Apple Hill String Quartet with Sally Pinkas

November 30th @ 6:30 PM at WCCMA at Union Church

Join us in welcoming back the Apple Hill String Quartet with pianist and friend Sally Pinkas. This concert will benefit the WCCMA, and is by donation. 

PROGRAM

Philip Glass String Quartet No. 3 “Mishima

Arika Morningstar Silent Rain

Frank Bridge Piano Quintet in d minor, H.49

APPLE HILL STRING QUARTET

Called “dashing and extraordinary” by The Strad Magazine, the Apple Hill String Quartet are the Artistic Directors and resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, winner of the CMAcclaim award from Chamber Music America. The Quartet serves as the Music Directors for Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop in Nelson, New Hampshire, cultivating connection and understanding among people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, playing levels, and ages through music performance and education centered around the values of acceptance, inclusivity, creative expression, and encouragement.

The Quartet’s concert programs reflect the diversity of Apple Hill: pieces amplifying new voices, views, and backgrounds in classical music; compositions from places representing the Quartet’s global travels and the summer workshop community; and music from the historic canon and new commissions, especially from renowned alumni.

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SALLY PINKAS

Following her London debut at Wigmore Hall, Israeli-born pianist Sally Pinkas has garnered universal praise as an eloquent and ardent performer. Among highlights are appearances with the Boston Pops, the Aspen Philharmonia and New York’s Jupiter Symphony, and at the festivals of Marlboro, Rockport (USA), Pontlevoy (France), Havana (Cuba) and HCMC Conservatory (Vietnam). A first-ever performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in Bandung (Indonesia’s 2nd largest city), premieres of George Rochberg’s monumental Circles of Fire for two pianos in Russia, Israel and Nigeria, and a revival of rarely-heard 19th-century Filipino Salon Music in its birth city Manila, all exemplify Pinkas’ wide-ranging repertoire. Through her travel she shares it generously with enthusiastic audiences and young pianists.

Equally at home in a recording studio, Sally’s discography features works by Mozart, Schumann, Fauré, Debussy, Gaubert, Martinů, Rochberg, Shapiro, Pinkham and Wolff, released on the MSR, Centaur, Naxos, Toccata Classics and Mode labels. Her most recent CD release of Sonatas by Shostakovich and Bridge was hailed as “…A mandatory purchase for all pianophiles: two major works, in performances of utter power… ideal melding of strength and emotional pliancy…” by Fanfare Magazine. A CD featuring Piano Quintets by Miguel del Aguila (with Cuarteto Latinoamericano) is forthcoming on Urtext Digital Classics.

Pinkas tours regularly as member of Ensemble Schumann and the Hirsch-Pinkas Duo (with her husband pianist Evan Hirsch), and collaborates frequently with the Adaskin String Trio, the Apple Hill String Quartet and Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Recent travel took her to Madrid and Barcelona, where she presented solo recitals, and to Rio de Janeiro, where the Hirsch-Pinkas Duo made its Brazil debut in the famed Cecília Meireles Hall. She will be returning to China with Ensemble Schumann in 2023.

Pinkas holds performance degrees from Indiana University and the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Ph.D. in Composition from Brandeis University. Her principal teachers were Russell Sherman, George Sebok, Luise Vosgerchian and Genia Bar-Niv (piano), Sergiu Natra (composition), and Robert Koff (chamber music). Pianist-in-residence at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College, she is Professor of Music at Dartmouth’s Music Department.

Community singing for the holidays

WCCMA’s community singing group will begin rehearsing holiday and Christmas tunes soon. If you’d like to join for the holidays or beyond just reach out [email protected]. All voice types are welcome. The group is currently primarily adults, but students are also welcome. Reach out with questions about student participation.

Did you miss previous concerts? Watch them on our YouTube Channel!

Stay warm, stay creative, and see you at our next event!

Taylor Ho Bynum / Tomas Fujiwara Duo

November 20th, 2023 @ 7:00 PM at WCCMA at Union Church

Musician & educator Taylor Ho Bynum will lead open sessions dedicated to introducing listeners to jazz and other forms of improvised music.

Over the past thirty years, over twenty-five albums and hundreds of gigs in dozens of different bands, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum have developed one of the deeper levels of creative communication in the contemporary music scene – in groups under Fujiwara’s leadership like Triple Double and Shizuko, ensembles led by Bynum including his Sextet, 9-tette, and PlusTet big band, and collective projects like Illegal Crowns (with Mary Halvorson and Benoit Delbecq) and the Thirteenth Assembly (with Halvorson and Jessica Pavone). Throughout this history, they’ve maintained their duo, which has released four albums: “True Events” (2007), “Stepwise” (2010), “Through Foundation” (2014), and “Notice” (2022). Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming,” (Point of Departure) Brooklyn-based Tomas Fujiwara is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation. He leads the bands Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio, and Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up; is a member of the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); has a collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum; and engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Matana Roberts, Taylor Ho Bynum, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko.” His most recent work is “Dream Up,” a suite for percussion quartet, commissioned by NYSCA and Roulette Intermedium. “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.” (New York Times)

More information

Apple Hill String Quartet with Sally Pinkas

November 30th @ 6:30 PM at WCCMA at Union Church

Called “dashing and extraordinary” by The Strad Magazine, the Apple Hill String Quartet are the Artistic Directors and resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, winner of the CMAcclaim award from Chamber Music America. The Quartet serves as the Music Directors for Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop in Nelson, New Hampshire, cultivating connection and understanding among people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, playing levels, and ages through music performance and education centered around the values of acceptance, inclusivity, creative expression, and encouragement.

The Quartet’s concert programs reflect the diversity of Apple Hill: pieces amplifying new voices, views, and backgrounds in classical music; compositions from places representing the Quartet’s global travels and the summer workshop community; and music from the historic canon and new commissions, especially from renowned alumni.

Community singing for the holidays

WCCMA’s community singing group will begin rehearsing holiday and Christmas tunes soon. If you’d like to join for the holidays or beyond just reach out [email protected]. All voice types are welcome. The group is currently primarily adults, but students are also welcome. Reach out with questions about student participation.

Missed previous concerts? Watch them on our YouTube Channel!

Here’s the video from our last concert, featuring the Dinuk Wijeratne Trio!

Stay warm, stay creative, and see you at our next event!