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Pacifica String Quartet to perform concert in Slee
By AMY GREENAN
Reporter Contributor
The award-winning Pacifica String Quartet, celebrating its 10th season this year, will present the second concert in the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle as part of the Department of Music's concert schedule for November.
Pacifica String Quartet
The concert lineup also includes the annual Eastman Organists Day, performances by cellist Fred Sherry and organist Cherry Rhodes, and a UB faculty recital featuring pianist Jacob Greenberg, joined by guest vocalists Tony Arnold, soprano, and Alexander Hurd, baritone.
All performances will be held in Lippes Auditorium in Slee Concert Hall, North Campus.
The Pacifica's UB concert, to be held at 8 p.m. on Nov. 6, is just one stop on a 10th anniversary tour in which the ensemble performs its debut at Wigmore Hall in London, plays all five Elliott Carter quartets during performances in San Francisco, appears in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and performs more than 60 other concerts around the country, UB among them. The group also is releasing the complete Mendelssohn string quartets on the Cedille label.
Winner of three of chamber music's most important international awards—the Grand Prize at the 1996 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, top prize at the 1997 Concert Artists Guild Competition and the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award—the Pacifica quartet subsequently was honored in 2002 with Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award and was appointed Resident Quartet of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two.
An ardent advocate of contemporary music, the Pacifica has commissioned and performed as many as eight new works a year, and has performed Elliott Carter's five quartets in New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago and at the Edinburgh International Festival.
The Pacifica Quartet serves as Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago.
The annual Eastman Organists Day was the brainchild of David Fuller, UB professor emeritus, who envisioned a concert event to give music students majoring in organ performance at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester—one of the schools in the country to go for those studying the instrument—the opportunity to play and present performances on the spectacular Fisk organ housed in Lippes Auditorium in Slee Concert Hall.
What began as a one-time concert grew into its annual event due to the enthusiasm and interest of the local audience.
This year, Eastman organ students Daniel Aune, Eric Dombrowski, Miran Kim and Kola Owolabi will perform works that span from the 15th to the 20th centuries. The concert will be held at 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.
Among the works to be performed will be Praludium e-moll, BuxWV 142 by Dietrich Buxtehude; Tiento de medio registro de Segundo Tono by Francisco Correa de Arauxo; Fantaisie et Fugue, Op. 18, No. 6 by Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly; Allegro ma non troppo, Op. 18, No. 7 by Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly; Phantasie Op. 25 by Heinrich Reimann; "Gargouilles et Chimères" from Pièces de Fantaisie, Op. 55, No. 5 by Louis Vierne, and Sonata Eroïca, Op. 94 by Joseph Jongen.
Considered a pioneer and visionary in the music world, cellist Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents to contemporary music through his close association with such eminent composers as Mario Davidovsky, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Steven Mackey and Charles Wuorinen.
Sherry will present a recital at 8 p.m. on Nov. 12 in Lippes Auditorium. He also will conduct a master class at 1 p.m. on Nov. 12 and a composer reading with UB graduate composers at 3 p.m. on Nov. 11, both in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus. The master class and composer reading are free and open to the public.
Davidovsky, Mackey, Somei Satoh and Wuorinen have written concertos for Sherry, which he has performed with such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, Municipal Orchestra of Buenos Aires, the American Composers Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the New York City Ballet. Sherry gave the European premiere of the Elliott Carter cello concerto with Knussen and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the 2002 Aldeburgh Festival. He has been an active performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since the 1970s, an artist member since 1984 and was artistic director from 1988-92.
A member of the cello and chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School and a guest teacher at the Britten-Pears School Contemporary Music Course, he is writing a treatise on contemporary string playing.
The first American to win an international organ competition, Cherry Rhodes made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at 17 and subsequently performed with the orchestra many times under the baton of Eugene Ormandy, as well as many guest conductors. She will present a recital at 8 p.m. Nov. 19 in Lippes Auditorium.
Rhodes has played recitals at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and at international organ festivals all over Europe. In addition to performances in international Bach festivals in Paris and Marburg, she has given Bach recitals throughout the United States and has performed at numerous national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists.
A graduate of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, Rhodes is adjunct professor of organ at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and has served as a national and international adjudicator for numerous organ-playing competitions. In 2000, she gave a recital, as well as a master class, in Manchester Cathedral at the invitation of The Royal College of Organists, and served as the only American on an international jury that selected the International Performer of the Year.
The music of Beethoven and Ives will be the focus of pianist Jacob Greenberg's faculty recital at 8 p.m. Nov. 30 in Lippes Auditorium. Greenberg will be joined by vocalists Tony Arnold, soprano, and Alexander Hurd, baritone, both UB faculty members, as well as violist Adrienne Elisha, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Music.
Greenberg served for three years as principal keyboardist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, with whom he also played extensively as a chamber musician. As an orchestral player, he has performed with the Israel Philharmonic and the New World Symphony, among others.
Highlights of Greenberg's 2004-05 concert season include performances of Messiaen's Sept Haïkaï at Oberlin College, his alma mater; a concert with the George Crumb Ensemble, and recitals at New York's Symphony Space (with the International Contemporary Ensemble), New York University and the Boston Conservatory.
Greenberg collaborated with Arnold in her first-prize appearance at the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received the special award for outstanding accompanist at the Louise D. McMahon International Music Competition, again in collaboration with Arnold. Their recent recording of Elliott Carter's Of Challenge and of Love is available on Bridge Records.
Greenberg received his doctoral and master's degrees from Northwestern University, where he studied with Ursula Oppens. In addition to a degree in music, he completed a bachelor's degree in religious studies at Oberlin.
Tickets for the Pacific String Quartet, Fred Sherry and Cherry Rhodes concerts are $12 for general admission and $9 for UB faculty/staff/alumni, senior citizens and WNED members with a card, and $5 for students. Tickets for Eastman Organists Day are $5; tickets for the Jacob Greenberg faculty recital are $5, with UB students admitted free of charge when showing a valid ID.
All tickets can be obtained at the Slee Hall box office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at the Center for the Arts box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster outlets.