“Leaves of Gold” Program: Carnegie Hall Comes to Orcas Island

A noteworthy quartet performs a formidable concert

In what Aloysia Friedmann, Artistic Director of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival has called “a Carnegie Hall experience on Orcas Island,” four world-class concert pianists will perform the “Leaves of Gold” concert next Monday, Oct. 25.

The performance begins at 7 p.m. at the Orcas Center, with a Music Adventure Trips Auction and reception following. “Leaves of Gold” tickets cost $150, or $75 for students, and is a benefit for the Chamber Music Festival. The concert brings newcomer Orion Weiss to join the Festival’s Artistic Associate, Jon Kimura Parker, and other familiar festival faces (or fingers) — Adam Stern and Anna Polonsky, Weiss’ wife as of last summer.

The concert will range from Wolfgang Mozart’s  Sonata for Two Pianos, KV 448 to Rodney Bennett’s Suite for Skip and Sadie,with the four pianists combined in every permutation, and all performing together in several compositions.

Pianist Orion Weiss is one of the most sought-after soloists and collaborators in his generation of young American musicians. His deeply felt and exceptionally crafted performances have won him acclaim from audiences, critics and colleagues in a wide range of repertoire and formats.

In 2005, he toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Itzhak Perlman. He toured the US with the Orchester der Klangverwaltung Munich in October 2007.

The summer of 2010 saw well-received returns to the Ravinia, La Jolla and Colorado Music Festivals. In September 2010, Mr. Weiss was named the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, and will soon release a recital album of Dvorak, Prokofiev and Bartok.

He will also be featured in a recording project of the complete Gershwin works for piano and orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic and JoAnn Falletta, and will perform with numerous other orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Slovenian Philharmonic.

Continuing his close relationships as a collaborator,  Weiss performs regularly with his wife, pianist Anna Polonsky, as well as working again with the Pacifica Quartet and multiple recital partners.

As a recitalist and chamber musician,  Weiss  was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 2002-2004. He has appeared widely across the U.S.  and made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in April 2005. That year he also made his European debut in a recital at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Weiss has compiled an impressive list of awards; he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Paul Schenly. Other teachers include Daniel Shapiro, Sergei Babayan, Kathryn Brown, and Edith Reed. In February of 1999, Weiss made his Cleveland Orchestra debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In March 1999, with less than 24 hours’ notice,  Weiss stepped in to replace André Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He was immediately invited to return to the Orchestra for a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in October 1999. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.

Internationally acclaimed pianist Jon Kimura Parker was born, raised and educated in Vancouver. “Jackie” Parker studied with Edward Parker, Keiko Parker, Robin Wood, Marek Jablonski, and Lee Kum-Sing, as well as Adele Marcus, under whom he received his doctorate at The Juilliard School in 1988.

Parker has performed as guest artist and given recitals with major orchestras throughout the world, including performances with the Tokyo Quartet and Joshua Bell. In the spring of 2007 he performed and spoke alongside humanitarians Elie Wiesel and Paul Rusesabagina at the 50th Anniversary of AmeriCares, under whose auspices he performed in war-torn Sarajevo in 1995.

In the summer of 2007 he gave the world premiere of Peter Schickele’s “Music for Orcas Island,”  and in 2009 he joined Cho-Liang Lin in the world premiere of a new violin sonata by Paul Schoenfield. A versatile performer, he has jammed with Doc Severinsen and Bobby McFerrin, and collaborated with Audra McDonald and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Mr. Parker was awarded his country’s highest honor, the Order of Canada, in 1999.

Jon Kimura Parker is Professor of Piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. A committed educator, he has given master classes at the Steans Institute, the Banff Centre, the Brevard Festival, Caramoor’s Rising Stars, and The Juilliard School. He has hosted the television series “WholeNotes” about classical music, and gives recitals and lectures in remote regions of Canada as a founding member of “Piano Plus.”  Parker was also seen performing on CNN and has been documented frequently on CBC, as well as on PBS’s “The Visionaries.” Mr. Parker has recorded for Telarc with André Previn, Yoel Levi, and Peter Schickele.

Last season Parker appeared as concerto soloist with the NHK Orchestra in Tokyo, and he toured Canada with Pinchas Zukerman and the National Arts Centre Orchestra. This season Parker performs at the Beijing Music Festival, with the Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Oregon Symphony and Seattle Symphony, in recitals with James Ehnes, Cho-Liang Lin and Lynn Harrell and in festivals across the country, including our own Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.

