Piano on Park presents:
Miraculous Convergence: The Story of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time
All-Messiaen Program with Min Kwon (piano), Siwoo Kim (violin), Ari Evan (cello) and Graeme Steele Johnson (clarinet)
Olivier Messiaen was the sum of so many powerful influences: he was synesthetic, and saw colors when he heard chords; he was obsessed with birds, had them stuffed all over his apartment walls and spent hours at a time studying their songs; he was pioneering and meticulously mathematical in his approach to rhythm; and he was a devout Catholic, and played organ in a Paris church for over 60 years, right up until his death. Written inside the walls of a German prisoner of war camp in the throes of World War II, Messiaen’s transcendent Quartet for the End of Time represents a miraculous collision of diverse political ideologies, religious beliefs, and the composer’s personal influences under the most unlikely circumstances. Celebrated chamber musicians Min Kwon, Siwoo Kim, Ari Evan and Graeme Steele Johnson present a rare all-Messiaen program that will chronicle the amazing story of the Quartet and its construction through performance and discussion, and also feature the world premiere of a new chamber arrangement of his Vocalise for the four instruments.
Doors at 7.00 pm; Music at 7:30 pm
free admission (with donation for musicians appreciated)
PROGRAM:
Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992):
Vocalise [arranged by Graeme Steele Johnson for clarinet, violin, cello & piano - World premiere)
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time)
Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet
Winner of the Hellam Young Artists’ Competition and the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, Graeme Steele Johnson has established a multifaceted career as a clarinetist, writer and performance designer. He has appeared recently as a TEDx speaker, as a soloist and chamber musician at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Chicago’s Symphony Center and the Phoenix Chamber Music Society, and as a concerto soloist with the Vienna International Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra and the Caroga Lake and Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestras.
Highlights of Johnson’s summer 2019 season included a solo recital on Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts Series, as well as performances at the Ravinia Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Maverick Concerts, Lake George Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival, and chamber and concerto appearances in Prague and Vienna. In his recent TEDx talk, "Music About Nothing: Seinfeld and the Classical Style," he spoke about the structural similarities between Mozart and that '90s sitcom to explain how to hear narrative and dramatic elements in music without a plot. In 2018, Johnson designed and directed a multimedia performance concept titled IMPRESSION, which weaves the chamber music of Debussy and Ravel with the spoken poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, culminating in Johnson’s own octet arrangement of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Johnson will return to Chamber Music Northwest in 2020 to perform his arrangement with the likes of Edgar Meyer, Fred Sherry, Bella Hristova and Carmit Zori, among others.
Johnson recently became the first clarinetist to join the Young Artists roster of the Center for Musical Excellence, and in 2020 he will return to perform at Chamber Music Northwest as a resident artist of its prestigious Protégé Project. He has been broadcast on Chicago's WFMT Radio and has recorded commercially for Hyperion Records and Delos Productions, with a forthcoming recording on Cantaloupe Music. His writing about music continues to be published in program booklets by Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Northwest, Yale and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, among others.
Johnson holds graduate degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he was twice awarded the school's Alumni Association Prize. His major teachers include David Shifrin, Ricardo Morales and Nathan Williams, and he is now a doctoral fellow at The Graduate Center at CUNY under the mentorship of Charles Neidich. www.graemesteelejohnson.com
Siwoo Kim, violin
Siwoo Kim is an “incisive” and “compelling” (The New York Times) violinist who plays with “stylistic sensitivity and generous tonal nuance” (Chicago Tribune). Siwoo performs as soloist and chamber musician, and he is the founding co-artistic director of VIVO Music Festival in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Siwoo gave the world premiere of Samuel Adler’s violin concerto which was written for him. He recorded the work on Linn Records to commemorate the composer’s 90th anniversary, and the BBC Music Magazine raved his “impassioned playing.” Siwoo made his Carnegie Hall solo debut in Stern Auditorium with the Juilliard Orchestra. He has since performed with the likes of the Houston Symphony, the Staatsorchester Brandenburgisches Frankfurt, the Johannesburg Philharmonic, the Seongnam Philharmonic, and Orchestre Royal de Chambre in venues across the world such as Walt Disney Concert Hall and Lotte Concert Hall.
As a chamber musician, Siwoo formed the “whipsmart” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) Quartet Senza Misura and spends his summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. He has collaborated with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joyce DiDonato, Jeremy Denk, Mitsuko Uchida and Denes Varjon. Siwoo has been featured internationally at the Stellenbosch Festival in South Africa, Bergen Festival in Norway, Tivoli Festival in Denmark, Ensemble DITTO in South Korea, and Port de Soller Festival in Spain.
Siwoo graduated from The Juilliard School where he studied under Robert Mann and Donald Weilerstein with full scholarship. He went on to complete a two-year fellowship with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Prior to college, Siwoo studied under Roland and Almita Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago.
