Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

YooJin Jang and Sheena Hui '19

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Applauded by The Strad for her “fiery virtuosity” and “consummate performances,” violinist YooJin Jang is a winner of the 2017 Concert Artists Guild Competition and First Prize winner of the 2016 Sendai International Music Competition. These successes have resulted in a busy itinerary of international recital and concerto engagements as well as the release of two new recordings.

Her recent concerto performances include appearances with the symphony orchestras of Chautauqua, Dubuque, and Roswell. In recital, highlights include YooJin’s recent Carnegie Hall debut and concerts at Jordan Hall and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert series in Chicago.  Internationally, YooJin has performed with the KBS Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Bulgaria National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Spain’s Extremadura Orchestra.

YooJin Jang performs on the 1714 “May-Jacquet” Stradivari Violin on generous loan from the Eastman School of Music.

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Sheena Hui '19 is the founder of the Athenaeum Concert Series. As a pianist she has performed dozens of solo and chamber recitals in Hong Kong, Europe and across the United States, recently serving as artist-in-residence at Porto Pianofest in Portugal. In addition to her pianistic activities Sheena has an avid interest in music theory; her research focuses on completing unfinished works by the 19th century Russian composer Alexander Borodin.

Sheena is profoundly aware of her responsibility to share the artistry and knowledge she has inherited from her lineage of teachers and mentors. In addition to teaching at various music festivals and institutions, she hopes that the Athenaeum Concert Series will bring a relevant and fresh perspective on classical music to the Claremont community.
 

Program Notes

How did Soviet Russia develop a rich musical identity and canon while other oppressive 20th Century regimes – Nazi Germany, Maoist China – lay “musically barren,” in the words of leading music historian Richard Taruskin? Soviet musicians did not escape political persecution by any means, but a small group managed to survive and produce authentic, enduring masterpieces. Of these composers, Dmitri Shostakovich is a representative case, having fallen in and out of Soviet favor in spectacular fashion throughout his life. On one hand, Shostakovich was a true patriot, never defecting from the USSR unlike fellow composers Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff despite living in constant paranoia; on the other hand, he was a fiercely unique artist, whose artistic integrity found a way into his music through the myriad subtextual possibilities of music. This Athenaeum presentation explores Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata, written for the 60th birthday of his friend, the adored Soviet violinist David Oistrakh.

Program

Mozart, Violin Sonata in F Major, K. 376 (14’)
Shostakovich, Violin Sonata Op. 134 (30’)

Floris Van der Veken and Marlies Hollevoet

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Marlies Hollevoet (°1997) is a Belgian composer, currently residing in the USA. Their music has been performed by numerous ensembles and musicians, including the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Virago Symphonic Orchestra, Brightwork Ensemble, and the Lilith ensemble. They were recently awarded with the prestigious B.A.E.F Music Fellowship 2022-2023 and the University of Rochester’s Sproull Fellowship to pursue their doctoral studies in composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.
Marlies’ music is often based on obsessive rhythms and abstract structures, but never without a sense of humor. They are currently exploring extramusical aspects of performances and how to integrate them into the composition and score and try to create music in an openness to different genres, disciplines and artforms.
Marlies has studied under the guidance of composers Wim Henderickx, Steven Prengels, Bob Morris, Carlos-Sanchez Gutierrez, David Liptak and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.
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Floris Van der Veken (°1998) is a Belgian saxophonist and performance artist currently residing in Rochester, NY. Commended by Augusta Read Thomas for “his deep musicality and a kaleidoscope of characters and moods,” his performances are characterized by a strong emphasis on contemporary repertoire and interdisciplinary collaboration. The search for new repertoire has led Floris to premiere concertos by composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Marlies Hollevoet, and Wim Henderickx.

Besides performing, Floris is an active researcher and improviser. His research includes the use of extramusical elements by Boulez and Stockhausen, providing theoretical background for interdisciplinary collaborations and improvisations. Floris is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music, after having obtained the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in saxophone performance, studying there under Dr. Chien-Kwan Lin. For his work with his saxophone students, Floris was awarded the 2022-2023 Graduate Teaching Assistant Prize.

Program notes

This concert program explores the variety with which current or recent composers translate rituals into practice in their music and, subsequently, how their translation is passed on to the performer. This can result in elaborate collaborations where the end result is almost a cocreation between both. Be it physical movement, melodic shaping, or the underlying idea, each of these works took inspiration from ritual practices and put the musical material in dialogue between artists. We invite you to compare these results and contemplate on which ones resonate more with you and, more importantly, why.

Includes the world premiere of a new composition by Marlies Hollevoet written specifically for this occasion, inspired by the other pieces in the program and exploring music rituals.

