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 Anita Chen
Sunday February 19, 2012 2:30pm
…flawlessly poised, elegant and brilliant…”
The New York Times
Called by the press as one of the rarest occurrences in orchestral music, multi-talented rising star Anita Chen received accolades by critics and audiences for being equally talented as a soloist on two instruments. She is quickly becoming an internationally recognized double-treat on both the violin and piano. Launching her career as a professional soloist at age eleven, Anita performed in eight concerts on both violin and piano with the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble at the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2002.
In 2006, Anita made her recording debut on the Bel Air Music BAM label with Russia’s Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitry Yablonsky, featuring E.Grieg’s Piano Concerto, and J. Conus’s Violin Concerto and Formosa Capriccio by Albert Markov. Critic Julian Haylock of ‘The Strad’ wrote about her violin performance: “...Her tone is both alluring and sensuous...” and about the piano “...Her inspirational account of the Grieg Concerto exudes confidence in all departments...” Robert Matthew-Walker of the Record-Review (March 2007) said about her Grieg performance “it is a most enjoyable, clean and fresh performance” and “her playing of Conus’s Concerto is also excellent.”
In addition to her performances in the United States, Miss Chen participated in music festivals in France and Spain and in 2007 she toured in Italy and appeared as solo recitalist in Mexico as part of the Parnassos concert series. She opened the 2008/2009 season as orchestral soloist with the Bridgeport Symphony under Gustav Meier performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 followed by Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler, the Austrian-born American violinist and composer.
In February 2009, Anita returned to Carnegie Hall and made her recital debut at Zankel Hall in a program featuring Cimarosa, Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Prokofiev and Markov, performing the first half of the concert on piano and the second half on violin. The sell-out audience responded with a shouting and stamping ovation (and a pile of floral tributes). They were rewarded with a piano and violin encore of which New York’s music critic Edith Eisler wrote “The concert aroused admiration, but also two disturbing questions. Is being a prodigy on one instrument no longer enough to attract attention? And will future prodigies have to equal this double whammy?”
Upcoming engagements will take Miss Chen to Europe again where she will be the featured recitalist in Germany, Italy and in England. This October 2010 she appeared with the Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Gustav Meier. The Connecticut Post called her performance ”dazzling” and noted “Chen went beyond mere extraordinary technique. She had a depth of feeling for the violin and for the work itself that stretched well beyond her years.”
Born in America in July 1991 to Taiwanese parents who are both musicians, prodigiously gifted Anita Chen began to study the piano at age four and within a year, she added the violin. At age seven, she was accepted into the pre-college division at Juilliard School. Anita has won many piano and violin competitions and recently, competing on the violin, was the winner of the GBS’ Carlson-Horn Competition. She resides in New York City and is studying piano with Oxana Yablonskaya in Italy and the US and violin with Albert Markov.
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Indigo Ensemble
Sunday March 18, 2012
2:30pm
The Indigo Ensemble from Berlin, Germany, is a chamber music quartet with a non-traditional instrumentation consisting of violin, guitar, bass & piano. The girth of their repertoire encompasses four continents and three centuries. The aural possibilities of the group are enhanced by the fact that all the musicians play multiple instruments. Their first USA tour took place in October 2010.
Guitarist Seth Josel has become one of the leading instrumental pioneers of his generation. He has concertized throughout Europe as well as the US, Canada, Israel and Japan, and he has been a guest performer with leading orchestras and ensembles, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest German Radio Orchestra, the South German Radio Choir, the DSO Berlin and the Schönberg/ASKO Ensemble of Amsterdam. In recent seasons he has been guesting regularly with KNM Berlin, Ensemble SurPlus of Freiburg as well as with the Basel Sinfonietta. He is a member of the Amsterdam-based electric guitar quartet, Catch.
Johannes Neupert, from the former East Germany, is a virtuoso violinist with the added capacity of being at home within a broad spectrum of musical styles. From Schubert to Swing to Sting, Joe is an idiomatic Wunderkind (even though he’s over 30!)
Double bassist, Peter Nelson, who is originally from South Carolina, has lived in Germany for the last 24 years. As of last year he has lived longer in Germany than in the United States. [How old is Mr. Nelson now?] In addition to being principal bassist of the Thuringian Philharmonic, Peter is an active chamber musician and teacher. He also loves to jam on electric bass in multiple styles in the clubs of Leipzig. For Live on Stage, he has performed and moderated hundreds of concerts throughout the US with his group, the Thüringer Salonquintett.
Pianist extraordinaire, Rafael de Torres, is originally from Granada, Spain. He now lives and works as a concert pianist in the Germany cultural city of Weimar, home to Goethe, Schiller, Bach & Liszt. Chamber music is his passion, which he applies to any keyed instrument. He is far and away the youngest member of the Indigo Ensemble, but he does have permission to come on tour.
Though recently founded, the members of the Indigo Ensemble have been collaborating with one another throughout Germany for many years. Peter and Johannes have been playing together regularly for the past 19 years. Peter has known and played with Seth before their German residencies. In 2008 Rafael was introduced to the group. What started as sporadic musical encounters evolved into an eager exploration of world chamber music with four committed friends who share one huge common denominator: to make intimate, fun, exciting music without borders, always searching and reaching to connect with each other and the audience.
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