Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor/composer

In the field of Modern and Contemporary music, Reinbert de Leeuw is widely know and a highly respected musician. Born in Amsterdam, Reinbert de Leeuw’s musical activities cover a wide field: Conductor, composer and pianist. Since 1974 he has been conductor and music director of the Schönberg Ensemble. He is also author of a book on Charles Ives and a book with musical essays and has collaborated on 8 film documentary series of twentieth-century composers such as Messiaen, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Vivier, Górecki shown on dutch television and which have won international acclaim.

Ustad Farida Mawash, singer

Ustad Farida Mahwash was born into a conservative Afghan family. Her mother was a Quran teacher and religion loomed large throughout her upbringing. For many years, her interest in music was suppressed as, at the time, female singers and musicians were viewed with contempt. Upon completion of her studies, Farida accepted a position in the Kabul Radio Station. There, she was discovered by the station’s director who encouraged her to pursue singing as a career.

>Farida took music and singing lessons under the scholarship of Ustad Mohammad Hashem Cheshti. An established maestro, he quickly put the protégé under a rigorous training regime. Most of the lessons, which were based on North Indian classical music, are still used today to train Afghan singers. In 1977, Farida was conferred the title of Maestra by Ustad Sarahang, a controversial move as, until that point, it was an honor reserved for men. In 1977, she received the title of Ustad (master).

After the political turmoil of late 1970s through 1980s Ustad Mahwash was forced to leave Afghanistan. In 1991, with her family in tow she moved to Pakistan where she took refuge from the two warring sides of the time, each of whom urged her to sing for their cause or face assassination. Worn and exhausted, she applied for asylum abroad. Eventually, her plight was recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and she was granted political asylum in the United States.

Ustad Mahwash has gone on to become the “voice of Afghanistan,” sharing the country’s rich musical heritage in critically-acclaimed performances and recordings. In 2003, she received a prestigious BBC Radio 3 World Music Award, which was issued for artistic excellence as well as for her work speaking on behalf of thousands of orphaned Afghan children. Through it all, she remains a powerful vocalist and passionate champion of refined, yet haunting, music in the service of a peace-filled Afghanistan.

Trimpin, sound sculptor

Trimpin is a Seattle-based, world-renowned sound artist, kinetic sculptor, engineer, musician, composer, and inventor. He has described his work as “an ongoing exploration of the concepts of sound, vision, and movement, experimenting with combinations that will introduce our senses of perception to a totally new experience.”

The son of a brass and woodwind player, he spent much of his childhood and young adulthood playing with both traditional and nontraditional musicalinstruments, investigating the sound components of such objects as the radio and lines of wire. Trimpin built his first sound sculpture at the age of 8 at his home in Efringen-Kirchen, Germany. He later apprenticed as an electro-mechanical engineer, furthering his interest in acoustic sound spatialization. Trimpin moved to the United States in 1980 for the simple reason that in the United States, he would have larger access to antiquated technological components, which were scarce in Europe at the time. While Trimpin does use familiar sculptural materials to compose his works, he also takes advantage of the latest technologies to activate sound and movement; often his installations are controlled by computers.

Trimpin is the consummate creator. His sound sculptures, simultaneously whimsical and serious, have not gone unnoticed. A 1997 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Trimpin has been awarded numerous prizes and both public and private commissions throughout his artistic career. The artist was an artist-in-residence at California Arts Institute in 2009 and in May 2010, California Institute of the Arts awarded Trimpin an honorary doctoral degree.

No stranger to the Ojai Music Festival, Colorinpurple inaugurated Trimpin’s relationship with the Festival in 2006, and was followed up with 2009’s installation of two sound sculptures, Sheng High (2005) and Guiter-Toy (2009).Trimpin was selected by the City of Ojai Arts Commission to produce the permanent public art for the new Libbey Bowl: Sound Arch, which graces the entrances of the new venue.

Timo-Veikko Valve, cello

Timo-Veikko Valve began his studies at the West-Helsinki Music Institute when he was 6 years old. In 1997 he moved to the Sibelius Academy. His main teachers were Heikki Rautasalo, Marko Ylönenand Teemu Kupiainen. Valve continued on to study in Edsberg, Stockholm with Torleif Thedéen and Mats Zetterqvist. He graduated from Edsberg in 2006 and from the Sibelius Academy in 2007 focusing on Chamber Music in both institutions.

