Composers over the centuries found inspiration in folk music from around the world, and in the late 20th century, many composers found their influence in gamelan music from Indonesia. We’re proud to bring you an experience of chamber music works that transform the indelible instrument into each composer’s own style and setting. Debussy and Ravel paint with its harmonic color palette and common melodic shapes. Vivian Fung mimics the special timbres and sound world. Steve Reich lives within its rhythmic systems and poignant expression through repeated figures, while Lou Harrison captures its overall textures and tells an evocative story through the sense of gamelan’s coordinated interlocking parts. Come be transported by gamelan re-contextualized.
A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-themill instrumentalists from true artists.” Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season.
Performance highlights include concerts presented by the San Francisco Symphony with Itzhak Perlman, Amarillo Symphony, Chamber Music Sedona, a tour with the Silk Road Ensemble, Parlance Chamber Concerts, Moab Music Festival, Music in the Vineyards, Lyra Music Festival, Olympic Music Festival, North Carolina New Music Initiative, the Leicester International Music Festival, the Musicians Emergency Fund at Lincoln Center, as well as performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica. Reflecting on both her personal journey and her professional journey, Kristin Lee has developed a new project, Americana, which showcases a spectrum of illustrious composers and the American musical styles which influenced them, as well as their own musical styles which influenced generations of composers to come. As a foreign-born citizen of America, Lee was compelled to select this unique collection of works to express her pride of the country she now calls her own, and offers recital programs that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history. Lee’s many honors include awards from the 2015 Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School – in the Pre-College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007.
Born in Seoul, Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. She is a member of the faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and the co-founder and artistic director of Emerald City Music in Seattle.
Michael Stephen Brown has been hailed by The New York Times as one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers. His artistry is shaped by his creative voice as a pianist and composer, praised for his fearless performances (The New York Times) and exceptionally beautiful compositions (The Washington Post).
Winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Brown has recently performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the National Philharmonic, and the Grand Rapids, North Carolina, Wichita, New Haven, and Albany Symphonies; and recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center. Brown is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing frequently at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. In 2022, he opens the Societys season with Bach and Mendelssohn concertos, and makes European debuts as soloist with the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, and performs recitals at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Majorca. He was selected by Andras Schiff to perform on an international tour making solo debuts in Berlin, Milan, Florence, Zurichs Tonhalle and New Yorks 92nd Street Y. He regularly performs recitals with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, Music in the Vineyards, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise.
As a composer, he recently toured his own Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) around the US and Poland with several orchestras. He was the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Residency Award recipient. He has received commissions from the Gilmore Piano Festival, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra; the New Haven and Maryland Symphony Orchestras; Concert Artists Guild, Shriver Hall; Osmo Vanska and Erin Keefe; pianists Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich; and a consortium of gardens.
A prolific recording artist, his latest album Noctuelles, featuring Ravels Miroirs and newly discovered movements by Medtner was called a glowing presentation by BBC Music Magazine. He can be heard as soloist with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot in the music of Messiaen, and as soloist with the Brandenburg State Symphony in music by Samuel Adler. Other albums include Beethovens Eroica Variations; all-George Perle; and collaborative albums each with pianist Jerome Lowenthal, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and violinist Elena Urioste. He is now embarking on a multi-year project to record the complete piano music by Felix Mendelssohn including world premiere recordings of music by one of Mendelssohns muses, Delphine von Schauroth.
Brown was First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, a winner of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (formerly CMS Two), a recipient of the Juilliard Petschek Award, and is a Steinway Artist. He earned dual bachelors and masters degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. Additional mentors have included Andras Schiff and Richard Goode as well as his early teachers, Herbert Rothgarber and Adam Kent.
A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th century Steinway Ds, Octavia and Daria.
He will not reveal which is his favorite, so as not to incite jealousy. In his spare time, he learns Italian, carves stumps into coffee tables, and plays a lot of Mendelssohn.
Praised by the New York Times for his “understated but unmistakable virtuosity” along with a “winning combination of gentleness and fluidity,” Svet Stoyanov is a driving force in modern percussion.
Winner of the prestigious Concert Artists Guild International Competition, Svet was also presented with the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Award. His career highlights feature solo concerto appearances with the Chicago, Seattle, and the American Symphony Orchestras, as well as solo performances in Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center and Taiwan National Concert Hall amongst many others worldwide. Some of the conductors he has performed with include Pierre Boulez, Marin Alsop, Cristian Macelaru, Gerard Schwarz, Oliver Knussen and James Conlon.
Svet Stoyanov has recorded for numerous labels, featuring Telarc, Naxos and Bridge Records. His albums Percussive Counterpoint, as well as Textures and Threads were broadcast internationally and applauded for their artistic integrity and virtuosic ingenuity.
A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Svet has commissioned a significant body of solo and chamber works. An upcoming highlight commission is a Double Percussion Concerto, written for Mr. Stoyanov by Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning composer Jennifer Higdon. The work will be premiered with Co-Soloist Matthew Strauss and the Houston Symphony Orchestra in 2022.
Recent highlight projects feature the commission and performances of Sideman: a percussion concerto written for Svet Stoyanov by Grammy-winning Composer Mason Bates. Sideman was performed in Miami, The Kennedy Center, Kansas City’s Kauffman Center and in Baltimore City. It was also recorded by Svet for an upcoming CD release.
Svet Stoyanov is a proud founding member of the groundbreaking project The Percussion Collective. This group features some of the finest percussionists in the world. With The Collective, Svet recently toured China and premiered Christopher Theofanidis’ Drum Circles Concerto with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. Upcoming engagements include concerto performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Grant Park Orchestra, as well as a tour of Europe in 2022, visiting London, Munich, Vienna and Amsterdam.
An inspiring project of Svet’s features the release of multiple audio/video recordings, under the umbrella of Elemental Culture. This project embraces the cinematographic video capturing of actual musical recording sessions. It strives to deeply immerse the listener, by allowing them to also witness the intimate visual moments of musical creation. Among the featured titles is a special collaboration with European marimba virtuoso Katarzyna Mycka – a duo recording of Passacaglia by Anna Ignatowicz Glińska, as well as the percussion quintet Kyoto, by John Psathas – composer of music for the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.
Alongside his diverse performance career, Svet Stoyanov is the Director and Associate Professor of Percussion Studies at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, where he has collaboratively built a most unique and innovative modern percussion program. Students of Svet Stoyanov hold positions in major orchestras, educational institutions, and have won numerous competition prizes worldwide. Svet endorses some of the finest percussion instruments and products today, namely Adams , Remo , Zildjian , Pearl and ProMark .
Svet Stoyanov has performed in more than one thousand recitals and has presented over two hundred masterclasses worldwide. His artistic mission is committed to the purity, quality and virtue of music.
