2011/12 Music Series

Mara Gearman and Friends
Thursday, March 08, 2012, 8:00 pm
PONCHO Hall, 710 East Roy Street, Seattle, WA

$20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students and alumni (with ID)

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Event Summary

Cornish faculty violist Mara Gearman along with Seattle Symphony principals Elisa Barston (violin) and Efe Baltacigil (cello), as well as Brittany Boulding (violin), Paige Stockley Lerner (cello), Oksana Ezhokina (piano), Paul Taub (flute) and Eric Garcia (percussion) present a concert of classic and contemporary chamber music.

Program

• Mozart’s Divertimento in E-flat major for String Trio (1788)
• Hindemith’s Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 11, No. 4 (1919)
• Morton Feldman’s The Viola in My Life, Part II (1970)

While still early in her career, violist Mara Gearman is already an accomplished player with extensive experience in both orchestral and chamber music settings. She regularly performs with the chamber groups American String Project and Seattle Chamber Players, and has collaborated with such prestigious performers as Ani Kavafian, Peter Wiley, Vladimir Feltsman, and Dale Clevenger, the legendary principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She is also a founding member of the Barston String Quartet as well as Trio Tara with pianist Oksana Ezhokina and Laurie DeLuca, clarinet. Gearman has held or been awarded a number of orchestral appointments, including principal viola (at age twenty) under maestro Rossen Milanov, and principal viola at the Kansas City Symphony and at the Oregon Symphony under music director James DePriest. Currently she is the second desk violist for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. As a solo performer Gearman has won solo awards at the Primrose and Tertis International Viola Competitions, performing viola solos ranging from American composers Alan Shulman and Derek Bermel to Hungarian composer Miklos Rozca. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, her primary teachers included Roberto Diaz, Pinchas Zukerman, and Karen Tuttle, as well as additional study in Canada, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland with Nobuko Imai, Barbara Westphal, and Gerard Causse.

Violinist Elisa Barston is currently the Seattle Symphony’s Principal Second Violinist and previously served as the Associate Concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She was also a member of the first violin sections of the Cleveland Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist and chamber musician, Barston has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, appearing with the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Taipei Symphony Orchestra, among many others. In 1986, she made her European debut with the English Chamber Orchestra at the request of Sir Yehudi Menuhin. During her tenure as associate concertmaster, Barston made yearly appearances as featured soloist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, performing a diverse concerto repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Shostakovich and Schnittke. Among her awards are the Jascha Heifetz Scholarship, the Starling Foundation Grant, top prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition (including the Audience Prize), First Prize at the Julius Stulberg Auditions, Grand Prize at the International Kingsville Young Performers’ Competition and First Prize in the Seventeen-General Motors National Music Competition. Barston has been awarded first prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music, Kuttner Quartet and Indiana University competitions. Barston studied violin performance at the University of Southern California with Robert Lipsett and Indiana University with Josef Gingold.

Turkish cellist Efe Baltacıgil is the principal cellist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 he won the 2005 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He was also awarded The Peter Jay Sharp Prize, which presented his New York debut in December 2005, and the Washington Performing Arts Society Prize, which presented his Washington, DC debut in April 2006. He has also appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in Richard Goode’s Perspectives series and at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Buffalo Chamber Music Society. Baltacigil has performed the Brahms Sextet with Pinchas Zukerman, Midori and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall for Isaac Stern’s memorial, and participated in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. He has also appeared as soloist in the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra conducted by Otto-Werner Mueller. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and is a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two. Baltacigil was born in Istanbul, Turkey. He started studying the violin at the age of five and changed to the cello at the age of seven. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Mimar Sinan University Conservatory in Istanbul in 1998 and an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 2002, where he studied with Peter Wiley and David Soyer and was the recipient of the Curtis Institute’s Jacqueline DuPré Scholarship.

Violinist Brittany Boulding recently moved back to Seattle where she performs as Concertmaster and Soloist of the Auburn Symphony Orchestra, Bellevue Philharmonic and 5th Avenue Theater. Ms. Boulding will also be performing as Concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonietta this year. Other recent solo appearances have been with the New Haven Symphony, Spoleto Festival and National Reperatory Orchestra. She also performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Boulding has most recently performed in the Simple Measures, Second City and Guemes Island Chamber music series. During the summer season Ms. Boulding attends the Bellingham Festival of Music and in the past has appeared as Concertmaster of the Tanglewood Music Center, Banff Center and Spoleto USA orchestras. Ms. Boulding received her BM from Rice University as a student of Kenneth Goldsmith and her Professional Studies Certificate from the Colburn Conservatory under the tutelage of Robert Lipsett. Ms. Boulding’s violin career also extends past her experience as a classical musician. Since the age of 6 she has been performing with her family the internationally acclaimed MAGICAL STRINGS touring throughout the U.S., Canada, Japan and Ireland. She has recorded on five of their sixteen albums and been a featured soloist at their annual Celtic Yuletide Concerts, a celebrated Northwest tradition.

