Frederic Chiu
July 6 – 14
Pianist Frederic Chiu performs in major venues on five continents, such as Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, The Chatelet in Paris, or the Mozarteum in Buenos Aires, as well as touring extensively in smaller and unusual venues. He collaborates with Classical music friends Joshua Bell, Pierre Amoyal, Gary Hoffman and the St Lawrence String Quartet, as well as non-Classical friends like jazz pianist Bob James, writer/storyteller David Gonzalez, Shakespearean actor Brian Bedford, and the clown Buffo, trying to bring the vivid live concert experience to as many people as possible. He has worked with conductors such as John Nelson, Stefan Sanderling, Rodolfo Fischer, Susan Haig, Bernhard Klee, Xian Zhang and Alexander Titov.
Among his recital programs, Frederic Chiu presents “Classical Smackdown”, a multi-year series where composers face off in head-to-head comparisons, with listeners voting for their favorite composer. After his first successful Smackdown between Debussy and Prokofiev, he presented Bach vs. Philip Glass in 2014, with results tracked at ClassicalSmackdown.com.
Frederic Chiu has released over 27 recordings, including the most extensive complete piano works of Prokofiev, and works of Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rossini and Grieg, as well as the Beethoven/Liszt Symphony V and the solo piano version of Carnival of the Animals. His latest projects include “Hymns and Dervishes,” music of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann, and Distant Voices: Piano music of Claude Debussy & Gao Ping. He is a regular on St. Paul Sunday and Performance Today, and a favorite of public radios across the country.
Chiu’s teaching program Deeper Piano Studies – a philosophic and holistic approach to piano playing – has been presented at the Juilliard School, Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the New England Conservatory, the Banff Centre and most of the National Conservatories in China.
He is also co-founder and director of Beechwood Arts and Innovation in Connecticut, focused on the crossroads between art, innovation and transformation. His efforts to promote music coincide with his desire to foster peace and understanding, recently recognized by a Senatorial Commendation from the United States Congress.
Patricia Tao
July 11 – 16
Pianist Patricia Tao, founding member of the Guild Trio for ten years, leads an active career as performer, teacher, and concert organizer. As pianist of the prizewinning Guild Trio, she performed throughout the United States and Europe and was awarded the position of Trio-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Centre. As a soloist, Dr. Tao toured Europe and the United States as an Artistic Ambassador under the auspices of the USIA and for Columbia Artist’s Community Concerts series.
Dr. Tao’s live performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” WNYC’s “Around New York,” WQXR’s “The Listening Room, the public television series “Premiere Performances” out of St. Louis, Chicago’s WFMT and on CBC. She has commissioned and premiered numerous works, including William Bolcom’s “Spring Trio,” and Sheila Silver’s “To the Spirit Unconquered,” which she recorded on the CRI label. She has also recorded a solo CD on the Arktos label featuring works of Schubert, Liszt and Corigliano, and Chopin and Strauss cello and piano sonatas on the Centaur label.
An avid chamber musician, Patricia Tao performs frequently with fellow Trio Voce members, violinist Jasmine Lin and cellist Marina Hoover. They have recorded two CDs, one featuring the the music of Shostakovich and Weinberg, and their latest containing trios by Suk, Arensky, and Zemlinsky, which Fanfare describes as “committed music-making on a level rarely heard today.”
As concert organizer, Dr. Tao has served as Artistic Director for the Edmonton Chamber Music Society’s Summer Solstice Music Festival for eleven years and organizes the Hear’s to Your Health Concerts at the Walter Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Tao received her undergraduate education at Harvard University, a master’s degree with distinction from Indiana University and her doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where her principal teachers were Leonard Shure, Gyorgy Sebok and Gilbert Kalish. She has given master classes at numerous schools in North America, Europe and China and has held performance residencies in East Hampton, NY, Stony Brook University, and the University of Virginia. She is Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, where she teaches piano and chamber music.
Steven Lubin
July 14 – 21
In the past few seasons, pianist Steven Lubin has performed as concerto soloist or recitalist in England, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Ukraine, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, and all across North America. He has appeared as soloist in many of the world’s great concert halls (Avery Fisher, Alice Tully, Barbican Center, Kennedy Center, Davies, Herbst, Concertgebouw, Musikverein, Wigmore, Queen Elizabeth, St. John’s Smith Square, Myerson, Ambassador, Ordway, Severance, El Auditorio de Zaragoza, etc.), and in major international festivals (Lufthansa, South Bank, Regensburg, Colmar, Utrecht, La Roque d’Anthéron, Aranjuez, Ravinia, Espoo, Mostly Mozart, Mainly Mozart, etc.). He has performed with the National Symphony, the Odessa Philharmonic, the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, the St. Paul and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras, the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music of London, the Wiener Akademie, Il Fondamento, and many others. He has recorded twenty CDs, mostly for major labels, and has received critical approbation worldwide for his artistry, musical originality and technical excellence.