Timo-Veikko has performed as a soloist with the Helsinki Filharmonia, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Tampere Filharmonia and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra among others. He has also appeared broadly both as a soloist and a chamber musician in Europe, Asia, Australia and in the US.

Valve has appeared at the Helsinki Festival, Kemiö Music Festival,Musica Nova Helsinki, Kuhmo Chamber Music, Lahti Sibelius-festival, Järvenpää Sibelius-festival and many other festivals abroad. Valve records regularly for the Finnish Broadcasting Company and has given world premiere performances of youth works by Jean Sibelius as well as many other works by contemporary composers.

In 2006 he was appointed Principal Cello of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He appears as a soloist with his own orchestra frequently. Valve is also a guest teacher at the Australian National Academy of Music and a founding member of Jousia Ensemble and Jousia Quartet. He also performs regularly with pianist Joonas Ahonen and accordionist Veli Kujala.

Concerts in 2010 will include the Schumann concerto with the Adelaide Symphony and the ACO, as well as World Premieres of concertos by Olli Virtaperko and Aulis Sallinen.

Valve plays a Giuseppe Guarneri filius Andreæ -cello from 1729. The cello has been made available for him by an anonymous Australian benefactor.

Scott Robinson, alto and bass clarinet

Multi-instrumentalist/composer Scott Robinson has been a highly active presence on the New York-based jazz scene for more than 25 years, appearing on some 200 CDs. He has been heard on tenor sax with Buck Clayton, on alto clarinet with Paquito D’Rivera, on trumpet with Lionel Hampton, and on bass sax with the New York City Opera, along with performances alongside as diverse a group of artists as Anthony Braxton, Ruby Braff, Ella Fitzgerald, Elton John, Bob Brookmeyer, Frank Wess and Roscoe Mitchell. In 2001 he performed in eleven West African nations during an eight-week tour as a U.S. Jazz Ambassador. Robinson has been the winner of a number Down Beat Critics Polls and Jazz Journalists Association awards in recent years.

As a composer, he has created large-scale multimedia works in collaboration with sculptor/videographer Rob Fisher and choreographer Larue Allen, in addition to his jazz works which have been recorded by a number of artists. Several of his large-scale works have been performed and recorded by the Gotham Wind Symphony and others,and his chamber works include the ongoing series Immensities for Large Instruments.

Satu Vänskä, violin

Satu was born to a Finnish family in Japan, where she took her first violin lessons at the age of 3. Her family moved back to Finland in 1989 and she continued her studies with Pertti Sutinen at the Lahti Conservatorium and the Sibelius Academy. From 1997 she was a pupil of Ana Chumachenco at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, where she finished her diploma in 2001.

At the age of 11 Satu was selected for the Kuhmo Violin School in Finland, a special institution for talented young violinists, where she attended master classes with Ilya Grubert, Zinaida Gilels, and Pavel Vernikov and had the opportunity to perform at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival with the Kuhmo Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.

In 1998 Sinfonia Lahti named her “young soloist of the year.” From 2001 she played under the auspices of the Live Music Now Foundation founded by Lord Yehudi Menuhin, which gave her the opportunity to perform with musicians like Radu Lupu and Heinrich Schiff. During her studies in Germany she played with the Munich Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and was a tutor with the Young Bavarian Philharmonic.

Ms. Vänskä has performed as a soloist in Finland, Germany, Spain, and Canada and as a chamber musician she has been invited to festivals in Finland and Germany, such as the Tuusulanjärvi Festival (with Pekka Kuusisto and Olli Mustonen) and the Festivo Aschau. She has also recorded chamber music, most recently a BIS CD of music by Jean Sibelius.

Richard Tognetti, violin

Austlian violinist and conductor Richard Tognetti has established an international reputation for his compelling performances and artistic individualism. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium with Alice Waten, in his home town of Wollongong with William Primrose, and at the Berne Conservatory (Switzerland) with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi Prize as the top graduate soloist in 1989. Later that year he returned to lead several performances of the ACO, and in November was appointed as Leader. He was subsequently appointed Artistic Director of the Orchestra.

