Professor Arthur Haas Wins Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award
Early Music America, the national service organization for the field of early music, announces the winners of its 2012 awards recognizing outstanding accomplishments in early music. These awards will be presented at the EMA Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony at the Berkeley Festival on June 9, 2012 at 2:30 p.m. in the Drawing Room of the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA.
Arthur Haas will receive the Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a university or college early music ensemble.
Arthur Haas, harpsichordist, is one of the most sought-after performers and teachers of Baroque music in the U.S. today. Haas is professor of harpsichord and early music at Stony Brook University, where he directs the award winning Stony Brook Baroque Players, and is also on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music and Juilliard’s recently created historical performance program.
When he began teaching at Stony Brook University in the mid 1980s, the music department was known primarily for its performance and scholarship of contemporary music. There was a small Collegium Musicum, but no Baroque ensemble class. Haas started the Baroque Ensemble class in his first years at Stony Brook and has seen it grow from just a handful of students to a vibrant group of dedicated players numbering more than 30 each semester. He started a small early music series of concerts on the campus called Baroque Sundays at Three–featuring students in the class and then some outside artists as well–usually alums or young professional Baroque musicians from the NY area. To this day, that series is one of the only ways to hear fine period instrument performances on Long Island. Through some serious fundraising, he was able to procure a number of period instruments that have literally changed the lives of many students over the years. He is able to put period string, wind, and percussion instruments and bows in the hands of many of the students who enroll in the class, and some of these young musicians have gone on to become professional Baroque musicians. In 2009, the Stony Brook Baroque Players received the first ever Collegium Musicum travel grant sponsored by Early Music America, who featured the group in a fringe concert at the Boston Early Music Festival. The ensemble performed again at the 2011 BEMF—both times to very large and appreciative audiences.
Haas holds a master’s degree in historical musicology from UCLA, where he studied harpsichord with Bess Karp. He also studied with Albert Fuller at The Juilliard School and with Alan Curtis in Berkeley and in Amsterdam. He was awarded the top prize in the Paris International Harpsichord Competition in 1975, and then lived for a number of years in France, performing in many of the major European early music festivals and teaching at the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Angoulême. While in Paris, he joined the famed Five Centuries Ensemble, known for its performances and recordings of both early and contemporary music. In 1985, his formal American debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was highly praised by The New York Times.
He is a member of the Aulos Ensemble, one of America’s premier early music ensembles whose recordings of Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, and Rameau have received critical acclaim in the press. He is also a member of Empire Viols and Aula Harmoniæ. Mr. Haas participated in the first recording of the Bach Goldberg Variation Canons with Alan Curtis, and has also recorded suites for two harpsichords by Gaspard LeRoux with William Christie. His solo CD’s of Pièces de clavecin by Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, Suites de clavecin of Forqueray, music by Henry Purcell and his contemporaries, and suites of Jacquet de la Guerre and François Couperin have been widely praised. Known for his expertise as a continuo player, Mr. Haas has toured with such distinguished early music specialists as Marion Verbruggen, Jaap ter Linden, Julianne Baird, Laurence Dreyfus, Bruce Haynes, and Wieland Kuijken. In 2001, he recorded Bach’s Cantata #199 and songs of Henry Purcell with the soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Annual summer workshop and festival appearances take him to the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Amherst Early Music Festival, where he has served as artistic director of the Baroque Academy since 2002.
Stony Brook Student Makes Carnegie Debut
Alexandria Le
Alexandria Le, a DMA student in Stony Brook’s Music Department, made her Carnegie Hall debut on Wednesday, April 11, in Weill Recital Hall. The concert was sponsored through Pro Musicis; Le was a winner of its 2011 International Award, which comes with a New York City debut and concert management.
Le shared the concert with pianist Andrew Staupe, a current DMA student at Rice University and co-winner of the Pro Musicis award.
Le performed Beethoven’s Fantasy in G minor, Op. 77, Competing Demands by Ryan Carter (a world premiere), and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. She encored her performance with the “Danza de la moza donosa” from Ginastera’s Danzas Argentinas. Then the two pianists, Le and Staupe, performed a four hands version of Schubert’s Hungarian Melody D. 817.
New York Concert Review Inc. reviewed the concert with high praise: ”With three world premiere pieces and some of the great works in the piano repertoire, it had the makings of a fascinating evening. Happily, this was the case, as both performers brought brilliance, poetry, and a deep understanding of their respective selections.”
Of Le, the reviewer wrote that she is “a passionate and involved player; she invests herself entirely in her performance.”
For the full review, click here.
2012 Concerto Competition Results
The Stony Brook Music Department is pleased to announce the following winners of the 2012 Concerto Competition. Each will perform with the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra during the 2012-2013 school year.
So Young Bae – Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto
Fadi Deeb – Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto
Yiding Niu – Lierbermann’s Second Piano Concerto
Chieh-Fan Yiu – Rozsa’s Viola Concerto
Yarn/Wire Reviewed in NYTimes
Yarn/Wire, a contemporary music group dedicated to the music for two pianists and two percussionists and composed of all Stony Brook University graduates, received praise for their inaugurated residency and recent concert at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn.
The group consists of pianists Laura Barger and Ning Yu, and percussionists Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg. The ensemble was formed at Stony Brook in 2005.
New York Times critic Steve Smith admired the eclectic percussion instruments and range of collaborative composers on the concert. You can read the full review here.
Stony Brook Pianists Honored at David Lang Piano Competition
Katherine Dowling, piano, Stony Brook DMA candidate.
Two Stony Brook University pianists received high honors at the inaugural David Lang Piano Competition.
Held in November via YouTube, contemporary music-minded pianists from around the world uploaded performances of David Lang’s “wed,” a movement from Lang’s 30-minute composition memory pieces that will be featured on his forthcoming CD. The winning performance, selected from uploaded YouTube videos, would receive an all-expense paid trip to NYC to perform the work at the CD release concert in May. Of the 39 entries, Stony Brook DMA candidates Katherine Dowling (Saskatchewan, Canada) and Denise Fillion (Queens, NY) were chosen as runner-ups for their original interpretations of the work.
Pianists Jeremy Denk, Andrew Zolinsky, Lisa Moore, and Vicky Chow served as judges. Lang explained the work on his YouTube site: “It’s very moody, not too long. … Very introspective, very kind of beautiful, slow, and moody.” He picked the work for its open-ended nature, a piece subject to differing approaches.
The CD release concert will take place in on May 6 at (le) Poisson Rouge.
Ackerman Chamber Competition Winners Announced
Chamber groups were invited to present 20 minutes of music (at least two pieces in contrasting style) to a jury consisting of the Emerson Quartet, Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl. The winning group(s) will be presented in a concert during the final night of the May Chamber Music Festival, May 5th at 8:00pm, with a reception to follow.
The Winners, in alphabetical order:
The Brahms/Beethoven Clarinet Trio
Chester Howard, clarinet
Agnes Kallay, ‘cello
Alex Le, piano
The Zephyr Winds
Laurie Baefsky, flute
Kendra Hawley, oboe
Chester Howard, clarinet
Rachel Koeth, bassoon
Amr Selim, horn
Seba Ali, piano
Julia den Boer (DMA, Piano) a Winner at the Orleans International Piano Competition
Julia den Boer won the Prix Mention spéciale Maurice Ohana at the Orleans International Piano Competition on March 5, 2012.
