Faculty

BORROMEO STRING QUARTET
www.borromeoquartet.org

Nicholas Kitchen, Kristopher Tong, violins; Mai Motobuchi, viola; Yeesun Kim, cello.

Considered “Simply the best there is” by the Boston Globe, the critically acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet is one of the most sought after string quartets in the world, each season performing over 100 concerts. Audiences and critics alike have praised the Borromeo's revealing explorations of Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Ligeti, and its affinity for making challenging repertoire approachable.

The quartet's musicians serve as artists-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Borromeo continues long-standing residencies at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York, and the Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo. Awards include Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, as well as top prizes at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. In 2006 the Aaron Copland House honored the Borromeo’s commitment to contemporary music by creating the Borromeo Quartet Award, an annual initiative that premieres the work of important young composers.

The quartet made classical music history in 2003 with its pioneering record label, the Living Archive Recorded Performance Series, making it is possible to order DVDs and CDs of many of its concerts, providing listeners the chance to explore in greater depth the music they have just heard live and explore new and rarely performed works.

This is the Borromeo's fourth season with Taos School of Music.

BRENTANO STRING QUARTET
www.music.princeton.edu/~brentano

Mark Steinberg, Serena Canin, violins; Misha Amory, viola; Nina Lee, cello. 

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has established itself as one of the world's top quartets, labeled by a London newspaper as "an ensemble of exceptional insight and communicative gifts." As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in a performance review, "The concert made it clear that these players could well be the best of the latest generation. Their level of individual technique was superb, while musical dialog necessary for rich chamber music was evident from first to last." 

The quartet's many awards include the Cleveland Quartet Award, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, and the Martin E. Segal Award. The Brentano was chosen by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to participate in the inaugural season of Chamber Music Society Two, and in 1997 the quartet capped a triumphant European tour in London with a Wigmore Hall debut for which it won Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Music Award. 

Recent and upcoming appearances include the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, the Bath Festival in England, Chamber Music New Zealand, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, plus performances in Australia, France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. The Brentano is known for its inspiring performances of works by Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and other masters of classical music, but also has a strong commitment to contemporary composers. It has commissioned and premiered works of Milton Babbitt, Chou Wen-chung, Charles Wuorinen, Bruce Adolphe, and Steven Mackey, and their recordings include CDs of works by Mozart, Adolphe, Mackey, and Haydn. This is the quartet's fifth season in Taos.

ST LAWRENCE STRING QUARTET
www.slsq.com

Geoff Nuttall, Scott St. John, violins; Lesley Robertson, viola; Christopher Costanza, cello 

Acknowledged as a world-class chamber ensemble, the St. Lawrence String Quartet's playing has been called "electrifying" and "deeply and poignantly sensual." As The New Yorker magazine wrote, "the St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection." 

Formed in 1990, just two years later the quartet won both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions, launching it on a performing career that has covered North and South America, Europe and Asia. The quartet performs over 100 concerts annually, which includes its popular series Sundays with the St. Lawrence for Stanford Lively Arts, plus concerts throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Its numerous collaborations have included projects with the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and the Emerson Quartet, and in 2007 the quartet joined with soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and pianist Kevin Murphy to premiere Roberto Sierra's “Songs from the Diaspora.” 

The St. Lawrence is ensemble-in-residence at Stanford University, and serves as visiting artists at the University of Toronto. This season they begin a visiting chamber music residency at Arizona State University. The quartet's recording of Schumann's First and Third Quartets received several prestigious awards, and BBC Music Magazine gave the recording its highest rating, calling it the benchmark recording of the works. Other recordings include works by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, and their 2002 CD Yiddishbbuk, featuring the music of composer Osvaldo Golijov, received two Grammy nominations.

ROBERT MCDONALD, Pianist

Pianist Robert McDonald has played extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. He has appeared with major orchestras in the United States and Latin America, and was the recital partner for many years to Isaac Stern, as well as other celebrated instrumentalists. Mr. McDonald has also performed with the Takács, Vermeer, Juilliard, Brentano, Borromeo, American, and Shanghai string quartets, and in tours with Music from Marlboro. 

His discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Bridge, Vox, Musical Heritage Society, ASV, and CRI, and Mr. McDonald's prizes include the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition, the William Kapell International Competition, and the Deutsche Schallplatten Critics Award. He has studied with Theodore Rehl, Seymour Lipkin, Rudolf Serkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Beveridge Webster, and Gary Graffman, and holds degrees from Lawrence University, The Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Manhatten School of Music. 

A member of the piano faculty at the Juilliard School since 1999, Mr. McDonald joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2007. In addition to coaching piano at Taos School of Music, he is also the school's artistic director. This will be his twenty-seventh summer in Taos. 
 

MICHAEL TREE, Guest Violist

Violist Michael Tree, who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1954, was a scholarship student at the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Efrem Zimbalist, Veda Reynolds, and Lea Luboshutz. He has appeared as violin and viola soloist with the Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New Jersey, and other major orchestras, and has also participated in leading music festivals, including Marlboro, Tanglewood, Casals, Spoleto and Israel. As a founding member of the Guarneri Quartet, Mr. Tree has played in major cities throughout the world, and, in 1992, New York City Mayor Ed Koch presented the Guarneri Quartet with the city's Seal of Recognition. Mr. Tree was also a founding member of the Marlboro Trio, and served as president of the First American String Quartet Congress presented by the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institute. Presently Mr. Tree holds the Misha Elman Chair at the Manhattan School of Music and serves on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music, Rutgers University, The Juilliard School, and the University of Maryland. Among the most recorded musicians in America, he has recorded over 95 chamber music works, including 10 piano quartets and quintets with Arthur Rubenstein, and two complete Beethoven quartet cycles. This will be his sixteenth summer with the Taos School of Music.

RANDALL HODGKINSON, Pianist

Grand prize winner of the International American Music Competition sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Foundation, pianist Randall Hodgkinson has been called "a first-rate musician...(with a) superb sense of musical shape" by Fanfare Magazine. He is on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and the Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society. He has performed with orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, and Cleveland, abroad in Italy and Iceland, and collaborated with conductors including Leonard Bernstein and Gunther Schuller. In addition he performs the four-hand and two-piano repertoire with his wife Leslie Amper. 

Festival appearances include Blue Hill in Maine, Bargemusic in New York, Chestnut Hill Concerts in Connecticut, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Northwest in Oregon. Mr. Hodgkinson is a featured artist on the Bosendorfer Concert Series aired over WNYC-FM in New York. A CD of solo piano music, titled Petrouchka and Other Prophecies, featuring works by Stravinsky, Chopin, Beethoven, and Schumann, won critical acclaim, with BBC Music Magazine calling it "a rather spectacular piano recital...a formidable pyrotechnic display...very impressive." Other recordings include the Gardner Read Piano Concerto, solo piano music by Donald Martino and Roger Sessions (New World Recordings), and the complete works for cello and piano by Leo Ornstein with cellist Joshua Gordon.