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St. Lawrence String Quartet will give the final performance of the 20th anniversary season of Lafayette’s Williams Center for the Arts in a concert with clarinetist Todd Palmer and soprano Courtenay Budd 8 p.m. today.
Tickets cost $20 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 610-330-5009.
The program features Palmer’s collaboration in the performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Budd’s collaboration in Osvaldo Golijov’s evocative and tender meditation, “Tenebrae.” St. Lawrence also will perform String Quartet in F major by Ravel.
Prior to the concert, William E. Melin, professor of music at Lafayette, will give a free introductory lecture about the program 7 p.m. in Williams Center room 108.
The event is a tribute concert to Young Concert Artists, an important professional development program directed by Susan Wadsworth in New York. St. Lawrence performed at the Williams Center in 1994 as a Young Concert Artist ensemble and Budd is a current YCA artist. St. Lawrence has collaborated frequently with Palmer, a fellow YCA alumnus.
Thirty-four YCA alumni have performed at the Williams Center, including Robert Routsch and William Sharp during their stints as Alan and Wendy Pesky artists-in-residence in 1987-88 and 1989-90, respectively. Others include pianists Richard Goode, Anne-Marie McDermott, Olli Mustonen, and Ursula Oppens, the latter of whom opened the 20th anniversary season with Pacifica Quartet; string players Fred Sherry, Ida and Ani Kavafian, and the Chillingirian String Quartet; and Easton native flutist Gary Schocker.
Ensemble-in-Residence at Stanford University, Lawrence String Quartet is comprised of Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman, violins; Lesley Robertson, viola; and Christopher Costanza, cello. Having walked on stage together more than 1,500 times in the last 12 years, the group has established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation. It continues to build on its reputation for imaginative, spontaneous music-making that the Washington Post calls “emotionally high charged but never out of control.”
Since their genesis in Toronto in 1989, the St. Lawrence players have performed across Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The group enjoyed mentoring with the Emerson, Tokyo, and Juilliard String Quartets and spent several summers at the Aspen, Norfolk, and Tanglewood Festivals. Since winning the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists Auditions in the early 1990s, the quartet has become a regular at some of North America’s most esteemed music festivals, including Spoleto USA, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Mostly Mozart in New York, and Ottawa Chamber Music Festival.
During the concert season, in addition to making appearances at such venues as New York’s Lincoln Center and Washington’s Kennedy Center, the St. Lawrence Quartet enjoys playing in less conventional locations and has undertaken regional tours of the Canadian Prairies and Maritime provinces and the American Midwest. Recent tours of Europe have cast the group onto the famed stages of London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’ Theatre de Ville, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.
The foursome regularly delivers traditional quartet repertoire, but is also passionately committed to performing and expanding the works of living composers. Among those with whom the St. Lawrence Quartet has active working relationships are R. Murray Schafer, Osvaldo Golijov, Christos Hatzis, Jonathan Berger, and Melissa Hui.
The long-awaited initial recording of St. Lawrence Quartet, Schumann’s First and Third Quartets, was released in May 1999 to great critical acclaim. The CD, first in a series with EMI Classics, received the coveted German critics award, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, as well as Canada’s annual Juno Award, granted by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for Best Classical Album: Solo or Chamber Ensemble. BBC Music Magazine gave the recording its highest rating, calling it the benchmark recording of the works. St. Lawrence’s album Yiddishbbuk,featuring the chamber music of Golijov, earned two 2003 Grammy nominations.
In the 2002–2003 season, the quartet undertook a 15-city tour of Europe and an 18-city tour of Australia and New Zealand, as well as its debut appearances for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. The season also included a recital at the Metropolitan Museum and a festival of the music of John Adams presented by Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series.
St. Lawrence joined the renowned Pilobolus dance company in a collaborative evening of music and dance featuring the January 2003 premiere of a work by Canadian composer Christos Hatzis with choreography by Michael Tracy, performed as part of Stanford University’s Lively Arts Series.
Palmer studied at Mannes College of Music, where he received the Outstanding Performance and Academic Excellence Awards. He made his New York recital debut at Weill Hall and his concerto debut with the Houston Symphony as the first wind player ever to receive the Grand Prize in the Ima Hogg Young Artist Competition.