Tognetti performs on period, modern and electric instruments. His numerous arrangements, compositions and transcriptions have expanded the chamber orchestra repertoire and been performed throughout the world.

Highlights of his career as director, soloist or chamber music partner include the Sydney Festival (as conductor of Mozart’s opera Mitridate ); and appearances with the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg,Tapiola Sinfonietta, Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra. He is currently Artistic Director of the Maribor Festival in Slovenia; the first festival under his leadership was held in September 2008 and featured collaborations with European and Australian musicians and the European premiere of Luminous.

As a soloist Richard Tognetti has appeared on many occasions with the ACO and with the major Australian symphonies, including the Australian premiere of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony in 1998. He has collaborated with colleagues from across various art forms and artistic styles, including Joseph Tawadros, Dawn Upshaw, James Crabb, Emmanuel Pahud, actor Jack Thompson, singers Katie Noonan, Neil Finn,Tim Freedman and Paul Capsis, photographer Bill Henson and poet/cartoonist Michael Leunig. In 2003, Richard was co-composer of the score for Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; violin tutor for its star, Russell Crowe; and can also be heard performing on the award-winning soundtrack. In 2005, together with Michael Yezerski he co-composed the soundtrack to Tom Carroll’s surf film Horrorscopes and, in 2008, created The Red Tree, inspired by illustrator Shaun Tan’s book.

Alongside numerous recordings with the ACO, Richard Tognetti has recently recorded Bach’s solo violin repertoire for ABC Classics.The unaccompanied sonatas and partitas were released in 2005 to critical acclaim and awarded the 2006 ARIA Award for Best Classical Album.The concertos were released in 2006 and awarded the 2007 ARIA for Best Classical Album. The final installment, the accompanied sonatas, was released in 2007 and recently collected the 2008 ARIA for Best Classical Album. Future recordings include a set of Mozart concertante violin works and the Dvorak Violin Concerto for the BIS label.

A passionate advocate for music education,Tognetti established the ACO’s Education and Emerging Artists programs in 2005 and toured regional Australia with a concert based on the inspiring documentary film, Musica Surfica (recently awarded best feature at the New York Surf Film Festival). Richard Tognetti holds honorary doctorates from three Australian universities and was made a National Living Treasure in 1999. He performs on a 1743 Guarneri del Gesù, made available exclusively to him by an anonymous Australian private benefactor.

Mark Danner, writer

Mark Danner is a writer and reporter who for twenty-five years has written on politics and foreign affairs, focusing on war and conflict. He has covered Central America, Haiti, theBalkans, Iraq and the Middle East, among many other stories. Danner is Chancellor’s Professor of Journalism and Politics at the University of California, Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics and the Humanities at Bard College. Among his books are Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War, Torture and Truth, The Secret Way to War, and The Massacre at El Mozote. Danner was a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, Aperture, and many other newspapers and magazines. He has co-written and helped produce two hour-long documentaries for the ABC News program Peter Jennings Reporting, and his work has received, among other honors, a National Magazine Award,  three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In 1999 Danner was named a  MacArthur Fellow. He speaks and lectures widely on foreign policy and America’s role in the world.

Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization.” She became widely known for the orchestra she founded in 1992. They appeared at Visiones in Greenwich Village every Monday night for a stretch of five years. Subsequently, the Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed at festivals and concert halls worldwide, and she herself has received numerous commissions and guest conducting invites working with over 85 groups from over 30 countries spanning Europe, South America, Australia, Asia and North America.

Commissions include arranging and conducting concerts for the Norrbotten Big Band and Danish Radio Orchestra with Toots Thielemans. Other commissioning organizations include the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands, Stuttgart Jazz Orchestra, Orchestra National de Jazz (Recapitulaion), Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra (El Viento), Monterey Jazz Festival (Scenes from Childhood, Willow Lake), University of Miami Concert Jazz Band (Three Romances “Grammy-nominated”), Hunter College (Concert in the Garden, Sky Blue), Jazz at Lincoln Center (Buleria, Solea y Rumba “Grammy-nominated”), Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (Aires de Lando), the American Dance Festival for dance company, Pilobolus (Dissolution), Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope Festival (Cerulean Skies), Kronos Quartet (String Quartet No. 1) and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for soprano, Dawn Upshaw (Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories) which will be given its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall, May 13th, 2011, in a performance conducted by Schneider.

