ARTISTS’ PROFILES

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

Pierre-LaurentAimard has collaborated with many leading composers of our age, including György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Olivier Messiaen, and Pierre Boulez, who appointedAimard at age 19 the Ensemble Intercontemporain’s first solo pianist. In the 2021–22 seasonAimard toured internationally with leading orchestras and conductors including Münchner Philharmoniker, Philharmonia Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, and San Francisco Symphony with Esa-Pekka Salonen, with whom he will record Bartók’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3. He will also give performances of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards at the Philharmonie de Paris and the ConcertgebouwAmsterdam and collaborate with leading instrumentalists Mark Simpson and Jean-Guihen Queyras for trio recitals at theAuditorio Nacional de Música and Elbphilharmonie.Aimard was awarded the 2017 International Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in recognition of a life devoted to the service of music.

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Norwegian pianist Leif OveAndsnes plays concertos and recitals in the world’s leading concert halls and with its foremost orchestras, while building an extensive, esteemed discography. He is the founding director of the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, was co-artistic director of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music for nearly two decades, and has served as music director of California’s Ojai Music Festival.AGramophone Hall of Fame inductee, he holds honorary doctorates from Norway’s University of Bergen and The Juilliard School. Now recording exclusively for Sony Classical, the pianist recently received his eleventh GRAMMY® nomination and has been recognized with six GramophoneAwards. He was the first Scandinavian to curate Carnegie Hall’s “Perspectives” series and has been Pianist-in-Residence of the Berlin Philharmonic andArtist-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic.

Aris Quartett

Anna Katharina Wildermuth, Noëmi Zipperling, violins; Caspar Vinzens, viola; Lukas Sieber, cello Founded in 2009 in Frankfurt am Main, theAris Quartett performs on the world’s great stages, including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, Konzerthaus Wien,Amsterdam Concertgebouw, BBC Proms, and San Francisco Chamber Music Society. The quartet attracted attention after winning the Chamber Music Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation in addition to five prizes at theARD International Music Competition. They were named New GenerationArtists by the BBC and ECHO Rising Stars by the European Concert Hall Organization, and won the Borletti–Buitoni TrustAward.Aris Quartet has released five highly acclaimed CD productions to date, the most recent in autumn 2020 in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk and BBC Radio 3 featuring works by Johannes Brahms.

The Colburn School

A performing arts institution located in the heart of Los Angeles, the Colburn School trains students from beginners to those about to embark on professional careers. The academic units of the school provide a complete spectrum of music and dance education united by a single philosophy: that all who desire to study music or dance should have access to top-level instruction. Each year, nearly 2,000 students from around the world come to Colburn to benefit from the renowned faculty, exceptional facilities, and focus on excellence that unites the community. colburnschool.edu.

Johan Dalene, violin

21-year-old Swedish violinist Johan Dalene’s current schedule includes performances with all the major Scandinavian orchestras and debuts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic with Semyon Bychkov, and Konzerthausorchester Berlin with Christoph Eschenbach, as well as solo recitals at Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall. During the 2020–21 season, he wasArtist in Residence with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing concertos, recitals, and chamber music together with members of the orchestra, and performed solo recitals in some of Europe’s most prestigious concert halls. Recording exclusively for BIS, Dalene released his first recording album on the label in December 2019, featuring the Tchaikovsky and Barber Violin Concerti with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. His second disc, of Nordic recital music, was released in Spring 2021 and received an Editors’Choice from Gramophone Magazine as well as winning the Diapason D’Or.

Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano

Multi-GRAMMY® Award winner and 2018 Olivier Award winner for Outstanding Achievement in Opera, Kansas-born Joyce DiDonato has soared to the top of the industry, gaining international prominence in operas by Handel and Mozart as well as her varied and highly acclaimed discography. She is also widely celebrated for the bel canto roles of Rossini and Donizetti. DiDonato most recently received rave reviews for her performances as Virginia Woolf in the world premiere of The Hours at the Metropolitan Opera. Earlier this season she completed European tours of her baroque-inspired programme My Favourite Things with Il Pomo d’Oro, and her Winterreise and In My Solitude recital programmes with pianist and longtime collaborator Craig Terry. DiDonato also returned to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in Handel’s Theodora, as Agrippina at the Metropolitan Opera and in a new production at the Royal Opera House, in Les Troyens at the Vienna State Opera; Adalgisa in Norma at the Metropolitan Opera, Sister Helen in Dead Man Walking at the Teatro Real Madrid and London’s Barbican Centre; and in numerous recitals at the great halls of North American and Europe. Her discography includes Les Troyens which in 2018 won the Best Recording (Complete Opera) category at the International Opera Awards, the Opera Award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Gramophone’s Recording of the Year, among many other award-winning recordings. EDEN is a 2023 GRAMMY® Nominee for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Michael Gerdes, lecturer

Michael Gerdes is Director of Orchestras at San Diego State University, where he conducts the San Diego State Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, and Opera Orchestra. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education and Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Selected by the San Diego Union-Tribune as one of three “Faces to Watch in Classical Music” during his first year as Director of Orchestras, Gerdes is focused on creating a thriving orchestral community at San Diego State University.

Giorgi Gigashvili, piano

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2000, Giorgi Gigashvili won First Prize at the Vigo International Piano Competition with a jury chaired by his idol and mentor Martha Argerich. Some months later Gigashvili also won the Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the 62nd Busoni International Piano Competition. Isolating in Georgia during the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote electronic music and popular songs. In 2021 he returned to classical piano competition, winning the Hortense Anda-Bührle Bursary at the 15th Géza Anda Piano Competition in Zurich, and the First Prize and Audience Prize at the KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen.

