Evermay Concert Series

The 6821 Quintet

Mayu Kishima (1st violin & group leader)
Eric Silberger (2nd violin)
Meng Wang (viola)
Clancy Newman (cello)
Michael Djupstrom (piano)

The 6821 Quintet consists of international artists coming together to fulfill the understanding that music brings disparate cultures together. The group will put on performances during the National Cherry Blossom Festival in March, and will be showcasing their musical artistry at various venues around the DC area.

BIOGRAPHY

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Mayu Kishima

Violin

Appointed Visiting Producer

First Prize winner in the First Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition in 2016.

In 2000, she caused a stir in the music world when she took top prize as the youngest-ever Japanese top prizewinner in the Junior Division of the 8th Wieniawski International Competition in Lublin. In 2011 she was awarded First Prize, as well as the David Garrett Award for outstanding musical interpretation in the International Music Competition Cologne.

In June 2004, Kishima performed with the Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Spivakov. Her performance was lauded by a Russian newspaper, which said: "It's no wonder the great Mstislav Rostropovich calls her 'the world's best young violinist.' She awed the audience with her superb technique and mature understanding of the music."

In 2005, Kishima performed with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich (Rome and Madrid, February); the National Symphony (Washington, D.C., May); the London Symphony Orchestra (London, June); and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Munich and other locations, July). She was praised by the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, which said: "She was made known to the world by Rostropovich in the same way that Karajan made Anne-Sofie Mutter famous and Maazel made Hilary Hahn famous."

Kishima has participated in several recordings thus far. On the strong recommendation of Vladimir Ashkenazy, who had become Music Director of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, she performed "Tzigane" on Ravel: Orchestral Works. She has also released the solo albums Chaconne and Rise. The recording of her performance at the 2015 Progetto Martha Argerich festival in Lugano was included in the live recording CD Argerich & Friends, released on Warner Music in May 2016.

Currently Kishima is based in Paris and Cologne and performs frequently in Europe. Her recent activities include performances at the Martha Argerich festival in Lugano, and concerts with the Saito Kinen Orchestra and Mito Chamber Orchestra.

Kishima has received instruction from Izumi Hayashi, Kazuyo Togami, Toshiya Eto, Dorothy DeLay, Masao Kawasaki, Machie Oguri, Chihiro Kudo and others. She also participated in the Seiji Ozawa Academy in Switzerland in 2008 and 2009. In spring 2012, she graduated with the top grade from the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne, where she studied with Zakhar Bron. In autumn 2015, she graduated at the top of her class from the graduate school of the Hochschule fur Musik, with all professors awarding her highest grades, and received Germany's national qualification for musicians.

In 2002, Kishima received a fellowship for overseas study from the Japanese Ministry of Culture.

Official website: http://kishimamayu.seesaa.net/

BIOGRAPHY

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Eric Silberger

Violin

Virtuoso violinist Eric Silberger is a prize winner of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Michael Hill International Violin Competition in 2011. His performances have been described by critics as "spine-tingling…astonishing" (The Guardian), "dazzling virtuoso playing" (The Washington Post), "impeccable level of playing, a wonderful musician" (Heather Kurzbauer, The Strad), and " ….he has got everything in his favour, technique, composure and personality" (El Pais, Spain).

Eric has performed as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician throughout the United States and around the world, including solo performances with the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, Mariinsky Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Chamber Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, London Philharmonia, Danish National Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de México, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, among others. Conductor collaborations include Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev, Dimitri Kitajenko, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Donald Runnicles, Robin Ticciati, and others. 

Recent and upcoming solo highlights include a performance with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Maestro Valery Gergiev, and a tour in Spain with the Munich Chamber Orchestra among others.

He has appeared at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Louvre in Paris, the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, The Moscow International House of Music in Russia, Shanghai Grand Theatre in China, Royal Festival Hall in London, Seoul Arts Center in Korea, the National Arts Centre in Canada, and more. Among numerous television and radio appearances in the United States, Asia, and Europe, he was featured on Radio France, STV in China, KBS in Korea, and WQXR, WFYI, FOX 59, WISH-TV, and NPR, among others.

An avid chamber musician, Eric frequently performs chamber music internationally. He also has a special collaboration with bandoneonist and composer JP Jofre.

Eric received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Columbia University and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Coming from a musical family, Eric is a fourth generation violinist. Mentors have included Glenn Dicterow, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Robert Mann, and Dorothy Delay, among others. He was also mentored by Maestro Lorin Maazel. 

Eric plays on a rare J.B. Guadagnini violin from 1757 on generous loan from the Si-Yo Music Society Foundation and family of Sau-Wing Lam.

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

BIOGRAPHY

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Meng Wang

Viola

Violist Meng Wang has established himself as a soloist, an avid chamber musician and a prominent orchestral musician. He has been a member of The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 2007 and regularly plays with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Prior to this, at age 23, he was hired as the Principal Viola by the Kansas City Symphony.

Deeply committed to chamber music, Mr. Wang has collaborated in chamber settings with distinguished artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Lars Vogt, Sharon Robinson, Chao-Liang Lin, Jaime Laredo, Joseph Silverstein, Pinkas Zukerman, Lang Lang, Barbara Westphal and the pop star Bono. His performances have taken him throughout the United States and his native China, performing at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Library of Congress, Kennedy Center and the Beijing National Theater.

Mr. Wang has performed in many highly respected summer festivals such as the Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland, the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, Music Academy of the West and the Sarasota Music Festival. He also appeared as faculty at the International Music Festival in Maine and the Utah Chamber Music Festival. As a Pittsburgh Symphony featured artist and a member of Kansas City Chamber Music Society, his playing has been broadcasted frequently in many public radio stations.

Mr. Wang graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with renowned violists Michael Tree, Roberto Diaz and Karen Tuttle. He began his violin studies at the age of 5 in China. After attended the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing, he then moved to the United States where he pursuited viola studies at the New England Conservatory.

Currently Mr. Wang is the principal viola coach for the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra and teaches both viola and chamber music at Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and Duquesne University The Mary Pappert School of Music in Pittsburgh.

BIOGRAPHY

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Clancy Newman

Cello

Cellist Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has had the unusual career of a performer/composer. From Albany, NY, he began playing cello at the age of six, and at twelve he received his first significant public recognition when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against contestants twice his age. In the years that followed, he won numerous other competitions, including the Juilliard School Cello Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions.

He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. He can often be heard on NPR's "Performance Today" and has been featured on A&E's "Breakfast With the Arts". A sought after chamber musician, he is a member of the Clarosa piano quartet and the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and a former member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center and the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio. He has also toured as a member of "Musicians from Marlboro".

He developed an interest in composition at an early age, writing his first piece at seven. Since then, he has greatly expanded the cello repertoire, including pieces for solo cello, cello ensemble, cello and piano, and his Four Seasons of Life for cello and string orchestra. His wildly successful "Pop- Unpopped" project, in which he writes solo cello caprices based on pop songs, has been ongoing since 2014 and has led to an exploration of cello techniques heretofore unimagined, gaining over eighty thousand views on youtube. He has also written numerous chamber music works, and has been a featured composer on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. His piano trio, Juxt-Opposition, is available on Bridge Records.

Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia. His teachers have included David Gibson, Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.

 

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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