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Festival Musicians
“I will never forget the conversations with musicians whom we invited to come to Vail this summer. It was important that they were not only great musicians, but also could embrace the spirit that we wanted to bring to our Vail community. And after months of uncertainty, the thought of being able to come together and make music was overwhelming.
My sense was that once live music came to Vail, there would be an exhilaration and joy like none of us had ever experienced, even for those of us with long careers in music. That is exactly what happened. Every single performance was life-changing. We were—and remain—filled with gratitude to have had the opportunity to make music together in the beautiful Vail Valley during this unforgettable season.”
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ANNE-MARIE MCDERMOTT, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
YEFIM BRONFMAN, PIANO emigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in 1973. At 14 he studied with Arie Vardi, later attending Juilliard, Marlboro School of Music, and Curtis Institute. He has given recitals around the world, including his acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall in 1989, and in 1991 gave joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia. He toured last season with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena. Since his Bravo! Vail debut in 2012, the Grammy-Award winner has served as the New York Philharmonic’s Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, led his own Perspective Series at Carnegie Hall, and premiered concertos by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jörg Widmann.
DOVER QUARTET, STRING QUARTET won every prize at the 2013 Banff Competition. Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, it is quartet-in-residence for the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Chamber Music Northwest, Artosphere, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and New York’s Peoples’ Symphony. It was the first-ever Quartet-in-Residence for the Kennedy Center, and first Quartet-in-Residence at the Curtis Institute, where it was formed. Collaborators have included Anne-Marie McDermott, Emanuel Ax, Marc-André Hamelin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Peter Serkin, and Edgar Meyer. Dedicated to sharing its music with underserved communities, the Quartet is actively involved with Music for Food.
IDA KAVAFIAN, VIOLIN AND VIOLA co-founded Bravo! Colorado (now Bravo! Vail) and served as artistic director for ten years. She is a longtime artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and former violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio. She has been artistic director of Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico for thirty-four years. She also co-founded the chamber ensembles Opus One, Tashi, and Trio Valtorna. Ms. Kavafian has premiered numerous works including concertos by Toru Takemitsu and Michael Daugherty. She has toured and recorded with jazz artists Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis, and with fiddler/composer Mark O'Connor. She and her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom, breed and train prizewinning Hungarian vizsla show dogs.
ZOË MARTIN-DOIKE, VIOLIN AND VIOLA was born in Honolulu, Hawaii A top prize winner at the Primrose International Viola Competition and the Lennox International Young Artist Competition on viola and violin, respectively, she has appeared as a soloist with the Honolulu, Indianapolis, Richardson, and Bloomington Symphony Orchestras, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and the World Youth Orchestra in Rome, Italy. She has also been featured on the National Public Radio programs “From the Top” and “A Prairie Home Companion,” and has had the distinct pleasure of performing for his holiness, the Dalai Lama.
ANNE-MARIE MCDERMOTT, PIANO Artistic Director of Bravo! Vail since 2011, performs, records and curates an awe-inspiring variety of music. Her repertoire includes more than 50 concertos, and her long-term dream is to record all of Haydn’s piano sonatas and all of Mozart’s piano concertos. Her discography on Bridge Records also includes Chopin, Prokofiev, Poul Ruders and Charles Wuorinen. Long an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in 2018 she served as Artistic Director of the inaugural McKnight Center Chamber Music Festival at Oklahoma State University and was most recently appointed Music Director Designate of Santa Fe Pro Musica.
KERRY MCDERMOTT, VIOLIN joined the New York Philharmonic as its youngest member at the age of 21. She has garnered prizes in major competitions including the Montreal International Violin Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow - where she also received a special award for "Best Artistic Interpretation.” She has recorded for Cala, New World Records and Melodia, and her media appearances include a PBS/ABC/BBC Documentary, the motion picture FAME and an AT&T commercial for National Network Television. She is a member of the McDermott Trio with her sisters, pianist Anne-Marie and cellist Maureen.
CLARA NEUBAUER, VIOLIN is a Kovner Fellow at The Juilliard School in the studio of Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin. She has participated in the Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island and the PMP Winter Residency in Sarasota, Florida since 2017. She made her concerto debut with the National Repertory Orchestra at the age of 10 and her Lincoln Center debut at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Young Ensembles Concert in 2013. Clara shared the stage with Bernadette Peters and Robert DeNiro hosting a 9/11 Memorial benefit and can be heard leading the audio tour guide at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. In her free time, she loves to read, cook, watch opera, and play ping-pong.
OLIVER NEUBAUER, VIOLIN attends The Juilliard School as a recipient of the Kovner Fellowship and a student of Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin. He has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the National Repertory Orchestra, the Sound Symphony Orchestra, and the Symphony of Westchester, and was the recipient of the Gold Award at the 2018 National Young Arts Competition. Winner of the 2017 Young Musicians Competition at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic as the narrator for Britten’s Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. He also loves playing chess and ping pong.
PAUL NEUBAUER, VIOLA made his Chicago Symphony subscription debut with conductor Riccardo Muti and his Mariinsky Orchestra debut with conductor Valery Gergiev. He gave the U.S. premiere of the newly discovered Impromptu for viola and piano by Shostakovich with pianist Wu Han and has recorded Aaron Kernis’s Viola Concerto with the Royal Northern Sinfonia on Signum Records. A two-time Grammy nominee, he has also recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Red Seal, and Sony Classical. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21, he has appeared as soloist with over 100 orchestras and has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and A Prairie Home Companion.
BROOK SPELTZ, CELLO a native of Los Angeles, is the cellist of the Escher String Quartet and a season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist throughout the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He has also toured with the cello rock band Break of Reality, whose cover of music from Game of Thrones has received over 19 million views online. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School and performs on an 1857 J.B. Vuillaume.
AMY YANG, PIANO has given world premieres of music by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw and Ezra Laderman, whose Piano Sonata No. 5 she recorded for Albany Records. She founded The Schumann Project, which will present the composer’s major solo piano and chamber works over the next decade. She has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire and is Program Director of the Curtis Institute of Music’s Summerfest program. On the piano faculty for Curtis’s Young Artist Summer Program, she made her Bravo! Vail debut in 2019 performing Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening with Anne-Marie McDermott and Third Coast Percussion.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 2020 FESTIVAL MUSICIANS.
ANNE-MARIE MCDERMOTT 10TH ANNIVERSARY
The entire Bravo! Vail community celebrates the 10th anniversary of Anne-Marie McDermott's extraordinary direction and vision as Artistic Director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. Her artistic inspiration and unwavering commitment to our community were particularly instrumental to the success of this year’s Festival, and we are proud to have her leadership through 2023. In honor of this milestone, Bravo! Vail has commissioned a piano concerto for Anne-Marie by the acclaimed American composer Chris Rogerson, with its world premiere planned in Vail.
EDUCATION & ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS
In striving to fulfill our mission of enriching lives through the power of music during this unusual time, Bravo! Vail stretched its imagination to create meaningful experiences for the children in our community in a safe and healthy way.
HIGHLIGHTS
More than 700 people tuned in to Zoom for eight year-end recitals of Bravo! Vail’s After School Piano & Violin Programs this spring, more than doubling the typical in-person attendance of 300. A Music Box recital at Red Sandstone Elementary School on August 1 included performances from five after-school students. Over 70 families registered for Little Listeners in Your Living Room, which featured interactive educational performances by resident musicians on Zoom, followed by an at-home musical activity using household items like pots and pans.
