A Baroque Celebration — Vivaldi Four Seasons and Bach D Minor Keyboard Concerto
Saturday, January 20, 2024 at 7:30 pm
Tickets
A mid-winter treat featuring Vivaldi’s beloved Four Seasons - Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, as well as the most famous of all Baroque keyboard concertos, Bach’s D Minor Concerto for keyboard and string orchestra. This concert features scoring for string orchestra, harpsichord and piano.
Performers:
Sunyoung Graves, violin
Mia Laity, violin
Sarah Pratt-Parsamian, violin
William Hakim, viola
Robert Burkhart, cello
Barbara Podgurski, harpsichord and piano
Sunyoung Graves, a violinist and dedicated educator, celebrates individual diversity while advocating a culturally inclusive community through her contributions to music performance and education. She served as concertmaster of diverse ensembles and orchestras, including Queens Oratorio Society, Queensborough Symphony, and Pusan Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in South Korea, as well as solo recitals in Asia and the United States, including her New York debut at Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall, presented by Artist International’s Special Presentation Series. She served on a gala committee at Kaufman Music Center and hosted Kaufman Connects. Sunyoung holds a Master of Music degree in violin performance from Mannes College of Music and Advanced Certification in Music Education from Aaron Copland School of Music. She is a member of the board of directors for Musica Reginae Productions, and an adjudicator for Long Island String Festival Association. Sunyoung is on the Teaching Artist faculty of Midori & Friends Organization.
Originally from Listowel, ON, and currently based in New York, NY, acclaimed violinist Sarah Pratt-Parsamian enjoys a diverse and exciting musical career. She has been a prizewinner at the Jeunesses Musicales International Violin Competition, and Silver Medal winner in the Canadian National Music Competition. At the age of 14 she made her solo debut with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra at the Guelph Spring Festival in Ontario, and since has performed as soloist with orchestras in Canada and the U.S., including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa. Recently highlights include a riveting performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra, (Stratford, ON). An avid chamber musician and recital artist, Sarah has performed across Canada and the United States, including Stratford Summer Music Festival, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society, the Arts and Letters Club, Heliconian Club (Toronto), the British Art Museum (New Haven, CT), Bargemusic (New York, NY), the Detroit Institute of Art (Detroit, MI), Clefworks (Montgomery, AB), and others.
Sarah is a temporary member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, having joined the company for the current season. She also performs as a substitute with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, with whom she has traveled on tours across the United States, Europe and Asia. She is a member of the New York City Opera Orchestra, a position she has held since 2006. Sarah holds a Bachelor in Performance Degree from the University of Toronto, Master’s Degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and Doctor of Musical Arts from SUNY Stony Brook. When her violin is resting, Sarah can be found jogging on park trails, climbing trees with her children, hiking with her camera, or curled up on the couch with a good book and a glass of wine.
An adaptable artist known for her engaging musicianship, Mia Laity joined the violin section of the New York City Ballet Orchestra in the 2023-2024 season. Mia studied with Grigory Kalinovsky, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Laurie Smukler at the Manhattan School of Music as the recipient of the L. John Twiford Scholarship, receiving the Helen Airoff Dowling award for the outstanding violinist graduating from the BM program. She received her Master’s of Music degree as a student of Grigory Kalinovsky at Indiana University, where she also taught violin as an Associate Instructor. Before joining the NYCB orchestra, she was a tenured core member of the Sarasota Orchestra’s violin section. During the summer, Mia performs as assistant concertmaster of the Charlottesville Opera, and in Steamboat Springs Colorado as part of the Strings Festival orchestra. She is also the Events Manager for Perlman Music Program Suncoast, and the Executive Director of Soundbox Ventures, a new arts organization that serves as a platform for artist curators and recently created the Listen Hear! series at the Sarasota Art Museum.
William Hakim, violist, has performed extensively throughout the United States and abroad. Praised for his "warmth of tone and musicality" (Leipziger Volkszeitung), he enjoys playing, writing and arranging music in many styles. He has recorded for Albany Records, Decca, and Nonesuch for various artists including Renee Fleming, served as Billy Joel's violist for his Madison Square Garden residency, had numerous TV appearances with Josh Groban, toured the country with Branford Marsalis and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.
Mr Hakim is a member of the Iris Orchestra in Memphis and the le Poisson Rouge Ensemble as well as serving as principal of the New York Symphonic Ensemble and the Glens Falls Symphony. A former member of the Hyperion String Quartet, he studied with John Graham at the Eastman School of Music, Samuel Rhodes at Juilliard, and with Paul Neubauer at the Graduate Center of CUNY where he is pursuing a doctorate and researching improvisation methods for classically trained musicians. Mr. Hakim served on the faculty at Brevard Music Center and is on the faculty of Seton Hall University and Skidmore College.
