Chesapeake Music’s YouthReach Program recently sponsored the Kaleidoscope String Quartet of New York City to provide classroom visits at Chapel District Elementary School in Cordova and White Marsh Elementary School in Trappe. Students in the second, third, fourth, and fifth grades were able to hear the Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect group perform and provide instruction on its orchestral instruments. This is the ensemble’s first visit to the Eastern Shore.

“This program has been in the schools virtually for two years and it’s good to be in person this year for the first time. The students were enthralled and focused as they listened to the music. There were great questions and participation,” comments Don Buxton, Executive Director of Chesapeake Music.

The four members of the Kaleidoscope String Quartet, Brian Hong (violin), Arlen Hlusko (cello), Ruben Rengel (violin), and Caeli Smith (viola) have been performing for a few years together as part of a two-year fellowship through Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect, a Post Graduate Leadership Program. They all share a love of music education and community engagement. The ensemble performs in public schools and health care facilities, as well as performs chamber music concerts.

“We are showing the public what a classical musician can be in the 21^st century. There is very little music for applied instruments in schools today, so we try and be accessible and friendly to get students excited about orchestral instruments. Anyone can talk about music but finding entry points for kids to connect to how music works is what we do,” comments Caeli Smith of Kaleidoscope String Quartet.

“What’s rewarding for us is the students seeing what we do together as a collaboration and that this can be a profession too.”

One of the activities the musicians did with the students was to connect the sounds of their music to activities that the children did to show the connections and emotions that can be felt from the music.

“It is so significant bringing live music back this year because it’s so difficult for students to get somewhere where they can experience this. By bringing it here to the students, it especially makes it easier for families,” comments Amanda Leffler, Music Teacher, at Chapel District Elementary School.

“The performances were phenomenal. Our second, third, fourth, and fifth-grade students absolutely loved them. I think it’s so important for music education for students to actually see and hear the music. Many students don’t get those opportunities outside of school, so I think it was so fortunate that Chesapeake Music could bring Kaleidoscope String Quartet to Chapel Elementary. We appreciate it so much,” concludes Kari Clow, Principal of Chapel District Elementary School.

The performances were supported by donors Robert and Ceci Nobel. Chesapeake Music has an extended history of educational outreach to the Mid-Shore community, including its prior Youth Reach and First Strings programs, Chamber Music Festival Family Concerts, discounted tickets to its chamber music, jazz and competition concerts, free open rehearsals for its annual two-week Chamber Music Festival and special video-recorded musical programs for students. Upcoming events in Chesapeake Music’s educational outreach program include local school visits in April 2023 by the Aero Saxophone Quartet, in connection with the quartet’s April 22, 2023 concert at the Ebenezer Theater. For more information about the concert and Chesapeake Music’s programs, you may visit the Chesapeake Music website at Chesapeakemusic.org.

About Chesapeake Music

Based in Easton, Maryland, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring renowned jazz and classical musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. They have been doing it for 37 years! To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

Chesapeake Music will present a free Family Concert at 6:00 p.m. on December 2, 2022, in the Ebenezer Theater at 17 South Washington Street in Easton, Maryland. Tickets are not required. The concert will feature The Kaleidoscope Quartet, performing music of American women composers Florence Price, Reena Esmail, and Gabriela Lena Frank. The interactive performance will encourage the audience to join the performers in exploring how composers reconcile and communicate their personal cultures and identities through their music.

The Family Concert, which is open to all members of the public, is part of a residency by the Kaleidoscope Quartet in the Talbot County Public School system sponsored by Chesapeake Music. The residency includes classroom visits and assemblies by the quartet at the Chapel District and White Marsh elementary schools.

The school visits by the quartet will provide students with a closer look at the quartet’s instruments, the collaborative music-making process and include excerpts from “An Andean Walkabout” by Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer of contemporary classical music, recently recognized by the Heinz Award for “weaving Latin American influences into classical constructs and breaking gender, disability and cultural barriers in classical music composition.”

The Kaleidoscope Quartet members, Brian Hong (violin), Ruben Rengel (violin), Caeli Smith (viola), and Arlen Hlusko (cello), all alumni of top musical conservatories across the country, met in New York City and trained together at Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect Program. Following their completion of that program, they formed and now perform as, the Kaleidoscope Quartet. When asked about the focus area of the quartet, violist Caeli Smith, “The players of the Kaleidoscope Quartet place a high value on personal, engaging musical concerts, and using music as a connector between audience and performer. They strive to offer connection and resonance to each listener, regardless of their experience with classical music.”

