Cuba 2016 Tour Overview

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Bard College Conservatory of Music Orchestra
Leon Botstein, music director

Botstein leads an active schedule as a guest conductor worldwide, and can be 
heard on numerous recordings with the London Symphony (including its
Grammy-nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony), the London Philharmonic, NDR-Hamburg, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Highly
 regarded as a music historian, Botstein’s most recent book is Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedäächtnis der Moderne (2013). He is the editor of The
Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books.
 
Peter Serkin, piano
Recognized as an artist of passion and integrity, the distinguished American pianist Peter Serkin has successfully conveyed the essence of five centuries of repertoire. His inspired performances with symphony orchestras, in recital appearances, chamber music collaborations and on recordings are equally valued worldwide.
 
Peter Serkin’s rich musical heritage extends back several generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father pianist Rudolf Serkin. He has performed with the world's major symphony orchestras with such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Alexander Schneider, Daniel Barenboim, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Herbert Blomstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and George Cleve. A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, the Budapest, Guarneri, Orion and Shanghai String Quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member.  He has recently performed a duo-piano team with Julia Hsu. They are devoting themselves to both one-piano, four-hands, as well as to two-piano music.
 
An avid exponent of the music of many of the 20th and 21st century’s most important composers, Mr. Serkin has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Henze, Berio, Wuorinen, Goehr, Knussen and Lieberson and others to audiences around the world. He has performed many important world premieres of works written specifically for him, in particular by Toru Takemitsu, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen, Charles Wuorinen and Peter Lieberson.  Mr. Serkin has recently made several arrangements of four-hands music by Mozart, Schumann and his grandfather, Adolf Busch, for various chamber ensembles and for full orchestra.  He has also arranged all of Brahms’s organ Chorale-Preludes, transcribed for one piano, four-hands.
 
The 2015 summer season featured engagements at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and La Jolla Chamber Music Festivals in performances of concertos, chamber music, and duo piano programs with pianist Julia Hsu. He travels to Japan to perform with the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra and the Osaka Symphony and will give recitals in Tokyo and Shizuoka. Mr. Serkin appears with David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in China following an Australian tour last season.  Within the United States he is soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, San Antonio and the Traverse Symphony and will perform the Reger Concerto in Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra in celebration of the centenary of the composer’s death. European tours bring him to Cologne and Homburg in recital with programs of Josquin, John Bull, Dowland, Byrd, Nielsen, Mozart, Max Reger and Beethoven, as well as the Reger Piano Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Dresden Staatskapelle orchestras conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.
 
Orchestral highlights of recent seasons have included the Boston, Chicago and Saint Louis Symphonies, New York Philharmonic and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, while recital tours have taken Mr. Serkin to Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Santa Monica, Princeton and New York’s 92nd Street Y. Recent summer festival appearances have included BBC London Proms, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh, Chautauqua and Denmark’s Oremandsgaard Festival. Mr. Serkin currently teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
 
Zenaida Romeu, director, Camerata Romeu
Zenaida Romeu  studied piano with her mother, Zenaida Romeu Gonzalez, Choir Conducting with Agnes Kralovsky, and Orchestral Conducting  with Gonzalo Romeu,  at the Superior Institut of Art in Havana became the first Cuban Orchestra Conductor graduated in 1992. Received master classes with Olaf Koch and Gert Firshmuth in Cuba and Germany.
 
She founded the Choir Cohesion that renewed the Cuban choral movement, the Lyric Studio Choir and the Camerata Romeu, that is her main artistic project that adorns the tradition of three generations of musicians Romeu in Cuba Island.
 
As a teacher, she has taught at the ISA in the chair of choral, orchestra direction and more recently in the chair of Chamber Music. She combines her work with a weekly program which dialogue on various aspects of Cuban music.
 
She has worked as musical director on the films The Annunciation directed by Enrique Pineda Barnet, Chamaco and  El Premio Flaco by Juan Carlos Cremata, as well as the animated The Ugly and The Moon in the Garden, of the Cross by Adanoe  and Yemely  Lima,  and participated in the feature film soundtrack for Sale, by Jorge Perugorría.
 
With her own orchestra, Camerata Romeu, was presented at  Duke, Northdrige, Baltimore, and Wake Forest Universities, USF, University of Judaism, as well as in CALART, in the Los Angeles County Museum, Santa Bárbaba Museum and other prestigious centers of culture and art.
 
The Camerata Romeu has performed at festivals and concert tours in Mexico, USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Martinique, Jamaica, Barbados, Ecuador, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden and France.