The Bard Center Presents the Acclaimed Colorado Quartet in Concert on April 29
Featuring World Premiere of "Hudson Valley Vignettes" by Harold Farberman and Works by Fanny Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, with Clarinetist Meighan Stoops
The program includes the world premiere of "Hudson Valley Vignettes" by Harold Farberman, director of the Conductors Institute at Bard. The vignettes (Dawn; Leaves Blowing in the Wind; Watching the Grass Grow; Birds: Wrens Playing, Blue Jays Fighting; The Sophisticated Swatter and the Unsuspecting Fly; Hornets; and Nightfall) are "the results of sitting on the back porch of our farm in Germantown, observing and listening," explains Farberman. Other works include Mendelssohn's Quartet in E-flat; and Brahms's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B Minor, Opus 115, with clarinetist Meighan Stoops, guest artist.
Recognized on four continents as one of the finest string quartets on the international scene, the Colorado Quartet—Julie Rosenfeld and Lydia Redding, violins; Marka Gustavsson, viola; and Diane Chaplin, cello—have been in residence at Bard since 2000. Winners of both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Naumburg Chamber Music Award, their performances are noted for their musical integrity, impassioned playing, and lyrical finesse.
Highlights of past years include tours of more than 20 countries and performances in major cities across the globe. New York appearances have included the Mostly Mozart Festival, where they performed 20 Haydn quartets over a two-year period, and concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. The group regularly performs the complete Beethoven quartets, most recently in Berlin, making them the first female quartet to have performed the Beethoven cycle in both North America and Europe. The Colorado Quartet commemorated the 50th anniversary of Béla Bartók's death in 1995 with the first complete performance in Philadelphia of the Bartók string quartets, and has since performed the Bartók cycle several times.
The Colorado Quartet continues its tenure as quartet in residence at Bard College, coaching chamber music ensembles and enabling Bard students to study throughout the academic year in private lessons with the quartet's individual members, as well as with the group as a whole, in classes on the literature of the string quartet. The Quartet's inspiring style combines a deep scholarly knowledge of the quartet literature with energy, passion, and a focus on fine details. Their critically acclaimed recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and contemporary composers can be found on Parnassus, Mode, and Albany Records. The Colorado Quartet commemorated its 20th anniversary in 2003 with a release of the first in a complete set of Beethoven quartet recordings. The Quartet marks its 25th anniversary in 2007, when they plan to release all the late quartets of Beethoven on the Parnassus label.
This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Endowment at Bard College. For further information about the program, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425. Please note that no reservations are necessary; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Conductor and composer Harold Farberman has written diverse works for orchestra, three operas, numerous chamber works, a score for an Academy Award–winning documentary film, and music for dance companies. Many of his works, which have been performed all over the world, are represented on three Albany Records CDs devoted to his music. As a conductor and an advocate of modern music, Farberman received the Ives Award for his definitive interpretations of the work of Charles Ives. His recordings of Mahler, Michael Haydn, and Irwin Bazelon, as well as of Ives and his own music, have earned worldwide recognition for excellence. Farberman founded the Conductors Guild and is the author of a pioneering work, The Art of Conducting Technique: A New Perspective, an innovative approach to the physical placement and movement of the baton. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Conductors Institute and director of Bard's Master of Fine Arts Degree Program in Conducting. A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's percussion section from 1951 to 1963, Farberman was its youngest performer when he joined the orchestra immediately after graduating from The Juilliard School of Music.