As an early musician, in his sub-specialty as fortepianist, Mr. Lubin has been a dominating figure for two decades. He pioneered a series of solo recitals including fortepiano in major New York venues (including his 1977 debut in Carnegie Recital Hall), and, having organized a classic-period orchestra in the early 80s, offered pathbreaking performances of Mozart concertos in period style, as soloist/conductor, in several of New York’s principal halls (Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum).
His recordings of several Mozart concertos for Arabesque served as an introduction for many listeners world-wide to period-style performance of this repertoire. These recordings garnered widespread critical praise, including a recording-of-the-year citation from Stereo Review magazine, and earned Mr. Lubin a European reputation. He was chosen by Decca to record the five piano concertos of Beethoven with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, a recording cited as definitive by many critics internationally, and named as one of the most distinguished recordings of the year by Stereo Review, The New York Times, Gramophone, Fanfare, and The Penguin Guide. Mr. Lubin has also released a series of highly acclaimed recordings for Harmonia Mundi USA.
Mr. Lubin received his bachelors degree in philosophy at Harvard College, and his masters in piano at the Juilliard School. He earned a Ph.D. in musicology at New York University, with an analytic dissertation on Beethoven. He served as Head of the Graduate Theory Department as a professor at Cornell University, and has also taught at Vassar College and the Juilliard School. He has published substantially in the musical area, and has a busy lecture career. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Music at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, Purchase, NY. In 2001, he was the recipient of a Kempner Distinguished Professor Award at Purchase College.
In 2013, Mr. Lubin was awarded an honorary membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, for lifelong services to the liberal arts and sciences.
Jason Cutmore
July 6 – 21
Jason Cutmore has performed piano recitals and collaborative concerts throughout North America, Europe and India, winning praise for his “brilliant technical finesse” and “deep emotional penetration” (Offenbach-Post, Germany), and for the “charismatic generosity of communication in his music.” (The Telegraph, Kolkata, India).
Mr. Cutmore made his Chicago recital debut in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts with an all-Liszt programme that was broadcast live on WFMT radio, and shown on Chicago Cable TV 25. Since then he has returned twice to the Hess series, and has performed in Canada’s Elora, Music Niagara, and Colours of Music festivals, Los Angeles’ Sundays Live series, Calgary’s Celebrity Series, and at venues in New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Edmonton and elsewhere across North America.
Concertizing has frequently taken him abroad to Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, and India, as well. These performances have included appearances at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai), the Alliance Francaise (Bangalore), and the India International Centre (New Delhi), as well as at the Franz Liszt Museum in Budapest, and the International Music Festival in Burgos, Spain.
Mr. Cutmore’s debut commercial CD, an album of piano music by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla on Centaur Records, was released to critical acclaim. Gramophone magazine praised his “warm, generous sonority and natural feel for the idiom” and raved that “this pianist’s gorgeously variegated legato makes a sexy and inviting recital.” Mr. Cutmore’s interpretations of the Spanish piano repertory have gained notice in concert as well. The Times Argus in Vermont has written that “Cutmore performed this most evocative music with flair. His colorful playing proved vibrant and exciting.”
Mr. Cutmore’s passion for chamber music has led to many collaborations, both traditional and unusual, including performances with Lithuanian pianist Guoda Gedvilaite, tenor Nils Neubert, and with concert organist Daniel Sullivan. One of Mr. Cutmore’s recent projects was a collaboration with narrator (and former CBC radio personality) Rick Phillips, in works for solo piano and narrator by composers such as Debussy, Prokofiev, and others, in live concert performances for children.
Mr. Cutmore’s major piano teachers have included Stephanie Brown, Robert Shannon, and Michael Massey. Additionally, he has studied music theory with Allen Cadwallader and Edward Klorman, and Aesthetics with the esteemed philosopher Noël Carroll. Originally from Edmonton, he currently resides in Philadelphia, where he is completing a PhD in Philosophy at Temple University while also serving as the Director of Alberta Pianofest.
