July 10
Lake Placid Center for the Arts
Raul Juarena, Bandoneon
Raul Jaurena, master of the Tango, is among today’s most prominent bandoneon players. His music plays a very personal tribute to the influences of his native South America and his adopted hometown of New York. It combines the traditional roots of the tango and the style of the “Tango Nuevo” influenced by Astor Piazzolla.
The bandoneon has influenced Jaurena’s life right from the cradle. He was raised in Uruguay and his father taught him how to play the bandoneon - at the age of eight he already joined a tango orchestra. The fascination for this highly emotional music grabbed him and has not let go of him ever since. As a member of and adaptor for various renowed tango-ensembles in the nineteensixties and seventies in Uruguay, Argentina ,Brasil, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, Raul Jaurena lays the tracks for his career. A performance together with Astor Piazzolla at the Montreal Jazz Festival turns out be guiding for his musical development. The conservation of the musical spirit of Astor Piazzolla becomes his personal vocation: Jaurena’s tango interpretations which are enriched by influences of jazz, his own arrangements and spontaneous improvisations fascinate a new generation of listeners and dancers.
Besides, his activities remain as many-faceted as the artist himself. His arrangements and his skills as a composer and a solo player make him equally popular both in the USA and in Europe. The ballet suite he composes in 1995 for the Irene Hultman Dance Company debuts in New York and is shortly after awarded the “Bessie”. During the same year he was invited to the White House and received a Grammy nomination for his CD Tango Bar. In 2007 he won a LATIN GRAMMY for best Tango Album "Te amo Tango".
Over the years he has taking charge of the musical direction of many other stage projects and among other things he plays guest performances at the Thalia Spanish Theatre in New York. He has played with Cuban Jazz saxophone player Paquito D'Rivera, Yo Yo Ma, Giora Feidman, Tango Five and others. As a soloist he plays with prominent ensembles and orchestras throughout Europe and he has perform regularly a series of programs including Klezmer and Tango Music. He has performed at different Universities and Schools with Tango Music Symposium in Hannover, Halle Kassel, Hamburg, Lubeck, Munter, Lingen, Landshut, Muhigorf, Heidelberg, Bonn, Kiel, Celle, Wurzburg, and Bremen. He was invited as a special guest to the International Accordeon Festival in San Antonio, Texas and his show Tango & Tango had great success at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.
He toured through Europe with TANGO FIVE and singer Marga Mitchell with the program AMANDO A BUENOS AIRES in 2001. He has been invited to at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York with Russian violinist Nina Bellina, the Cleveland Museum of Art en World Music and Dance Series, the Orchestra Concertante of Chicago conducted by Hilel Kagan, and at the Fiedrichsbau Theatre in Stuttgart, Germany along with TANGO FIVE and Marga Mitchell.
In 2003 he does a series of concerts with the Pan American Symphony Orquesta Opera Maria De Buenos Aires, Sudwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz with Marga Mitchell and Tango Five, The North/South Chamber Orchestra at the Merkin Hall (New York) Conductor Max Lifchitz, and Tango Mundo at Montclair State University. He performs a series of concerts with Giora Feidman he tours (Boblingen, Balingen, Russelsheim Theatre, Wurzburg, Ludwigsburg, Bonn, Tuttlinge, Stadthalle, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany) During the same year he performs with The Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center along with conductor Dino Anagnost, and also performs with LET'S TANGO at East Carolina University. In Israel he performs with the Israel Kibbutz Orchestra, and in Finland at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. He was presented an ACE Award (Asocacion de cronistas de espectaculos de la ciudad de New York) for his professional trajectory.
As the result of a continuing search for new experiences, Jaurena’s music has turned into something truly unique. It reflects the influences of different cultures as well as one hundred years of tango history with all its contradicting emotions. Raul Jaurena - the man that Astor Piazolla once called one of the greatest bandoneon players ever - has established a unique connection to his instrument: Genuine, open, touching, with stunning technical brilliance his play has enriched and added an important facet to modern tango interpretation.
