2008 Summer Series 20th Anniversary Season The Honest Brook Music Festival will present its 20th Anniversary Season in July and August. The concerts are held in a preserved dairy barn in an idyllic rural setting in the Western Catskills. For the 20th Anniversary Season the festival will present artists who have been a part of its first two decades - The Jupiter String Quartet, clarinetist Todd Palmer, co-founder and artistic director Michael Cannon and The Shanghai Quartet. The Jupiter String Quartet Nelson Lee, violin Meg Freivogel, violin Liz Freivogel, viola Daniel McDonough, cello Saturday, July 12, 8:00 PM The Jupiter String Quarter has just been awarded the Cleveland Quartet Award by Chamber Music America, a prize which "honors and promotes a rising young string quartet whose artistry demonstrates that it is in the process of establishing a major career." They have also been selected to join Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two for a three-year residency and have been awarded the Netherland America Prize, which sponsored a tour of the Netherlands this past Spring. They have been first prize winners in many competitions including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions. The Honest Brook Music Festival presented them in their New York debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 2004 to critical acclaim. They have performed in many of the most important concert venues in the US and Europe including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, New York's Lincoln Center, Boston's Jordan Hall and London's Wigmore Hall. Besides their performances at the Honest Brook Music Festival, they have performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the Yellow Barn Music Festival, among others. This performance marks their fourth appearance in the Honest Brook Music Festival's barn. Further information about this extraordinary quartet can be found on their website - www.jupiterquartet.com. Todd Palmer, clarinet Simon Mulligan, piano Saturday, July 19, 8:00 PM Having been involved in an array of creative and diverse artistic presentations throughout his career, clarinetist Todd Palmer has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. He has appeared with many symphony and chamber orchestras including those of Houston, Atlanta, St. Paul, Cincinnati, Montréal, BBC Scotland, and has collaborated with many of the worlds finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Daedalus, Pacifica and Ying quartets. Palmer has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw, and appeared in the world premiere of composer Ricky Gordon’s theatre work, Orpheus and Euridice, with coloratura Elizabeth Futral on Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005. Since winning the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, Mr. Palmer has appeared as recitalist and lecturer at major performing arts centers and universities throughout the United States. He has been a participant for 14 years at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston SC, and for 10 years a member of the highly popular touring group Spoleto Chamber Music USA, which has been heard around the U.S. and on annual NPR broadcasts. He’s attended many other summer music festivals in the US and Canada over the years including Ravinia, La Jolla SummerFest, Bravo!, the Caramoor, Bridgehampton, El Paso, Portland, Scotia and the Vancouver Chamber Music Festivals. In addition, he participated for five summers at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, as well as the Tanglewood Music Festival where he received the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. This performance marks Mr. Palmer's third performance at The Honest Brook Music Festival. British pianist Simon Mulligan celebrated his debut at the age of 19 at London's Barbicon Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He has performed with many of the world's finest orchestras including the BBC Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, Warsaw Sinfonia and Brno Philharmonic with Menuhin, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Halle Orchestra and Bournemouth Sinfonia. As a chamber musician Mr. Mulligan has collaborated with many notable artists including Joshua Bell and Lynn Harrell with whom he has performed on many of the world's premiere stages including New York's Carnegie Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, Hamburg's Musikhalle and Tokyo's Suntory Hall. He has studied at the Royal Academy of Music where he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal Academy in 2007 and was the recipient of a scholarship to the International Piano Academy on Italy's Lake Como where he studied with Charles Rosen, Alexis Weissenberg and Murray Perahia. Michael Cannon, piano Johana Arnold, soprano Sunday, August 3, 4:00 PM Michael Cannon has been called "a pianist of stunning technical accomplishment and deep musical understanding." From his early beginnings at the age of 4 his unusual talent was clearly recognized. Growing up in southern California he performed in many recitals and with orchestras. At the University of Southern California he studied with such notable pedagogues as Lillian Steuber and Gwendolyn Koldowsky. After receiving his Bachelor of Music degree at that institution, he continued his studies at The Juilliard School in New York City where he worked with Rosina Lhevinne, one of America’s most renowned piano pedagogues, and received a Master of Music degree. Mr. Cannon’s performing career has taken him all over the world. He has performed in such major European capitals as London, Amsterdam, The Hague, Berlin and Frankfurt as well as Shanghai and Tokyo in the Far East. He has given numerous performances both as recitalist and soloist with orchestra throughout the United States and Canada. He has performed in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and he appears regularly on the stage of Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. As a teacher Mr. Cannon has taught at Brigham Young University and in New York City, and he has given many master classes in New York City and throughout the country. Mr. Cannon will present a program of “originals” and "transcriptions," assisted by soprano Johana Arnold. In the first half, Ms Arnold will sing three Schubert songs including the Ave Maria, and Mr. Cannon will perform Liszt's transcriptions for piano solo of those songs. This will be followed by three Rachmaninoff songs sung by Ms Arnold and then performed as piano solos by Mr. Cannon in the transcriptions by Earl Wild. The second half will be piano transcriptions of orchestral works including Gershwin's An American in Paris. Johana Arnold, soprano, enjoys a versatile career in recital, chamber music, opera, oratorio and theater. A former member of the Ensemble for Early Music and Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, she has sung with Steve Reich and Musicians, the Phillip Glass Ensemble, Meredith Monk, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble and the Mark Morris Dance Ensemble. Venues include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and BAM in New York, and the Kennedy Center, National Cathedral, and Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. where Ms Arnold is a frequent guest artist with Hesperus and the Folger Consort. Oratorio experience spans works by Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Mozart, Rossini, Gounod, Rutter and Tom Johnson. Ms Arnold is an artist-in-residence at Hartwick College, and appears frequently with the Catskill Choral Society and the Catskill Symphony Orchestra. She is a veteran of Orpheus Theater and has appeared in several productions with the Franklin Stage Company. She has recorded for Musical Heritage, Nonesuch, Bard and Western Wind. Ms Arnold is currently involved in recitals of music of Charles Ives, and an up-coming jazz opera by composer Sasha Matson which will take place in Cooperstown, NY. The Shanghai Quartet Weigang Li, violin Yi-Wen Jiang, violin Honggang Li, viola Nicholas Tzavaras, cello Sunday, August 10, 4:00 PM Originally formed in Shanghai 25 years ago, The Shanghai Quartet is known for their passionate musicality, impressive technique, and multicultural innovations. The Quartet's elegant style of melding the delicacy of Eastern music with the emotional breadth of Western repertoire allows them to traverse the genres, from traditional Chinese folk music to cutting edge contemporary classical works. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Quartet will premiere commissions from the three continents that comprise their artistic and cultural worlds: Chen-Yi, Krzysztof Penderecki, and jazz pianist Dick Hyman. In addition to these 25th Anniversary Commissions, the Quartet's range of commissions and premieres includes works by Lowell Lieberman, Bright Sheng and Zhou Long, among others. They have performed on the world's most prominent concert stages and regularly tour the great music centers of Europe, North and South America and Asia. Recent seasons have included tours of Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The Quartet has built an extensive discography that now totals over 20 recordings on multiple labels. They have a distinguished teaching record serving as the Ensemble-in-Residence at Montclair State University as well as visiting professors at the Shanghai Conservatory and the Central Conservatory in China. This performance marks the Quartet's fifth performance at The Honest Brook Music Festival, and we are pleased to be able to celebrate the quartet's 25th anniversary during the festival's 20th anniversary season. For further information about the Shanghai Quartet visit their website - www.shanghaiquartet.com. Back to Top