On Tues., January 7 at 6:30 p.m., pianist Drew Petersen, a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner and international rising classical music star, will perform a solo piano recital in Guarneri Hall, 11 E. Adams Street, 3rd floor, Chicago, IL. The program will feature Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 by Frederic Chopin; 8 Valses Poéticos for piano by Enrique Granados; and the Fantasie in C Major (“Wanderer Fantasy”) by Franz Schubert.
On Thurs., January 9 at 6:30 p.m., Toby Appel, the celebrated violist and Juilliard faculty artist, will join Drew Petersen in Guarneri Hall for a recital featuring: Hebrew Melodies for viola and piano, Op. 9 by Joseph Joachim; Märchenbilder, Op.113 by Robert Schumann; Elegy by James Friskin; Morpheus, by Rebecca Clarke; and Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 by Dmitri Shostakovich.
And on Tues., January 28 at 6:30 p.m., violinist Frank Almond brings Harp Spotlight from his acclaimed Milwaukee chamber music series, Frankly Music, to Guarneri Hall. Kelsey Molinari, harp, and Marta Aznavoorian, piano, make their Frankly Music and Guarneri Hall debuts, and are joined by the young, prizewinning cellist Alexander Hersh.
Tickets and information: Single tickets are $40 each ($10 for students). All tickets include a post-concert reception with the artists. Purchase tickets online at: guarnerihall.org/events/ or call 847-780-6720.
About Guarneri Hall NFP
Guarneri Hall NFP is a not-for-profit classical music incubator that presents live classical music performances in Guarneri Hall, an acoustically engineered and technologically advanced 60-seat performance and recording space at 11 E. Adams St. in Chicago’s Loop, and in pop-up locations elsewhere in Chicago. As part of its mission to sustain and modernize classical music, Guarneri Hall NFP produces innovative, high-quality video that it distributes worldwide for free access, and provides education programs for young music professionals and for Chicago-area students, with a special focus on reaching young people with limited access to classical music. Live streaming of Guarneri Hall events is available, free-of-charge, at guarnerihall.org.
Guarneri Hall NFP serves as a facilitator and catalyst for emerging musical artists, musical groups and music education initiatives. It aims to be a leader in the field of music education, providing advanced training for professional ensembles, soloists, music educators, and students, as well as curriculum support for classroom teachers through teacher training initiatives promoting best practices. Guarneri Hall NFP also provides educational resources, including PDFs of musical scores and parts and online tutorial videos, to the Chicago community and beyond.
Guarneri Hall NFP is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
About Drew Petersen
Drew Petersen has earned many accolades in his young career, including becoming a prizewinner in the Leeds International Piano Competition, Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition and the New York Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition. Additionally, he was the winner of the 2017 American Pianists Awards and the Christel DeHaan Fellowship of the American Pianists Association.
Born in New Jersey in 1993, Mr. Petersen was presented at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall at age 5 and at age 9 performed a solo recital at Steinway Hall in Manhattan for the company’s 150th anniversary. His prodigious intellect and insatiable curiosity led him to win a Davidson Fellow Award for the profoundly gifted at age 12 and he graduated cum laude from Harvard at 19 with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Social Sciences. He completed both his undergraduate and graduate music studies at The Juilliard School in New York.
About Toby Appel
Violist Toby Appel is among the most admired violists of his generation. He has been heard in recital and concerto performances throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He has appeared as a member of the Tashi chamber ensemble and the Lenox and Audubon Quartets; as guest artist with the Alexander, Manhattan, and Vermeer Quartets; and with jazz artists Chick Corea and Gary Burton. He has performed at the White House, the United Nations, and at the Angel Fire, Bravo, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, and Orcas festivals.
Mr. Appel’s chamber music performances can be heard on the Columbia, Delos, Desto, Koch International, Opus 1, and Musical Heritage Society labels and he is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. He entered the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 13, studying with Max Aronoff. He is currently on the faculty of The Juilliard School.
About Frank Almond
Violinist Frank Almond holds the Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Previously, he held the Concertmaster position with the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Valery Gergiev and Guest Concertmaster position with the London Symphony Orchestra with Kurt Masur. He performs regularly as a soloist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and as soloist and chamber musician throughout the US and Europe. He is the founder of his own chamber music series in Milwaukee, Frankly Music, which is recognized for innovative programming and for attracting leading performers from around the world.
At 17, Mr. Almond was one of the youngest prizewinners in the history of the Niccolò Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, and five years later was one of two American prizewinners at the Eighth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, which was documented in an award-winning PBS film. His extensive recording discography includes a wide range of repertoire and has earned him multiple Grammy nominations. His most recent series of recordings, A Violin’s Life, chronicles the extraordinary history and lineage of his current violin, the 1715 Lipiński Stradivarius. This instrument has direct ties to Giuseppe Tartini, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, and Robert and Clara Schumann.
Mr. Almond earned two degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy Delay, Michael Tseitlin, Felix Galimir, and Joseph Silverstein. He currently serves on the Faculty at Roosevelt University in Chicago and is the Artist-in-Residence at the Milwaukee Youth Symphony, one of the largest youth arts programs in the United States.
Additional Upcoming Guarneri Hall NFP 2019-2020 Season Concerts:
Mon., February 10 at 6:30 p.m. – Avalon Quartet: Ludwig and Wolfgang
Works by Beethoven and Mozart
Thurs., February 13 at 6:30 p.m. – Gandelsman Meets Bach
Featuring Grammy-award winning violinist and producer Johnny Gandelsman of the NYC string quartet Brooklyn Rider
Fri., April 3 at 6:30 p.m. – The Formosa Quartet
First Prize and Amadeus Prize winners at London’s Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition perform Beethoven and selections from their exclusive collection of world, folk, pop, jazz, and poetry arrangements
Mon., April 6 at 6:30 p.m. – April in Paris: Dempster Street Pro Musica and CSO Winds
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Oboist Michael Henoch and CSO woodwind players John Bruce Yeh, clarinet; William Buchman, bassoon; and Oto Carillo, horn join violinist Stefan Hersh (Guarneri Hall Artistic Director) and NEXUS Chamber Music cellist and co-artistic director Alexander Hersh for works by Debussy, Ravel, Ibert, and Pierné.
Visit guarneri.org/events/ for additional concert details.