Get together with people who love music after this Weill Recital Hall concert for a free drink and discussion with the evening's musicians.
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Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.
Lead funding has been provided by the Max H. Gluck Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, Hearst Foundations, The Kovner Foundation, Phyllis and Charles Rosenthal, and The Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.
Additional support has been provided by the Arnow Family Fund, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, E.H.A. Foundation, Barbara G. Fleischman, Leslie and Tom Maheras, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, Sarah Billinghurst Solomon and Howard Solomon, and Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Ensemble Connect is also supported, in part, by an endowment grant from The Kovner Foundation.
The Soggetto Reale, or “royal theme,” upon which Bach based his Musical Offering was written by no less than King Frederick the Great of Prussia, himself a notable flutist and composer. This magisterial and enigmatic work centers on a trio sonata that combines Frederick’s instrument with violin and continuo. The sonata demonstrates Bach’s contrapuntal mastery, as well as his affinity for the fashionable “sensitive style” of the mid-1700s.
Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir is well-known to New York audiences, having received the New York Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer Award in 2015, as well as this year’s Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center. Hrím—the Icelandic word for “hoarfrost”—is typical of her powerfully suggestive sonic landscapes. Airy and ethereal, the music resonates with “the sense of space ... the sound of the wind and the constantly changing weather” that Thorvaldsdottir considers key to her musical identity.
One of Dvořák’s most characteristic chamber works, the A-Major String Sextet exemplifies the imaginative evocations of the dumka and other Slavonic folk music that defined his early “nationalist” style. With its generous fund of melodies, exotic harmonies, and robust, multilayered rhythms, the sextet has been a surefire crowd-pleaser ever since it helped establish the Czech composer’s international reputation in the late 1870s.
Ensemble Connect is a two-year fellowship program for the finest young professional classical musicians in the United States that prepares them for careers combining musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. It offers them top-quality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and the opportunity to partner throughout the fellowship with a New York City public school.
As performers on the concert stage and in their work in schools and communities, musicians of Ensemble Connect have earned accolades from critics and audiences alike for the quality of their concerts, their fresh and open-minded approach to programming, and their ability to actively engage any audience.
Moving on to the next stage of their careers, Ensemble Connect’s 119 alumni are now making an impact on the national and international musical landscape in a wide variety of artistic and educational arenas. Continuing the strong bonds formed through the program, in 2011 the alumni formed the chamber music collective Decoda, which has been named an affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall.
Exemplary performers, dedicated teachers, and advocates for music throughout the community, the forward-looking musicians of Ensemble Connect are redefining what it means to be a musician in the 21st century.
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