Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Performing Arts Center will inaugurate the Arch Chamber Music Festival, a weekend of world-class music with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, on April 14 at 8 p.m. and April 15 at 3 p.m. Both concerts will take place in Hodgson Concert Hall in the Performing Arts Center.
The April 14 program will include chamber music by Mozart, Brahms and Ernõ Dohnányi; and the April 15 program will showcase the music of Beethoven and Schumann.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is America’s premier repertory company for chamber music, with a roster of the world’s leading instrumentalists. Six of Lincoln Center’s outstanding artists will perform in Athens for the Arch Chamber Music Festival, including pianist Wu Han, violinists Yura Lee and Arnaud Sussmann, violist Paul Neubauer, cellist Nicholas Canellakis and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.
Han serves as co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society and ranks among the most esteemed and influential classical musicians in the world today. Along with her husband, cellist David Finckel, she launched ArtistLed, classical music’s first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, whose catalogue of 13 albums has won widespread critical acclaim, including BBC Music Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award. They also are the founding artistic directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley, and were named the 2012 Musicians of the Year by Musical America.
Lee was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2007 and has won numerous international prizes, including first prize and the audience prize at the 2006 Leopold Mozart Competition.
Sussmann, also an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, American Symphony Orchestra, Monaco Chamber Orchestra, Nice Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, El Salvador National Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, among others.
Neubauer was appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21. He serves as the chamber music director of the OK Mozart Festival in Oklahoma and artistic director of the Chamber Music Extravaganza in Curaçao. He is a two-time Grammy nominee.
Canellakis was a founding member of the Vertigo String Quartet, which received first prize in the Musicatri International Competition in Italy in 2006.
Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor is another Avery Fisher Career Grant winner and two-time Grammy nominee.
Tickets for each concert are $37, with special discounts for UGA students. Tickets can be purchased online at pac.uga.edu or by calling the Performing Arts Center box office at 706/542-4400 or toll free at 888/289-8497.
The underwriter for the performance is the Franklin Chamber Music Society.
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Note to editors: An image of Wu Han, who serves as co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society, is available for download at http://multimedia.uga.edu/media/images/Wu-Han-Chamber.jpg.
Note to editors: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center concerts originally were scheduled to be performed at the UGA Chapel but have been moved to Hodgson Concert Hall.
