Classical Jam with guest pianist Jonathan Yates
Sally Koo , Violin
Amadi Hummings, Viola,
Iris Jortner , Cello
with guest pianist Jonathan Yates
Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 2:30pm
Programme
- Beethoven - Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11
- Enescu - Concert Piece
- Brahms - Quartet in C minor, Op. 60
Bios
Salley Koo, violin
Salley Koo is a versatile violinist who maintains an active career performing solo and chamber music. Having received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 from Harvard-Radcliffe University, where she studied with Lynn Chang, Ms. Koo proceeded to earn both her Master of Music and Artist Diploma degrees from Yale University in the studio of Peter Oundjian, in addition to having worked with other renowned pedagogues such as Almita and Roland Vamos, David Taylor, Sylvie Koval, and Dorothy Kitchen.
Ms. Koo has been a guest soloist with numerous orchestras in the United States, and has performed recitals in Europe and across North America. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Koo has collaborated with world-renowned musicians such as Peter Frankl, Yo Yo Ma, Colin Carr, and as well with members of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Peabody Trio, Emerson Quartet, Takacs Quartet and the symphony orchestras of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Ms. Koo has performed with the Hartford and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and has served as concertmaster for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.
A past participant of the Banff Centre Winter Residency, Yellow Barn Music Festival, Taos School of Music, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Pacific Music Festival, Ms. Koo has served as a faculty member at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire, Vermont’s Chamber Music Intensive Program at Yellow Barn, the Opus 118 We Want Music! program in East Harlem, New York, Elm City ChamberFest, and the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Connecticut, in addition to maintaining an extensive private teaching studio. She is currently pursuing a D.M.A. at Stony Brook University under the guidance of Pamela Frank and Philip Setzer.
Amadi Hummings, viola
"Delicious warm tones, ardent phrasing and stunning fingerwork.” - The News and Observer,Raleigh, NC
Amadi Hummings, violist, has been heard in recital in major cities throughout the United States, such as New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, San-Diego, Houston, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. He has also performed throughout Israel, Canada, South & Central America, India, Japan, Hong Kong and the Caribbean. Recently Mr. Hummings has been a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. He has collaborated with such artists as Awadagin Pratt, Mitsuko Uchida, Andras Schiff, Nobuko Imai, David Soyer, and Felix Galimir.
As a concerto soloist, Mr. Hummings has appeared with the Virginia Synphony, North Carolina Symphony, Roanoke Symphony, Winston‑Salem Symphony, the City Island Baroque Ensemble of New York & the National Symphony of Ecuador.
He has also performed at the Marlboro, Sarasota, Tanglewood, Aspen, Norfolk, Spoleto, San Juan Islands, El Paso, Salt Bay and Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festivals.
Mr. Hummings has been heard on National Public Radio, WNYC in New York, WGBH in Boston, WFMT in Chicago, and the BBC. Among Mr. Hummings' prizes and awards are those from the New York Philharmonic, Concert Artists Guild, the North Carolina Symphony, the National Society of Arts and Letters, and the Epstein Young Artists Award from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, with whom he still maintains a strong artistic and mentoring association.
Mr. Hummings serves on the faculty of James Madison University in Virginia and has given master classes throughout the USA and in Hong Kong. In addition to an active performing schedule he is the Director of Program Development for the Gateways Music Festival and the founder/conductor of the Harlem Symphony Orchestra.
Born in 1969 in New York City, Mr. Hummings began his early studies with his mother,
pianist Armenta Adams-Hummings. He obtained his music degrees from the North Carolina School of the Arts, the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Indiana University. His teachers included Sally Peck, Marcus Thompson and Atar Arad.
Iris Jortner, Cellist
Iris Jortner, Cellist, was born and raised in Tel Aviv. As an active chamber musician she has collaborated with Yefim Bronfman, Michael Tree, Itamar Golan, Levon Chilingrian, the Orion Quartet, and the Apple Hill Chamber Players, and has performed in numerous festivals including Verbier, Banff, Tanglewood, Prussia Cove, Dubrovnick, Kfar Blum, Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, and Rolandseck.
Iris was a founding member and cellist of the Aviv Quartet between 1997-2002. She has performed in important venues including Wigmore Hall, the Louvre, Theater du Chatelet, Vienna Concert House, Cologne Philhamonic Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Bargemusic, and the Kennedy Center. She recorded for works for oud, cello, and piano by Eastern and Western composers for Live Classics, and the Hoffmeister Quartets for Naxos.
She studied at the Eastman School of Music, the Amsterdam Conservatory, the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne, and the Mannes College of Music. Her teachers include Timothy Eddy, Paul Katz, Bernard Greenhouse, Dmitri Ferschtman, and members of the Alban Berg Quartet. For the past two years Iris taught cello and chamber music at the University of Virginia, and currently lives in NY where she is active as a chamber musician and freelances.
Jonathan Yates, Piano
Highly regarded as a pianist and conductor, Jonathan Yates 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 been heard as a pianist at many major New York City venues, including Weill Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Miller Theater, Bargemusic and Merkin Hall, as well as at the Caramoor Festival, Music Mountain, and on the Ravinia Festival Rising Stars Series. He serves as founding music director of Camerata Notturna, one of the New York City’s most exciting young chamber orchestras, and as conductor of the Sarah Lawrence College Orchestra.
His work as an opera conductor includes 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 is also Sarah Lawrence College’s diction coach, 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 the premieres of such composers as Chen Yi, Augusta Read Thomas and Joan Tower, 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. He can be heard in chamber music of Hindemith on Cedille Records. He holds degrees from Harvard University, SUNY Stony Brook and The Juilliard School.
