Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Tour
Gloria Chien, piano
Kristin Lee, violin
James Thompson, violin
Yura Lee, viola
Dmitri Atapine, cello
"Though every musician on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center roster is superb, the sum of the parts is even greater...a potent evening of first class music making.”
— The Strad
STUDENT ($10) and EDUCATOR ($15) RUSH available 48 hours prior to performance.
Pre-concert talk with the Artists: 6:45PM
Dmitri Atapine talks about the visit by the Chamber Music Society
PROGRAM:
Samuel COLERIDGE-TAYLOR: African Dances for Violin and Piano (1904)
Reynaldo HAHN: Quintet in F-sharp minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello (1922)
Eugène YSAŸE: Sonata for Solo Violin “Ballade” Op. 27 no. 3 (1923)
Ernest BLOCH: Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola and Cello (1923-24)
Bold and truly diverse in origin and expression, this program offers audiences the opportunity to dive deeper into chamber music of the early 20th century, with new sounds and divergent compositional influences that helped shape contemporary chamber music. In 1904, the year of the premiere of his African Dances for violin and piano, English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor received a warm welcome from American audiences, especially Black concert goers, while on his first tour in the states. Coleridge-Taylor would continue to dive deeper into both his Sierra Leonean heritage and his use of African-inspired themes in his music for the remainder of his too-short life. Unlike Coleridge-Taylor's inspirations from his heritage, Venezuelan composer Reynaldo Hahn, a naturalized Frenchman, preferred to write strictly with Paris in mind. His Piano Quintet opens with all the drama of the latest Parisian fashion of the 1920s, but its ability to shift moods within movements is even more spectacular. Belgian composer, teacher, and virtuosic violinist Eugene Ysaÿe provides a differing style with his Sonata No. 3, “Ballade”, which reflects the playing style of the violinist it was dedicated to, George Enescu. A passing student of Ysaÿe’s in Brussels, Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch’s compositions are often described as reflective of his Jewish heritage, with highly dramatic scores influenced by philosophical, poetic, and religious themes. His Quintet No. 1, composed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923, is rife with tension and expression and is regarded as one of his greatest works.
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The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, (CMS) is one of eleven constituents of the largest performing arts complex in the world, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which includes the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center Theater, and The Metropolitan Opera. CMS has its home in Lincoln Center's magnificent Alice Tully Hall. Through its many performance, education, recording, and broadcast activities, it brings the exhilarating experience of great chamber music to more people than any other organization of its kind. Under the inspired leadership of Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han, CMS presents a wide variety of concert series and educational events for listeners of all ages, appealing to both connoisseurs and newcomers. The performing artists constitute a revolving multi-generational and international roster of the world’s finest chamber musicians, enabling CMS to present chamber music of every instrumentation, style, and historical period. Annual activities include a full season in New York, an equally full season of national and international tours, nationally televised broadcasts on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, an international radio series, and regular broadcasts on SiriusXM and American Public Media’s Performance Today. Audiences worldwide enjoy an extensive selection of New York performances through live streams on the CMS website.
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Pianist Gloria Chien has been picked by the Boston Globe as one of the Superior Pianists of the year, “… who appears to excel in everything.” Richard Dyer praises her for “a wondrously rich palette of colors, which she mixes with dashing bravado and with an uncanny precision of calibration…Chien’s performance had it all, and it was fabulous.”
Gloria made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist under the batons of Sergiu Comissiona, Keith Lockhart, Thomas Dausgaard, Irwin Hoffman, Benjamin Zander, and Robert Bernhardt. She is a prize winner of the World Piano Competition, Harvard Musical Association Award, as well as the San Antonio International Piano Competition, where she also received the prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work. Gloria has presented solo recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Harvard Musical Association, Sanibel Musical Festival, Caramoor Musical Festival, Salle Cortot in Paris, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan.
An avid chamber musician, Gloria has been the resident pianist with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston since 2000, a group known for its versatility and commitment to new music. Boston Herald praises her for “ [playing] phenomenally.” She recently recorded with clarinetist, Anthony McGill. Her CD with violinist, Joanna Kurkowicz, featuring music of Grazyna Bacewicz was released on Chandos Records. The International Record Review writes, “[the violinist] could ask for no more sensitive or supportive a pianist than Gloria Chien.” Harmonie Magazine writes, “…but it would be unfair not to mention the pianist, who is accompanying the soloist in an absolutely responsive, impressive and confident way. She is more than an accompanist — rather, she is an equivalent partner to the soloist.” The Strad praises her for “super performances…accompanied with great character.” She also received fantastic reviews in Gramophone, American Record Guide, and Muzyka 21. Gloria has participated in such festivals as Chamber Music Northwest, Music Academy of the West, Verbier Music Festival, and Music@Menlo, where she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute in 2010 by Artistic Directors, David Finckel and Wu Han.
