Violins of Hope Concert

Exquisite music for violin, viola, and violoncello by composers who were persecuted or perished in the Nazi era.

Played by The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra members:
Regi Papa, violin
Marylene Gingras-Roy, viola;
Mikhail Istomin, cello

18. January 2024 by avawalker
Categories: Fall 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: Piano Solo and Duets: featuring works by Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms and Robert Schultz.

Yeeha Chiu, piano
Pauline Rovkah, piano
A Steinway Artist, Yeeha Chiu, a Hong Kong-born pianist, studied with Ilona Kabos, Bela Siki, Beveridge Webster, Nadia Reisenberg, and Sheila Paige. A graduate of the Royal College of Music in London and the Juilliard School of Music, she has taught at Juilliard and Duquesne University. Ms. Chiu performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, at the historic inauguration of the first Concert Hall in Hong Kong. Subsequently, she was a concerto soloist with the Taipei Municipal Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and played with the Vienna Symphony under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach. Ms. Chiu has appeared in solo and chamber music recitals in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States, including a series of concerts in Taiwan sponsored by the United States Information Service. A versatile chamber musician, Ms. Chiu has collaborated with members from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Alexander String Quartet based in San Francisco, the Renaissance City Winds, at the Organ Historical Convention, Art Songs with Daphne Alderson, Lilly Abreu, and Eva Ostrakovna. She has also performed the entire cycle of trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello by Beethoven and Brahms. Ms. Chiu is in demand as a teacher and coach. She is also on the faculty at the annual Keyboard Wellness Seminar in Texas directed by Sheila Paige. The Japan Times, “Her sincere and genuine musicianship made this a truly memorable evening.”

18. January 2024 by avawalker
Categories: Fall 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: CHASING METAPHORS: The Music & Words of Katherine Hoover

Performer: Zoe Sorrell, flutist
With special guests: Jana Lange, flutist & Katherine Palumbo, pianist

Chasing Metaphors was a recital five years in the making. In the autumn of 2018, Zoe Sorrell used her inheritance from her late maternal grandmother to purchase the flute of the late composer-flutist-poet Katherine Hoover. In the time since, this instrument has served as a connection to these two ancestors and Sorrell has become a champion and devotee of Hoover’s music. On October 20th, she performed five of Hoover’s works: three solo and two for chamber ensemble. These works were interspersed with short poems and stories aimed at helping audience members to connect with Hoover’s art and spirit on a deeper level.
The program included the following works: Winter Spirits, Suite for Two Flutes, Reflections, Kokopeli, and Mountain & Mesa.

18. January 2024 by avawalker
Categories: Fall 2023 | Leave a comment

Reunion Recital

Professor Emeritus Henry Spinelli and Director of Piano Program Pauline Rovkah shared a special recital program, featuring music by Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Adeline Shepherd, and Amy Beach. This event was part of Chatham University’s Alumni Reunion Weekend.

18. January 2024 by avawalker
Categories: Fall 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: Before & After, James Iman Piano Concert

Join Chatham University’s Music Program for the first Friday Afternoon Musicale of the fall semester, September 15th at 4:00 PM at the James Laughlin Music Center!  The concert will feature James Iman playing works by Kaija Saariaho, Anne Boyd, Donald Martino, and Jenny Back on the piano.  The title of the concert is “Before & After” and is reflective of the nature of the pieces that will be showcased.  All of the local community is welcome and invited to attend this program!

Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) hit her stride after attending the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, where she studied with Spectral composers Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey. Spectralism provided her with a method that freed her from serialism and sparked her creativity. She has left behind a legacy of beautiful and profound work, of which this prelude is among her few piano compositions.
Anne Boyd (b.1946) is an Australian composer inspired by the wilderness of her childhood and the music of East Asia. The work featured on this program is inspired by Debussy’s Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut from his Images II, which was in turn inspired by the Gamelan music he heard at the Paris World’s Fair. Using only four notes from Debussy’s original composition, Boyd weaves a tapestry that is static and contemplative.
Donald Martino (1931-2005) began his musical career as a jazz clarinetist, soon finding his way to composing, and eventually he took up twelve-tone composition. These preludes are his last large-scale composition for piano, and build off of ideas he had explored in his Fantasies and Impromptus. Each prelude is short and explores one idea, yet they are dynamic in their mood.
Jenny Beck (b.1985) is a composer who explores time as a special dimension (which is especially true of her recent work). The pieces which make up Stand Still Here are each a reflection on a paragraph from Virgina Wolff’s To the Lighthouse. These are also deeply contemplative works and are at time brooding, while at other times shimmering. They have a size far larger than their duration.

