Evermay Concert Series

BIOGRAPHY

Luosha Fang

Violin and Viola

Appointed Visiting Producer

Violinist and violist Luosha Fang brings her adventurous spirit to music ranging from canonical repertoire to world premieres. As a violinist, she has performed as soloist with the Albany Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, and the West Virginia Symphony, and she was a winner of Astral Artists' 2013 National Auditions and the S&R Foundation's 2015 Washington Award. As a violist, she won 1st Prize in the 2018 Tokyo International Viola Competition, performing Paul Hindemith's "Der Schwanendreher" concerto with the New Japan Philharmonic and subsequently touring in Japan with Antoine Tamestit and Nobuko Imai. She will return in 2019 for Bartok's Viola Concerto with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra and will perform at the Tokyo "Viola Space" festivals in 2019 and 2020.

Other recent performance highlights include Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Bay-Atlantic Symphony and appearances in the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with the Suzhou Royal Chamber Orchestra in China (violin soloist) and at the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid (viola soloist). She is a frequent performer at Bard Music West (San Francisco) and Krzyżowa-Music (Poland), and she worked most recently with Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff and Steven Isserlis at the Kronberg Academy's "Chamber Music Connects the World" project. In 2019, she will appear with the "Musicians from Marlboro" tour as both violinist and violist.

Ms. Fang has a strong interest in championing contemporary works. She recorded George Tsontakis's double violin concerto "Unforgettable" with the Albany Symphony Orchestra for release on NAXOS Records, and she worked closely with composer Krzysztof Penderecki in preparation for a 2014 Carnegie Hall performance of his Sextet. She premiered Chinese composer Shen Yiwen's violin concerto "Mulan" with the American Symphony Orchestra and has commissioned a solo violin work by Michael Djupstrom, "Lautar."

As a chamber musician, Ms. Fang was awarded the Silver Medal at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as the first violinist of the Chimeng Quartet, of which she was a founding member. She has appeared in leading venues including Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Library of Congress, and her festival appearances include Marlboro, Ravinia, Norfolk, Aspen, Kneisel Hall, Music from Angel Fire, Incontri in Terra di Siena, and Bard. She has worked with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Nobuko Imai, Bruno Canino, Cynthia Raim, Benita Valente, Marina Piccinini, Peter Wiley, Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, Paul Katz, Hsin-Yun Huang, Roberto Diaz, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets. In addition, she has been a guest artist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Ms. Fang made her debut at age eight in her native China with Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, and at sixteen moved to the USA on a scholarship to the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ida Kavafian and Arnold Steinhardt. After graduating from Bard with degrees in violin and Russian Studies, she attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a violin student of Ida Kavafian and Shmuel Ashkenasi. At this time, she began viola studies with with Steven Tenenbom, and in 2016, she entered the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid as a viola student of Nobuko Imai. 

Always in pursuit of new artistic frontiers, Ms. Fang has also collaborated with the Almanac Dance Circus Theatre and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She studied acting and theater at Bard College and the University of Pennsylvania. Fang plays on a Pietro Guarneri violin made in 1734 and a Dominique Peccatte bow kindly loaned by Dr. Ryuji Ueno.

BIOGRAPHY

Ilya Poletaev

Piano

Appointed Visiting Producer

A musician with a fiercely inquisitive mind, impeccable technique and an intensely poetic vision, Ilya Poletaev is an artist equally at home on the modern piano or on historical keyboards: harpsichord, fortepiano, and chamber organ. Hailed as "one of the most significant pianists of his generation" by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, he launched his career after capturing First Prize at the prestigious International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2010 -- the only Canadian ever to win that competition. He has since appeared at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, KlavierFestival Ruhr, Dresdner MusikFesttäge, Potsdam Musikfestspiele, Leipzig BachFest, Montreal Bach Festival, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center and Chamber Music Society, St. Paul's Ordway Center, Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, Caramoor Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and many other prestigious venues. He also was the Grand Prize winner of the 2008 Concorso Sala Gallo in Italy, a laureate of the 2008 Canadian Stepping Stone, a top prize-winner at the 2007 SEHKS harpsichord competition, and a prize-winner at the 2011 George Enescu Competition in Bucharest. In 2009 he joined the roster of Astral Artists and is currently an Astral Artist laureate.