Cellist Robert Burkhart combines a deep commitment to the existing cello repertoire with what the New Yorker magazine calls an “adventurous” spirit in new music. With performance credits at Alice Tully Hall, Bargemusic, Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and The Rose Studio at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Robert has also appeared as a soloist throughout Japan as a member of the New York Symphonic Ensemble, and been featured in recital on WQXR’s “Young Artist Showcase.”
At the center of new music in New York, Robert has performed with the American Modern Ensemble, Argento New Music Project, Fireworks Ensemble, Newspeak, and SONYC. Recent collaborations include Uri Caine, Georg Friedrich Haas, Aaron Jay Kernis, Steve Mackey, Joan Tower, Charles Wourinen, and Chen Yi. He has performed the New York premiere of John Harbison’s Abu Ghraib for cello and piano, and was the soloist in Augusta Read Thomas’s Passion Prayers for cello and chamber ensemble at the New York Times Center.
Robert’s major teachers include Paul Tobias at The Mannes College of Music and Uri Vardi at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he has worked with Timothy Eddy, Aldo Parisot, and Janos Starker at festivals and masterclasses. Robert has taught at Juilliard Pre-college, Mannes Prep, Syracuse University, and Music Conservatory of Westchester, and been artist-in-residence at Yale University and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. His recent CD “20/21: Music for Cello and Piano from the 20th and 21st Centuries,” features pianist Blair McMillen and the premiere of a work for cello and piano by composer Andrew Waggoner. Robert’s recording of solo Bach on the American Express commercial “Don’t Take Chances. Take Charge.” has garnered national attention.
A native of New York, pianist and teaching artist Barbara Podgurski holds a DMA in piano performance from The Graduate Center (CUNY) as well as a BM in piano performance and an MM in both piano performance and music theory from the Mannes College of Music. Dr. Podgurski has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Europe and has performed at many of the world’s finest venues including a number of performances at Carnegie Hall. She has been featured in numerous television and radio broadcasts, including appearances on WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase, WNYC’s “Soundcheck”, NPR, WPLN Nashville’s “Live from Studio C”, WQED and numerous others. Ms. Podgurski was recently featured on a television documentary for NHK in Japan with her touring partner violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn and the famed “Red” Mendelssohn Stradivarius. Ms. Podgurski was a special guest in March 2015 performing for the National Association of Broadcasters at the 2015 Golden Mike Awards with Grammy-nominated violinist Jenny Oaks Baker. Past collaborations with renowned artists including violinists Philippe Graffin and the late Lorand Fenyves, flutist Harold Jones, clarinetist Charles Neidich, pianists Diane Walsh and Seymour Lipkin, and cellists Manfred Stilz, Marcy Rosen and the late Paul Tobias.
Dr. Podgurski has premiered numerous new works including a commission of a concerto by Pulitzer-Prize winning composer George Walker which she premiered with the Queens Symphony Orchestra. She is a dedicated proponent of new music, focusing on premiering works of NYC based composers and programming such works each season. Barbara has been working for a number of years with the Department of Cultural Affairs as a contact for organizing and contracting musicians for the 9-11 Commemoration Memorial (live televised broadcast from Ground Zero in NYC) and in 2015 was invited with her colleagues to perform at a private ceremony for Pope Francis and members of the United Nations in an interfaith prayer service during the Papal visit to NYC.
Dr. Podgurski is currently the Executive and Artistic Director of Musica Reginae Productions in Queens, NY. She is also a member of the Pitcairn-Podgurski-Drachman Piano Trio which just completed its first US tour. A former faculty member at The Mannes College of Music (The New School), Hunter College (CUNY) and Mercy College (NY), she is currently on the faculty of the RiverArts Music Program in Hudson Valley and is a consultant for the Board of Education for both New York City and New York State. By invitation in 2014, Dr. Podgurski became a Steinway Teaching Artist.
Recent performances include concerts at Carnegie Hall (NY), at the Luzerne Summer Music Festival (NY) and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Trinity Church (NYC), concerts in Palm Beach (FL) and St. Croix (USVI), as well as performing Mozart Piano Concerto in c minor K.491 as soloist with the Astoria Symphony Orchestra in NYC. Barbara is currently a contributing writer to Cambridge’s Nineteenth Century Music Review, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at BMCC (CUNY) and is a staff pianist in the Strings Department at NYU, Barbara performed with rock band Evanescence on their 2017-18 Synthesis Tour and recently performed with legendary vocal group Il Divo their 2019 and 2022 US tours. Barbara is an Arts Commissioner Advisor for the Queens Council on the Arts. In November 2020 Barbara accepted the position of organist/music director at Trinity St. Andrews Evangelical Lutheran Church in Maspeth, Queens. Her most recent performance was at Carnegie Hall in May 2022 celebrating the release of the album Song of the Redwood Tree.