Clarinetist Meighan Stoops has distinguished herself in both in the classical and new-music realms as a solo, chamber, and orchestral performer. She performs with artists as diverse as Peter Schickele, Elvis Costello, and tabla virtuoso Pandit Samir Chatterjee. A member of the Naumburg Award–winning Da Capo Chamber Players, Stoops has appeared at the Moscow Forum and Autumn festivals; St. Petersburg Sound Ways festival; Merkin Hall; Knitting Factory; Fisher Center at Bard College; and many other prestigious venues. In a New York Times review of a Da Capo program of works by Joan Tower and George Crumb, Allan Kozinn noted that "Meighan Stoops . . . had a star turn in Ms. Tower's Wings." Another review glowingly said she "energized Shulamit Ran's Private Game with real musical dash." Stoops can be heard with other ensembles, such as Gotham Sinfonietta, American Modern Ensemble, Colorado Quartet, Sequitur, Music from Japan, International Society of Contemporary Music, John Eaton's Pocket Opera Players, Ensemble Sospeso, Sylvan Winds, and the Quintet of the Americas. She is principal clarinet in the Garden State Philharmonic and routinely plays with several New York orchestras: Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, and Dicapo Opera. She has recorded for CRI, Naxos, Albany, and Chesky Records.
A native of Los Angeles, violinist Julie Rosenfeld has been a member of the Colorado Quartet since 1982. Rosenfeld received her training at the Curtis Institute, the University of Southern California, and Yale University. Her teachers have included Szymon Goldberg, Nathan Milstein, and Yukiko Kamei. She has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, La Jolla Chamber Music Festival, Skaneateles Festival, Steamboat Springs Festival, and Newport Music Festival as well as with Chamber Music at Lincoln Center. Rosenfeld has served on juries for the Coleman, Concert Artists Guild, and Juilliard concerto competitions, and in 1992, she was the first female judge at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. In 1996 she was artist in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival and the International Mozart Festival in Poland, and performed the West Coast premiere of André Previn's Violin Sonata. Her recording with Mr. Previn of French chamber music is available on the BMG label.
Born in New York City, violinist Lydia Redding grew up in Colorado. She founded the quartet while studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a bachelor of music degree from that institution, where she studied with Oswald Lehnert, as well as a master of music degree from The Juilliard School, where she was a student of Szymon Goldberg. Redding has taught at the Adamant Chamber Music Workshop and lectured at the European Mozart Academy in Poland. She now teaches at Bard College and has assembled a class of violin students from the surrounding communities. A serious marathoner, Redding runs ultramarathons, distances of 50 to 100 miles, to raise scholarship money for the Soundfest Scholarship Fund.
Marka Gustavsson received her bachelor's degree with high distinction from Indiana University, where she was a student of Joseph Gingold. Gustavsson also studied at the Mannes School of Music with Felix Galimir, and recently received her doctorate from the City University of New York with a dissertation on the violin music of Enesco. She has appeared in the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society's "Meet the Music" series, on Robert Sherman's WQXR Young Artists' Programs, in Avery Fisher Hall and Boston's Symphony Hall as a member of the Brandenburg Ensemble, and as a member of the featured string quartet in the ABC documentary Passion to Play. Internationally, she has performed in the Festival Presence de Ligeti at Radio-France's Salle Messiaen in Paris, for the queen of the Netherlands at Vredenburg Hall in Holland, and at Toru Takemitsu's memorial concert at Oji Hall in Tokyo. Gustavsson has worked with such composers as Martin Bresnick, Tan Dun, John Halle, and Henri Dutilleux, and has collaborated with such performing artists as Bayla Keyes, Daniel Phillips, David Geber, and Michael Tree. She has served on the faculty of Hofstra University and also as a member of the Hofstra String Quartet and the Kinhaven Music Festival in Vermont. She lives in New York with her husband, John Halle, and their son, Benjamin.
A native of Los Angeles, cellist Diane Chaplin has been a member of the quartet since 1988. She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts, where she was a student of Cesare Pascarella, and a master of music degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Harvey Shapiro. Chaplin currently serves as the administrative director of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute, and also holds teaching positions at Bard College and at a private school in Manhattan. She has performed throughout the United States and Europe, including appearances with Mikhail Baryshnikov and the Flying Karamazov Brothers. Chaplin received a special prize from the International Cello Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as a certificate from the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
This event was last updated on 04-30-2007
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