Schneider has composed for two unique commissions through her ArtistShare® website fan base where she documented her process of composing the music for various participants. Those commissioners are, Christophe Asselineau (The Thompson Fields), and Bill and Carol Bloemer, Justin Freed, Paul James and John Koerber (Lembrança). Her most recent work is being commissioned by the Ojai Festival for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Dawn Upshaw, for which she is setting poems by Ted Kooser, from his book, Winter Morning Walks, to be premiered June 12th, 2011.

Schneider and her orchestra have a distinguished recording career as well. Their debut recording, Evanescence, was nominated for two 1995 Grammy Awards. Her second and third recordings, Coming About and Allégresse were also Grammy-nominated, Allégresse being chosen by TIME and BILLBOARD in their Top Ten Recordings of 2000, inclusive of all genres of music.

Her most recent recordings have brought two Grammy awards, the first for Concert in the Garden (Best Large Ensemble Album), released only through her website. It became historic as the first record to win a Grammy with Internet-only sales. The second Grammy was awarded for Cerulean Skies (Best Instrumental Composition).

Concert in the Garden and her orchestra’s latest album, Sky Blue (on which Cerulean Skies was recorded) were both named “Jazz Album of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association and the DOWNBEAT Critics Poll. “She now has become entrenched among the ranks of America’s leading composers. … For Schneider, the question is no longer whether she can sustain the heights she has attained on earlier recordings; it is now how far her musical journey will take her.” –DOWNBEAT “… She puts together stories that speak with the clarity of Ernest Hemingway and the musical grace of Aaron Copland.” –PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW “It seemed impossible for Schneider to top her Grammy-winning Concert in the Garden, but she’s done just that with Sky Blue. She has elevated her music to a seemingly impossible height. … Cerulean Skies is the masterpiece within a masterpiece, … Magnificent. A magical work of art, from beginning to end.” –ALLABOUTJAZZ.com “Maria Schneider’s orchestral jazz is about feeling. Like Wayne Shorter, she somehow expresses compassion through tones.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES “To call Schneider the most important woman in jazz is missing the point … She is a major composer–period.” –TIME MAGAZINE “Twenty-one musicians of tremendous technical sophistication and emotional energy channel their talents through the direction of the most significant big-band jazz composer of our time.” –THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR For more information, visit MariaSchneider.com Photo by Dani Gurgel

Kayo Iwama, piano

Kayo Iwama, Head of Program for the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard Conservatory, has performed extensively with singers such as Christópheren Nomura, Lucy Shelton, and Dawn Upshaw throughout North America, Europe, and Japan, in venues such as the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Gardner Museum, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Yamaha Hall, and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. In addition to her work at Bard, she is on the faculty and serves as coordinator of the vocal studies program at the Tanglewood Music Center.

She was previously on the music staffs of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has held teaching positions at the Hartt School of Music, the Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory of Music. She earned degrees at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, where she studied with Gilbert Kalish. She also attended the Salzburg Music Festival, the Banff Music Centre, the Music Academy of the West, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Formerly a resident of Boston, she was featured numerous times on WGBH radio and was pianist and music director of the critically acclaimed Cantata Singers Chamber Series, programs devoted to rarely heard works of art song and vocal chamber music.

Ms. Iwama can be heard on CD on the Well-Tempered label, with baritone Christópheren Nomura in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, and on two ISMM discs devoted to French mélodies and the songs of Schumann with tenor Ingul Ivan Oak.

