RiverArts® Presents – Strings in the Afternoon: Quintets of Mozart, Bunch, and Montgomery – Sunday, March 10, 2024
FEBRUARY 8, 2024 – HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON AND TARRYTOWN:
On Sunday, March 10 at 4:00 PM, at the Baptist Church of Tarrytown, 56 South Broadway, RiverArts will present two of Mozart’s great string quintets, No. 3 in C Major K. 515 and No. 4 in g minor K. 516, along with String Circle by Kenji Bunch and Jessie Montgomery’s Strum.
Date – Sunday, March 10
Venue – First Baptist Church of Tarrytown; 56 South Broadway, Tarrytown, NY
Time – 4:00 PM
Tickets – $40; tickets can be purchased at https://riverarts.org/event/strings-in-the-afternoon/
Artistic Director Peter Seidenberg has assembled an esteemed lineup of musicians for the afternoon, including Phil Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, and Miranda Cuckson on violins, composer and violist Kenji Bunch and Daniel Panner [Mendelssohn String Quartet] on violas, and Mr. Seidenberg on the cello.
From ephemeral to down to earth, RiverArts presents a concert of seemingly contrasting chamber music. Mozart String Quintets offer a profound glimpse into his genius for utilizing old forms to create groundbreaking and deeply innovative works. The two quintets are not just familiar classical Viennese chamber music, but they bring us into the depths of Mozart’s personal world and perhaps show us the future of how he might have composed had he lived longer.
In contrast, we will also hear two pieces by two of today’s most authentically American voices. Both Kenji Bunch and Jessie Montgomery use vernacular folk music to create beautiful, accessible, chamber music that keeps your toes tapping. Bunch’s String Circle is an homage to blue grass and blues. Montgomery’s Strum evokes a jam session of plucked string instruments. An added excitement to this concert is that composer Kenji Bunch will be playing viola for the afternoon. Unifying all the music performed at the concert is the idea of the viola quintet, so cleverly designed in the mid 18th century.
About the Artists:
Kenji Bunch [viola and composer] writes music that looks for commonalities between musical styles, for understandings that transcend cultural or generational barriers, and for empathic connections with his listeners. Drawing on vernacular musical traditions, an interest in highlighting historical injustices and inaccuracies, and techniques from his classical training, Bunch creates music with a unique personal vocabulary that appeals to performers, audiences, and critics alike. With his work frequently performed worldwide and recorded numerous times, Bunch considers his current mission the search for and celebration of shared emotional truths about the human experience from the profound to the absurd, to help facilitate connection and healing through entertainment, vulnerability, humor, and joy. Mr. Bunch is widely recognized for performing his own groundbreaking works for viola. He is Artistic Director of the new music group Fear No Music and is deeply committed to music education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Miranda Cuckson [violin] delights audiences with her playing of a great range of music and styles, from older eras to the very newest creations. An internationally acclaimed soloist and collaborator, violinist and violist, she performs at venues large and small, from casual spaces to concert halls. She has been a featured artist at the Berlin Philharmonie, Suntory Hall, Casa da Musica Porto, Teatro Colón, Cleveland Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Strathmore, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music, 92nd St Y, National Sawdust, and the Ojai, Bard, Marlboro, Portland, Music Mountain, West Cork, Grafenegg, Wien Modern, Frequency, and LeGuessWho festivals. Miranda made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Piston’s Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra. She recently premiered Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2 at the Vienna Musikverein and with orchestras in Japan, Portugal and Germany, and the Violin Concerto by Marcela Rodriguez with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México. Miranda is a member of interdisciplinary collective AMOC and director of non-profit Nunc. Her albums include Világ featuring the Bartok Solo Sonata; the Ligeti, Korngold and Ponce concertos; music by 20th century American composers; Bartók/Schnittke/Lutoslawski sonatas; Melting the Darkness, an album of microtonal/electronic music; and Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, named a Recording of the Year by the New York Times. She studied at Juilliard and is on faculty at Mannes School of Music.
Daniel Panner [viola] enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. As violist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, he has concertized extensively throughout the United States and Israel. He has performed at music festivals in Marlboro, Tanglewood, Aspen, and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, and has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, and Juilliard String Quartets. As a member of the Whitman String Quartet, Panner received the 1998 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award.
He currently teaches at The Juilliard School, the Mannes School of Music, SUNY Stonybrook, and the Queens College Conservatory of Music. He has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Musicians from Marlboro, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has served as the principal violist of such orchestras as the New York City Opera and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. An active performer of new music, he is a member of Sequitur and the Locrian Ensemble and has performed as a guest artist with Speculum Musicae, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and Transit Circle.
Peter Seidenberg [cello and Artistic Director] “Totally enchanting, inspired performances, brimming with natural, spontaneous musicianship”, raves Gramophone Magazine about cellist Peter Seidenberg. Mr. Seidenberg has played in major halls throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. He made his solo debut with the Chicago Symphony and has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including Century Orchestra of Osaka, New American Chamber Orchestra, De Paul Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Soloists, and the Eastman-Rochester Philharmonic. For four years he served as principal cellist with the Century Orchestra of Osaka. He was a founding member of the critically acclaimed Elements Quartet which created groundbreaking commissioning projects involving over 30 composers. He has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Tokyo, Juilliard and Emerson Quartets and has participated in the Marlboro, Aspen, Caramoor, Casals and Norfolk festivals. His numerous recordings can be found on the Pantheon, RCA, EMF, CRI, Albany, and Lyrichord labels. He has been featured on PBS, NBC, NHK, New Zealand Public TV, Air Espania and European Broadcast Union (EBU) broadcasts. Currently, Peter Seidenberg is the cellist for the Oracle Trio, the Queen’s Chamber Band, and the New York Chamber Soloists. Peter also concertizes frequently in collaboration with pianist Hui-Mei Lin. The duo have performed together throughout the US to much acclaim.
Philip Setzer [violin] is a founding member of the renowned Emerson String Quartet. He has appeared with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony, Memphis Symphony, New Mexico and Puerto Rico Symphonies, Omaha and Anchorage Symphonies and on several occasions with the Cleveland Orchestra. He has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival. Currently serving as the Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook, Mr. Setzer was recently appointed as the Artistic Director of the Manchester Music Festival in Vermont. A visiting Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Mr. Setzer has also been bestowed the title of Artistic Director of Strings Chamber Music. As a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center, Mr. Setzer wrote an article about those workshops that appeared in The New York Times on Isaac Stern’s 80th birthday celebration in 2000.
A versatile musician with innovative vision and dedication to keep the art form of the string quartet alive and relevant, Mr. Setzer was the co-creator of the Emerson’s two highly praised collaborative theater productions: The Noise of Time, which premiered at Lincoln Center in 2001 and the more recent, Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy. Black Monk has been performed at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Princeton University, Wolf Trap, Ravinia Festival, Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, Korea and Stony Brook University. Mr. Setzer has also been, and will continue, touring and recording the piano trio repertoire with David Finckel and Wu Han.
About RiverArts Chamber Series:
Founded in 2016, the RiverArts Chamber Music Series under the Artistic Direction of Peter Seidenberg and produced by Doug Coe, is devoted to bringing the finest Chamber Music, both classical and contemporary, to the Rivertowns. Seasons usually consist of three concerts, one being a benefit hosted by The Newington-Cropsey Foundation.