Chesapeake Music has an extended history of educational outreach to the Mid-Shore community, including its prior Youth Reach and First Strings programs, Chamber Music Festival Family Concerts, discounted tickets to its chamber music, jazz and competition concerts, free open rehearsals for its annual two-week Chamber Music Festival and special video-recorded musical programs for students. Upcoming events in Chesapeake Music’s educational outreach program include local school visits in April 2023 by the Aero Saxophone Quartet, in connection with the quartet’s April 22, 2023 concert at the Ebenezer Theater.

For more information about the concert and Chesapeake Music’s programs, you may visit the Chesapeake Music website at Chesapeakemusic.org.

About Chesapeake Music

Based in Easton, Maryland, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring renowned jazz and classical musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. They have been doing it for 37 years! To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

The renowned Calidore String Quartet – gold prize winner at the 2012 International Chamber Music Competition – returns to Easton for a concert on Saturday evening, October 22nd. This Chesapeake Music Interlude Concert will take place at the Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington Street, at 7:30 p.m.

Now based in New York City, the Calidore String Quartet – Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violins; Jeremy Berry, viola; and Estelle Choi, cello – first came together in 2010 at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. In the short span of just over a decade, the Quartet’s performances have consistently garnered praise and respect. A New York Times review cited the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.” The Los Angeles Times described the Quartet as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching for,” and praised its balance of “intellect and expression.” A Washington Post review stated that “Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one.”

In addition to the Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition, the Calidore String Quartet has won grand prizes in virtually all major US and international chamber music competitions, including the 2012 ARD Munich String Quartet Competition and the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, which awarded the Quartet the $100,000 Grand Prize. In 2018, the Quartet received the highly prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

The Quartet’s members are passionate supporters of music education, especially the mentoring and educating of young musicians, students, and audiences. In 2021, the Quartet joined the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music, serving as directors of the Graduate String Quartet Residency program. There the Quartet selected the emerging Abeo Quartet as the inaugural two-year Graduate String Quartet Assistantship recipient. Chesapeake Music will sponsor the Abeo Quartet – the silver prize winner at the 2022 International Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition – in a concert on October 7, 2023.

The Calidore’s program on October 22 will feature three exciting and thoughtful string quartets by Beethoven (Op. 18, no. 6), Smetana (No. 1 “From My Life”), and Shostakovich (No. 8, Op. 110, “To the Memory of the Victims of Fascism and War”). Smetana’s lush and evocative string quartet, “From My Life” (1876), was written as an intimate confession – a tonal biography of his life, his loves, and his response to his deafness. Similarly, Beethoven’s Op.18 quartets (1798–1800), were written at the time when Beethoven was first experiencing the frustration of hearing loss. Together with Shostakovich’s explosive String Quartet No. 8, written in three days in 1960 as a final epitaph possibly before a planned suicide, these intimate musical self-portraits detail the inner lives of the composers and promise a deeply moving concert.

For more information and to purchase a ticket go to chesapeakemusic.org.

About Chesapeake Music

Based in Easton, Maryland, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring renowned jazz and classical musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. They have been doing it for 37 years! To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

Chesapeake Music presents the Loston Harris Trio on Saturday, August 13 at 8 p.m. in the Ebenezer Theater in downtown Easton, Maryland.

Harris comes to Chesapeake Music from the legendary Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle in Manhattan, New York, where he has been delighting audiences with his smooth, soulful voice and piano style. It has been his musical home for nearly two decades and the host to many cabaret and jazz greats like Bobby Short, Eartha Kitt, Elaine Stritch, John Pizzarelli and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

“The innate and dazzling talent of Loston is a beacon of quality in a cacophonous world. He is contemporary, stylish, joyful, playful, powerful, soulful and an immensely satisfying musician. Simply put, his music is a combination of humanity and genius,” said Michael Feinstein, the ambassador of The Great American Songbook.

Rounding out the trio with Harris are Mike Lee on tenor saxophone and Gianluca Renzi on bass. Together, they bring a lively approach to the American Classics.

Harris blends traditional jazz riffs, gospel and blues with his own unique stylings. A protégé of Ellis Marsalis, father of the famed Marsalis jazz family, Harris is reminiscent of another Marsalis protégé – Harry Connick, Jr.  Harris was a percussionist during his early studies, switching to piano on the advice of Marsalis.