Jay Anderson, Bass

Bassist/composer Jay Anderson is among the most versatile and respected jazz artists performing today.  He has performed/recorded with a wide variety of jazz artists including Woody Herman, Carmen McRae, Michael Brecker, Paul Bley, Bob Mintzer, John Abercrombie, Dave Liebman, Joe Sample, Maria Schneider, Lee Konitz, Mike Stern, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Wheeler, Jay Clayton and non-jazz artists like Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Franks, Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Chaka Khan, Michel Legrand, Allen Ginsberg, and Celine Dion.  He has been featured on over 300 recordings, three of which have received a Grammy Award. He has conducted clinics around the world and is a Professor of Jazz Bass Studies at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. Anderson has been the recipient of the NEA grant for composition and two Meet the Composer grants. He currently co-leads the critically acclaimed group BANN featuring Seamus Blake, Oz Noy and Adam Nussbaum.

Gilbert Kalish, piano

Gilbert Kalish leads a musical life of unusual variety and breadth.  His profound influence on the musical community as educator, and as pianist in myriad performances and recordings, has established him as a major figure in American music making.

A native New Yorker and graduate of Columbia College, Mr. Kalish studied with Leonard Shure, Julius Hereford and Isabella Vengerova. He was this pianist of the Boston symphony Chamber Players for 30 years and was a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a group devoted to new music that flourished during the 1960’s and 70’s. He is a frequent guest artist with many of the world’s most distinguished chamber ensembles. His thirty-year partnership with the great mezzo-soprano Jan De Gaetani was universally recognized as one of the most remarkable artistic collaborations of our time. He maintains longstanding duos with the cellists Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnick, and he appears frequently with soprano Dawn Upshaw.

As educator he is Distinguished Professor and Head of Performance Activities at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. From 1969-1997 he was a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center and served as the “Chairman of the Faculty” at Tanglewood from 1985-1997. He often serves as guest artist at distinguished music institutions such as The Banff Centre, and the Steans Institute at Ravinia, and the Marlboro Festival. He is renowned for his master class presentations.

Mr. Kalish’s discography of some 100 recordings encompasses classical repertory, 20^th Century masterworks and new compositions. Of special note are his solo recordings of Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and Sonatas of Joseph Haydn, and immense discography of vocal music with Jan De Gaetani and landmarks of the 20^th Century by composers such as Carter, Crumb, Shapey and Schoeberg. In 1995, he was presented with the Paul Fromm Award by the University of Chicago Music Department for distinguished service to the music of our time.

Frank Kimbrough, piano

Pianist/composer Frank Kimbrough has been active on New York’s jazz scene for nearly 30 years. He is currently a Palmetto Records artist, with previous recordings as a leader for OmniTone, Soul Note, and Mapleshade, and nearly 50 more as a sideman. His latest CD is “Rumors”, with bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Jeff Hirshfield. His previous trio CD, “Play”, with Masa Kamaguchi and Paul Motian, was released in May 2006. It was named one of the top 10 CDs of 2006 by the Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday, and the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia). Air. His solo piano debut on Palmetto, features original compositions and was named as one of the top 10 jazz releases of 2008 by Slate magazine. His playing has been cited by the Downbeat Critics Poll each year since 2001.

Mr. Kimbrough is currently on the jazz studies faculty at the Juilliard School, and previously taught at the New School University and New York University. He is a founding member and composer-in-residence of the Jazz Composers Collective (1992–2005), a not-for-profit, musician-run organization dedicated to presenting original works by its resident and guest composers.

He has played with the Maria Schneider Orchestra since 1993, and is prominently featured on her Grammy-winning CD Concert in the Garden. He’s toured and recorded with saxophone legend Dewey Redman, vocalist Kendra Shank, and with fellow JCC composers-in-residence Ben Allison, Ted Nash, Michael Blake, and Ron Horton, among others.

Dawn Upshaw, 2011 Music Director

Ojai Music Festival welcomes back Dawn Upshaw as the 65th Festival Music Director making this her fourth appearance in Ojai.

Joining a rare natural warmth with a fierce commitment to the transforming communicative power of music, Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her ability to reach to the heart of music and text has earned her both the devotion of an exceptionally diverse audience, and the awards and distinctions accorded to only the most distinguished of artists. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “genius” prize, and in 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles (Pamina, Ilia, Susanna, Despina) as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. From Salzburg, Paris and Glyndebourne to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has since made nearly 300 appearances, Dawn Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera, L’Amour de Loin and oratorio La Passion de Simone by Kaija Saariaho; John Adams’s Nativity oratorio El Niño; and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre. Ms. Upshaw’s 2010-11 season opens with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in performances of Golijov and Canteloube at the Tanglewood Music Festival. She tours Europe in Peter Sellars’ acclaimed production of Kurtag’s i, and appears in recital at London’s Barbican Centre (with Gerald Finley).

