Maine Mountain Chamber Music Concert Sponsored by ArtsFarmington in Nordica Auditorium

Time: 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Location: Nordica Auditorium, Merrill Hall, on the UMF Campus

MAINE MOUNTAIN CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT

On Saturday, June 9, 2018, ArtsFarmington (formerly known as the Arts Institute of Western Maine) is sponsoring a Maine Mountain Chamber Music (MMCM) concert featuring violinist Min-Young Kim, violin, and Käthe Jarka, cello, with MMCM co-directors Laurie Kennedy, viola, and Yuri Funahashi, piano. The program features a late piano-violin sonata by Mozart, an early string trio by Beethoven, and a piano quartet by Dvorak. The concert will be held in Nordica Auditorium located on the second floor of Merrill Hall on the University of Maine at Farmington campus, starting at 7:30 p.m.

About the Mozart piano-violin sonata and the Beethoven string trio, Laurie Kennedy has written “Some great composers rise to the pinnacle of an era by perfecting the craft of their predecessors. Others become catalysts of a new era by absorbing the existing craft and then striking out in an uncharted direction. Mozart was in the first group, Beethoven in the second. Mozart’s Violin Sonata, K. 526, composed in 1787 in Vienna, represents Mozart at the pinnacle of his career. Shortly after Mozart’s death in 1791, a young Beethoven arrived to master the craft of the Viennese style. His String Trio Op. 9, #3, composed in 1798, is a great example of his mastery. In another few years he would set out in a new direction that would change musical history forever. Beethoven referred to his three Op. 9 trios, at the time, as “the best of my works”. Op. 9, #3 trio is in C minor, a key that Beethoven often used to express a sense of inevitability. A peaceful Adagio movement in C Major is a contrast to the driving, energetic, stormy mood of the work as a whole.

From program notes by Kai Chistiansen (on earsense.com): “Dvorák composed his first piano quartet in 1875, when he was 34; it demonstrates numerous evocations of Slavonic national character that give nearly all of Dvorák's work a special, novel cast. The quartet is huge in scale with a confident if not overzealous generosity of musical content ... winning melodies with a stormy romantic bravado sweeping in and out of view ... A deft use of rapid scale passages and Dvorák's uncanny gift for ensemble color add yet additional layers to the music ...

The guest performers for this concert are violinist Min-Young Kim and cellist Käthe Jarka. Min-Young Kim is a founding member of the Daedalus Quartet. She has toured extensively and has also collaborated in festivals and performances with members of the Juilliard, Guarneri, Cleveland, Takács and Vermeer Quartets. A graduate of Harvard University and the Juilliard School, Ms. Kim teaches violin and chamber music at the University of Pennsylvania, and was formerly on the faculty of Columbia University and the School for Strings in New York. Käthe Jarka, a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she studied with Leonard Rose, has been hailed as a cellist who proves that “the ‘old school’ concept of beautiful, controlled sound and vitality of phrasing is alive and well,” and whose hallmark is “clarity of musical and dramatic insight.” An active recitalist and sought-after chamber musician, she has performed throughout the United States and abroad. She has appeared on numerous occasions with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Laurie Kennedy and Yuri Funahashi, founders (in 2002) and co-directors of Maine Mountain Chamber Music, have been providing the community and the Arts Institute with the very best of chamber music. Laurie Kennedy has been Principal Violist and concerto soloist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra since 1981, and has performed at chamber music festivals throughout the Northeast. She received her Masters and the Performers Certificate from Indiana University School of Music. Yuri Funahashi has performed in Japan, Australia, Canada, throughout Europe and in many of the major halls in the U.S. She is a performing member of the Festival Chamber Music Society in New York City, and has collaborated with the Verdehr Trio, and the Brentano and Cassatt String Quartets. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School.

The concert is sponsored by ArtsFarmington, an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Admission is $15 / free for 18 & under and for students with ID. For more information, please go to the website: https://www.artsfarmington.org