An avid performer of contemporary music, cellist Paige Stockley Lerner is the founder of the Saint Helens String Quartet, a quartet devoted exclusively to performing the music of the 20th century. The quartet has premiered numerous new works at Benaroya Hall, and has participated in the Seattle Symphony’s “Made in America” and “Bridging the 48th Parallel: Music from Central Europe“ festivals. With noted director Nick Schwartz Hall, the quartet also created a theater piece about the Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, which premiered at Cornish in 2007 and was presented by the Seattle Symphony that same year. Currently, as artists–in–residences at the Jack Straw Foundation, the quartet is recording their first CD featuring the works of Peter Schickele, Philip Glass, and Ken Benshoof. In addition to her quartet work, Stockley Lerner also performs regularly with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra and the Auburn Symphony, and, with the Seattle Symphony, records movie and television soundtracks. She is also the Artistic Director of the “Second Sundays in Snohomish” series and frequently participates in the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s public school outreach program. A former student of Toby Saks, Valentin Hirsu, Michael Haber, and Ardyth Alton, Stockley Lerner earned a BA in Political Science and English from the University of Washington and her MM degree at the Manhattan School of Music. She also spent a year in Krakow and Prague on a European Mozart Academy fellowship. She has been a member of orchestras in Connecticut, Castille y Leon, Spain, and Mexico City, as well as a freelance cellist in New York City.

Oksana Ezhokina is a native of Ryazan, Russia. A winner of several piano and chamber music competitions, Ezhokina frequently appears as guest recitalist and chamber musician on concert series across the United States, and has been featured on multiple live radio broadcasts on stations including WFMT-Chicago, KUOW-Seattle, and Maine Public Radio.  Her collaborations have included concerts with such ensembles as the Seattle Chamber Players, Klimt Piano Trio and the Contemporary Chamber Players. A dedicated champion and performer of works by contemporary composers, she has premiered music by Laura Kaminsky and Paul Dresher, among others. Ezhokina was awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2004. She also holds an Artist Diploma from the Ryazan School of Music in Russia, a Master of Music degree in piano from Northern Illinois University and a Bachelor of Music degree from Walla Walla College. Her principal teachers were Christina Dahl, Donald Walker, Leonard Richter and Eleanor Oragyoff, and she has coached chamber music with pianists Gilbert Kalish and Seymour Lipkin as well as members of the Juilliard, Emerson, Orion and Vermeer String Quartets.

Paul Taub was born in New York City, and has been a resident of Seattle since 1979. He holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. He has studied with some of the world’s greatest flutists including Michel Debost, Samuel Baron, Marcel Moyse, and Robert Aitken. As a longtime Cornish faculty member and founding member of the Seattle Chamber Players, Taub plays an active role in the Seattle contemporary music scene. He has performed and recorded American and world premieres by internationally known composers including Robert Aitken, John Cage, George Crumb, Janice Giteck, Sofia Gubaidulina, Wayne Horvitz, Ned Rorem, Toru Takemitsu, Reza Vali, and Peteris Vasks among others. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, the Everett Symphony, the Young Composers Collective, and the Esoterics. Taub has also worked extensively to promote Soviet/Russian composers in America and American composers in the former Soviet Union. His Soviet repertoire has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, at the Goodwill Arts Festival, in a solo recital at the Leningrad Musical Spring International Festival and at New York’s Symphony Space. He has also performed four times in Russia with the Seattle Chamber Players and twice at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland, as well as in China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands and Ukraine. Taub’s program of international solo flute music has been presented at numerous festivals and universities throughout the U.S., Canada, and France. Repertoire on his first CD, Oo-Ee (Periplum), features ten solo commissioned works, and has been performed in Seattle—where he gave the first flute recital in the new Benaroya Hall—and in New York City. In 2011, he released Edge – Flute Music from the Periphery of Europe (Present Sounds) featuring works by Kancheli, Vasks, Sergei Slonimsky, Artur Avanesov and Elmir Mirzoev. Taub has also been a featured performer at National Flute Association conventions in Los Angeles (1992), Atlanta (1999), Las Vegas (2003) and New York (2009). He is currently a member of the Boards of Directors of Chamber Music America and has just completed a distinguished term on the board of the National Flute Association.

Eric Garcia currently serves as Assistant Conductor for both the Seattle Symphony and the Eastern Music Festival. Garcia formerly served as Director of Orchestral Activities and Professor of Conducting at the University of Evansville and Music Director of the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He has also served as Music Director at St. Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. In Chicago, Garcia held several conducting positions and appeared as guest conductor with numerous orchestras. Among these, he guest conducted the Northwest Festival Orchestra of Illinois, working with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Civic Orchestra of Chicago. As a doctoral student at Northwestern University, he conducted performances with the Contemporary Music Ensemble, Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonia. A frequent conductor of contemporary music, Garcia has worked directly with composers including John Adams, George Crumb, Frank Ferko, David Lang, Lowell Lieberman and Jay Alan Yim. Garcia has attended the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival and School, working with such eminent conductors as Nicholas Kraemer, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin and David Zinman. At Aspen, he worked with the American Academy of Conducting Orchestra, The Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies, and the Aspen Opera Theatre Center. Garcia received a Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University under the mentorship of Victor Yampolsky. He received a Bachelor of Music degree in music theory from the University of Texas.