USCB’s Festival Series Brings It Home
”It would be hard—very hard—to find better chamber music playing than at the cellist Edward Arron’s enterprising series.” This high praise appeared in a recent New Yorker magazine, and although the reference was to Mr. Arron’s chamber music series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it could just as easily be said of the USCB Festival Series that Mr. Arron brings to the Lowcountry five times each year.
The February concert is a great opportunity for you to discover just how accurate the New Yorker critic is and just how fortunate citizens of the Lowcountry are to have this music and these artists in our midst. Artistic Director Edward Arron is bringing prize-winning musicians to play music that will both delight and move even the least musical among us. It really is a program that can make chamber music what it was always intended to be, an intimate musical communication among artists and between artists and listeners. Clearly, being the listener is the easiest role to play.
Center stage will be Rieko Aizawa, who will dazzle us with her keyboard skills as she plays the delicate
and delightful Mozart Rondo in D Major on the nine-foot Steinway concert grand. Then she will be joined by the four other artists for the dramatic and powerful Shostakovich Piano Quintet and the passionate and romantic Dohnanyi Piano Quintet, Opus 1. These quintets will fill the hall with the intimate and yet incredibly forceful music that five highly trained and synthesized musicians can create. You will be amazed by how clearly you can hear the individual artists and how the unity of the whole will move you.
Prize-winning pianist Rieko Aizawa, known for her rare combination of technical mastery and musical sensitivity, returns to Beaufort after a busy fall of solo and orchestral performances that continued her brilliant career since debuting in the US at the age of fourteen. She has played throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. Highlights of recent seasons include acclaimed performances with the New Japan Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, the English Chamber Orchestra under Heinz Holliger, the Festival Strings Lucerne in Switzerland under Rudolf Baumgartner, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under Hugh Wolff, the Curtis Institute Orchestra with Peter Oundjian, the St. Louis Symphony under David Loebel and, most recently, a wonderfully received performance with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra.
Ms. Aizawa received her Masters Degree from the Juilliard School, where she worked with Peter Serkin. She is also a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was awarded the prestigious Rachmaninoff Prize and studied with Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski as his last pupil.
Violist Danielle Farina enjoys a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, teacher, and recording artist in both the classical and pop genres. As a soloist, Ms. Farina recently recorded Jon Bauman’s Viola Concerto with the Moravian Philharmonic, Andy Teirstein’s Viola Concerto with the Kiev Philharmonic and premiered Peter Schickele’s Viola Concerto with the Pasadena Symphony.
A member of the Lark and the Elements Quartets, she toured extensively in North America, Europe, and Scandinavia performing at some of the most prestigious venues and festivals including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Schleswig Holstein Festival, Tibor Varga Festival in Budapest and the International Istanbul Music Festival. While with the Lark, Ms. Farina recorded Aaron Kernis’ string quartets, music of Amy Beach, and music of Giovanni Sollima.
An active teacher, she is now on the faculty of the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division and The Eastern Music Festival. In addition to recording classical music, Ms. Farina also records for feature film soundtracks and well as pop albums. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, Ms. Farina has studied with Karen Tuttle, Joseph dePasqaule, Stephen Wyrczynski, and Byrnina Socolofsky.
Catherine Cho and Kyung Sun Lee are making their Lowcountry debuts.
Praised by The New York Times for her “sublime tone”, Catherine Cho has appeared worldwide as 
soloist in recital and with orchestras and has played with chamber ensembles at many venues.She has performed on the prestigious stages of Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Casals Hall in Tokyo as a member of the Casals Hall Ensemble, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd St. “Y”, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, and on Ravinia’s “Rising Stars” series in Chicago.
She has collaborated with pianist, Mia Chung, in performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in the U. S. and Asia. Ms. Cho was a participant in the Marlboro Music Festival from 1993 – 2001, and has taken part in eleven “Musicians from Marlboro” national tours. Ms. Cho has performed at festivals such as Chamber Music Northwest, Bridgehampton, Eastern Shore, Rockport, Santa Fe, and Skaneateles, and has performed with the Boston Chamber Players. She is a founding member of the chamber ensemble, La Fenice, and was a member of the Johannes String Quartet from 2003-6.
A winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ms. Cho won top prizes at the Montreal, Hanover, and Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competitions. She has served on the jury of international violin competitions and taught master classes worldwide. Ms. Cho is a member of the violin faculty at the Juilliard School.
Violinist Kyung Sun Lee captured sixth prize in the 1994 Tchaikowsky Competition, a bronze medal in the 1993 Queen Elizabeth Competition, first prizes of the Washington and D’Angelo International Competitions, and third prize in the Montreal International Competition, where she also won the Audience Favorite and the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work prizes. Subsequent to winning these awards she has enjoyed ever-increasing popularity as a performer.
For years a highly sought after teacher in the United States including Oberlin Conservatory and University of Houston, she has been an Associate Professor at Seoul National University since March 2009. She has taught two summers at the Aspen Music Festival, and has also been involved with the Texas Music Festival and Green Mountain Chamber Music Festivals, the Euroart Chamber Music Festival in Leipzig, as well as numerous festivals in Korea. Lee is a former member of the acclaimed KumHo/Asiana String Quartet of Korea, with whom she performed worldwide. In addition to her busy international performing career, in recent years she has been in demand as a judge of violin competitions. Lee has recorded two CDs with pianist/husband Brian Suits, “Salut d’Amour” with pianist HaeSun Paik on EMI, several recordings with KumHo/Asiana String Quartet, and “Spanish Heart” with German pianist Peter Schindler and guitarist Sung-Ho Chang on Good International. Her latest album, with cellist Tilmann Wick, was released in January of 2004 on Audite Records.
Kyung Sun Lee studied at Seoul National University, Peabody Conservatory and The Juilliard School. Her teachers have included Nam Yun Kim, Sylvia Rosenberg, Robert Mann, Dorothy Delay and Hyo Kang.
Anchoring the ensemble will be cellist, host and Artistic Director Edward Arron, who has led the Festival Series for the past two seasons with fine and varied programming and impassioned performances. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earlier that year, he performed Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos with Yo-Yo Ma and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the Opening Night Gala of the Caramoor International Festival. Since that time, Mr. Arron has appeared in recital, as a soloist with orchestra, and as a chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
The 2010-2011 season marks Mr. Arron’s eighth season as the artistic coordinator of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, a chamber ensemble created in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Museum’s prestigious Concerts and Lectures series.
He has performed numerous times at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Halls, New York’s Town Hall, and the 92nd Street Y, and is a frequent performer at Bargemusic. Past summer festival appearances include Ravinia, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, BRAVO! Colorado, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, Seattle Chamber Music, the Chamber Music Conference of the East, and Isaac Stern’s Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Arron has participated in the Silk Road Project and has toured and recorded as a member of MOSAIC, an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music.
Edward Arron began his studies on the cello at age seven in Cincinnati and, at age ten, moved to New York, where he continued his studies with Peter Wiley. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Harvey Shapiro.
For more complete bios of the artists and for a complete program, please go to http://www.uscb.edu/festivalseries.
For advance tickets, call Staci Breton at 843-208-8246, Monday – Friday 8:30 – 4:30. Tickets are also available at the door. Tickets start at $40. The concert begins at 5 on Sunday, February 20 at the USCB Performing Arts Center on Carteret Street.