Conductor, composer and pianist Adam Stern was trained at the Califonria Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. He received his MFA in conducting in 1977 at the age of twenty-one, the youngest music student in CalArts’ history to receive a Master’s degree.

Following years as a freelance conductor, composer and pianist, Stern served as Assistant Conductor (1992–1996) and Associate Conductor (1996–2001) of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra as well as Music Director of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, form 1993 to 2000. Stern has guest-conducted throughout the United States.

A devotee of unjustly neglected works, Stern is particularly noted for his frequent performances of English music, especially that of Ralph Vuaghan Williams. He led the first Seattle Symphony performance of Vaughan Williams’ Pastoral Symphony in 1996; in January 2007, he and the Seattle Philharmonic presented the Northwest premiere of the same composer’s final symphony, No. 9.

Stern has also led Seattle, Northwest and West Coast premieres of works by Aaron Copland, Gustav Holst, Aurelio de la Vega, Gerard Schurmann, Richard Peaslee, Richard Danielpour, Rodion Shchedrin, James Tenney and Goffredo Petrassi.

He has composed incidental music for numerous dramatic productions in Los Angeles and Seattle. He was a music copyist for Frank Zappa and also appeared in the Richard Dreyfuss film, “The Competition.”

Stern’s compositions include The Fairy’s Gift for narrator and chamber ensemble (available on the Delos label), Partita Concertante for bassoon and wind ensemble, and Fanfare Pastorale, written for the Seattle Philharmonic. In addition, Stern was a recording producer for the majority of recordings made by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. Stern won a 1990 Grammy Award as “Classical Producer of the Year.”

Stern is currently the Music Director of the Seattle Philharmonic and the Port Angeles Symphony.  He is also the Music Department Administrator at Cornish College of the Arts, where he teaches composition, conducting and orchestral studies.

Anna Polonsky made her solo piano debut at the age of seven at the Special Central Music School in Moscow, Russia. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

She received her Bachelor of Music diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with the renowned pianist Peter Serkin, and continued her studies with Jerome Lowenthal, earning her Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School. Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician, and has appeared before international audiences in Europe, Russia, America and Asia.

She has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, and Shanghai Quartets, and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, David Shifrin, Richard Goode, Ida and Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Arnold Steinhardt, Anton Kuerti, Gary Hoffman, and Fred Sherry. She is regularly invited to perform chamber music at festivals such as Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle, Music@Menlo, Cartagena, Bard, and Caramoor, as well as at Bargemusic in New York City.

A frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two during 2002-2004. In 2006 she took a part in the European Broadcasting Union’s project to record and broadcast all of Mozart’s keyboard sonatas, and in the spring of 2007 she performed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium to inaugurate the Emerson Quartet’s Perspectives Series.

Polonsky was a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2003. With the violist Michael Tree and clarinetist Anthony McGill, she is a member of the newly formed Schumann Trio. In addition to performing, she serves on the piano faculty of Vassar College.

The evening’s program includes Scaramouche by Milhaud, played by Parker and Stern. Mozart’s  Sonata for Two Pianos, KV 448, with Polonsky and Weiss, Richard Rodney Bennett’s Suite for Skip and Sadie, performed by Polonsky and Stern and the Finale: Tarantella in Serge Rachmaninoff’s  Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 17, performed by Weiss and Parker.

Following the intermission,  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas, arr. Adam Stern, will be played by all four pianists.

Then Polonsky and Wiess will play En Bateau from Le Petite Suite by Debussy.  Weiss and Stern will play Polka from The Age of Gold, Op. 22 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Schumann’s Canonic Etude Op. 56, No. 5 in B-Flat Minor, arranged by Claude Debussy will be played by  Polonsky and  Parker. Stern, and Parker will then play El Salon Mexico by Aaron Copland arranged by  Leonard Bernstein.

All hands will play A Scott Joplin Rag Rhapsody, arranged by Kevin Olson, and the evening’s performance will close with  The Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner.

Following the concert, a Fireside Party will include desserts by Passionate for Pies and Sugar Baby Specialty Cakes, Coffee Bar by Kathryn Taylor Chocolates and Festival Wines by Thurston Wolfe. There will also be a live auction, where patrons can bid on Music Adventure Trips to Northwest Festivals in 2011

Tickets for the Leaves of Gold concert and auction and reception following are still available; contact the Chamber Music Festival office at 376-6636 or 1-866-492-0003 (toll-free),  stop by the Festival Office on the west side of Orcas Center, or order online www.oicmf.org.