She reprises her celebrated role in John Adams’s El Niño with the San Francisco Symphony, and begins a second three-year term as Artistic Partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with whom she also appears at Carnegie Hall as part of the “Spring For Music” series. She sings world premieres of four new works written for her, including a chamber piece by Donnacha Dennehy and the Crash Ensemble in Dublin, slated for release on Nonesuch Records; a co-commission with the Terezin Foundation and the Prague Spring Festival by Pablo Ortiz; a vocal and chamber orchestra commission from Gabirela Frank for the SPCO; and a jazz-inflected score by Maria Schneider for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with first performances at the 2011 Ojai Festival where Ms. Upshaw is the Music Director. There she curates and performs a series of concerts with the ACO, as well as a new production by Peter Sellars that features Ms. Upshaw in selections from George Crumb’s American Songbooks.

It says much about Dawn Upshaw’s sensibilities as an artist and colleague that she is a favored partner of many leading musicians, including Richard Goode, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Dawn Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade. From Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world, she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, unusual contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music. She furthers this work in master classes and workshops with young singers at major music festivals, conservatories, and liberal arts colleges. She is Artistic Director of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center.

A four-time Grammy Award winner, Dawn Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro; Messiaen’s St. Francois d’Assise; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; John Adams’s El Niño; two volumes of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, and a dozen recital recordings. Her most recent release on Deutsche Grammophon is “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra”, the third in a series of acclaimed recordings of Osvaldo Golijov’s music. Dawn Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, Allegheny College, and Illinois Wesleyan University. She began her career as a 1984 winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions and the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program.

Bard College Conservatory of Music Graduates

Michael Bukhman is completing his DMA studies at Juilliard in piano performance while working as a collaborative pianist at Bard College. He was a prizewinner in the Hilton Head and the Corpus Christi International Piano Competitions, among others. He had previously graduated with honors (BM) from Oberlin College for his self-produced recording of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues. Julia Bullock, soprano

Julia Bullock “doesn’t sing to her audience. She connects with it.” (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle) Roles include Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Monica (The Medium) with Eastman Opera Theater. Soon to make her Carnegie Hall debut with the American Symphony Orchestra, Bullock graduated from Bard’s Vocal Arts Program in 2011.

Jeongcheol Cha, bass-baritone born in Ulsan, Korea, completed his BM and MM in Seoul National University and has won numerous competitions including the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Boston District. He has appeared in many concerts and operas as the leading parts in Korea, Japan, and France. He is currently pursuing his second master’s degree at Bard and studies with Lorraine Nubar.

Ariadne Greif, soprano, has been praised for “elastic and round high notes,” last season Ariadne Greif made her debut with the American Symphony Orchestra, Le Poisson Rouge, and at Zankel Hall; her seven main role debuts included title roles in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Rusalka, and La Chûte de la Maison Usher with the Opéra Français de NY. She will record Ryan Chase’s Jabberwocky for the debut CD of Contemporaneous, appear at the Aldeburgh Festival, and tour with Uncommon Temperament baroque band.

Jeffrey Hill, tenor, has been a featured young artist at both Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Music Academy of the West, has performed recitals in Paris and New York, and has won several competitions, including the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in recital with Warren Jones in January, and more recently as Sultan Soliman in Mozart’s Zaide, with Ensemble ACJW. Reviews have described him as “a force to be reckoned with, [a voice] that sounds effortless but absolutely commands the listener’s attention,” “impressively rich and full-bodied,” and “authoritative.”

Katarzyna (Kasia) Sadej, mezzo soprano, was born in Wroclaw, Poland. Her singing calendar has most recently found her making international debuts at the Lviv and Banatul Philharmonics, as well as in Bogota and Cartagena, Colombia, for the Cartagena International Music Festival. In March 2011 she toured Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia singing all-French recital programs for the EuropeanFrancophonie Festival.

