire. No other artist alive today has commissioned and premiered more new works for the piano that have entered the permanent repertoire.
A prolific and critically acclaimed recording artist with five Grammy nominations to her credit, Ms. Oppens is renowned for her cult classic The People United Will Never Be Defeated by the late iconoclastic composer Frederic Rzewski. That 1979 release, for the Vanguard label, marked her first Grammy nomination. In 2016 she put out a new recording of The People United Will Never Be Defeated, also nominated for a Grammy, and earlier Grammy nominations were for Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano; Oppens Plays Carter; a recording of the complete piano works of Elliott Carter for Cedille Records (also named a "Best of the Year" selection by The New York Times' long-time music critic Allan Kozinn); and Piano Music of Our Time featuring compositions by John Adams, Elliott Carter, Julius Hemphill, and Conlon Nancarrow for the Music and Arts label. Ms. Oppens recently added to her extensive discography by releasing Fantasy: Oppens plays Kaminsky in 2021 for the Cedille label. She also recorded Piano Songs, a collaboration with Meredith Monk, as well as a two-piano CD for Cedille Records devoted to Visions de l'Amen of Oliver Messiaen and Debussy's En blanc et noir performed with pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
http://www.colbertartists.com/ursula-oppens/About Victoria Bond, host
A major force in 21st century music, composer Victoria Bond is known for her melodic gift and dramatic flair. Her works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and opera have been lauded by The New York Times as "powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding."
Her compositions have been performed by the New York City Opera, Shanghai, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, American Ballet Theater, and the Cassatt and Audubon Quartets.
Ms. Bond is also an acclaimed conductor, and is the principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, and has held conducting positions with Pittsburgh Symphony, New York City Opera, Roanoke Symphony, and Bel Canto and Harrisburg Operas.
https://www.victoriabond.com/Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space
2537 BroadwayNew York, NY 10025
United States
https://www.symphonyspace.org/your-visit/leonard-nimoy-thalia