Morkoski and Kaczorowska in Concert
with Special Guest Gabriela Lena Frank

Pianist Molly Morkoski and Violinist Joanna Kaczorowska unite for a very special concert featuring Mozart, Brahms, and our special guest, contemporary composer Gabriela Lena Frank.

March 17th, 2pm
Lehman College, Bronx

Recital Hall, Music Building Directions Here
Complimentary Admission

Program

Mozart, Sonata for Violin and Piano in F Major, K. 377

Allegro
Andante
Tempo di Menuetto. Un poco Allegretto

Brahms, Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 78

Vivace ma non troppo
Adagio
Allegro molto moderato

Gabriela Lena Frank, Sueños de Chambi: Snapshots for an Andean Album

Harawi de Quispe
Diablicos Puneños
Responsorio Lauramarqueño
P'asña Marcha
Adoración para Angelitos
Harawi de Chambi
Marinera

Joanna Kaczorowska

Acclaimed as an enormously accomplished violinist, Joanna Kaczorowska's playing features uncommon refinement, passionate expression and tonal sensitivity. Her artistry combines rare talent with ferocious enthusiasm: Joanna has an irrepressible passion for musical experimentation and discovery. In both classical and contemporary repertoire and world music traditions, Joanna has an ability to express herself in the deepest personal sense through her music.

Dr. Joanna Kaczorowska, a native of Poland, has performed with today’s leading artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, members of the Emerson String Quartet, Michael Tilson Thomas, Reinbert De Leeuw, David Robertson, and as a guest member of the New World Symphony. She has performed at many of the great concert halls across the globe such as Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Beethoven's Haus, and at many music festivals including Music at Menlo Festival, Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood Music Festival.

Dr. Kaczorowska is the founder and Artistic Director of New York Chamber Musicians, a brand new, innovative, chamber music series that breaks with the old traditional concert setting creating intimate experiences for both artists and audience while raising funds for charitable causes through its concerts.

Joanna has won much acclaim and many prestigious prizes and awards at numerous international competitions, including First Prize in the 2009 Liszt-Garrison Festival & International Piano Competition.

Joanna is a violin and chamber music professor at SUNY, Stony Brook, where she is also the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Chamber Music.

She holds a Doctorate from SUNY, Stony Brook and Masters from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Music Academy in Poznan, Poland. Joanna also has a postgraduate degree and Diploma in Arts and Music Management and Administration, from The Poznan School of Social Sciences, in Poland. Dr. Kaczorowska is an alumna of the Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

For more details visit: violinjoanna.com

Gabriela Lena Frank

Identity has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has travelled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own. She writes challenging idiomatic parts for solo instrumentalists, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras.

Frank’s compositions have been described by critics as “luminous... bursting with fresh originality” (Los Angeles Times), “of unearthly beauty” (Miami Sun-Sentinel), and “brilliant” (Chicago Tribune). In 2011, the all-Frank Naxos CD “Hilos” broke into the top 100 classical recordings on Billboard in the first week of its release and earned Frank a 2012 Grammy nomination as pianist with the Alias Ensemble in the category of Best Small Ensemble Performance. Frank received a 2009 Latin Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her work Inca Dances with Manuel Barrueco and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. She has also received a 2009 JohnSimon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to assist in research and artistic creation and a 2010 USA Artists Grant. Gabriela Frank’s orchestral work Peregrinos (Pilgrims), originally composed for the Indianapolis Symphony, depicts a world inspired by the stories of Latino immigrants in Indianapolis and was the subject of the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary “Peregrinos/Pilgrims: A Musical Journey.”

Gabriela Frank’s recent premieres include The Singing Mountaineers for the Los Angeles Master Chorale (in collaboration with the Andean music group Huayucaltia), ¡Chayraq! for Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Quijotadas for the Brentano String Quartet, Tres Mitos de Mi Tierra for the King’s Singers, and La Centinela y la Paloma (The Keeper and the Dove) for soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Joana Carneiro (based on original new texts by frequent collaborator and Pulitzer Prize playwright Nilo Cruz). Frank is currently at work on new compositions for the Berkeley Symphony (in collaboration with soprano Jessica Rivera and the San Francisco Girls Chorus), the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and guitarist Manuel Barrueco, among others.

Born in Berkeley in 1972, Frank holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Rice University, and a doctorate from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She currently resides in Oakland and travels often to Latin America.

Molly Morkoski

Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Japan. Her playing has been recognized by The New York Times as “strong, profiled, nuanced . . . beautifully etched . . . . an energetic and focused player . . . . with flexibility and warmth . . .” and The Boston Globe called her “outstanding”. In June 2007, she made her solo debut in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage playing Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126. As a soloist, she enjoys championing the classics, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and contemporary masterworks such as Ives’ Concord Sonata and Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, as well as premiering new works of her composer colleagues. Molly Morkoski has performed in many of the country’s prestigious venues, including Weill and Zankel Halls, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Boston’s Gardner Museum and Jordan Hall, St. Louis’ Powell Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian. Internationally, she has performed at the Teatro Nacional in Santo Domingo, the Strasbourg Conservatoire, the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Nice, and in Japan’s Suntory Hall. She has performed concertos with the Raleigh, Asheville, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Tuscaloosa Symphonies, and with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, Molly Morkoski is a member of Meme, Open End, and Exponential Ensembles and has collaborated with some of today’s leading musicians, including Dawn Upshaw, John Adams, John Corigliano, and David Robertson. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, New World Symphony, Speculum Musicae, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Her debut solo CD, Threads, was released on Albany Records, to critical acclaim, and she has enjoyed numerous other recording collaborations. Molly Morkoski was a Fulbright Scholar to Paris, where she was an apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. The recipient of many awards, she holds degrees from UNC Chapel Hill, Indiana University Bloomington, and SUNY Stony Brook. She is currently an Associate Professor at CUNY’s Lehman College in the Bronx.

For more details visit: mollymorkoski.com