Rachel Schutz made her acclaimed orchestral debut with the Boston Pops in 2006 and toured with the orchestra in 2008. She has sung at Carnegie Hall, the Santa Fe Opera, and Tanglewood Music Center and appears regularly on recital series around the United States and abroad, including in China, Taiwan, and Germany. Opera roles have included Susanna, Euridice, Sophie, and Gianetta, and she has appeared as a soloist with the Dessoff Choirs and Ebb and Flow Music.

Australian Chamber Orchestra

The internationally renowned for inspired programming and the rapturous response of audiences and critics, the Australian Chamber Orchestra is a product of our country’s vibrant, adventurous and enquiring spirit. In performances around Australia, around the world and on many recordings, the ACO moves hearts and stimulates minds with repertoire spanning six centuries and a vitality and virtuosity unmatched by other ensembles.The ACO was founded in 1975 by John Painter. Every year, this ensemble presents performances of the highest standard to audiences around the world, including 10,000 subscribers across Australia. The ACO’s unique artistic style encompasses not only the masterworks of the classical repertoire, but innovative cross-artform projects and a vigorous commissioning program.

The outstanding Australian musician Richard Tognetti was appointed as Artistic Director and Lead Violin in 1989. Under his inspiring leadership, the ACO has performed as a flexible and versatile ‘ensemble of soloists’, on modern and period instruments, as a small chamber group, a small symphony orchestra, and as an electro-acoustic collective. In a nod to past traditions, only the cellists are seated – the resulting sense of energy and individuality is one of the most commented-upon elements of an ACO concert experience.Regular international tours to Asia, Europe and the USA have drawn outstanding reviews for the ACO’s performances at many of the world’s prestigious concert halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Recent festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Interlochen and New York’s Mostly Mozart. The Australian Government recognizes the ACO’s achievements by designating it as an international flagship arts company.

The ACO’s dedication and musicianship has created warm relationships with such celebrated soloists as Emmanuel Pahud, Steven Isserlis, Dawn Upshaw, Imogen Cooper, Christian Lindberg, Joseph Tawadros, Melvyn Tan and Pieter Wispelwey. The ACO is renowned for collaborating with artists from diverse genres, including singers Tim Freedman, Neil Finn, Katie Noonan, Paul Capsis, Danny Spooner and Barry Humphries and visual artists Michael Leunig, Bill Henson, Shaun Tan and Jon Frank. Committed to Australian composition, the ACO has given 1700 performances of over 250 works by 80 Australian composers.

Several of the ACO’s principal musicians perform with spectacularly fine instruments. Tognetti performs on a priceless 1743 Guarneri del Gesù, made available exclusively to him by an anonymous Australian benefactor. Principal cello Timo-Veikko Valve plays on a 1729 Giuseppe Guarneri Filius Andreae cello, also made available by an anonymous benefactor, and Principal Second Violin Helena Rathbone plays a 1759 J.B. Guadagnini violin on loan from the Commonwealth Bank Group.

The ACO has made many acclaimed recordings, for labels including BIS, ABC Classics, Sony, Channel Classics, Hyperion, EMI, Chandos and Orfeo. In 2005 the Orchestra collaborated with pianist Angela Hewitt on the final instalment of her 10-year project to record all of Bach’s keyboard music. This double-CD set for Hyperion was ‘CD of the Month’ for Gramophone magazine. Similar critical praise was lavished on the ACO’s recording with Emmanuel Pahud of Vivaldi’s flute concertos for EMI. Richard Tognetti and the ACO recorded Bach’s violin concertos for ABC Classics (2006), winning one of three consecutive ARIA Awards for Richard Tognetti’s Bach recordings. The ACO is featured in the documentary Musical Renegades, the Classical Destinations II television series screened internationally in 2008-9 and Musica Surfica, which has won awards at film festivals in Europe and America in 2008-9. In 2009, ABC Classics released a 2CD compilation celebrating Richard Tognetti’s 20th anniversary with the ACO. The ACO currently records for the prestigious European label BIS.