Guest Artists
Susie Park, violin
Hailed as "prodigiously talented" (Washington Post) and praised for her "freedom, mastery and fantasy" (La Libre, Belgium), Australian Susie Park has gained worldwide recognition for her searing emotive range and dynamic stage presence. Concertising around the world she has appeared as soloist with the Vienna Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, major Australian orchestras including those of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmania, West Australia and Canberra, Korea's KBS orchestra, the Lille National Orchestra under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin in France and the Wellington Sinfonia, New Zealand. Recent performances include recitals throughout the US and appearances in venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Barbes and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, Ravinia Festival and Millennium Park in Chicago, Symphony Hall in Boston, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Vienna Musikverein, Cologne Philharmonie, Dusseldorf Tonhalle and the Danish Radio Concert Hall. Conductors she has collaborated with include Simon Rattle, Hans Vonk, Alan Gilbert, Fabio Luisi and Yehudi Menuhin.
Among her numerous awards and honours, Miss Park won top prizes at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and the Wieniawski Competition (Poland), and was winner of the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition (France), resulting in performances and re-engagements throughout the US and Europe. She won the Richard Goldner Concerto Competition and the Ernest Llewellyn String Award, took top prize in the National String Division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Young Performer's Award and her performance with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was televised nationally, earning her the Victorian Premier's Award.
A passionate chamber musician, Miss Park was the violinist of the Eroica Trio from 2006 to 2012. Highlights include releasing the Trio's Grammy®-nominated eighth CD for EMI featuring all-American music, "An American Journey", and embarking on international tours in countries including New Zealand, Brazil and Denmark, Germany with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the US with Vienna Symphony Orchestra in venues including New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and Chicago’s Millennium Park. Miss Park was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre Two collaborating with such Society members as Wu Han, Gary Hoffman and Ida Kavafian. She has participated in numerous tours with Musicians from Marlboro to critical acclaim as a result of her three consecutive summers in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival. Collaborations include performances with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Emerson and Cleveland Quartets, Kim Kashkashian, Pamela Frank, Jason Vieaux, Jimmy Lin and Jaime Laredo, and her numerous festival appearances include Music from Angelfire in New Mexico, Caramoor and Skaneateles Festivals in New York, Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, England, the Ravinia Festival, Aspen Music Festival, the Bermuda Festival, Sommerakademie Mozarteum in Austria and Israel's Keshet Eilon.
A native of Sydney, Australia, Miss Park first picked up the violin at age three, making her solo recital debut at the age of five. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and an Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory. Miss Park served as Concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony and the New York String Orchestra in Carnegie Hall and her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Shi-Xiang (Peter) Zhang, and Christopher Kimber.
Gemma New, conductor
Recently named a Dudamel Fellow by the LA Philharmonic, New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New serves as Associate Conductor for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and is the Founder and Director of the Lunar Ensemble, a contemporary music collective in Baltimore, Maryland.
Along with her appearances with the NJSO and the Lunar Ensemble, Ms. New has recently led concerts with a range of orchestras, among them, the Atlanta and Miami Symphony Orchestras as well as the Hamilton Philharmonic in Canada and Opus Orchestra in New Zealand. Upcoming guest conducting engagements include performances with Camerata Notturna and the New Amsterdam Symphony in New York. Additionally, Ms. New will return to New Zealand in 2015 to conduct the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra for the finals of the National Concerto Competition.
In 2013, Ms. New made her Carnegie Hall conducting debut, leading works by Adams, Norman and Ives on the American Soundscapes series, where she was mentored by John Adams and David Robertson. That same year, she was selected as the David A. Karetsky Conducting Fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival. Passionate about music education, Ms. New enjoys working with the NJSO-affiliated Greater Newark Youth Orchestra. She was also guest conductor for the 2013 New Jersey All State Orchestra. Between 2007 and 2009, Ms. New conducted the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, which grew from 40 to 70 players under her leadership and performed upwards of nine concerts a year.
Ms. New earned the Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where she studied with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar. She previously graduated from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand with a Bachelor of Music (Honors) in violin performance.
Ms. New was awarded the Ansbacher Fellowship, in which she was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic to reside at the Salzburg Music Festival in 2012. In September 2014, at the invitation of Maestro Kurt Masur, she resided for three weeks in Leipzig, Germany as a Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Fellow, where she studied Mendelssohn’s music under Maestro Masur and conducted the Leipziger Symphonieorchester in a concert at the historic Lindensaal in Markkleeberg.
Mark Steinberg, violin
Mark Steinberg is first violinist and founding member of the Brentano Quartet, in existence since 1992. With the quartet he has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Japan and Colombia. The quartet is ensemble in residence at Princeton University and has won many awards, such as the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the inaugural Cleveland Quartet award and the Royal Philharmonic Society award for best debut in the UK. He is also an active chamber musician and recitalist outside of the quartet. He has been heard in chamber music festivals in Holland, Germany, Austria, and France and participated for four summers in the Marlboro Music Festival, with which he has toured extensively. He has also appeared in the El Paso Festival, on the Bargemusic series in New York, at Chamber Music Northwest, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in trio and duo concerts with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, with whom he presented the complete Mozart sonata cycle in London's Wigmore Hall in 2001, with additional recitals in other cities. With Ms. Uchida he has also recorded a group of Mozart sonatas for Philips. Mr. Steinberg has been soloist with the London Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kansas City Camerata, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Philadelphia Concerto Soloists, with conductors such as Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Mark Steinberg holds degrees from Indiana University and The Juilliard School and has studied with Louise Behrend, Josef Gingold, and Robert Mann. An advocate of contemporary music, Mr. Steinberg has worked closely with many composers and has performed with 20th century music ensembles including the Guild of Composers, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Speculum Musicae, and Continuum, with which he has recorded and toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe. He has also performed and recorded chamber music on period instruments with the Helicon Ensemble, the Four Nations Ensemble, and the Smithsonian Institute. He has taught at Juilliard's Pre-College division, at Princeton University, and New York University, and is currently on the violin faculty of the Mannes College of Music. He has taught often at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Aspen Festival and the Taos School of Music and has given master classes at the Eastman School of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and numerous other schools.