“We are excited to bring the talented Loston Harris Trio to the Ebenezer Theater,” said Don Buxton, Executive Director of Chesapeake Music. “This continues our tradition of presenting great jazz artists to local audiences – which we’ve been doing for over a decade.”

Harris has performed with the prestigious Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra under the direction of multiple Grammy winner, Wynton Marsalis and appeared on the PBS special “Portraits in Blue” with fellow pianist and Grammy nominee, Marcus Roberts. His residency at The Carlyle has made him much in demand at celebrity events. Celebrities such as George Clooney, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Cruise, Michael Feinstein, and Sir Paul McCartney have all curated Loston’s talents. In addition, he’s received accolades from A-List celebrities such as Liza Minnelli, Clint Eastwood, Lenny Kravitz, Denzel Washington and Alicia Keys.

About Chesapeake Music

Based in Easton, Maryland, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring renowned jazz and classical musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire and develop tomorrow’s. They’ve been doing it for 35 years! To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

This year’s Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival will conclude on June 18^th with an exciting new work: John Harbison’s Six American Painters. According to Harbison, each of the movements of this 2000 composition was begun as a musical description of six paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, as the work developed, it seemed better to name the movements for the painters rather than for the specific paintings:

I wanted to evoke the artists’ after-images, rather than any of the individual paintings. When you look at a picture, you take away with you a general impression, a mood or color, that dominates the details; in music, on the other hand, one is apt to remember the details, a tune or a harmony. I wanted these movements to be a perceivable whole, an act of seeing.

The six painters (and the six movements) are: I. George Caleb Bingham; II. Thomas Eakins; III. Martin Johnson Heade; IV. Winslow Homer; V. Hans Hoffman; and VI. Richard Diebenkorn.

The composition was originally scored for a flute quartet and was premiered in Cincinnati in 2002. However, his long-time student and friend, oboist Peggy Pearson, asked him to re-score the flute part for oboe, which he did in 2003. Harbison has known Pearson since she was a teenager and has written a half-dozen or so pieces for her over the years. For the oboe version, he adapted some of the movements and scrapped the Homer movement altogether and replaced it with one based on a painting by the artist George Inness.

According to violinist Jennifer Elowitch, Founder and Artistic Director Emerita of the Portland Chamber Music Festival, Six American Painters “is one of those pieces that audiences can really enjoy on a first hearing. I like the piece’s simplicity, actually. There is a lot of rhythmic unison, so [the musicians] play together much of the time, and it gives the piece a lot of openness and clarity.”

John Harbison won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1989. The Metropolitan Opera commissioned him to write three operas, including The Great Gatsby in 1999. He is on the music faculty at MIT.

Peggy Pearson, the recipient of many prestigious awards, is a member of the Bach Aria Group, solo oboist with the Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, and principal oboist with the Boston Philharmonic. She has toured internationally and recorded extensively. She has appeared with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Music from Marlboro. She is currently on the faculties at Boston Conservatory and MIT. Peggy also is a frequent and much-admired participant in the annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festivals.

For further details on the 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival and to purchase tickets, visit https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

Critically acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Jennifer Johnson Cano, will be an exciting newcomer at the 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival (June 10-18). Cano will open each of the first week’s three concerts, performing arias from Bach cantatas to the accompaniment of the Festival’s instrumentalists. In addition, she will perform works by Brahms, Chausson, and Ravel. Cano has performed in over 100 productions at The Metropolitan Opera and has been lauded as a “consummate actress” (The Wall Street Journal). She also is acclaimed for her song recitals. The New York Times enthused over her 2016 recital at the Morgan Library, stating:

Dramatic intelligence and imagination suffused every note of Ms. Johnson Cano’s performance. Endowed with an attention-grabbing dark mezzo, its depths bracing like strong coffee, she seems to thrive in the role of a storyteller.

The Festival’s artistic directors, cellist Marcy Rosen and violinist Catherine Cho, were especially pleased to engage Jennifer Johnson Cano in order to showcase the vocal component of the chamber music repertoire. The powerful blending of voice and instruments will be highlighted in the Bach cantatas, especially the intertwining of Cano’s rich mezzo with Peggy Pearson’s oboe in Bach’s expressive melodies. And in Ravel’s unabashedly emotional Chansons madécasses, scored for voice, piano, flute, and cello, Cano’s singing becomes the principal instrument in a quartet of independent voices.

