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Datebook
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March 6-13: Minneapolis
James Valenti
Minnesota Opera
Puccini's La bohème (Rodolfo)
March 11: Akron, OH
Brooklyn Rider
FUZE! Concert - Akron Art Museum
March 11, 16, 23: London
Pablo Heras-Casado
English National Opera
Donizetti's Elixir of Love
March 12-14: Los Angeles
Joyce Yang
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Beethoven: Piano Cto. 3
March 13: Jonesboro, AR
Brooklyn Rider
Arkansas State University
March 14: Wilton, CT
Inon Barnatan
Candlelight Concerts recital
March 15: NYC
Brooklyn Rider
Angel Orensanz Foundation
Dominant Curve CD release event
March 18: Manchester, UK
Pablo Heras-Casado
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
March 18: Austin, TX
Brooklyn Rider
NPR showcase, SXSW festival
March 19 & 20: Cincinnati
Stefan Jackiw
Cincinnati Symphony
Bruch: Scottish Fantasy
3/19 & 21: Birmingham, AL
Susanna Phillips
Birmingham Opera
Marriage of Figaro (Countess)
Mar. 20 & 21: Santa Barbara
Joshua Roman
Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra
Golijov & Tchaikovsky
March 25: Chapel Hill, NC
Brooklyn Rider
University of North Carolina
March 25-27: Philadelphia
Stefan Jackiw
Philadelphia Orchestra
Mozart: Violin Cto. 4
March 26: Dallas
Joyce Yang
Chamber Music International
Southern Methodist University
Mar. 26, 27: Heidelberg
Inon Barnatan
Heidelberg Festival
Recitals & chamber music
March 27: Philadelphia
Brooklyn Rider
Kimmel Center
March 27: Richardson, TX
Joyce Yang
Chamber Music West
March 27: Huntsville, AL
Susanna Phillips
Nativity Concert Series
Recital
March 29: Sun City, AZ
Joyce Yang
Chamber Music West Recital
March 29-April 24: NYC
James Valenti
Metropolitan Opera
La traviata (Alfredo)
March 31: Philadelphia
James Valenti
Academy of Vocal Arts Gala
Verizon Hall
Mar. 31 & Apr 1: Kenner, LA
Inon Barnatan
Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody...Paganini
April 8: Portland, ME
Stefan Jackiw
Portland Concert Association
Brahms: Violin Sonatas
April 8, 9: Copenhagen
Pablo Heras-Casado
Danish National Sym. Orch.
April 10: Vancouver, BC
Joyce Yang
Vancouver Symphony
Grieg: Piano Cto.
Apr. 11: Baltimore
Inon Barnatan
Shriver Hall Concert Series
Recital with Alisa Weilerstein
April 13: Seattle
Joshua Roman
TownMusic series
Concert with Biava Quartet
April 15: Bordeaux, France
Pablo Heras-Casado
Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine |
About 21C Artists To Watch
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21C Artists To Watch is an image- and awareness-building
program for artists on the brink of major careers in classical music.
Each month, 21C Media Group publishes an e-newsletter profiling several
members of this select group and highlighting their recent and upcoming
activities. Read past newsletters here.
For inquires regarding any of 21C Artists To Watch, please contact:
Wende Persons
Program Director
21C Media Group
ph (917) 691-1282
click here to e-mail
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Joyce Yang plays L.A. with busy summer ahead
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 Pianist Joyce Yang made headlines in 2005 as the youngest silver medalist in the history of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The 19-year-old also swept two additional awards, for best performance of a chamber work and best performance of a new work. Now 23, Yang says she's "having a ball" performing Beethoven, Bernstein, the big Romantics, and more as she "continues to dazzle audiences with her clarity and breadth of style" (Duluth News Tribune, 1/15/10).
Yang returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with conductor Edo de Waart. Her summer includes re-engagements at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony (with James Conlon in Bernstein's Age of Anxiety) and Aspen Music Festival (Tchaikovsky with Leonard Slatkin and a recital evening), as well as her debut in July with the San Francisco Symphony under Alondra de la Parra playing "Rach Three".
