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Artist Biographies for 2011/2012

 
“One of the violin greats of our era” (Newhouse News), Stephanie Chase excels in the virtuoso soloist's repertoire, period instrument practice, contemporary music, chamber music, and music education. As violin soloist she has appeared with the world’s most illustrious orchestras, among them the Chicago Symphony, London Symphony and New York Philharmonic, and her playing is widely acclaimed for its "elegance, dexterity, rhythmic vitality and great imagination" (Boston Globe). Her recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Romances, the first ever on period instruments, has been declared “one of the twenty most outstanding performances in the work’s recording history” (Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Cambridge University Press) and honored with the highest possible ratings by BBC Music Magazine and Classic CD.

Born in Illinois to musician parents, Stephanie Chase gave her first public performance at age two and made her debut with the Chicago Symphony at eight as the youngest winner ever of the orchestra's Youth Competition. After her Carnegie Hall debut at age eighteen, she became a pupil of the legendary Belgian violinist, Arthur Grumiaux. Stephanie Chase’s triumphant win at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow has led to international fame and the award of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. In addition to her solo and chamber music appearances, Ms. Chase gives master classes throughout the United States and teaches violin at NYU’s Steinhardt School and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. In the summer of 2010 she stepped in on one day's notice to perform three concerts at the Bravo! Vail Festival, including the Colorado premiere of Joan Tower's new Piano Quartet.
Dr. Yeou-Cheng Ma has collaborated as a violinist and violist with the Lark Quartet, cellist Hai Ye Ni, and performed in chamber music groups with faculty and friends of the Children’s Orchestra at the Alice Tully and Merkin Hall, the United Nations, 92 St. Y, Christ and St. Stephen’s Church, St. John the Divine in NYC, Wave Hill, the Beethoven Festival at Planting Fields Arboretum and toured Europe, Asia and the United States with the Dadap-Ma Duo. A graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Medical School, she is informally known as the “Music Doctor”. Her recent interests include optimizing communication in all children, exploring the relationship of music to young children’s temperament, and using music as a means to find the “inner language” of children who have difficulty in verbal communication.

Born in Paris to Chinese parents, Yeou-Cheng Ma gave her first public performance at age seven, and played piano with her brother Yo-Yo Ma for over a decade, and participated in a fundraiser to build the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. She was winner of the French National Competition “Royaume de la Musique” and played Mendelssohn Concerto with the Denver Symphony Orchestra at the age of 10. Her violin teachers were her father, Dr. H. T. Ma, Firmin Touche, Koji Toyoda and Arthur Grumiaux. Her work as Executive Director of the Children’s Orchestra Society has been recognized by St. Joseph’s College in West Hartford, which awarded her a doctorate in humanitieshonoris causaand the Francis Riker David Alumna Award from the Brearley School for outstanding community service.

John Novacek is the winner of the Leschetizky and Joanna Hodges International piano competitions in addition to numerous national competitions. He divides his solo work between recitals and concertos with orchestra. Venues include Kennedy Center, Avery Fisher hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center, Hollywood Bowl, UCLA's Royce Hall, Irvine Meadows Amphitheater, Ambassador Auditorium (Pasadena), the 92nd St. Y (New York), Ravinia Festival and Tokyo's Suntory Hall. He has performed on many television and radio programs, and is often heard on syndicated programs such as NPR's "Performance Today," "The Record Shelf," "First Hearing," and "St. Paul Sunday." A much sought-after collaborative artist, Novacek has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Leila Josefowicz, Julius Baker, and Lynn Harell, and the Colorado String Quartet. He has given numerous world premiers and worked closely with John Williams, George Rochberg, and Lalo Schifrin.

John Novacek has composed many original ragtime pieces for piano, piano and violin, and piano and guitar duo. His arrangements have been performed by the Three Tenors, Kiri Te Kanawa, and pop singer, Diana Ross. Novacek has recorded twenty CDs, encompassing solo and chamber music by most major composers from Bach to Bartok, and many contemporary and original scores. His solo recordings on the Ambassador label include "Novarags" ("superb contributions to this literature," The Seattle Times) and "Spanish Rhapsody" ("a splendid recital," Fanfare Magazine). He also records for Phillips Classics, Koch International, Atlantic, Arkay, Four Winds, Virtuoso, and EMI Classics.

For the past twenty years, cellist James Wilson has consistently performed to the delight of audiences throughout the world, from small towns to the world’s most illustrious venues. Acclaimed for his singing tone, and intelligent and soulful approach to music, the Los Angeles Times described Wilson as a musician "with something to say and a commanding way of saying it."