Ari Evan, cello
A native New Yorker, cellist Ari Evan is a member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect fellowship—a two-year performance and teaching residency at Carnegie Hall that combines first-class performance opportunities with outreach and entrepreneurship projects. Prior to Ensemble Connect, Ari completed his Masters degree at The Juilliard School, studying with Timothy Eddy.
A versatile chamber musician, Ari has performed with renowned artists including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Colin Carr, Gary Hoffman, Hsin-Yun Huang, Ani Kavafian, and Itzhak Perlman, current/former members of the Cleveland Quartet, Artemis Quartet, as well as members of the Berlin Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, and Met Opera Orchestra. His festival appearances include Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Krzyzowa Music festival, IMS Prussia Cove, the Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop, the Olympic Music Festival, ECU’s Four Seasons Festival, Kneisel Hall, and the Sarasota Music Festival, among others.
A strong proponent of new music and cross-disciplinary collaborations, Ari performs often for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century—a theater company that strives to create shows that combine acting, high-level classical chamber music, singing, and dance. As a part of this company, reviewers hailed Ari as “a cellist whose joy in the music fills the theater space and draws us in as well.”
A passionate teacher, Ari often coaches pre-college chamber music at Juilliard, and held a cello faculty position at the Opus 118 School of Music during the 2017-18 academic year. In November 2017, with two other Juilliard alumni, Ari co-led a week-long music classroom workshop at the Nord Anglia School of Dubai, through their partnership with Juilliard’s Global Ventures program. As a fond traveler, his musical endeavors have also brought him to Japan, Poland, Portugal, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Canada, and throughout the US, and he hopes to see more of the world through music in the near future.
Min Kwon, piano
Hailed by New York Concert Review as “ravishing,” Korean-born American pianist Min Kwon excels in an unusually versatile career that encompasses concerti, solo recitals, and chamber music appearances, while in high demand around the world as pedagogue, arts advocate, and administrator. She has held professional engagements in over 60 countries and all 50 U.S. states.
Professor of Piano at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2002, Dr. Kwon is also the founder and director of the Center for Musical Excellence (CME), a non-profit dedicated to mentoring and supporting gifted young musicians. Artistic director of a concert series inaugurated in 2018, Music Made Here, and CME in Harding Homes, Kwon brings world class talent to intimate venues. She has also served as Co-Director of Vienna ConcertoFest, a two-week festival that provides extraordinary opportunities for young artists to appear as soloists with a Viennese international orchestra in prestigious venues in Austria.
As soloist, Kwon has performed extensively in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, with such orchestras as Philadelphia, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Fort Worth, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Estaudo Mexico, Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela, Wiener Residenz Orchester, Bacau Philharmonic, as well as all major orchestras in Korea on several nationally televised concerts. Since her Lincoln Center debut in 1992 with the Juilliard Orchestra, she has appeared with many of New York’s leading ensembles, including New York Classical Players, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Sinfonietta. She has collaborated with such distinguished conductors as James Conlon, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Alan Gilbert, Vaktang Jordania, Gerhardt Zimmerman, and Xian Zhang.
As recitalist, Kwon has performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, where she returns each year as Artistic Director of critically acclaimed, themed concerts featuring Rutgers pianists. The New York Concert Review wrote of her Weill Recital: an “impassioned performance, in full technical command, she allowed for both simplicity and opulence.”
An avid chamber musician, she has performed in numerous duo and chamber recitals around the world, from Stavanger Concert Hall in Norway, Tartu Festival in Estonia, Sony Convention in New York, IMF Conference in Davos, Switzerland to recent appearances in major cities worldwide. Festival performances include Aspen, Ravinia, Caramoor, Cape & Islands, Colmar (France), Freiburg (Germany), Kuhmo (Finland), and AMEROPA (Prague).
A Steinway Artist, Kwon holds Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School and a B.M. from The Curtis Institute of Music, completing post-doctorate studies in Salzburg. She counts among her teachers and mentors Eleanor Sokoloff, Martin Canin, Leon Fleisher, Hans Leygraf, Dorothy DeLay, Jerome Lowenthal, and Leif Ove Andsnes. Kwon is a Steinway Artist.
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
This concert has limited seating available (First Come First Sit!). If you need to be able to sit, please kindly send us a message so we can reserve a chair for you. Also keep in mind that the event is taking place in a "shoe-free zone". Choose your socks wisely!
About Piano on Park:
Piano on Park offers an intimate and refreshing way to experience live music. The house concert series was launched when pianist Cyrus von Hochstetter opened his doors to host regular performances by soloists, chamber ensembles and small bands of all musical styles and colors. The venue enables a direct and unhindered exchange between performers and public, resulting in a unique and impactful musical experience.