"She's been a Performance Today favorite ever since her amazing interview and performance in our studios right after the 2005 Cliburn Competition," writes host Fred Child. "Joyce joined me in the studio again this past November and played highlights from Schumann's Carnaval. (And we have the Schubert Club performance of the same, complete.) Her performance was so strong, and her comments were so good, we plan to make that a centerpiece of our Schumann 200 coverage in June." Stay tuned!
For more information, visit Joyce Yang's web site or the Opus 3 Artists web site.
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James Valenti: on fire in Minnesota
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 Minnesotans like to say they discovered tenor James Valenti first. He began his professional career as a resident artist with Minnesota Opera and went on to win the Met's National Council Auditions in 2002. Valenti's current star turn in La bohème is a welcome homecoming to the Twin Cities. Read the Star Tribune's preview feature: "This tenor's on fire."
New Yorkers will hear the 6' 5" New Jersey native later this month in his Metropolitan Opera debut as Alfredo in La traviata opposite Angela Gheorghiu and Thomas Hampson (March 29 - April 24). "James Valenti looks like a hockey player, with heartiness to match," said Scott Cantrell in the Dallas Morning News last season when Valenti made his Dallas Opera debut and was named Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year. "And what a voice! He can send clarion sounds soaring over full orchestra, but his tenor also softens into tender intimacies."
We recently asked the 32-year-old Florida resident about a few of his favorite things. Hint: sun, sailing, and singing... Read more.
For more information, visit JamesValenti.com or the IMG Artists web site.
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Brooklyn Rider in NPR's SXSW showcase
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 The musicians of Brooklyn Rider are riding fast and high on a wave of media attention for a number of high-profile appearances and projects. On March 18 they'll be the only classical group featured on NPR's showcase at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, to be broadcast live on a number of stations and archived on NPR.org. This month and next, iTunes and NPR are offering a free download of a track from Brooklyn Rider's Dominant Curve. Lucid Culture calls the new album "hypnotically beautiful, stunningly imaginative," and the Toronto Star says, "The precision and control in the playing is stunning."
On the road, the hip, adventurous string quartet is more than halfway through two dozen coast-to-coast concerts, playing venues ranging from clubs to Philadelphia's Kimmel Center (March 27). "We have a burning desire for our music to be relevant to our generation," says violinist Colin Jacobsen in an interview for Portland's Phoenix. "We love playing Debussy [and others]...but love doing it in the context of our time." Read the full feature.
With an ever-growing list of accolades, the group hits NYC on March 15 for a CD release event at the Angel Orensanz Foundation (including a one-night-only showing of the Brooklyn Rider Art Gallery). "The dazzling fingers-in-every pie versatility that Brooklyn Rider exhibits is one of the wonders of contemporary music" (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times); "One of the concert highlights of the season" (Third Coast Digest); "The sort of transporting performance music lovers crave" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
For more information, visit Brooklyn Rider.com and Opus 3 Artists. |
Thumbs up for Stefan Jackiw's RNO tour
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 Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times caught one of violinist Stefan Jackiw's tour performances in California last month with the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev. "He has a striking, percussive technique. He could be a rock star. And he tears into Tchaikovsky like a rock star might if a rock star could... . Jackiw's was a fascinating, impressive, and often riveting performance... . There can't be much doubt that Jackiw's star will continue to rise."
San Jose Mercury News writes that the 24-year-old violinist "seems tapped into the very source from which the music flows. It sure rushed through his Tchaikovsky, which was roomy and full of fireworks, the height of Romance... one wonders where he will take all this talent." And the Orange County Register says it all: "To be perfectly clear: I can't remember hearing a better performance of this work live. Jackiw would appear to have it all - a commanding technique, taste, intelligence, and, best of all, real feeling. He unwound the thing lyrically, taking his time and listening to the line to make sure it made sense and flowed in a dramatic narrative. It was like a great speech, a listener hanging on every word. Remember this kid's name."
