Kick off the Austin Chamber Music Festival with Philip Setzer, founding violinist of the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet. This chamber music legend is joined by fellow violinist Sandy Yamamoto and pianist Michelle Schumann for a program featuring Franz Schubert, Béla Bartók, Edvard Grieg, and Setzer’s own “Elegy.”
Program:
Violin Sonata in A Minor, D. 385 | Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Allegro moderato
Andante
Menuetto: Allegro
Allegro
44 Duos for Two Violins (Selections) | Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
INTERMISSION
Elegy | Philip Setzer (b. 1951)
Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in C Minor, Op. 45 | Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Allegro molto appassionato
Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza
Allegro animato
FEATURING:
Philip Setzer & Sandy Yamamoto, violins | Michelle Schumann, piano
Philip Setzer:
Violinist Philip Setzer is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet. He has appeared as soloist with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony, Memphis Symphony, New Mexico Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Anchorage Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Mr. Setzer currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook and Visiting Faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is also the Director of the Shouse Institute, a program for emerging artists of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. He plays a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in Brooklyn in 2011.
Sandy Yamamoto:
Violinist Sandy Yamamoto has dazzled audiences in concert performances around the globe for the past three decades as a soloist and as a member of the Miró Quartet. The New York Times describes her performance as playing with “explosive vigor and technical finesse.” With the Quartet, she performed on the major concert stages of the world, regularly concertizing in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. She was a recipient of the Naumburg Chamber Music and Cleveland Quartet Awards, won First Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition and was one of the first chamber musicians to be awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Currently, she is the Associate Professor of Practice in Violin Performance at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin and was the recipient of the 2016 Butler School of Music Teaching Excellence Award. In the summers, she teaches at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival.
Michelle Schumann:
Hailed for her “sensitive, flexible, and tempestuous dexterity” (Fanfare Magazine), pianist Michelle Schumann has built a reputation for evocative and moving performances. Since 2006, Michelle has served as Artistic Director of the Austin Chamber Music Center, where she “is fearlessly expanding our definition of chamber music” (Austin-American Statesman). Her brand of performance includes an enthusiastic interplay with audiences, bringing diverse music together under a narrative blanket. She was named “Best Classical Musician” in the Best of Austin 2019 Readers Poll by the Austin Chronicle. Schumann is Professor of Piano at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
Subject to availability, $12 Student Rush (with student ID), $30 General Admission, $45 Preferred, and $80 Premium tickets may be purchased at the box office on the evening of the concert. The box office will open at 6:30 PM that day.