On the modern piano, he has appeared with the Toronto Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Samara Philharmonic, Sinfonia Toronto, Orchestra Filarmonica di Cluj, collaborating with such conductors as David Robertson, Peter Oundjian, Bernhard Gueller, Rossen Milanov, Nurhan Arman, John Holloway and Leo Kraemer.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Poletaev is the founding member of the Trio de Montreal (Axel Strauss, violin, and Yegor Dyachkov, cello) and Trio Séléné (Mingzhe Wang, clarinet, and Elizabeth Lara, cello). Trio Séléné's debut recording, featuring music by Fauré, Zemlinsky, and the Catalan composer Fernando Buide, has been released in May of 2018. Mr. Poletaev has also appeared alongside such vocal artists as Susan Graham, Miah Persson, James Taylor, Thomas Cooley, and Dominique Labelle; cellists Gary Hoffmann and Joshua Roman; violinists Donald Weilerstein, Colin Jacobsen, Mark Steinberg, Stephen Copes, and members of the St. Lawrence, Juilliard, and Alcan string quartets; flautist Ransom Wilson, and many others.
As a solo harpsichordist, Mr. Poletaev appeared at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Helicon Foundation, Ordway Center in St. Paul, Minnesota (with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, both in chamber formations and under the leadership of Christian Zacharias), Montreal's Salle Bourgie, the Aston Magna Early Music Festival, Amherst Early Music Festival, and Yale's Collection of Musical Instruments. As a continuo player, he has performed with Masaaki Suzuki, Andrew Lawrence-King, Steven Stubbs, Nicholas McGegan, Simon Carrington, Graham O'Reilly, Matthias Maute, and Helmuth Rilling. He can be heard in both solo and continuo roles on several recordings with the Yale Schola Cantorum (Bach's 1725 St. John Passion; Bertali's Missa Resurrectionis, among others) -- all issued on the ReZound label.

In addition to performing classical repertoire, Mr. Poletaev is also active as an improviser, both as a soloist and a creator of live scores for silent film. 

Mr. Poletaev's performances and interviews have been broadcast on the BBC; WQXR in New York; Minnesota Public Radio; CBC Radio-Canada; Radio Berlin-Brandenburg, MDR, NDR, and WDR networks in Germany; Radio Romania; Radio Rossiya and Radio Orfei (Russian Federation), and others. His recording of George Enescu's violin and piano works with Axel Strauss has been heard on radio stations world-wide.

A dedicated teacher, Mr. Poletaev is currently Associate Professor of Piano at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal. He is also Assistant Director at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival's Choral Week. He previously served on the faculty of Yale University as a Lecturer in Early Music. He has given numerous master classes and talks on performance practice in many of the world's most prestigious music schools, including the San Francisco Conservatory, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Buchman-Mehta Music Academy in Tel-Aviv, Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, Royal Conservatory in Toronto, and the Conservatorio di Milano. His students have been the recipients of many distinguished prizes and scholarships. 
Mr. Poletaev began studying in Moscow at the age of six and continued his studies in Israel until he moved to Canada at the age of 14. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied with pianist Marietta Orlov, harpsichordist Colin Tilney, and composition with Walter Buczynski, as well as Master's and Doctorate degrees from Yale, where he studied with Boris Berman.

Mr. Poletaev currently resides in Montreal with his wife, the Romanian-born fortepianist Ruxandra Oancea, and their son Nikolay Simon.

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Djupstrom

Composer, Piano

The work of composer and pianist Michael Djupstrom (b. 1980) has been honored with first prizes in the international composition competitions of the UK's Delius Society, the American Viola Society, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, and has been further recognized through awards and grants from institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship, Charles Ives Scholarship), Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (Pew Fellowship), New Music USA, S&R Foundation (Grand Prize, Washington Awards), Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, the Académie musicale de Villecroze, and the Sigurd and Jarmila Rislov Foundation, among many others. The Music Teachers National Association named him its 2005 MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year.

Recent commissions have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, the National Cherry Blossom Festival, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Tanglewood Music Center, the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, Music From Angel Fire, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus, International Opera Theater, the Lyra Society, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, and the Cavatina Duo, among others.

Djupstrom's music continues to receive local Philadelphia performances by Network for New Music, Dolce Suono, and Lyric Fest, by ensembles across the country including Music from Copland House, the Definiens Project, Dinosaur Annex, Juventas, Sounds New, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and has been heard abroad at concerts and broadcasts in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Taiwan, China, and Japan. In recent seasons, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, Symphony in C, Shasta Symphony, and International Opera Theater have presented his works for larger forces.

As a pianist, Djupstrom has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia-based new music ensemble Relâche. His interest in chamber music led to national tours as a founding member of the Phoenix Trio and concerts for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, the British Library, S&R Foundation, Astral Artists, and many other presenting organizations. His festival appearances include Hong Kong's "Intimacy of Creativity," Music From Angel Fire, Tanglewood, Brevard, and the Académie musicale de Villecroze, and he has performed in major metropolitan cities throughout the world, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, Houston, Atlanta, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Tokyo, Shenzhen, and Aix-en-Provence. He has recorded for American Public Media's "Performance Today," Radio Television Hong Kong's Radio 4, and the Equilibrium, American Modern, and Meyer Media labels.

An active and committed educator, Djupstrom teaches the composition seminar and is Coordinator of the composition department at the Curtis Institute of Music. He previously taught piano at Settlement Music School, theory and orchestration for Boston University, and ear training at the University of Michigan and has been a guest teacher and presenter at Rice University, Westminster Choir College, Montana State University, Rowan University, Shasta Community College, the International School of Brussels, the Paris Conservatory, and Yichao Music Training Center in Shenzhen, China.

Djupstrom received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with composers Bright Sheng, Susan Botti, William Bolcom and Karen Tanaka. Djupstrom pursued further studies in Paris with Betsy Jolas, whom he later worked for as assistant. He also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was a student of Jennifer Higdon and Richard Danielpour.

Official website: http://www.michaeldjupstrom.com