This month Jackiw (pronounced jack-EEV) makes his Cincinnati and Philadelphia Orchestra debuts, and he'll be signing copies of his new Brahms Violin Sonatas CD after each performance.
For more information, visit StefanJackiw.com or the Opus 3 Artists web site.
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21C Artists To Watch in the news
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Star Tribune, Minneapolis - 3/8/10 (James Valenti)
"Foremost among the opening-night cast...is the splendid James Valenti, whose Rodolfo, more poet than tenor, combines adult passion with boyish élan... . At full throttle, he sounds thrilling, with no hint of strain. Yet he can also sing with compelling intimacy, coloring his words arrestingly." - Larry Fuchsberg
Naples News - 3/5/10 (Joyce Yang)
"Yang is a powerful player, with the accuracy of a surgeon and the heart of an artist. Thursday night, in the first of a weekend series, she delivered a passionate reading of the [Rachmaninoff] Rhapsody... . This performance alone was worth the admission." - Harriet Howard Heithaus
New Jersey Star-Ledger - 3/5/10 (Stefan Jackiw)
"Several years ago, a teenage Stefan Jackiw trekked from Boston to South Jersey to perform Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto for the first time. Because of his exam schedule at Harvard, he had only half of one rehearsal to practice with the Bay-Atlantic Symphony. 'He sounded like he had been playing this piece and really thinking about it for 20 years,' says the orchestra's music director, Jed Gaylin. 'It was brilliant.'" - Ronni Reich
Northwest Reverb - 3/1/10 (Brooklyn Rider)
New CD: "Brooklyn Rider shows deep artistic maturity and a spiritual essence bordering on the psychedelic... . Exciting and fresh, Dominant Curve is full of worthwhile new material as well as a valid and imaginative interpretation of the Debussy string quartet." - Lorin Wilkerson
San Francisco Chronicle - 2/20/10 (Joshua Roman)
"The soloist was Joshua Roman, a cellist of extraordinary technical and musical gifts. His Symphony debut, in fact, was so striking in so many ways that it left a listener eager for something more." - Joshua Kosman
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten - 2/19/10 (Pablo Heras-Casado): "The shadings and sparkle Pablo Heras-Casado drew from Mozart's "Prague" symphony were flabbergasting... . [He] was honored for his astonishing debut concert [with Staatskapelle Dresden] with enthusiastic applause: we look forward to another encounter with this congenial Spaniard." - Alexander Keuk
Guardian - 2/15/10 (Pablo Heras-Casado)
ENO's Elixir of Love: "Heras-Casado, wonderfully subtle, well deserves his reputation as a major new bel canto interpreter on this showing." - Tim Ashley
Financial Times - 2/14/10 (Pablo Heras-Casado)
ENO's Elixir of Love: "The conductor, Pablo Heras-Casado, makes a lively UK debut, ranging freely between exuberance and delicate lyricism." [five stars] - Andrew Clark
Chicago Tribune - 2/11/10 (Susanna Phillips)
Lyric Opera of Chicago's Elixir of Love: "I was pleased to see Phillips, an alumna of Lyric's Ryan Opera Center whose American career is now firmly launched, getting star billing at her alma mater. Her creamy soprano voice and charming character projection are a good fit with Adina... Phillips' second-act aria, in which the heroine regrets her behavior to Nemorino's face, was touchingly sung, with lovely tonal shadings and coloratura." - John von Rhein
Music Critic Fresno - 2/6/10 (Joyce Yang)
"The performance was astonishing from beginning to end... . Yang has all the technique to make these [Scarlatti sonatas] look easy... . She found the heart of the music and let it speak." - George Warren
Photos: Oh Seok Hoon (Yang); Dario Acosta (Valenti); Amber Darragh (Brooklyn Rider); Lisa-Marie Mazzucco (Jackiw) | |
