Ballet by John Neumeier | Préludes CV
Cello
Ani Aznavoorian
Cellist
"The Strad" magazine describes cellist Ani Aznavoorian as having "scorchingly committed performances that wring every last drop of emotion out of the music. Her technique is well-nigh immaculate, she has a natural sense of theater, and her tone is astonishingly responsive." Ms. Aznavoorian is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician with some of the most recognized ensembles, and she has appeared with many of the world's leading orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony, the International Sejong Soloists, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Edmonton Symphony. This season marks Ms. Aznavoorian's fifteenth year as Principal Cellist with Camerata Pacifica.
Ms. Aznavoorian received the prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award for her outstanding cello playing and artistry. Some of her other awards include first prizes in the Illinois Young Performers Competition (televised live on PBS with the Chicago Symphony), the Chicago Cello Society National Competition, the Julius Stulberg Competition, and the American String Teachers Association Competition. She was a top prizewinner in the 1996 International Paulo Competition, held in Helsinki, Finland. As a recipient of the Level I Award in the National Foundation for the Arts Recognition and Talent Search, Ms. Aznavoorian was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performed as soloist at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. where she met former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
As a first-year student at The Juilliard School, Ms. Aznavoorian won first prize in the institution's concerto competition – the youngest cellist in the history of the school's cello competitions to do so. As a result, she performed with the Juilliard Orchestra in a concert with conductor Gerard Schwarz at Avery Fisher Hall. With only 12 hours notice, Ms. Aznavoorian stepped in to replace Natalia Gutman in three performances of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with the San Jose Symphony – concerts that were hailed by the San Jose Press. Other notable appearances include concerts at Weill Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Ravinia's Bennett Hall, Aspen's Harris Hall, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, WFMT Live from Studio 1, and NPR's Performance Today. She has been a member of the renowned string ensemble the International Sejong Soloists, and also performs frequently on the Jupiter Chamber Music series in New York. Ms. Aznavoorian received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School where she studied with Aldo Parisot.
In addition to performing, teaching plays an important part in Ms. Aznavoorian's career. She has been a member of the distinguished music faculty at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, and in the summers has served on the faculty of the Great Mountains Music Festival in South Korea. Ms. Aznavoorian enjoys performing new music and has made the world premiers of many important pieces in the cello repertoire. Some of these include Ezra Laderman's Concerto No. 2 with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic under the baton of Lawrence Leighton Smith, Lera Auerbach's 24 Préludes for Cello and Piano on stage at the Hamburg Staatsoper with the Hamburg Ballet – choreographed by John Neumeier, and Lera Auerbach's Dreammusik for Cello and Chamber Orchestra, which was written for her and commissioned by Camerata Pacifica. Ms. Aznavoorian records for Cedille Records, and she proudly performs on a cello made by her father Peter Aznavoorian in Chicago.
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photo: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
Violin
Vadim Gluzman
Violin
Universally recognized among today's top performing artists, Vadim Gluzman brings to life the glorious violinistic tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries. Gluzman's wide repertoire embraces new music and his performances are heard around the world through live broadcasts and a striking catalogue of award-winning recordings exclusively for the BIS label.
The Israeli violinist has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony Royal Concertgebouw and many others. He collaborates with leading conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Tugan Sokhiev, Sir Andrew Davis, Neeme Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Semyon Bychkov and Hannu Lintu. Festival appearances include performances at Ravinia, Tanglewood, Verbier, and the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Chicago, founded by Gluzman and pianist Angela Yoffe, his wife and recital partner.
Highlights of the current season include performances with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Sydney and Melbourne Symphonies, Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra, and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Ohio, where he leads performances as its Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist. He celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of violinist Henryk Szeryng with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Hamburg NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony and the Warsaw Philharmonic.
Gluzman serves as Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Peabody Conservatory and performs on the legendary 1690 "ex-Leopold Auer" Stradivari, on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Piano
Lera Auerbach
Pianist
A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.
Lera Auerbach has become one of today's most sought-after and exciting creative voices. Her performances and music are featured in the world's leading stages – from Vienna's Musikverein and London's Royal Albert Hall to New York's Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center.