Jennifer Johnson Cano performs each season with major orchestras and conductors. She has toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and performed with the New York Philharmonic. In February, she sang in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and in the New York premiere of Marc Neikrug’s chamber opera, A Song by Mahler, presented by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. This March, along with Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara, she starred in Kevin Puts’ The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Johnson Cano is a native of St. Louis. She won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition and made her Met debut in the 2009-10 season. Among her honors is taking First Prize in the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions.

“The beautiful thing about what I do for a living is I get to crawl around in the skin of people I don’t initially see myself in,” Cano says. “I get to explore a world and a way of thinking which is very different from my own. That’s the joy and the challenge of being an actor, trying to not hide yourself but to immerse yourself in another human being’s experience.”

Program selections are subject to change. For further details on the 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival and to purchase tickets, visit https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

The 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival will be held at the Ebenezer Theater (17 S. Washington St., Easton, MD) from June 10^th to June 18^th. The Festival’s six concerts will feature 18 performances, each conceived around “artful dialogues” among the musicians and composers over the centuries. As Chesapeake Music Executive Director Don Buxton stated, “Given the stresses of the ongoing pandemic, the Festival’s program hopes to offer the calm, beauty, and humanity that especially chamber music can communicate between musicians and audiences.”

Long-time Festival participants will be back – including Festival Artistic Directors, cellist Marcy Rosen, and violinist Catherine Cho, as well as clarinetist J. Lawrie Bloom, pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, oboist Peggy Pearson, and violinist/violist brothers Todd and Daniel Phillips. Completing the roster will be cellist Peter Stumpf, violinist Carmit Zori, violinist Jennifer Liu, and violist Maiya Papach. Of special note is the appearance of Metropolitan Opera star, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, who will open the first week’s three concerts performing arias from Johann Sebastian Bach cantatas. Cano will also present two songs by Johannes Brahms (for voice, viola, and piano), Ernest Chausson’s poignant Chanson Perpétuelle, and Maurice Ravel’s three exotic Chansons madécasses (“Songs of Madagascar”).

As is customary, the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival program will feature several well-loved chamber ensemble pieces, including a trio for flute, cello, and piano by Franz Joseph Haydn, four works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a string quintet by Johannes Brahms, and a string sextet by Antonín Dvořák. Several early modern tonal pieces are on the program. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Amy Beach, two outstanding American composers, are represented with a clarinet quintet and a piano quintet respectively. The French composer Édouard Destenay’s extremely virtuosic trio for oboe, clarinet, and piano will also be featured. A brilliant contemporary work, John Harbison’s Six American Painters, will help bring the Festival to a dazzling conclusion. Based on six paintings that Harbison viewed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the work was originally written for flute and strings. Harbison recast the work for oboe and strings for his long-time student and friend, oboist Peggy Pearson,

As in past years, the winners of the 10^th International Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition for Young Professionals will perform on June 17^th.

Program selections are subject to change. For further details on the 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival and to purchase tickets, visit https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival Schedule – Ebenezer Theater, Easton, MD

June 10, 7:30 p.m.    Opening Extravaganza!             

June 11, 7:30 p.m.    From Bach to Brahms                 

June 12, 5:30 p.m.    Artful Dialogues

June 16, 5:30 p.m.    Mozart and More

June 17, 7:30 p.m.    Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition Winners

June 18, 7:30 p.m.    Festival Finale

June 8 and 15, 10 a.m.   Free! Open Rehearsals     

Chesapeake Music has announced the winners of the 10th Biennial Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition for Young Professionals held on April 2 at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton, Maryland. The five finalists competing in the Competition were the Abeo Quartet from the University of Delaware, the Aero Quartet from Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Elless Quartet from the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Terra String Quartet from New York City, and Trio Colores from Zurich, Switzerland. Trio Colores was awarded the Lerman Gold ($10,000) Prize and the Audience Choice Award. Abeo Quartet won the Silver ($5,000) Prize.

This year’s finalists came not only from the U.S. but also from Austria and Switzerland and have studied and prepared at distinguished schools and conservatories. The average age of an ensemble must be under 31, and some include members as young as 21.  The applicants represented a wide range of instrumental combinations: winds, strings, brass, and mixed instruments, including percussion.

