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Pacifica Quartet and pianist Ursula Oppens will open Lafayette’s Chamber Music Series 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6 at the Williams Center for the Arts.
The evening will consist of Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet, opus 64, no. 5; Mendelssohn’s F-minor Quartet, opus 80; and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. It is the inaugural Dr. Aaron M. Litwak Concert, named after the benefactor of a new performance fund for chamber music at the Williams Center.
Individual tickets cost $4 for students and faculty, and $18 for the public. A subscription to Chamber Music, which costs $99, also includes concerts by the period instrument Four Nations Ensemble, with countertenor David Walker ’88, fresh from his performances of Handel operas throughout the world, 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12; Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Saturday, Nov. 8; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, now in its 18th season at Lafayette, Friday, Feb. 6; pianist Orli Shaham, featured in a week-long “Performance Today” profile on National Public Radio last year, Wednesday, March 10; and St. Lawrence String Quartet and Friends, Thursday, April 29.
All performances other than the Four Nations concert start at 8 p.m. The subscription represents a $17 savings compared to the total cost of the individual concerts.
To order or learn more about subscription packages or individual tickets, call the Williams Center at 610-330-5010. Starting Wednesday, Aug. 27, call the box office at 610-330-5009 from noon-2 p.m., 4-5 p.m., and one hour before performances.
Lifelong Easton resident Aaron Litwak ’42 completed his medical degree three years later from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry. He maintained a successful dental practice in Easton for more than four decades before retiring in 1988. He has generously endowed an annual concert program at the Williams Center for the Arts though a life income agreement, and this Sept. 6 concert inaugurates the endowment program that bears his name.
Pacifica has earned the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the Nathan Weeden Award of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Grand Prize of the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, teaching residencies at Northwestern University and University of Chicago, and recent appointment to the roster of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Its members are Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello.
“The Pacifica Quartet made an exciting showing…Its sound is pure, lyrical and educated,” stated the New York Times in a concert review. “The Pacifica lives up to its prizes,” reported the Los Angeles Times.
Time magazine called Oppens “the madonna of contemporary musican accomplished performer of the standard repertoire.”
Formed in 1994, Pacifica has developed into what the Chicago Sun Times calls “one of the most vibrant chamber ensembles around.” Enjoying an active international touring schedule, the group has played as far afield as Australia, Greece, and Panama, and coast-to-coast from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City. The quartet is regularly featured on several of the nation’s most reputed radio broadcasts, including National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” and Minnesota Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday.”
Festival appearances include Aspen, Bellingham, Cape and Islands, Vermont Mozart Festival, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Collaborations with distinguished artists include concerts with Paul Katz and a recent recording of the Dvorak Viola Quintet for Cedille Records with violist Michael Tree. In 1999, the quartet had the honor of being selected “Quartet in Residence” by National Public Radio in Washington D.C., where it presented a series of live concerts broadcast over two weeks, and was recently named the next Quartet in Residence for Lincoln Chamber Music Society II.
Cited by the Chicago Reader as “having a knack for the new,” and “poised to take over from the likes of the Kronos and Juilliard Quartets,” the Pacifica is a leading advocate of contemporary music. In the 2001-2002 season alone, eight new string quartets were written for the Pacifica. As resident string quartet for the Contemporary Chamber Players, one of the country’s leading contemporary music organizations, the quartet presents a series of concerts each year devoted exclusively to new music. Recent performances have included premieres of works by Easley Blackwood, Maurice Gardner, and Robert Lombardo, and collaboration with Steve Mackey in a performance of his Troubador Songs. The Pacifica has also recorded the complete string quartets of Easley Blackwood, released on the Cedille label in 2000.
The Pacifica Quartet is the first resident ensemble in the history of the University of Chicago. The group was instrumental in creating the Music Integration Project, which provides musical performances and teacher training to inner-city elementary schools. In addition, the quartet regularly teaches at summer festivals, including Interlochen Arts Camp, Madeline Island Music Festival, the Britt Festival in Oregon, and the Weathersfield Music Festival. The quartet is also frequently invited for visiting residencies at universities and schools nationwide.
Oppens appears as guest soloist and in chamber music in major musical centers and festivals throughout the United States and Europe. Her recent highlights include residencies and performances at Tanglewood, Aspen, Santa Fe, and other international music festivals; the New York premiere at Cooper Union of Luciano Berio’s Piano Sonata, written for her; the Henry Cowell Piano Concerto in San Francisco and Dublin; Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 ( “Emperor”) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl; and Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with Jerome Lowenthal at the Music Academy of the West.
She performed Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and at the Ruhr Festival with Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra on the occasion of the late composer’s 85th birthday celebration. Other orchestral engagements include the Copland Piano Concerto in Cuba with the Havana Orchestra directed by Bernard Rubinstein, the Rachmaninoff Paganini Variations with the New Hampshire and Memphis symphonies, and a concerto by contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin with the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester in Berlin.
Oppens often collaborates with chamber groups, including the Juilliard, Vermeer, and Mendelssohn String Quartets, and joined the Arditti Quartet for the Library of Congress premiere and tours in the United States and Europe of Elliott Carter’s Piano Quintet. The work was commissioned by the Library of Congress and a consortium of presenters to honor Mr. Carter’s 90th birthday.
She is a co-founder of Speculum Musicae, a performing group that has pioneered new music since 1971. She holds the position of the John Evans Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
“What makes Oppens a compelling musician… is her probing intellect and curiosity; her ability to clarify what she perceives,” writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The nationally recognized Performance Series at Lafayette, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
Named Lafayette’s Administrator of the Year for 2002-03, Williams Center for the Arts Director Ellis Finger received the 2002 William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters at its 45th annual conference. The national award recognizes sustained achievement in programming, and honors an individual or organization for quality, innovation, and vision of program design, audience building, and community involvement efforts. Finger’s selection was by unanimous vote of the association’s awards committee. He also hosted this year’s Chamber Music America conference.
The 2003-04 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by the F.M. Kirby Foundation; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, and New England Foundation for the Arts.