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Leon
Fleisher, piano
Renowned pianist and conductor LEON FLEISHER is a native of San
Francisco, where he began his keyboard studies at 4 and gave his
first public recital at 8. One year later he became a student of the
legendary Artur Schnabel, who was his most important mentor both as a
pianist and as a teacher. In 1944, at age 16, Mr. Fleisher made his
debut with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux. He went on
to become the first American to win the Queen Elisabeth International
Piano Competition in Belgium. Regular appearances with orchestra and
in recital on the world's great concert stages followed. His
celebrated collaboration with George Szell and the Cleveland
Orchestra resulted in a series of recordings, among them the
Beethoven and Brahms Piano Concertos, that have remained touchstones
of the classical catalogue to this day.
Midway through the 1964-65 season, Mr. Fleisher's illustrious career
was interrupted by the onset of a debilitating ailment affecting his
right hand, later diagnosed as repetitive stress syndrome. During the
intervening years, he devoted his musical career to work as a
teacher, to conducting (which he has pursued actively since 1967)
and, eventually, to the left hand alone piano literature. His
performances and recordings of the repertoire for the left hand,
beginning in the 1980's, won him immediate critical and popular
acclaim, as well as two Grammy nominations for his Sony Classical
recordings (both solo works for the left hand and the Ravel and
Prokofiev Concertos). It was in 1995, at a concert with Cleveland
Orchestra, that Mr. Fleisher was able to play the Mozart Concerto in
A Major, K. 414 successfully with both hands again. He now performs
both the left-hand repertoire and select works for two hands.
Over the past few seasons, Mr. Fleisher has performed the Brahms
Piano Concerto No. I with the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre
de Paris (under Carlo Maria Giulini) and the Berlin Staatsoper
Orchestra (under Daniel Barenboim), among other orchestras. He has
also continued to play the Mozart Concerto, K. 414 with such
orchestras as the Boston Symphony, theChicago Symphony (at Ravinia)
the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony and the
Chamber Orchestra of Europe (which he also conducted) and the Ravel
Concerto for the Left Hand with the Toronto Symphony, the
Indianapolis Symphony, the BBC Symphony, and the Orchestra de Paris
(as soloist on its European tour in the fall of 1997). His recitals,
which in 1998-99 included appearances in Vienna and London (Wigmore
Hall), combine two-hand and left-hand alone repertoire. He has also
played chamber music at the Verbier and Santa Fe festivals.
Mr. Fleisher's reputation as a conductor was quickly established when
he founded the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center in 1967
and became Music Director of the Annapolis Symphony in 1970. He made
his New York conducting debut at the 1970 Mostly Mozart Festival and
in 1973 became Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony. Since
that time, he has appeared as guest conductor with the Boston
Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit
Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony and the
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others. He conducted his first
opera in Baltimore during the 1988?89 season. He also had a regular
association with the New Japan Philharmonic as its Principal Guest
Conductor, leading the orchestra in a series of concerts each season.
Holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Chair at the Peabody Conservatory of
Music since 1959, Mr. Fleisher also serves on the faculties of the
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Royal Conservatory
of Music in Toronto. From 1986?1997, he was Artistic Director of the
Tanglewood Music Center. Teaching activities have been an important
element of his activities at the Aspen, Lucerne, Ravinia and Verbier
festivals, among others. He has also given master classes at the
Salzburg Mozarteum, the Paris Conservatory, the Ravel Academy at St.
Jean de Luz, the Mishkenot in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York.
Leon Fleisher holds honorary doctorates from the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music, Towson State University and the Cleveland
Institute of Music, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences. In 1994 Musical America named him "Instrumentalist
of the Year." He has also been the recipient of the Johns
Hopkins University's President's Medal.
Jin Hi
Kim, komungo
JIN HI KIM is highly acclaimed as both a komungo (a fourth century
fretted board zither) virtuoso and for her cross-cultural
compositions. She is active worldwide as one of the leading
compositional voices of a new Generation East, which is rooted in a
profound Korean history and evolving a distinctive Pan-Asian/American
compositional approach. Kim's work celebrates the different energies
of Buddhist and Confucian-influenced Korean court music and the
spirit of vigorous Shamanistic folk music. Meanwhile, her works
approach contemporary composition with a bilingual tongue, drawing on
the most stimulating aspects of each of these cultures.
She has developed for twenty years a series of compositions,
"Living Tones" -that each tone is alive, embodying its own
individual shape, sound and subtext-and that have been presented at
the Lincoln Center Festival, Kennedy Center (Washington DC),
Juilliard School's Focus Festival '96, Carnegie Hall, Darmstadt
Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, the Warsaw
Autumn Festival, Festival Nieuwe Muziek, Institute for Contemporary
Art (London) and the Asian Pacific Festival (New Zealand). Josef
Woodard of the Los Angeles Times wrpte "This (Living Tones) is
new music/world music at its finest, beyond political correctness,
into the realm of the sublime, where words and cultural postures fall away."
