News

If you want to purchase your copy of my solo album, I am ecstatic to announce that the wait is finally over! The CD, published by Delos Music, is now available for purchase or download worldwide – on Amazon, iTunes, Tidal, and other purveyors of fine music. Buy yours now! I am also planning a CD release party in a few months, in New York and elsewhere; I will keep you posted.

I will be joining hundreds of other violists from all over the United States and the world at the American Viola Society Festival 2016, subtitled “Exploring New Pathways”. This exciting event – exciting even for non-violists! – is taking place in Oberlin, OH from June 8 to 11. There are special guests such as Kim Kashkashian, Robert Vernon and Elmar Oliveira, as well as recitals, masterclasses, vendor exhibits and all kinds of viola-related presentations. Come nerd out with us! My lecture of Aram Khatchaturian’s Sonata-Song for Solo Viola takes place on June 9 at 3:30pm at Kulas Recital Hall at the Oberlin College & Conservatory campus. See you there!

I can finally announce what many of you have asked about – yes, the solo viola CD is ready, and it will be released in mid-2016! I am very excited for my debut project to be issued by Delos, one of America’s most respected and well-known independent record labels. We’ve been in talks for some time now and the details are being ironed out. All I can say is, it’s been a long time coming, but it will be worth the wait! Stay tuned.

I again had the honor to adjudicate the Viola Concerto Competition at Juilliard this school year, alongside colleagues from the Shanghai String Quartet and NYU. I got to hear four finalists, each performing Krzysztof Penderecki’s Viola Concerto. Caeli Smith deservedly won – go hear her play tonight at Alice Tully with the Juilliard Orchestra! 7:30pm.

Two of the last Fridays in September I spent playing four string quartets by Dimitry Shostakovich, with my good friends Daniel Khalikov, Kristi Helberg and Rubin Kodheli. We spent weeks preparing and getting to know these seemingly simple yet mysterious works. The First Quartet is youthful, concise in form, jubilant. The Fourth, written in memory of a good friend, is puzzling in how Shostakovich chooses to mourn, or perhaps insert secret messages, in the piece. The Fifth is ambitious and sprawling. It is all over the place in the best way. Shostakovich gives homages to Schubert, Beethoven, his student and one-time love interest Galina Ustvolskaya, but he also shows his less pleasant, neurotically angry side. And the Eighth Quartet is a classic. Rugged, angry, incorporating Jewish melodies like many of his works; written in the memory of victims of fascism, but what kind of fascism? Against the Soviet Union, or inside it? A true postmodernist who constantly synthesized a lot of influences, Shostakovich paints some startlingly vivid images, and that’s one of my favorite things about him!

We played these two concerts at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. This was such a great venue, a classic coffeehouse near Columbia University popular with the literati, with an attentive and enthusiastic crowd. Not to mention the amazing owner Philip, whose idea these concerts were in the first place. We had a great time and still talk about it.

I will be spending ten days teaching at the Texas Strings Camp this month. From June 16 to 26, sixty music students from all over the Lone Star State and elsewhere will be congregating in Austin, Texas, for an intense and rewarding time of teaching and performing. I’ll be joining Naoko Tanaka of the Juilliard School, Blaise Déjardin of the Boston Symphony, and other distinguished string players on the faculty, not to mention violinist Pasha Sabouri, an old friend and mastermind of this whole endeavor. Plus, being in one of America’s hippest cities won’t hurt…