Her recent performances include collaborations with the St. Lawrence, Miró, Borromeo, Daedalus and Jupiter String Quartets, David Shifrin, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Joseph Silverstein, Jaime Laredo, Cho-Liang Lin, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Wu Han, Rob Kapilow, Paul Neubauer, Roberto Diaz, Andres Diaz, Sharon Robinson, James Ehnes, Nai-Yuan Hu, Bion Tsang, Soovin Kim, Carolin Widmann, Edward Arron and Anthony McGill.
In fall of 2009, Gloria launched String Theory, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in downtown Chattanooga, as its founder and artistic director.
Gloria began playing the piano at the age of five in her native Taiwan. She has a doctor of musical arts, a master’s and an undergraduate degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Her teachers have included Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun. Gloria is an Associate Professor at Lee University in Cleveland, TN, and is a member of the prestigious Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center. Gloria is a Steinway Artist.
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A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”
In addition to her dynamic performing career, Lee was recently appointed to the faculty of University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin. She is the artistic director of Emerald City Music, a chamber music series she co-founded in 2015, that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State.
Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season. For seven years, Lee was a principal artist of Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, sitting as The Bernard Gondos Chair. She is also concertmaster of the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, Florida, and is a member of Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, a hybrid chamber-jazz ensemble that explores the very foundations of group improvisation and spontaneous composition. Lee has also appeared in chamber music programs at Music@Menlo, La Jolla Festival, Medellín Festicámara of Colombia, the El Sistema Chamber Music festival of Venezuela, the Sarasota Music Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of Germany, the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, among many others.
Recent and upcoming highlights include performances presented by the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra, Olympia Symphony, Chamber Music Sedona, Newport Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Parlance Chamber Concerts, Moab Music Festival, Music in the Vineyards, Lyra Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Adelphi University, and many others, as well as performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In December 2021, Lee hosted a panel for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Musical Heritage Series, honoring her teacher and legendary violin pedagogue, Dorothy DeLay. Itzhak Perlman, Toby Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, and Sandra Rivers joined the panel to pay tribute to DeLay.
Lee’s performances have been broadcast on PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center,” the Kennedy Center Honors, WFMT Chicago’s “Rising Stars” series, WRTI in Philadelphia, and on WQXR in New York. She also appeared on Perlman in Shanghai, a nationally broadcast PBS documentary that chronicled a historic cross‑cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory. She made the world premiere recording of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, which won a Juno Award and is available on Naxos.
Lee’s many honors include awards from the 2015 Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation.
She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School–in the Pre-College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007.
Born in Seoul, Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman after he heard her perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony Orchestra. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Donald Weilerstein, and served as an assistant teacher for Perlman’s studio as a Starling Fellow. She has served on the faculties of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, the LG Chamber Music School in Seoul, Korea, El Sistema’s chamber music festival in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival.
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Violinist James Thompson enjoys a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, educator, and lecturer. He is currently on faculty at Music@Menlo and has been a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program since 2021.
Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Thompson considers himself fortunate to have been surrounded by superlative musical artists and educators from a young age. Through the preparatory program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he was introduced to the world of chamber music and inspired to pursue a career performing and collaborating with artists from around the world.
Thompson has since performed for prestigious chamber music organizations across the country including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, the Four Arts Society, Parlance Chamber Concerts, the Perlman Music Program, and the Taos School of Music. Solo engagements include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra. He was invited to perform in Budapest as part of the First Bartok World Competition and in Sendai for the Seventh Sendai International Violin Competition.
Recently, Thompson’s abilities as a presenter have earned him invitations to speak at a variety of established concert series. His multimedia live-interview with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, hosted by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, was a highlight of his 2021/2022 season. As newly-appointed director of Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency, he curates diverse student and community programs in the Bay Area.
Alongside his performance career, Thompson is forming a strong reputation as a private instructor and chamber music coach. In 2019, he joined the faculty of Music@Menlo as both a coach for the Young Performer’s Program and a mainstage artist. He has recently served as a teaching fellow at both the Encore Chamber Music Festival and the Western Reserve Chamber Music Festival. He views his work with young people as an immensely important aspect of his calling as a musician, and is grateful to have the opportunity to share with everyone the joy he has found making music.
Thompson holds Bachelor of Music, Masters, and Artist Diploma degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music; his primary teachers include Jaime Laredo, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor. He currently resides in Rochester, New York with his wife, violinist Jeanelle Thompson.
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Violinist and violist Yura Lee is an associate professor of practice and the Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld Endowed Chair in String Instruction at the USC Thornton School of Music. One of the most versatile artists in the world, she is one of the few musicians who has mastery of both violin and viola and actively performs both instruments equally. In her over two-decade-long career that has taken her all over the world, she has – both as a soloist and as a chamber musician – captivated audiences with music from baroque to modern.