Speaking to the five finalists, Marcy Rosen, one of Chesapeake Music’s artistic directors who was also a preliminary judge, said, “The level of playing we heard today was really unbelievable. The sensitivity and artistry you all showed were magnificent.”

Trio Colores, which hails from both Austria and Switzerland, connects a longstanding passion for percussion with a visible joy in performing music while sharing the versatility of percussion instruments.  The musicians’ knowledge of classical and contemporary music, combined with their interest in challenging the traditional boundaries of modern music, results in creative, ambitious, and uniquely arranged concert programs.

The trio mesmerized the audience with a range of percussive instruments, including playing “Music de Table,” using hand percussion on wooden tablets, as well complex arrangements for the marimbas – what the group called “big xylophones.” Its member Fabian Ziegler commented, “We want to change this mindset from the people that percussion is just a show instrument. We want to show that we can play a recital, like a piano recital.”

Trio member Luca Stafffelbach, who arranges many of the trio’s compositions, added, “As percussionists, we don’t have the repertoire from all the great composers centuries ago like pianists or violinists have. So, we try to create our repertoire with arrangements of music that we like, which is actually not composed for our instruments, but we try to find a way that this music works.”

The Abeo Quartet is currently the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware under the tutelage of the Calidore String Quartet. Formed at The Juilliard School in 2018, the quartet was selected as a finalist in the 2021 Young Concert Artists International Competition, and previous accolades include the silver medal winner of the 2019 Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, among others. The ensemble is compelled to integrate their music with the societal issues that grip humanity today while transmitting their love for chamber music to a wide variety of audiences both inside and outside of the concert hall.

Abeo Quartet member Brian Gadlow, a cellist, stated, “The competition pulled out all the stops to just make sure we were feeling good throughout our time here. We were able to spend time getting acquainted with like the community and felt so welcomed by our host family – it’s been awesome.”

“The conversations that we have had with other musicians are also really important to us and our development. It influences our choices going forward and how we view music. It’s been a really wonderful experience.”

Rebecca Benjamin, a quartet member and violinist, added, “The energy of the audience was really special too. You don’t find that everywhere.”

James Kang, a violist, commented, “We get to play music of people that are living and writing today and that’s really special to us. At the end of the day, it’s important to connect with people and connect with the world and to spread the message of love and joy as our name Abeo suggests.”

The other finalists, the Aero Quartet, the Elless Quartet, and the Terra String Quartet commented that in addition to the hospitality of their Eastern Shore hosts, the in-depth feedback from the judges and the opportunity to interact with their colleagues from around the world were extremely valuable and some of the strengths of the competition overall.

Geirthruder Gudmundsdottir, a cellist with Terra String Quartet, concluded, “As young people, especially young people coming out of the pandemic, we’ve been craving social time, playing music with our friends and getting to know people. Spending time with people and getting to know music through other people – that’s neat.”

The two judging panels for the preliminary and final competitions were chaired by Chesapeake Music’s artistic directors, Marcy Rosen and Catherine Cho. Preliminary judges include Marcy Rosen (head), Tara Helen O’Connor, Daniel Phillips, and Ieva Jokubaviciute. Finalist judges include Catherine Cho (head), Diane Walsh, and Peggy Pearson.

The ensembles performed concerts the following day on April 3 at Christ Church in Cambridge, St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Easton, Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, and at a private concert given by a competition benefactor.

The Trio Colores will perform again at the 2022 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival on June 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton. Visit the website www.chesapeakemusic.org  for further information.

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition is underwritten by Talbot Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and private benefactors.

The 10th Biennial Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition for Young Professionals will be held live on April 2, 2022, at 1 p.m. at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton, Maryland and live-streamed all day. This exciting daylong celebration of chamber music will feature five of the most distinguished young ensembles competing for the Lerman Gold ($10,000) and Silver ($5,000) prizes.

This year’s finalists come not only from the U.S. but also from Austria and Switzerland and have studied and prepared at distinguished schools and conservatories. The average age of an ensemble must be under 31, and some include members as young as 21.  The applicants represent a wide range of instrumental combinations: winds, strings, brass, and mixed instruments, including percussion. The preliminary judging panel reported this to be a particularly talented group of young musicians. The five finalists are the Abeo Quartet from the University of Delaware, the Aero Quartet from Bloomington, Indiana, the Elless Quartet from the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Terra String Quartet from New York City, and Trio Colores from Zurich, Switzerland.

