SILVER MEDAL WINNERS ELM CITY ENSEMBLE TO PERFORM IN NEWTOWN SUNDAY
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SILVER MEDAL WINNERS ELM CITY ENSEMBLE TO PERFORM IN NEWTOWN SUNDAY
When music lovers attend the October 10 concert at Edmond Town Hall â the opening concert for the Newtown Friends of Music 1999-2000 season â they will be in for a big surprise. Just how often does one get to hear an ensemble that has just returned, triumphantly, from an international competition with silver medals around the necks of all the performers?
Eight hundred musicians (or groups of musicians) from 27 countries sent their best demo tapes to the judges of the Third International Chamber Music Competition in Osaka, Japan. From this number, the judges selected 24 groups and invited them, all expenses paid, to travel to Osaka and perform in person.
The late Yehudi Menuhin envisioned the Osaka competition as âthe competition of his dreams,â with the ideal notion âthat all types of ensembles are judged primarily by how much they emotionally move the audience.â The Elm City Ensemble, from New Haven (hence its name), is the only American group to ever win at any level of the medal round.
The Elm City Ensemble's success started in 1997, after winning the first and grand prizes in four chamber music competitions: the prestigious Fischoff, the Coleman-Barstow, the Yellow Springs Competition, and the AT&T Pro Youth Award in the Carmel Competition.
Formed in 1995 at Yale University, the members are graduates of Juilliard, Eastman and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The group is the violinist Ingrid Sweeney, clarinetist Garrick Zoeter, pianist Christina Valdes, and cellist Rebecca Patterson.
Since its initial success, The Elm City Ensemble has dedicated itself to the exposure and promotion of contemporary and unusual works. They currently maintain a versatile repertoire, featuring works from the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, although the ensemble is dedicated in particular to commissioning and performing new works.
They have just finished a CD that features a world premiere work, Scenes from an Imagined Life, written for them by the distinguished composer Ezra Lederman. Other works on the CD include Paul Hindemith's Quartet (1938), and David Schiff's Divertimento from Gimpel the Fool (1985), which is based on klezmer style of music.
For the performance in Newtown, sponsored by the Newtown Friends of Music, the ensemble will perform not only the Hindemith quartet and the Schiff divertimento, but also Schumann's Fairytales, which calls for a viola (Ingrid Sweeney plays both instruments), and Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio and a