July 24
Lake Placid Center for the Arts
Rieko Aizawa, Piano
Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa, discovered at age 13 by the late Alexander Schneider on the recommendation of pianist Mitsuko Uchida, has since established her own unique musical voice. Schneider engaged her as soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo's Casals Hall; later that year, Schneider presented 14-year-old Ms. Aizawa in her U.S. debut concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, performing Mozart's Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414, with his New York String Orchestra.
Praised in 2009 by the NY Times for her “impressive musicality, a crisp touch and expressive phrasing," Ms. Aizawa has performed in solo and orchestral engagements 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 have included 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 a wonderfully received performance with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Aizawa also has a great interest in exploring unusual repertoire. In October 2007, the St. Paul Pioneer Press described her performance with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf "the Salieri Piano Concerto in C was played so splendidly by Rieko Aizawa. Hers was a graceful reading. .... Aizawa's performance lent the work a respect it rarely receives." In the same year, she received the Washington Award.
As a recitalist, Ms. Aizawa has been heard in many North American cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, St. Louis, Seattle, Boulder, Los Angeles, Houston, and Toronto; at the Caramoor International Festival; at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival; Ravinia Festival, Gilmore Keyboard Festival. Following a recent all-Beethoven recital in Dresden, Germany, a reviewer wrote: "Her listeners followed her playing -full of details and delicate contrasts- breathlessly." Ms. Aizawa recently has started her "Prism" series in Japan, with tributes to Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, and specially commissioned works for each program. She also will continue her exploration of Beethoven's music with a Beethoven cycle at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2006, Ms. Aizawa performed a series of all-Mozart recitals, a project jointly presented by WFMT-Chicago and Fazioli.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Aizawa has performed as a guest with string quartets including the Guarneri Quartet, the Orion Quartet and the Shanghai Quartet, and she has participated in numerous festivals, such as the Marlboro Music Festival, U.S.A.; the Kammermusik Festival Moritzburg, Germany; and the Evian Festival, France. She has been a guest artist of Boston's, Philadelphia's and Seattle's Chamber Music Society. Ms. Aizawa is a founding member of Duo Prism with a violinist Jesse Mills, which earned the 1st Prize at the Zinetti International Competition in Italy in 2006. With Mr. Mills, Ms. Aizawa became co-artistic director of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Colorado in 2010.
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. March 2005 marked the release of Ms. Aizawa's first solo recording on the Japanese label Altus Music - a tour-de-force CD of Shostakovich's and Scriabin's "24 Preludes." Her second solo CD, of Faure's and Messiaen’s preludes, will come out in 2011.
Ms. Aizawa is a Steinway Artist.
Saturday, August 6
Lake Placid Center for the Arts
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Evgeniya Krachmarova-Sotirov, August 6
Evgeniya Krachmarova-Sotirov is a young singer who has charmed audiences as a soloist throughout Europe. Born in Varna, Bulgaria, she launched her operatic career at the tender age of seven when she won a position in the elite Varna Opera Children’s Choir. Her first solo performance was as a child in Puccini’s “La Boheme”. After graduating magna cum laude from the Varna College of the Arts, she was a soloist at the State Music Theater Shumen and, simultaneously, as a concert soloist for the famous Choir at Sofia State Philharmonic Orchestra. Evgeniya has performed at the large Bulgarian Opera stages in Burgas, Varna, Plovdiv, and Sofia where her memorable roles include Dorabella in “Cosi fan Tutte” (Mozart), Cherubino in “Le Nozze di Figaro” (Mozart), Fenena in “Nabucco” (Verdi), Amneris in “Aida” (Verdi), and Santizza in “Cavalleria Rusticana” (Mascagni). Evgeniya has also been a frequent participant in a number of Festivals including the Summer Festival in Orange France, Varna Summer Bulgaria, and the well known Salzburg Mozart Festival in Austria. She has toured the world extensively with performances to her credit in Spain, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Kuwait, and Monte Carlo. Since moving to Northern New York and beginning a family, she recently performed with the Orchestra of Northern New York in Watertown.
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