The Abeo Quartet is currently the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware under the tutelage of the Calidore String Quartet. Formed at The Juilliard School in 2018, they have studied with members of the Alban Berg, Ebene, Takács, Artemis, Miro, Emerson, and Brentano Quartets. Most recently, the Abeo Quartet was selected as a finalist in the 2021 Young Concert Artists International Competition, and previous accolades include the silver medal winner of the 2019 Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, among others. Abeo means “to bring joy” which is the aim of the quartet as they perform and engage with audiences across the country. The Abeo Quartet is compelled to integrate their music with the societal issues that grip humanity today while transmitting their love for chamber music to a wide variety of audiences both inside and outside of the concert hall.

The Aero Quartet has been praised by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Grammy-winning composer Augusta Read Thomas for their “nuanced, colorful, and artfully sculpted” chamber music interpretations for the saxophone. The quartet, from Bloomington, Indiana, has won numerous awards in chamber music competitions, including First Prizes at the New Orleans Chamber Festival, Music Teachers National Association, and Briggs Chamber Music Competitions. Most notably, Aero won the Gold Medal in the Senior Wind Division of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In the fall of 2021, Aero completed a residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, New Hampshire before embarking on a Midwest performance and educational outreach tour. The quartet conducted clinics for hundreds of middle and high school students in multiple states.

The Elless Quartet was formed in 2019 at the Cleveland Institute of Music and is comprised of violinists Emera Gurath and Megan Lin, violist Marcus Stevenson, and cellist Cecelia Swanson. They have performed in masterclasses given by members of the Emerson, Orion, Dover, and Miami String Quartets. In 2021, the ensemble was selected by members of Alban Berg and Artemis quartets and Director André Roy to participate at the prestigious McGill International String Quartet Academy (MISQA). The quartet was also the Grand Prize winner of the 7th Annual Coltman Chamber Music Competition. In addition, the members of the ensemble have participated in renowned music festivals such as the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Meadowmount School of Music, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and Saint Paul Chamber Music Institute.

The Terra String Quartet is a vibrant young ensemble based in New York City. Hailing from five continents, these four musicians share a mission to perform chamber music with intellectual and emotional vitality. The quartet has performed in such venues as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. They have also been featured on WQXR’s Midday Masterpieces. They have attended festivals including Four Seasons Chamber Music’s Winter Workshop and have collaborated with artists such as Robert McDonald, Natasha Brofsky, Catherine Cho, and the Cremona Quartet. The Terra String Quartet is represented by Le Dimore del Quartetto in Italy, Si-Yo Music Foundation in NJ/NY and is the first quartet to have been chosen to pursue the Four Seasons Chamber Music String Quartet Fellowship at East Carolina University.

Trio Colores hails from both Austria and Switzerland. Its members, Matthias Kessler, Luca Stafffelbach, and Fabian Ziegler, connect a longstanding passion for percussion with a visible joy in performing music.  Playing as an ensemble since 2017, the repertoire of the trio spreads over a large spectrum of 20th-century percussion masterpieces by Iannis Xenakis, Steve Reich, and John Cage alongside works by living composers such as Ivan Trevino,  Emmanuel Séjourné, and Theirry de Mey.  Their knowledge of classical and contemporary music, combined with their interest in challenging the traditional boundaries of modern music, results in creative, ambitious, and uniquely arranged concert programs.  The Trio shares with audiences both the versatility of percussion instruments and the fascinating always growing new timbres they provide.

It takes a dedicated and experienced group of musicians to make great decisions about young talent and the Competition’s two panels are no exception.  The preliminary judges, responsible for selecting the finalists, conduct blind evaluations based only on an audio performance included in the application. The finalist judges watch the live performance on April 2 and select the prize winners at the end of the evening.  Over the past 20 years, they have proven their expertise as many of the winners and finalists have gone on to illustrious careers.

The two judging panels are chaired by Chesapeake Music’s artistic directors, Marcy Rosen and Catherine Cho. Preliminary judges include Marcy Rosen (head), Tara Helen O’Connor, Daniel Phillips, and Ieva Jokubaviciute. Finalist judges include Catherine Cho (head), Diane Walsh, and Peggy Pearson.