Auerbach's exquisitely crafted, emotional, and boldly imaginative music reached to global audiences. Orchestral collaborations include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Munich's Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Vienna's ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester, among many others. Auerbach's works for orchestra are performed by the world's leading conductors, including Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop, to mention only a few.
Her large-scale theater works have been produced in major venues on every continent, including Vienna's Theater an der Wien, New York's Lincoln Center, the Hamburg State Opera, the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, the Royal Danish Theater, the Nuremberg State Theater, the Finnish National Theater, Moscow's Stanislavsky, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing China and the NHK Hall in Tokyo.
Recent season highlights included WienModern's 3.5-hour production of Demons & Angels with Auerbach as the conductor. Washington D.C.'s National Symphony premiered her "4th Symphony 'Arctica'" – a work commissioned by the National Geographic Society. Her "4th Violin Concerto NYx: 'Fractured Dreams'" was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert, and Leonidas Kavakos, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered her symphonic poem "Eve's Lament" with Marin Alsop. 2022 brought the world premiere of two Lera Auerbach symphonies. The Nuremberg State Philharmonic presented the world premiere of "Symphony No.5 'Paradise Lost'" conducted by Joana Mallwitz, and her "Symphony No.6 'Vessels of Light'", a commission of Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was unveiled in Lithuania as part of the city's Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations.
Her music is championed and recorded by today's most prominent classical performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel; violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power, and many others.
Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and the visual arts. She incorporates these forms into her professional creative process, often simultaneously expressing ideas visually, in words, and through music. She has published three books of poetry in Russian, and her first English-language book, "Excess of Being" – in which she explores the rare form of aphorisms. Her next book, an illustrated work for children, "A is for Oboe", published by Penguin Random House, won Audiofile Best Audiobook 2022. She is the recipient of the 2021 Marsh Hawk Press – Robert Creely Memorial Award for her English poetry manuscript "Morning Music.”
Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process. Her visual art is exhibited regularly, included in private collections, and represented by leading galleries.
Lera Auerbach holds multiple degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Her teachers include Milton Babbitt, Rosalyn Tureck, Joseph Kalichstein, and Einar Steen-Nøkleberg. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, selected her in 2007 as a Young Global Leader, and since 2014, she has served as a Cultural Leader. Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski publish her music, and recordings are available on ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Alpha Classics, BIS, Cedille, and many other labels.
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photo: Raniero Tazzi
Piano
Angela Yoffe
Pianist
Pianist, producer, and educator, Angela Yoffe, is widely admired for her dazzling musicianship and passion for music education. In 2010, Yoffe created Chicago's annual North Shore Chamber Music Festival, now in its 7th season, and each year presents career advancement awards, such as the Arkady Fomin Scholarship, to exceptional emerging artists. Yoffe is also founder of the Collaborative Piano Class at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and the Creative Learning Program of the Betty Haag Academy of Music. She has created collaborative projects with the International Center on Deafness and the Arts and the Lurie Children 's hospital.
Ms. Yoffe has performed as a chamber musician and recitalist in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Tel Aviv, Geneva, Rome and Tokyo. She has appeared as guest soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, SWR Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony and with New York's Jupiter Symphony under the batons of Andrey Boreyko, Gerard Schwarz, Jens Nygaard, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, and Victor Yampolsky. Yoffe has been invited to perform at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Lockenhaus Festival in Austria, Festival de Radio France, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Colmar Festival in France, MIDEM Festival, Ravinia Festival, Pablo Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, the Schwetzingen Festspiele, and the Bantry Festival in West Cork.
Yoffe records exclusively for BIS Records, and her discography includes a recently release album with violinist Vadim Gluzman of Sergey Prokofiev 's Violin Sonatas. Her world premiere recording of Lera Auerbach's "24 Preludes for Violin and Piano" (composed for Ms. Yoffe and Mr. Gluzman) was released on BIS Records to rave reviews, as well as their other albums: "Time… and Again", "Ballet for a Lonely Violinist" and "Fireworks”.
Angela was born in Riga, Latvia into a family of respected musicians. After studying piano performance in the Soviet Union and Israel she continued with Joaquín Achúcarro and Jonathan Feldman in the United States and became an assistant to Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School of Music.
photo: Marco Borggreve