Since winning the 1990 Young Concert Artist International Auditions, Palmer has appeared as recitalist, concerto soloist, and clinician at major performing arts centers and universities in 47 states. His appearances abroad have included concerto, recital, and chamber music performances in Germany, France, Italy, England, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Japan, where his performance with pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn was broadcast nationwide.
Palmer has appeared at many music festivals, including nine years at Spoleto USA, Tanglewood, La Jolla SummerFest, Bravo!, and the Caramoor, Portland, and Vancouver Chamber Music Festivals. In addition, he participated for five summers at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, as well as the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he received the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. He has also toured throughout the years with Musicians from Marlboro and annually with Spoleto USA Chamber Music, and can be heard on National Public Radio’s Performance Today annually. He has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has collaborated with the Brentano, Borromeo, Colorado, St. Lawrence, and Orion Quartets.
He has also been clarinetist of choice in Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Roberta Peters, and Dawn Upshaw. Palmer has had a close association with composer Osvaldo Golijov since 1997 and was named editor-in-chief of his Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for publication. Ricky Ian Gordon composed the monodrama Orpheus and Euridice for Palmer, which premiered in October 2001 at Cooper Union in New York City.
Palmer has also served as principal clarinetist of the Minnesota Orchestra and the Grand Teton Festival in Wyoming. His first CD, Hermit Songs, was released in 1995 by Koch International Classics and was praised by Fanfare and American Record Guide for “remarkable music-making” and as “extraordinary in its range and emotional depth.” Palmer’s CD of Mozart and Tchaikovsky was also featured on the cover of the February 2001 issue of BBC Music Magazine. In November 2001, he was awarded a $20,000 grant by The National Foundation for Jewish Culture for his recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber music with the St. Lawrence Quartet for EMI Classics.
Budd won First Prize in the 2001 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. The Young Concert Artists Series presented her recital debuts in New York at the 92nd Street Y, sponsored by the Peter Jay Sharp Concert Prize; in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center, sponsored by the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Prize; and in Boston at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
She performed the role of Amy in Little Women with Opera Omaha and Central City Opera; the Lady in Waiting in the first American staging of Britten’s Gloriana with Central City Opera; Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Yum Yum in The Mikado with the Colorado Symphony, conducted by Marin Alsop; the title roles in The Ballad of Baby Doe with Opera Theater of Pittsburgh and Central City Opera, The Daughter of the Regiment with Opera Omaha, and Roméo et Juliette with Opera Northeast; and Ilia in Idomeneo with the National Chorale at Avery Fisher Hall, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Opera Delaware and Washington D.C.’s Summer Opera Theater. She has also appeared with the Atlanta and Tulsa Operas, the Opera Festival of New Jersey, and the Opera Orchestra of New York.
During the 2003–2004 season, Budd appears with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Reno Philharmonic. She has performed Mozart’s Requiem with the Orlando Philharmonic under the baton of Hal France, the Brahms Requiem with the Cheyenne Symphony, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra, Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915 with the Kenosha Symphony, Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Omaha Symphony, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the New Jersey Symphony, and Handel’s Messiah with the Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra in Carnegie Hall.
Budd gives recitals this season for the Sewanee (Tennessee) Music Festival, Kent (Ohio) Classic Arts, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, the Lee County (South Carolina) Arts Council, and the University of Wisconsin. She is a favorite of audiences and critics at the Spoleto Festival USA, where she is a regular in the Dock Street Chamber Music Series. Her performances with Charles Wadsworth include the Carnegie Hall Benefit for Camphill, the Musical Masterworks Series in Old Lyme, Conn., and Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen at Merkin Concert Hall. She performed Wolf’s Goethelieder at New York’s Joyce Theater for Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech, and recently appeared as guest artist with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall.
Budd is the recipient of a grant from the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation. She was a National Finalist in the 1998 Metropolitan Opera Auditions and won the 1996 Liederkranz Foundation Award and the 1996 Center for Contemporary Opera International Competition in New York, as well as the Audience Favorite Award. She was a 1997 MacAllister Finalist and winner of the 1996 Central City Opera McGlone Award for Outstanding Apprentice. Budd received her bachelor’s degree from the University of the South, and a master’s degree from Westminster Choir College. She also studied at the Music Academy of the West.
The nationally recognized Performance Series 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.
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.