The Competition will begin at 1 p.m. on April 2 and last all day with prizes announced following the final performance before 9:00 pm.  There will be Sunday afternoon concerts on April 3 by the ensembles at the following locations: Aero Quartet (4 p.m. – Christ Church, Cambridge), Trio Colores (2 p.m. – St. Marks United Methodist Church, Easton), Elless Quartet (2 p.m. – Temple B’nai Israel, Easton), Terra String Quartet (3 p.m. – Holy Trinity, Oxford), and Abeo Quartet (private concert given by Competition Benefactor).

Visit the website chesapeakemusic.org/competition for further information. The Competition is a program of Chesapeake Music. Tickets for this all-day extravaganza are available online. The cost is $20 for the entire day. Children are admitted free but must obtain a ticket at no charge. For those who cannot attend, live streaming will be available at $5 per household. The recording will be available both the day of the performance and for the week following. For further information about attending the Competition events, visit chesapeakemusic.org/competition or call 410-819-0380.

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition is underwritten by the Talbot County Arts Council, the Maryland State Arts Council, and private benefactors.

Chesapeake Music’s Rising Stars winter concert will present two outstanding young classical musicians in performance at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton, Maryland (17 S. Washington St.) on February 13th at 2 p.m. Pianist Elliot Wuu and cellist Sterling Elliott will perform music by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky. The concert will also be streamed for a week, following the live performance.

In this exciting concert, Elliot Wuu will open with one of Robert Schumann’s major solo piano works: “Kinderszenen“ (Scenes from Childhood), which depicts both the happiness and sadness of youth in 13 musical snapshots. Next up will be Franz Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy (Fantasie in C Major), long considered Schubert’s most technically demanding solo piano work.

In the second half of the program, Sterling Elliott will join forces with Elliot Wuu, and this will mark their first public duo collaboration. They will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s late “Cello Sonata No. 4,” an emotionally expressive work that also demands technical prowess of both players. Following will be an arrangement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous “dante cantabile.”

Concluding the concert, Elliot and Sterling will play an arrangement of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Havanaise in E Major,” a show-stopper with its fiery, virtuosic outer sections and dreamy, lyrical central melody for the cello.

Although young – both artists are 22 – Elliot and Sterling are widely lauded as exceptional musicians. The Republic, in reviewing Wuu’s 2017 performance of Saint-Saens’ G minor piano concerto, wrote, “Wuu is an unbelievable talent who will undoubtedly stun audiences all over the world with his powerful musical gifts.” And the Tribune Star reviewed his 2018 concert with the Terre Haute Symphony, stating, “The remarkable young pianist commands a keyboard with the power, speed and finesse of artists twice his age.”

The New York Concert Review praised Sterling’s 2018 solo recital at Carnegie Hall, writing: “The very fine young cellist Sterling Elliott played with perfect intonation, style, and total involvement.” And Victor Carr, Jr. of Classics Today wrote of an early performance, “Elliott’s impeccable musicianship, as well as his discernible love for the music, won over the audience, which responded with sustained standing applause.”

Both of these young artists received baccalaureate degrees from The Juilliard School, and both are presently pursuing master’s degrees at Juilliard, each having been awarded Kovner Fellowships there. Despite the rigor of their classes, they have been able to win prestigious competitions and awards and embark on concertizing careers at major venues in the U.S. and abroad.

Elliot Wuu won the 2021 Salon de Virtuosi Prior Family Foundation Career Grant and was named a Young Steinway Artist as well as a Gilmore Young Artist, two of the most prestigious awards given to young pianists. Sterling Elliott, who is now represented by Colbert Artists Management, received both an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant in 2021. In 2019, he was the first recipient of The National Arts Club’s Herman and Mary Neuman Music Scholarship Award as well as the first prize winner of the senior division of the National Sphinx Competition, becoming the youngest winner in the Competition’s history.

Despite their numerous competition successes, awards, and concert engagements, both musicians feel strongly that completing their educations remains paramount. At Juilliard, Eliot continues to study with Robert McDonald – a pianist well-known to Chesapeake Music audiences at the annual Chamber Music Festivals – and Sterling is studying with Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim.

Sterling summed up their shared goal to keep education a top priority, saying, “I saw the need to finish my degree and felt the need to go back for my master’s. There’s no way I could have stopped my education at this point. I could continue performing as I have been, but I would feel artistically incomplete to stop my learning. There’s so much to learn now, and I have to continue.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, please see www.chesapeakemusic.org.