As recitalist and chamber musician, he has appeared in many of the world’s most illustrious venues, including America’s Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center, Casal’s Hall in Tokyo, the Sydney Opera House, the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Montreal, the Philharmonie in Köln and the Musikverein in Vienna. He has performed at music festivals around the world such as the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the City of London Festival, the Deutches Mozartfest in Bavaria, the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and the Ysbreker in Amsterdam. In demand as a player of Baroque and modern cello, Wilson has collaborated with such diverse artists as violinist Joshua Bell, flutist Eugenia Zukerman, guitarist Eliot Fisk, actress Claire Bloom, the Tokyo String Quartet and the Mark Morris Dance Group. A former member of the Shanghai and Chester String Quartets, he recorded and toured extensively world-wide with both groups. Mr. Wilson’s performances have been broadcast on West German Radio and Bavarian Radio in Germany, CBC radio in Canada, CBS television and National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Saint Paul Sunday. He has also recorded for the Delos and Music Masters labels.

A devoted advocate for the arts and arts education, Mr. Wilson is currently the Artistic Director of the Richmond–based Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, and teaches cello and chamber music at Columbia University in New York.
Among the most distinguished classical artists of his generation, clarinetist Jon Manasse is internationally recognized for his inspiring artistry, uniquely glorious sound and charismatic performing style. A graduate of the Juilliard School and a professor both there and at the Eastman School of Music, Manasse has six critically acclaimed CDs. He is an avid chamber musician, is principal clarinetist of the American Ballet Theater Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival.

Jon Manasse's solo appearances include New York City performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Hunter College's Sylvia & Danny Kaye Playhouse, Columbia University, Rockefeller University and The Town Hall, fourteen tours of Japan and Southeast Asia - all with the New York Symphonic Ensemble - debuts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Osaka and concerto performances with Gerard Schwarz and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, both at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall and at the prestigious Tokyu Bunkamura Festival in Tokyo. With orchestra, he has been guest soloist with the Augsburg, Dayton, Evansville, Naples and National philharmonics, Canada’s Symphony Nova Scotia, the National Chamber Orchestra and the Alabama, Annapolis, Bozeman, Dubuque, Florida West Coast, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Jackson, Oakland East Bay, Pensacola, Princeton, Richmond, Seattle, Stamford and Wyoming symphonies, under the batons of Leslie B. Dunner, Peter Leonard, Eckart Preu, Matthew Savery, Alfred Savia and Lawrence Leighton Smith. Of special distinction was Mr. Manasse’s 2002 London debut in a Barbican Centre performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Gerard Schwarz and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
Pianist Todd Crow is widely acclaimed for performances in North and South America and Europe. He made his Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the American Symphony in 1992 and his London orchestral debut at the Barbican Centre with the London Philharmonic in 1986, and has performed recently with the Jerusalem Symphony in Israel, and with Milano Classica and I Solisti Aquilani in Italy. Mr. Crow has also been heard in recital or in chamber music at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. The BBC Radio features him in both live and recorded performances and he is heard on many American radio stations.

Since 1996, Mr. Crow has been music director and pianist of the Mount Desert Festival of Chamber Music in Northeast Harbor, Maine. His CDs include sonatas of Haydn and Schubert, works by Taneyev and Dohnányi, Liszt’s piano solo transcription of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Ernst Toch’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the NDR-Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and most recently, Schubert’s unfinished Sonata in C major in a new completion by Brian Newbould. Born in Santa Barbara, California, Todd Crow is an honors graduate of the University of California and the Juilliard School. In 1986 he received the University of California’s Distinguished Alumni Award and is currently the George Sherman Dickinson Professor of Music at Vassar College.
Soprano Hope Hudson is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, having obtained both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in vocal performance.  Ms. Hudson has been a frequent performer at the Aldeburgh Festival in England and sang the role of The Female Chorus in Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at the Festival.  She has been featured on BBC radio performing the songs of Britten, having studied them extensively under the tutelage of Sir Peter Pears.  Ms. Hudson is active in both oratorio and concert work and has appeared several times on the Trinity - St. Paul’s Concert Series. At Brick Church in New York City, she was soprano soloist in Dave Brubeck’s La Fiesta de la Posada, conducted by Mr. Brubeck.  At Riverside, she was soprano soloist in Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Kodaly’s Missa Brevis with the Jose Limon Dance Company, the John Rutter Requiem and Franz Liszt’s Christus.   She has appeared on the Christ Chapel concert series at Riverside and was a featured soloist for the world premiere at Riverside of Harmonia Sacra by Richard Pearson Thomas. 

Ms. Hudson is also a featured soloist on the Riverside Choir’s recording of Behold the Star and is heard as a featured soloist on the Riverside Choir’s 2002 recording of best-loved anthems.  She collaborates frequently with composers that include Richard Pearson Thomas, Lori Laitman and Tom Cipullo. Currently, Ms Hudson is a candidate for the EdM degree at Teacher’s College of Columbia University is on the faculty at Kean College.