07. September 2023 by melissa.redding
Categories: Fall 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: Duets and Arias from the World of Opera and Musical Theatre

Chatham University Music faculty members Walter Morales, piano, Kelly Lynch, soprano, and guest artist Raymond Blackwell, baritone present arias and duets from the world of grand opera and Musical Theatre. The afternoon program includes music by Ravel to LeGrand, Rossini to Puccini, Irving Berlin to Frank Loesser…  more! We hope to see you at the James Laughlin Music Center on April 14th at 4pm for this Friday Afternoon Musicale!

07. April 2023 by rovkah
Categories: Spring 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: A Musical Prayer

Two weeks ago, we welcomed flutist Amy I-Yun Tu and pianist Sha Wang to perform A Musical Prayer. They presented works from Rameau, Tournier, Bloch, Schubert, and Brahms. If you missed this concert, you can watch it here!

Flutist Amy Tu enjoys an active schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, and clinician while on faculty at Rutgers Community Arts since 2014. Her principal teachers include Dr. Bradley Garner, Bart Feller, and Lois Herbine. In solo and ensemble settings, Ms. Tu has performed at concert venues in the United States, Italy, Austria, Great Britain, Japan, and Taiwan and has recorded for Mark Records. In recent years, she collaborated with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, World Civic Orchestra, Eastern Wind Symphony, NOVUS NY, and Hub City Opera and Dance Company. She has been invited to present and perform at the Midwest Clinic (2015), International Trumpet Guild (ITC) conference (2017), National Flute Association Conventions in Orlando (2018), and Salt Lake City (2019).

Pianist Sha Wang (DMA) is a performing concert pianist, chamber musician, as well as a sought-after piano pedagogue. Dr. Wang has performed in concert series at Carnegie Hall, Peter Norton Symphony Space, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Auditorium in NYC; Dame Myra Hess Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center, Richard Nixon’s Library, Steinway Society of Southwestern PA, as well as other concert venues throughout the country. She has appeared on WQED FM Pittsburgh, WFMT 98.7 Chicago and other media outlets in Asia and Europe. She was also featured in a concert for the late U.S. President Gerald Ford. As a collaborative pianist, she has performed with artists such as pianist Lang Lang, violinist Kun Dong (Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra), soprano Tamara Wilson (Houston Grand Opera) and with members of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Pianist Sha Wang enjoys a career as an active concert pianist, a professor of music, as well as a scholar in music theory. At the age of 19, Ms. Wang became the winner of the 16th International Young Artist Piano Competition, Washington, D.C. Since then, she has advanced into competitions such as the Jose Iturbi International Music Competition, Hilton-Head International Piano Competition and the Honens International Piano Competition. She is the first prize winner at the Long Beach Mozart Festival Concerto Competition, the grand prize winner of the Pittsburgh Concert Society Competition, the 2nd prize winner of the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, and the alternate finalist at the Seattle International Piano Competition.

31. March 2023 by rovkah
Categories: Spring 2023 | Leave a comment

Friday Afternoon Musicale: Piano Fantastique

Thank you to everyone who joined us in welcoming Dr. Nanette Kaplan Solomon for our Friday Afternoon Musicale on Friday, February 17!

21. February 2023 by rovkah
Categories: Spring 2023 | Leave a comment

Piano Fantastique: An Afternoon of Piano Fantasies

Please join us in James Laughlin Music Center on Friday, February 17 at 4 pm as the Chatham University Friday Musicale series presents pianist Nanette Kaplan Solomon in a virtuosic and poetic journey through the beloved genre of the piano fantasy. Beginning with J.S. Bach’s delightful Fantasia in C Minor, the program also features the magnificent C Major Fantasy , op. 17, by Robert Schumann, lush, romantic Fantasy Pieces by the little-known Croatian composer Dora Pejacevic, Fantasie Negre no. 2 by American composer Florence Price, and William Hirtz ‘s (a Pittsburgh native) whirlwind tour of the iconic Harold Arlen tunes in his Wizard of Oz Fantasy.

31. January 2023 by rovkah
Categories: Spring 2023 | Leave a comment

Student Recital

Join us next Monday, December 5th, for two recitals of students from the music program to show the culmination of their efforts from throughout the fall semester. More information will be available soon as to who will perform in which recital, which will occur at 4pm and 6pm. Please reach out to rovkah@chatham.edu if you have any questions.

05. December 2022 by rovkah
Categories: Fall 2022 | Leave a comment

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