Program

Wim Henderickx, Empty Mind I
Marlies Hollevoet, Rite I
Karlheinz Stockhausen, In Freundschaft
Marlies Hollevoet – Three Fall Miniatures (world premiere)

Elise Noyes and Gina Hyunmin Lee

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Canadian-American soprano Elise Noyes is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music heralded for her versatility in operatic, musical theatre, and choral works alike. In the spring of 2023, she competed as a semi-finalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition, in addition to keeping up an active schedule as a recitalist. She was selected as the first prize winner of the Jessie Kneisel German Lieder Competition in 2022, in addition to being chosen as a finalist for the Friends of Eastman Opera Voice Competition in 2021. Her performances include Eastman Opera Theatre’s Into the Woods as Cinderella, La Calisto as the title role, Michaela in Mercury Opera’s Carmen, and Isabel in Pirates of Penzance with Rochester Summer Opera. She has been featured with SUNY Geneseo Symphony Orchestra as the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, as well as in Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Edmonton Youth Orchestra. Ms. Noyes works for Seattle Voice Lab, providing gender affirming voice instruction for students all across the world and has served as a lecturer at Ithaca College.
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Gina Hyunmin Lee is a Korean-Canadian pianist based in Rochester, NY. Gina is completing the DMA degree in Accompanying and Chamber Music at the Eastman School of Music under the guidance of Dr. Andrew Harley, and currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Gina has appeared in festivals and venues across North America and Europe including Banff Centre for Creativity and Arts, Schoenberg Centre, Zodiac Festival, Aspen Music Festival and School, Songfest, Yarn/Wire Institute, Indian River Music Festival, and Toronto Arts and Letters Club. Most recently, Gina was a prize winner at the Jesse Kneisel Lieder Competition (Eastman School of Music) and has received Canada Council for the Arts’ ‘Explore and Creation Grant’ which allows her to embark on a recording and commissioning project alongside Canadian Soprano Elise Noyes.
 

Program Notes

Lili Boulanger is an enigmatic composer whose enormous musical talents and career successes are discussed alongside her struggles with chronic illness, looming mortality, and, very often, her older sister Nadia Boulanger. This lecture-recital will center around Lili Boulanger’s monumental song cycle, Clairières dans le ciel, featuring a soprano and a pianist. The cycle tells a story of doomed love from an individual whose gender identity is seldom revealed nor confirmed throughout the cycle. The ambiguity in the gender of the narrator coupled with questions about the composer’s own sexuality creates a lens through which the cycle can be examined, exploring the topic of gender identity, sexual orientation, and sensuality in French symbolist poetry. Through our presentation of the selected songs from the cycle, we further wish to illuminate the importance of poetic understanding within the context of these songs and further a conversation about why they might have meant much to the Boulanger sisters.

Program

Lili Boulanger, Clairières dans le ciel

Nathan Cheung

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A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Dr. Nathan Cheung is known for his versatility as a solo pianist, collaborator, composer, and improviser. He has won top prizes in over 15 international and national competitions. His performances have taken him to over 25 states and six countries.

In addition to his active performing schedule, Dr. Cheung serves as an Instructor of Collaboration at Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music and was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. A sought-after educator, he has designed compositions and online practice intensives for piano students of all levels.

He received his doctorate and two masters degrees from the Eastman School of Music, as well as a BA from Stanford University. In his free time, he enjoys learning languages, reading, and self-teaching himself the guitar.
 

Program Notes

This program pushes the bounds of the conventional piano recital. In addition to water-themed classics by Liszt and Ravel, Cheung will perform the rarely heard Jazz Nocturne by Dana Suesse, virtuosic transcriptions on popular themes by Busoni and Earl Wild, original music for just four fingers, and an improvisation that draws on audience input. Every work on the program has its own fascinating story that involves innovation from what came before. Every work will explore the ways in which performing and composing mindsets inform each other. As a conservatory trained pianist and composer raised in a family with no musical training, this recital is designed to be a recital unlike any other that captivates both musicians and non-musicians alike.

Program

Liszt, Les jeux d'eaux à la villa d'Este
Ravel, Jeux d'eau
Busoni, Sonatina No. 6, Fantasia da camera super Carmen
Suesse, Jazz Nocturne
Cheung, Rapid Fire
Improvisation on notes selected by the audience
Gershwin-Wild, Virtuoso Etudes

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The Athenaeum Concert Series invites musical artists from all around the world to present recital programs at the Ath and speak about how to listen to their music, and why their music matters. Curated by Sheena Hui ’19, the aim of the series is to encourage guest artists and the Claremont audience to communicate and connect with each other in a way that traditional concert stages simply do not allow.