Amy Sue Barston, Cello &
Ieva Jokubaviciute, Piano
Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 2:30pm
Programme
- Debussy - Sonata for cello and piano
- Mark Summer - "Julie‑O" for solo cello
- Francois Rabbath - "Poucha‑Dass" for solo cello
- Janácek - "On an overgrown path" for solo piano
- Adam Silverman - "Baby Blackbird Fly Now" for cello and piano
- Golijov - "Salvador" for cello and piano
- Chopin - Cello Sonata in G minor p 65
Bios
Amy Sue Barston
Praised as “passionate and elegant” by The New York Times, cellist Amy Sue Barston has performed as soloist and chamber musician on stages all over the world, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Ravinia, Caramoor, BargeMusic, Haan Hall (Jerusalem), the Power House (Australia), the International Musicians Seminar (Cornwall, England), Symphony Center (Chicago), and the Banff Centre (Canada). At age seventeen she appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony on live television, won Grand Prize in the Society of American Musicians’ Competition, and won First Place and the Audience Prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
Starting cello at age 3, Miss Barston studied with Nell Novak at The Music Institute of Chicago. She continued with Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California and with Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School, where she earned her Masters degree and was Class Assistant to Mr. Krosnick. She has also had lessons with Yo Yo Ma, Rostropovich, David Geringas, Bernhard Greenhouse, Robert Mann, Ralph Kirshbaum, Timothy Eddy, Gary Hoffman, Mannheim Pressler, Tabea Zimmerman, and Pinchas Zukerman, among others.
Miss Barston has premiered many works written for her by living composers across the United States. In 2000 she performed as soloist with the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of a concerto written for her by Juilliard professor Kendall Briggs. In 2001 she toured the US and Australia and performed Osvaldo Golijov’s Omaramor for solo cello in twenty cities, receiving twenty consecutive standing ovations. In 2002 she performed the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Aftermath at the Ravinia Festival; The Chicago Sun‑Times wrote: "the deep, rich tones of Barston's cello haunted the vocal line like a sorrowing vision."
Miss Barston has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, the Rockford Symphony, the Denison Symphony, the USC Symphony, the Westchester Symphony, the Intermountain String Orchestra, and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, among many others. She made her first solo appearance with orchestra in Guelph, Canada when she was twelve.
Miss Barston is the cellist of two critically acclaimed chamber ensembles: the Corigliano Quartet and Divahn. Strad magazine hailed the “abundant commitment and mastery” of the Corigliano Quartet. Divahn is a unique all‑female quartet comprised of voice, percussion, violin, and cello that specializes in Middle Eastern music and improvisation. Miss Barston has also performed sonatas and chamber music with many of the world’s leading musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Jon Kimura Parker, Arnold Steinhardt, Bernard Greenhouse, Leila Josefowitz, Peter Oundjian, Ralph Kirshbaum, Ani Kavafian, Mark O’Connor, Danny Phillips, the Ying Quartet, and the Lark Quartet, among many others. She is also Co‑Artistic Director of the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival.
Above all, Miss Barston is a devoted teacher: in her home, at the New York School for Strings, as an assistant teacher at Juilliard, and at numerous summer festivals. Many students commute for lessons from hundreds of miles away, some from as far as Alaska and Japan.
Miss Barston’s upcoming schedule includes solo and chamber music performances in England, New Zealand, Sydney, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Wisconsin, Rochester, Denver, Chicago, and Germany, as well as giving classes for young cellists in nine cities in the US, Europe, and Australia. www.amybarston.com
Ieva Jokubaviciute
Known for her deep musical and emotional commitment to a wide range of repertoire, Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute performs regularly in the US, Europe, and South America. Critics have described her as possessing ‘razor-sharp intelligence and wit’ (The Washington Post) and as ‘elegant and engaging’ (The Wall Street Journal). In 2006, she was honored as a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.
Over the last seasons, Ieva made her Chicago Symphony debut at the Ravinia Festival with James Conlon and her Brazilian orchestral debut in Rio de Janeiro under the baton of Ligia Amadio. She has given solo recitals in Vilnius, Lithuania, on the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago, at Caspary Hall in New York City, and at the Freer Gallery in Washington DC, after which the Washington Post called her a ‘splendid colorist’ and described her performance as ‘magical tone-painting’.
In the fall of 2009, Labor Records, on its Music of Tribute series, will release Ieva’s world premiere recordings of works written in tribute to Alban Berg by Scelsi, Ali-Zadeh, Finney, Gilboa, and Apostel, which will be coupled with Berg’s piano sonata Op.1 and Four Songs Op.2.
A much sought after chamber musician, Ieva recently appeared at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and tours regularly with Musicians from Marlboro. Her piano trio—Trio Cavatina —made its New York City and Boston debuts in 2006. She appears annually at international music festivals including Marlboro, Ravinia, Bard, Prussia Cove in England, and Festival de la musique de chambre at La Lointaine in France and most recently at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany. Earning degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and from Mannes College of Music, her principal teachers have been Seymour Lipkin and Richard Goode.