Lee was the only first prize winner awarded across four categories at the 2013 ARD Competition in Germany. She has won top prizes for both violin and viola in numerous other competitions, including first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Leopold Mozart Competition (Germany), first prize at the 2010 UNISA International Competition (South Africa), first prize at the 2013 Yuri Bashmet International Competition (Russia), and top prizes in Indianapolis (USA), Hannover (Germany), Kreisler (Austria), and Paganini (Italy) Competitions.
At age 12, Lee became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the “Performance Today” awards given by National Public Radio. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Lee’s CD with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, titled Mozart in Paris (Oehms Classics) received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award in France.
Lee was nominated and represented by Carnegie Hall for its European Concert Hall Organization series. For this series, she gave recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Wigmore Hall (London), Symphony Hall (Birmingham, UK), Musikverein (Vienna), Mozarteum (Salzburg), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Stockholm Konserthus, Athens Concert Hall, and Cologne Philharmonie.
As a soloist, Lee has appeared with many major orchestras, including New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, to name a few. As a chamber musician, Lee regularly takes part in the Salzburg Festival, Verbier Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, Seattle Festival, Caramoor Festival, Kronberg Festival, Aspen Music Festival, among others. Lee is currently a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. In May 2022, she was named principal viola of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
Lee studied at the Juilliard School (New York City), New England Conservatory (Boston), Salzburg Mozarteum (Austria), and Kronberg Academy (Germany). Her main teachers were Namyoon Kim, Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai.
For violin, Lee plays a fine Giovanni Grancino violin kindly loaned to her through the Beares International Violin Society by her generous sponsors. For viola, she plays an instrument made in 2002 by Douglas Cox, who resides in Vermont.
Lee divides her time between Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon.
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Described as "splendid, elegant cellist, with a gorgeous sound" (MundoClasico), DMITRI ATAPINE has been hailed as a performer with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone), whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). As an avid soloist and recitalist, he has appeared on some of the world’s foremost stages, including Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Zankel and Weill halls at Carnegie Hall, the National Auditorium of Spain, to cite but a few. His performances have been broadcast on radio and TV in the USA, Spain, Mexico, and South Korea.
Highly in demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Atapine regularly performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). His multiple festival festival appearances have included Music@Menlo (California), Chamber Music Northwest (Oregon), La Musica Festival (Florida), Nevada Chamber Music Festival, Cactus Pear Music Festival (Texas), Banff (Canada), Great Mountains Music Festival (South Korea), Malaga Clasica (Spain), Miguel Bernal Jimenez Festival (Mexico), the French Academy in Rome (Italy), Aldeburgh (England), Aix-en-Provence (France), and Pacific Music Festival (Japan). He collaborated with such eminent artists as the Tokyo String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Wu Han, Ani and Ida Kavafian, David Finckel, David Shifrin, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Bruno Giuranna and Peter Wiley, among many others.
As a soloist Mr. Atapine has performed as a soloist with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Asturias Symphony Orchestra, the Leon Symphony Orchestra, the Gijon Chamber Orchestra, the 'Arche' Chamber Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as with Michigan State University Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras.
Mr. Atapine's many prizes and awards include the First Prize at the Carlos Prieto International Cello Competition and the Second Prize at the Vittorio Gui Chamber Music Competition. Other accolades include Top Prize and Yamaha Special Prize at the Florian Ocampo Spanish National Cello Competition, First and Second Prizes at the 2008 New England International Chamber Competition, the Grand Prize at the 2007 Plowman Competition, the 2005 Presser Foundation Award, the First Prize and Asturias Symphony Special Prize at the 2003 Llanes International String Competition (Spain), the Yale Woolsey Hall Competition, and the First Prize at the Sahagun International Music Competition at age 13.
Mr. Atapine's keen interest in contemporary music produced fruitful collaborations with several distinguished composers, among them Ezra Laderman, Jennifer Higdon, and Martin Bresnick. In collaboration with pianist Hyeyeon Park Mr. Atapine recently released a critically acclaimed world-premiere recording of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano on BlueGriffin label, leading to their presentation in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. Other recordings can be found on Naxos, Albany, Urtext Digital, and Music@Menlo LIVE labels.
Born into a family of musicians, Mr. Atapine began his musical education with his parents at the age of five and soon thereafter entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory School of Music. After his family moved to Spain, Mr. Atapine graduated with honors from the Asturias Conservatory under Alexander Fedortchenko. He came to the US and after receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees with high honors from Michigan State University under the tutelage of Suren Bagratuni, Mr. Atapine continued his studies with the legendary cellist Aldo Parisot at Yale University School of Music, where he completed the Master of Musical Arts degree, obtained the Artist Diploma, and since 2010 holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Currently Mr. Atapine is the cello professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Since 2007 he serves as the Artistic Director of Ribadesella International Music Festival (Spain), since 2010 he is the founder and Artistic Co-Director of Apex Concerts, and in 2022 he was appointed as Artistic Co-Director of Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City.