Axiom Brass [website]
Praised for their “high level of musicality and technical ability” and for their “clean, clear and precise sound”, the award-winning Axiom Brass Quintet has quickly established itself as “one of the major art music groups in brass chamber music.”
Winners of the 2008 International Chamber Brass Competition and prize-winners of the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Preis der Europa-Stadt Passau, the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and the Jeju City International Brass Quintet Competition in South Korea, the Axiom Brass is dedicated to enhancing the musical life of communities across the globe and educating the next generation of musicians.
Axiom’s commitment to education and their blend of virtuosic performances and dynamic teaching have inspired young audiences around the nation, earning the ensemble the 2011 Fischoff Educator Award. Their educational concert “Let’s Make Music” has captivated thousands of elementary and middle school students in the U.S. In 2011 the ensemble was featured as brass quintet-in-residence for the National Brass Symposium, sharing the stage with principal brass players from the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Atlanta Symphony.
Internationally recognized for their groundbreaking programming, their repertoire ranges from jazz and Latin music to string quartet transcriptions, as well as original compositions for brass quintet. Axiom Brass’ performances have captured the hearts and imaginations of their audiences, leading the ensemble to national radio and television appearances as well as concerts in Asia, Europe and across the U.S. Axiom’s dedication to brass repertoire has led the ensemble to commission and premiere several new works, including recent premieres of Celestial Suite by James Stephenson and For Then and Now by Laurence Bitensky. For Celestial Suite, Axiom Brass partnered with the New York Philharmonic Brass Quintet, the Chicago Symphony Brass Quintet, the Chicago Chamber Musicians and the Fischoff Chamber Music Society, as well as with the Digital Visualization Theater of the University of Notre Dame and Professor Keith Davis.
Highlights of Axiom’s past seasons have included: concerts in Germany, Portugal, Spain, South Korea and Japan, a four-week residency at the Grand Tetons Music Festival, the release of their debut album New Standards, a clinic and performance at the 2010 Midwest Clinic, as well as recitals, masterclasses and solo appearances with orchestras and bands around the U.S. In 2012, the ensemble will continue its rigorous concert schedule, taking the group on their first tour of Alaska, Central America, and South America, and will mark their return to Europe and Asia. This season, Axiom Brass will release their next album of the New Standards series, which will include the world premiere recording of Celestial Suite.
The Axiom Brass is an Ensemble-in-Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago and at the Boston University Tangelwood Institute. Axiom performs exclusively on Mutec Mutes.
Calidore String Quartet [website]
Grand Prize and Gold Medal winner of the 2011 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the Calidore String Quartet features violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi.
These four musicians hailing from across North America combine their musical backgrounds to bring a fiery brilliance to the concert stage.
Formed in 2010 at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music, the Calidore String Quartet made their debut with guitarist Angel Romero to a sold-out audience at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
As top prize winner of the 2011 Fischoff competition, CSQ participated in a tour of the Midwestern United States, performing at venues such as the Debartolo Arts Center, Nichols Concert Hall, and a live radio broadcast on WFMT's Impromptu! Program. This spring, the CSQ makes its debut at the 2012 Laguna Beach Chamber Music Festival as well as an appearance at the South Bay Chamber Series in Los Angeles. In addition, this summer the CSQ will make its European debut at the venerated Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy.
Members of CSQ have collaborated with artists and ensembles including the Tokyo, Cypress, St. Lawrence, and Cavani string quartets, Paul Coletti, Joseph Silverstein, Menahem Pressler, Ronald Leonard, and John Perry. Teachers and mentors of the quartet include Paul Coletti, Ronald Leonard, Robert Lipsett, and Arnold Steinhardt.
Calidore aims to present performances that share the passion and joy of string quartet playing. With the help of their strong friendship, four distinct musical personalities unite to bring chamber music to life for their audiences.
Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré”, (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it has received from its home base in California, the golden state.
The Russian Trio
The Russian Trio was formed in September 2011 at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. Members of the Russian Trio have won over audiences internationally with exuberant and stirring performances. They have performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Spain, Mexico, Norway, Belarussia, Poland, France and the Czech Republic.
The trio has been coached by some of today’s most eminent chamber musicians including Michael Kannen and Daniel Phillips (violinist of the Orion String Quartet). Cellist Dmitry Volkov and violinist Nikita Borisevich met at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where they both finished their Master of Music degrees, and began collaborating with pianist Katherine Harris when they met at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. They currently reside in Baltimore, Maryland.
Nikita Borisevich, Violin
Violinist Nikita Borisevich swept onto the Russian stage as one of today’s most promising younger virtuosos. He was born into a musical family and was five years old when he began studying the violin. His first teacher was his father, who was trained by students of the renowned Russian teachers Stolyarovsky and Gutnikov. His fate was decided at age twelve, when he made his debut with the Perm Opera Symphony Orchestra, playing a Haydn Violin Concerto. At fifteen, he won a Russian National Competition for Violinists and Cellists called “The Magical Bow” in Perm, Russia, as well as the Perm Youth Music Festival, as a result of which he performed with the Perm Opera Symphony Orchestra twice more. That same year, Nikita enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory on full scholarship to study with Maya Glezarova.
During his conservatory years, Nikita went on tour and performed in the Ukraine, Latvia, Spain, and the Czech Republic. He also had the privilege of playing in the Moscow Conservatory Symphony Orchestra under the batons of the outstanding musical figures G. Rozdestvensky, A. Rudin, and P. Domingo. An avid chamber musician, Nikita has performed chamber quintets by Frank, Dvorak and Shostakovich in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. In 2010, Nikita performed with the Ural Republic Symphony Orchestra playing works by Paganini, Ravel and Waxman and went on to win a diploma and special prize at the Chamber Music Competition in Vilnius. Nikita also broadened his musical horizons by attending the Russische Musikakdemie Dortmund (2005), as well as the Heifitz Music Academy (2010). Just this year, Nikita performed with the Volgograd Academic Orchestra. Nikita is now pursuing further graduate studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music with Victor Danchenko.