Robert John Hughes, interviewer

Journalist, broadcaster, musician, author, record producer. Hughes has interviewed hundreds of musical artists in classical, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, and blues, including Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, B.B. King, Adele, and Peter Gabriel. As a record producer and member of the GRAMMY® Academy, Hughes has released five albums of live performances by artists heard on San Diego FM station 102.1 KPRi. Hughes has hosted La Jolla Music Society Preludes since 2018.

Kodo

Exploring the limitless possibilities of the traditional Japanese drum, the taiko, Kodo is forging new directions for a vibrant living art form. Since the group’s debut at the Berlin Festival in 1981, Kodo has given more than 6,500 performances on all five continents, spending about a third of the year overseas, a third touring in Japan and a third rehearsing and preparing new material on Sado Island. Kodo strives to both preserve and reinterpret traditional Japanese performing arts. Beyond this, members on tours and research trips all over the globe have brought back to Sado a kaleidoscope of world music and experiences which now exerts a strong influence on the group’s performances and compositions. Collaborations with other artists and composers extend right across the musical spectrum and Kodo’s lack of preconceptions about its music continues to produce startling new fusion and forms.

Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour

Originating in 1966, the Monterey Jazz Festival assembled master jazz musicians under the “Monterey All-Stars” banner to perform at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. No longer just gracing the stages of Monterey, these bands tour nationwide and embody the past, present, and future of jazz history, and spread the Monterey Jazz Festival’s artistic footprint. The Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour 2022 again features critically-acclaimed, GRAMMY®-winning jazz artists including vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater and Kurt Elling, saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, pianist Christian Sands, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Clarence Penn. MJF On Tour presents the artistry, spirit, and fun of the Monterey Jazz Festival to audiences far and wide with musicians who embody the Monterey aesthetic by performing music both historic and new that reflects the values and legacy of the Monterey Jazz Festival over the last 65 years. In total, the MJF On Tour programs have played over 185 concerts to almost 150,000 people.

Kristi Brown‐Montesano, lecturer

Dr. Kristi Brown-Montesano approaches graduate seminars, adult-education classes, podcasts, and pre-concert lectures with the same philosophy: that offering context— rigorously researched, provocative, and humanistic—empowers listeners and musicians to make their own meaningful connections to classical music. Currently Chair of Music History at the Colburn Conservatory and Lecturer in Musicology at UCLA, Dr. Brown-Montesano also has ongoing relationships with many of Southern California’s most distinguished musical organizations, including the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, La Jolla Music Society, and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. Her book, Understanding the Women of Mozart’s Operas (University of California Press, paperback edition 2021) offers fresh critical takes on the female roles in the Da Ponte.

Il Pomo d’Oro

Founded in 2012, the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro specializes in authentic, dynamic interpretation of operas and instrumental works from the baroque and classical periods. The ensemble has collaborated with conductors Riccardo Minasi, Stefano Montanari, George Petrou, Enrico Onofri, and Francesco Corti, with Maxim Emelyanychev as its chief conductor since 2016. Il Pomo d’Oro is a regular guest in prestigious concert halls and festivals all over Europe. After the worldwide success of the program In War and Peace with Joyce DiDonato, in 2020 Il Pomo d’Oro and Emelyanychev presented My Favourite Things with DiDonato and is now on tour worldwide with EDEN, which it also recorded. The ensemble’s discography includes multiple award-winning opera recordings, recitals, and instrumental albums.

Quartetto di Cremona

Cristiano Gualco, Paolo Andreoli, violins; Simone Gramaglia, viola; Giovanni Scaglione, cello Winner of the 2019 Franco Buitoni Award, the Quartetto di Cremona was established in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona, Italy, and recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Quartetto di Cremona has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia, appeared at leading festivals, and performed regularly on radio and television broadcasts, including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The quartet’s extensive repertoire encompasses key masterworks from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; essential late nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature by Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, and Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ravel, Janaček, and Dvorák; and contemporary works by Golijov, Lacheman, Fabio Vacchi, Silvia Colasanti, Nimrod Borenstein, and Kalevi Aho. The quartet completed two North American tours in the 2021–22 season, and made its Lincoln Center debut with Prokofiev, Schoenberg, and Weber’s quintet with clarinetist David Shifrin, as well as debuts at the Ravello Festival and at Prague’s Rudolfinum.

Mark Synnott

Mark Synnott is a pioneering big-wall climber and one of the most prolific adventurers of his generation. His search for unclimbed and unexplored rock walls has taken him on nearly 30 expeditions to places likeAlaska, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland, Patagonia, Guyana, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Himalayas, Uzbekistan, Russia, Cameroon, Chad, Borneo, Oman, and Pitcairn Island, pioneering new routes and setting records. He has climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan 22 times, including several one-day ascents. Synnott works with The North Face Research, Design, and Development team and lectures frequently on his life as a professional climber and explorer. His book Baffin Island: Climbing, Trekking, Skiing was published in 2007. He has worked for National Geographic Television, NBC Sports, Warren Miller Entertainment, Teton Gravity Research, and Red Bull Media House and is a contributor to National Geographic magazine, Men’s Journal, Outside, Climbing, Rock & Ice, Skiing, and New York Magazine.

Zefira Valova, conductor

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Zefira Valova specialized in baroque violin at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and was concertmaster of several orchestras including The National Youth Orchestra of The Netherlands. She has appeared as a soloist with the Academic Symphony Orchestra Sofia, Classic FM Radio Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Orpheus, and the prizewinning Ars Barocca Ensemble. Valova is a founder of the Sofia Baroque Arts Festival and has been concertmaster of Il Pomo d’Oro since 2015. Since 2016, she has conducted the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra’s early music series, and collaborates with Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, La Chambre Philharmonique, B’Rock, Les Ambassadeurs, and others, and regularly appears in chamber music ensembles.