MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC OPERA STUDIES PROGRAM CELEBRATED AT 2023 GALA IN NEW YORK CITY’S ICONIC RAINBOW ROOM

By Salome Langevin

The gala honored long-time members of the MSM Board of Trustees Marcia Clay Hamilton and Edward Lowenthal. A celebration of the School’s prestigious Opera Studies Program, the evening featured performances by mezzo-soprano and two-time Grammy Award winner, Metropolitan Opera Artist J’Nai Bridges (BM’09), former New York Yankee, Latin Grammy-nominated jazz guitarist and MSM Trustee Bernie Williams (BM’16), recent MSM graduates and current MSM students, among other notable performers. All the scheduled performers were either MSM alumni or current students.

Among the recent graduates to perform included MSM alumni bass-baritone Le Bu (BM ’22) and baritone Daniel Rich (MM’19); both are currently in the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development program.

Le Bu was a winner of the 2022 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, and earlier this year Daniel Rich was a winner of the inaugural New York City Opera/MSM Duncan Williams Voice Competition.

Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today MSM is recognized for its more than 1,000 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from more than 50 countries and nearly all 50 states; its innovative curricula and world-renowned artist-teacher faculty that includes musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Met Opera Orchestra, and the top ranks of the jazz and Broadway communities; and a distinguished community of accomplished, award-winning alumni working at the highest levels of the musical, educational, cultural, and professional worlds.

The School is dedicated to the personal, artistic, and intellectual development of aspiring musicians, from its Precollege students through those pursuing doctoral studies. Offering classical, jazz, and musical theatre training, MSM grants a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees. True to MSM’s origins as a music school for children, the Precollege program continues to offer superior music instruction to 475 young musicians between the ages of 5 and 18. The School also serves some 2,000 New York City schoolchildren through its Arts-in-Education Program, and another 2,000 students through its critically acclaimed and pioneering Distance Learning Program.

The Gala was hosted by Richard Gaddes (HonDMA’17), former General Director of the Santa Fe Opera and founding General Director of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Melissa Wegner (MM ’05), Executive Director of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Laffont Competition.

Notable attendees at the Gala included: Richard Gaddes, Melissa Wegner, Marcia Clay Hamilton, Edward Lowenthal, J’Nai Bridges, Bernie Williams, Le Bu, Daniel Rich, Herbie Hancock, Gigi Hancock, Ann Ziff, Adrienne Vittadini, Sylvia Hemingway, Maribel Lieberman

For more information on the Manhattan School of Music, its history, and its curriculum, visit: www.msmnyc.edu/

Star pianist Alexei Tartakovsky performed at the legendary Merkin Hall in New York City. His performance at Merkin Hall was a masterclass in piano recitals including a repertoire with classical pieces from Beethoven, Schumann and Rachmaninoff. The first half of the concert lasted nearly an hour and his finale received a repeated standing ovation which led to him returning to the stage no less than five times to play to his audience.

Notable Attendees included: Pianists Richard Goode, Horacio Gutierrez and Roman Markowitz, Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail, model Elton Ilirjani, New York Artist Management’s Jasna Popovic.

Laureate of the 2021 International Beethoven Competition in Bonn, Germany, RussianAmerican pianist Alexei Tartakovsky has been called a “fantastic musician and pianist” by Martha Argerich and “truly exceptional…superb playing…a thoughtful and serious musician” by the New York Concert Review. His tonal palette, profound musicianship, superb technique, and exciting artistic approach have thrilled audiences worldwide and established him as one of the brightest talents of his generation.

He first brought attention to his artistry by winning three top prizes in a one-year span (2006-2007) at the Rolf and Brigitte Gardey International Competition in Daytona Beach, Florida, The New York Piano Competition, and the American Fine Arts Festival (AFAF) in New York, which resulted in his performing at Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall).

Alexei Tartakovsky

Joins the ‘Key Club’ of Star Pianists With New York City Event leading to Five Encores at the Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall

By Harry Brads

Immediately after, he became a laureate of the James Mottram International Piano Competition in Manchester (UK) and received 1st prize at the Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition, which he won with unanimous decision by the judges, who called him a “phenomenal, first-rate pianist” and “a monumental talent”. Additional prizes include 1st prize at the New York Concert Artists International Competition in 2011. In 2012, he swept all three prizes at the San Jose International Competition: 1st Prize, Audience Prize, and prize for the best performance of a Russian work.

Since then, he has given concerts both solo and with orchestra in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Europe, China, and Japan at halls that include the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Warsaw Philharmonic, Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall, and Carnegie Hall. His playing has been broadcast on Dutch Radio 4, Polish Radio 2, Russian Radio Orpheus, Chicago’s WFMT, and New York's WQXR. Among the orchestras Tartakovsky has performed with are the Jacksonville Symphony, the North Czech Philharmonic, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn (Germany), and the Symphonic Orchestra of the Voronezh Concert Hall (Russia). Conductors Tartakovsky has collaborated with include Gerard Schwarz, Hans Graf, Fabio Mechetti, Nurhan Arman, Maurice Peress, Yuri Androsov, and Clark Rundell.

A highlight of his career was his outstanding performance at the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, where he was a semifinalist. In 2016, Tartakovsky was awarded the French Prize at the Cleveland

International Piano Competition. In 2021, he received both the 2nd Prize and the Deutsche Telekom StreamOn Beethoven Award at the International Telekom Beethoven Competition in Bonn, Germany.

Among the musicians he has studied with are Matti Raekallio, Nina Lelchuk, Boris Slutsky, Boris Berman, and Horacio Gutierrez. Tartakovsky completed his undergraduate studies at Juilliard and Queens College (CUNY), received his Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory, and an Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music. He is currently a doctoral candidate as a student of Richard Goode at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he was awarded the coveted Graduate Center Fellowship.

Tartakovsky teaches at Brooklyn College (CUNY), is Music Director at Church of the Holy Spirit in Lebanon, New Jersey, and maintains a private studio in Raritan, New Jersey.

For more information about Alexei, please visit: www.atartakovsky.com

New York Artist Management presented performance at the Merkin Hall at The Kaufman Music Center

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