Jonathan Yates, conductor
Jonathan Yates has earned high praise as a conductor, solo pianist and collaborative artist for his musicianship, intellect and the remarkable variety of his musical endeavors. He made his professional orchestral conducting debut at 23, leading the National Symphony Orchestra in a Millennium Stages Concert. The following year he made his Carnegie Hall debut as a participant in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop. He has also been heard as a chamber musician at the 92nd Street Y, Miller Theater, Bargemusic and Merkin Hall, as well as at the Caramoor Festival and on the Ravinia Festival Rising Stars Series. He has performed as a concerto soloist with orchestras in North America, Europe and Asia, and has given solo recitals for the La Jolla Music Society, at the National Museum of American History (on fortepiano), and on the University of Chicago Concert Series. He served as Apprentice Conductor of the Chicago Youth Symphony, and for two years as Music Director of the Harvard University Bach Society Orchestra. As a past and founding member of the Amelia Piano Trio, he was presented by Isaac Stern in Weill Recital Hall and at Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan, and was a finalist for the Walter F. Naumburg Chamber Music Prize. He can be heard in chamber music of Hindemith on Cedille Records.
Jonathan is becoming increasingly sought after for his operatic work. He conducted the world premiere of Michael Webster's Hell at Performance Space 122, and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Paride ed Elena at the California Music Festival. He also led the world premiere of the first act of Adam Silverman's Korczak's Orphans at the Austrian Cultural Forum. He teaches French, German and Italian vocal diction at Sarah Lawrence College, and worked for two years as an accompanist at the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. As an ardent devotee of new music, he has been involved in numerous premieres, was the recipient of an ASCAP award for adventurous programming, and participated as a pianist and conductor in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble Tanglewood Workshops. Yates received his Graduate Diploma in conducting from the Juilliard School, where he studied with James DePreist and Otto-Werner Mueller, and was the holder of the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship. He received his Masters. of Music from State University of New York, where he worked with Gilbert Kalish, and his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, where he studied with Robert Levin. He currently serves as conductor of the Sarah Lawrence College Orchestra.
Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano
The winner of both the Main and the Song Prizes at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and a Grammy nominee, American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has been described by The Guardian as “a great artist, no question, with an imperturbable steadiness of tone, and a nobility of utterance that invites comparison not so much with her contemporaries as with mid-20th century greats such as Kirsten Flagstad.”
Highlights of Ms. Barton’s 2014-15 season include appearances as Fricka in Houston Grand Opera’s Die Walkure, Giovanna Seymour in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Anna Bolena, recitals at Carnegie Hall and Oper Frankfurt, and orchestral appearances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s The Work at Hand with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Barton’s 2013-2014 season featured returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Adalgisa in Norma, the Houston Grand Opera as Fricka in their upcoming Ring, and as Katisha in Opera Memphis’ The Mikado, and her Japanese debut as Meg Page in a new production of Falstaff at the Saito Kinen Festival under the baton of Fabio Luisi. In concert, Ms. Barton performed the Verdi Requiem with the Melbourne Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis, Britten’s Spring Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, a Concert of Verdi Arias and Ensembles at the Lanaudière Festival with Jean-Marie Zeitouni, and Elgar’s Sea Pictures at the Aspen Music Festival. She also made her French debut at the newly-founded Montreuilsur-Mer Festival in a Concert of French Opera followed by a performance of the Sea Pictures.
In recent seasons she has performed Mozart’s Requiem with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart, Schubert’s Mass No. 6 with San Diego Symphony, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Omaha Symphony. In recital she appeared with the Vocal Arts Society at the Kennedy Center, under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation, as well as Carnegie Hall as part of their Great Singers III: Evenings of Song series.
Vince Lee, conductor
With conducting described as “powerful” and “hefty” by the New York times, American conductor Vince Lee is quickly rising as one of today’s top emerging talents. Known among his contemporaries for his dynamic performances and his razor-sharp ear, his diverse musical background provides him a level of flexibility that is unique in the industry. During his three years with the Cincinnati Symphony, he revolutionized his role as Assistant Conductor for the orchestra. His numerous concerts with the CSO received critical acclaim, combining elements of increased interactivity with the highest artistic standards. He has been performed over 50 premiere works. He conducted 17 orchestral concerts during his time at IU, and served as assistant conductor for the IU New Music Ensemble, Opera Theater, and Ballet. During this time, he still remained active as a pianist and coach, conducting both the IU graduate and undergraduate Opera Workshop programs.
He was invited to study at the Juilliard School by Maestro James DePreist, he quickly became in demand throughout New York City. At Juilliard, he was appointed Musical Director for the MAP orchestra (a Juilliard faculty position) and served as principal pianist for the Juilliard orchestras. A vigorous supporter of musical collaboration, he conducted for the Dance and Composition departments, as well as for the “Beyond the Machine” series. he toured with Juilliard’s AXIOM ensemble, making his European debut at the Tonhalle in Zurich, Switzerland. Other New York conducting engagements include appearances at the Manhattan School of Music, NYU, Bargemusic, Symphony Space, and Alice Tully Hall. Most recently, he appeared in concert with violinist Gil Shaham at the Aspen Music Festival, Carnegie Hall with the AZLO Orchestra, and the NYCA Orchestra.