Dmitry Volkov, Cello
Winner of the 2009 Carlos Prieto International Cello Competition, 23-year-old cellist Dmitry Volkov performs solo concerts across the Globe. Having graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the studio of Natalia Shakhovskaya in 2011, he is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the Peabody Institute in the studio of Amit Peled.
Born in Togliatti, Russia, Mr. Volkov has performed as a soloist with the National Symphony of Mexico, the Youth Orchestras of the Americas, the Samara Symphony (Russia), the Togliatti Symphony (Russia) and the Naberezhnye Chelny Symphony (Russia), in addition to solo concerts at the Abramson Recital Hall (Washington DC), The International Holland Music Sessions (Bergen, Norway), the W.M.P Concert Hall Series “Strad for Lunch” (New York), and the Miguel Bernal Jiménez International Music Festival (Mexico).
Mr. Volkov won First Prize in the Midland-Odessa Symphony National Young Artist Competition (2011), the Heifetz Institute of Music Concerto Competition (2009), and the Togliatti International Competition for Strings, (2002), as well as Second Prize in the Teacher and Student International Competition (2003). He has won numerous Scholarships and Awards, including the Holland Music Sessions’ New Masters on Tour participant (2011-2012) the Stephen Kates Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund in Cello (2010), the First Act Heifetz Institute Scholarship (2008-2010), and the The Gold Book of New Names (Samara, Russia, 2009).
In May 2012, Mr. Volkov will debut in several of the most prestigious concert halls in Europe, such as Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Theatre Odeon (Zwolle) and Hervormde Kerk (Den Hoorn), in addition to recording his first solo CD on the Urtext label.
Katherine Harris, Piano
Acclaimed as a musician whose playing is “communicative, passionate, and fluid,” pianist Katherine Harris made her debut at age nine in her hometown of Yakutsk, Siberia, winning the Republic of Yakutia Competition for Young Pianists. She went on to quickly gather accolades from international competitions in seven countries, performing across the Ukraine, Belarussia, Canada, the United States, Russia, Poland, and France. Among the competitions in which she received awards are the World Piano Competition (Cincinnati, OH), the Rachmaninoff Competition for Young Pianists (Veliki Novgorod, Russia) and the International Russian Music Piano Competition (San Jose, CA). She has also played in several internationally-known venues, such as Carnegie Hall and the Glinka Small Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ms. Harris has also met with success during her musical education. She was given a full scholarship to Azusa Pacific University when she was only fifteen years old—the youngest student ever to enter the university. Subsequently, she was offered a full graduate assistantship in accompanying at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and graduated with her Master of Music last spring. This fall, she enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts program at Peabody with a full graduate assistantship in Keyboard Studies. She has been privileged to perform in masterclasses with some of the greats of today’s pianistic world, such as Leon Fleisher, Dinna Joffe and Naum Shtarkman, and her most influential teachers have included Alexander Shtarkman, Marina Lomazov, Natalya Reznik, Antoinette Perry and Pavel Nersessian.
Collaboration with conductors and chamber musicians is near and dear to Katherine’s heart. She has enjoyed performing with orchestras both in the United States and abroad, including the Polish Music Festival Orchestra (Zamość, Poland), the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra (Los Angeles, CA), Southwestern Youth Music Festival Orchestra (Los Angeles, CA) and the Cobb Symphony Orchestra (Marietta, GA). At the Peabody Conservatory, she collaborates on a daily basis with her fellow colleagues and has built an extensive chamber music repertoire.
Sun-Silverstein-Lyon Trio
The Sun-Silverstein-Lyon trio was formed at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival during the summer of 2011. The group immediately impressed Kneisel faculty members, students and public alike with their polished, sensitive and personal performances of the Ravel and Schubert B-Flat Major piano trios.
Encouraged by their mentors and excited by their successes and the joy they found in working on great works of the piano trio literature together, the group decided to continue despite the difficulties of distance.
Violinist Elicia Silverstein commutes between Los Angeles, where she is currently studying with Robert Lipsett and Arnold Steinhardt at the Colburn School's Conservatory of Music, and New York, for rehearsals, coachings and performances, where pianist Hannah Sun, student of Seymour Lipkin and Jerome Lowenthal, and cellist Elizabeth Lyon, student of Joel Krosnick, are pursuing their Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School. The trio is coached by pianist Seymour Lipkin and violinist Laurie Smukler in New York, where they are based.
Quartet La'Mi
With members from France, Japan, and the United States, Quartet LaMi is a truly diverse ensemble. Formed in 2011, the quartet features violinists Ambroise Aubrun and Eriko Tsuji, violist Din Hann Sung, and cellist Hillary Smith. After finishing their undergraduate degrees in their respective countries (Paris conservatory, Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, Cal State Long Beach and UCLA), members of Quartet LaMi met at the University of California Los Angeles where they are currently all graduate students. In addition to their studies with Guillaume Sutre (first violinist of the Ysaÿe Quartet), members of the quartet have also studied chamber music with Antonio Lysy, Movses Pogossian, Richard O’Neill, Peter Cropper (Lindsay Quartet), and Marc Coppey (Trio Wanderer). Members have also performed in masterclasses for the Calder, JACK, and Borromeo Quartets.
