ARTIST

CHRISTIAN REIF, conductor German conductor

Christian Reif has quickly established a reputation for his natural musicality, technical command and leadership as an engaging communicator and outstanding orchestra builder. San Francisco Chronicle has written: “Reif is a remarkable talent... a conductor of considerable stature, and everything felt like the work of a significant musical artist.

Since the 2019/20 season, Christian Reif has conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Romanian Radio Symphony, Aalborg Symphony, Fundación Excelentia in Madrid, North Carolina Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Belgique and Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguese in Lisbon. Most recently, he conducted the Stavanger Symphony in a program of Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet and Shostakovich Symphony No. 1 paired with Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with soprano Julia Bullock, and he made his debut in March 2021 with the Orchestre National d’île de France in a streamed performance of Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète. In June 2021, he made his debut with the Rundfunkorchester of the Bayrische Rundfunk in Munich creating a Mozart kaleidoscope for their family concert series.

Reif’s 2021/22 season includes appearances with the Baltimore

Symphony, New World Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, Gävle Symphony, Odense Symphony and Norrlands Opera Orchestra. He will lead a Juilliard Opera production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater in his NYC opera debut. Through the pandemic, Reif has taken part in several live-streamed events. He conducted the Music Academy of the West’s Instrumental Fellows in their 2020 Remote Summer Learning Institute on a socially-distanced performance of Haydn’s “London” Symphony No. 104. Using a virtual guide with him both conducting and playing piano with his brother Thomas Reif on violin, the fellows were able to merge as an orchestra virtually. He additionally appeared in live-streamed events presented by the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Lakes Area Music Festival, Long Beach Opera, New York Festival of Song and Musical America.

Reif has also been active on the piano during the pandemic, recording a series of at-home virtual “Songs of Comfort” with his wife Julia Bullock, ranging from Carole King’s classic “Up on the Roof” to Schubert’s Wanderers Nachtlied. In November 2020, NPR Music featured the duo in a “Tiny Desk (Home) Concert” for their special quarantine edition of the series. NPR’s Tom Huizenga found it “among the most transcendent musical moments I’ve experienced this year” and The New York Times highlighted them on their “Best Classical Music of 2020” list.

Previous season highlights included appearances in New York at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival with the

International Contemporary Ensemble and as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetLiveArts series on a new chamber version of John Adams’s El Niño with the American Modern Opera Company and performances with the San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C., St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Brucknerorchester Linz and at Opera San Jose on a production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.

From 2016 to 2019, Reif served as Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO). His tenure culminated in a sixcity 2019 European tour with the SFSYO including performances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin Philharmonie and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Following the Berlin performance, the Merkur wrote of Reif that a “bright future and a great career must lie ahead”. He was a Conducting Fellow with the New World Symphony from 2014 to 2016, and a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in the summers of 2015 and 2016.

Reif’s enthusiasm in performing contemporary music has led to several world premieres. Among those are Anahita Abbasi’s ...within the shifting grounds… (a work commissioned by Reif and SFSYO in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble), Michael Gordon’s El Sol Caliente (a city symphony in honor of Miami Beach’s centennial), and concertos for DJ and orchestra performed with the New World Symphony.

Christian Reif studied with Alan Gilbert at the Juilliard School, where he completed his Master of Music in Conducting in 2014 and received the Charles Schiff Conducting Award. Prior to that, he studied with Dennis Russell Davies at the Mozarteum Salzburg, where he received a diploma in 2012 and worked with singers as a répétiteur. He is winner of the 2015 German Operetta Prize, awarded by the German Music Council, and two Kulturförderpreise awards given to promising artists of the region who promote cultural advancement in their communities.

ALEXI KENNEY, Violin

The recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2020 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, Alexi Kenney is building a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras in the USA and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time.

In the 2021/22 Season, Alexi debuts as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Virginia Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, Eugene Symphony, and New Haven Symphony, returns to the Indianapolis Symphony, California Symphony, and Santa Fe Symphony, and appears at Wigmore Hall, Princeton University Concerts, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also performs duo concerts with harpist Bridget Kibbey, and as a member of Owls, a new quartet collective with violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko.

In 2021, Alexi released his first recording, Paul Wiancko’s X Suite for Solo Violin, accompanied by a visual album that pairs each of the seven movements of X Suite with seven contemporary sculptures, filmed on location at the Donum Estate in Sonoma, California.

In recent seasons, Alexi has performed as soloist with the Detroit Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phillips Collection, 92nd Street Y, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Alexi has been profiled by Musical America, Strings Magazine, and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad.

Chamber music continues to be a major part of Alexi’s life, performing at festivals including Bridgehampton, Caramoor,

ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music

Northwest, Festival Napa Valley, La Jolla, Ojai, Kronberg, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, and Spoleto, as well as on tour with Musicians from Marlboro and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he received his Artist Diploma as a student of Miriam Fried and Donald Weilerstein. Previous teachers include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by FrançoisNicolas Voirin.

Outside of music, Alexi enjoys hojicha, bauhaus interiors, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

Isidora Ebeljan

(1967 - 2020) is the most prominent and performed Serbian composer on the world music scene. She attracted the attention of the international public with her opera Zora D, which was commissioned by the Genesis Foundation of London. It premiered in Amsterdam in 2003, directed by Sir David Pountney and Nicola Raab. The same production opened the fiftieth season of the Vienna Chamber Opera in 2003.

After the success of the opera Dawn by D. Žebeljan continuously received commissions from important institutions and music festivals, such as the Berlin Philharmonic Foundation (Klin-chorba, 2015), the Venice Biennale (Horses of St. Mark, illumination for orchestra, 2004), Festival in Bregenz (opera Marathoners, 2008; Ring the Strings for Symphony Orchestra, 2013), Genesis Foundation of London (Song of the Traveler in the Night, for the opening of Bill Viola's exhibition at the National Gallery in London, 2003 and Skomraška igra, for the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, 2005), University of Kent (Polomka Quartet, 2009), Gelsenkirchen Opera (opera Simon the Chosen, 2009 and Nahod Simon, 2015), Dutch Chamber Choir (Latum lalo, 2010 and Psalm 78, 2017), Accademia

Musicale Chigiana Siena (opera Two Heads and a Girl, 2012), City of London Festival (When God Created Dubrovnik, 2013), Eduard van Beinum Foundation (Three Strange Loves, concerto for violin and orchestra, 2017), German Music Council (Bagpipe Stained Glass, 2019) etc. She composed for outstanding musical ensembles such as: Vienna Symphony Orchestra, The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Ship Quartet, Dutch Chamber Choir and London Brass. Her compositions are regularly performed throughout Europe, Israel, the Far East, America, Africa and Australia, including the Venice Biennale, Bregenz Festival, White Light Festival (Lincoln Center, New York), RAI Festival Nuova Musica (Torino), Settembre musica (Milan-Turin), Settimana Musicale Senese (Siena), West German Radio Music Festival (WDR), ISCM-festivals (Zagreb, Gothenburg, Wroclaw, Vancouver), Galway Arts Festival (Ireland), Ultima Festival (Oslo), City of London Festival, Swaledale Festival, Walled City Music, Dulwich Music Festival (Great Britain), Eilat Festival (Jerusalem),