She has pioneered a wide array of compositions for the komungo in
combination which she has performed with the Kronos Quartet, the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Xenakis Ensemble. She has
co-developed the world's only electric komungo with Joseph Yanuziello
in 1999. She also has co-created, with Alex Noyes, interactive pieces
for electric komungo and the MIDI computer system, which have been
presented at Smithsonian Freer Gallery in Washington DC and Asia
Society in New York. Kim has performed extensively throughout the
USA, Europe, Canada, South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and
Rusia at many international festivals both as a soloist and with
leading improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, William
Parker, James Newton, Oliver Lake, Peter Kowald, Evan Parker, Joelle
Leandre, Hans Reichel, Elliott Sharp and Henry Kaiser. She also
collaborated with virtuosos of the Indian sitar, Japanese koto,
African drum and Australian didgeridoo on her "Komungo Around
the World" CD project, which emphasizes an inclusiveness of
ethnic influence in moving towards a blurring of global delineations.
Peter Watrous of The New York Times wrote, "virtuoso, Jin Hi Kim
promises thoughtful shimmering East-West amalgams in combinations
that are both new and unlikely to be repeated."
Kim's widely acclaimed cross-cultural mask dance music theater,
"Dragon Bond Rite" (1997), featured artists from Korea,
Japan, India, Indonesia, Tuva and the U.S., and was presented at the
Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Kennedy Center (Washington DC),
Japan Society (New York) and at City Hall for The Festival of Asian
Art in Hong Kong. Jospeh McLellan of The Washington Post wrote
"[Dragon Bond Rite] cut across barriers of language, culture and
tradition, touch us at deep, irrational levels, and result in a work
that speaks to our common humanity."
The Asia Society commissioned a presented her work, "Garden of
Venus", scored for Korean komungo and changoo, Chinese pipa,
Japanese yokobue and Indonesian kinder and voice. It was co-presented
by World Music Institute and Thomas Buckner's Interpreations, in
association with the International Alliance for Women in Music in
1999. For the Millennium Celebration of Sacred Rhythm Festival in
Bali, Indonesia, she made the compositional structure and directed
"Golden Dragon Bond Rite" for Korean changoo and kwengar,
Indian ghantam, Indonesian kendang and Senegalese djembay. The
Jakarta Post wrote "One of the most fantastic performances
during the festival was a jam session involving Indonesian and
foreign artists led by Jin Hi Kim. Kim united all the melodies and
sounds into a solid music composition that deserved a standing
ovation from all of the audience".
Currently she is creating as new multi-media music ritual,
"Touching the Moons", which was performed at the Kitchen in
New York in May, 2000. The project utilized multi-media interactive
live performances, both interweaving and juxtaposing newly developed
Korean electric komungo and Indian performing art forms within the
contact of 21st Century Western scientific knowledge and advanced art technology.
She received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Mary
Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, art International Inroads for Ford
Foundation, Meet The Composer's Reader's Digest Commissioning
Program, National Endowment for the Arts, Lincoln Center Commission,
Kronos Quartet Commission, Foundation for Contemporary Performance
Arts, Korea Society Fund, Japan Society Commission, Asia Society
Commission and Asian Cultural Council.
She has given lectures about Korean music and her compositional
concept, Living Tones, at Wesleyan University, Cornell University,
Yale University, Skidmore College, Dartmouth College, Duke
University, Indiana University, Tufts University, Peabody
Conservatory, New England Conservatory, Smith College, Stanford
University, Hartwick College, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Drake
University, American Museum of Natural History, New York, California
Institute of the Arts, Cornish College, Calvin College, University of
Dayton, Vassar College, Kent State University, University of
Minnesota, Hemline University and many other universities and events
in Japan, Korea and Europe. She has presented extensive radio
broadcasts throughout North America including NPR, KPFA-FM, WNYC-FM,
the Canadian Public Radio/TV stations and in Korea, Japan, Australia
and Europe.
Born in Korea in 1957, Kim earned a BA degree in Korean traditional
music at Seoul National University before coming to the US, and
received an MFA in electronic music/composition at Mills College, CA.
Jin Hi Kim has studied ten years of traditional music with National
Living Treasures at the National Center for Korean traditional
Performing Arts and with a noted ethnomusicologist at Seoul National
university. She has written over 30 articles for Korea's largest
music magazine, Eumak Dong-A which is published by Dong-A Daily News.
These articles about American new music included reviews of concerts
and festivals, interviews with and research of some of America's most
significant composers including John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip lass
and many others. These articles were the initial exposure to Korean
audiences of contemporary musical ideas, concepts and composers from
the United States.
Her article "Asia as Silent Soul in the West" was published
by Asian American Renaissance for "Dancing Mosiac: A Pan-Asian
Performance Showcase" Handbook, MN (1999); "Female Energy
in Music" was published by Festival Nieuwe Muziek, The
Netherlands (1998), Evterpe Magazine Sweden (1998), and Logos Blad
Magazine, Belgium (1998); a biographical essay was published by the
Society of Composers, Inc. (1998); "Asian Women in Music"
was presented at the International
Symposium, Donne in Musica, Italy and published by IAWN Journal
(1997); and "Panel Discussion on Asian Women in Music" was
presented by the 18th Asian Composers League in the Philipines, and
published by IAWN Journal (1997).
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