Ursula Oppens, a legend among American pianists, is widely admired particularly for her original and perceptive readings of new music, but also for her knowing interpretations of the standard repertoire. No other artist alive today has commissioned and premiered more new works for the piano that have entered the permanent repertoire. With five Grammy nominations to her credit, Ms. Oppens established her reputation early on with a classic recording of Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated.
She has released Piano Songs, music by Meredith Monk, with pianist Bruce Brubaker; Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano; Oppens Plays Carter (complete Carter piano works); Piano Music of Our Time; Keys to the City, (complete Picker piano music);and, with pianist Jerome Lowenthal, Visions de l’Amen by Messiaen and Debussy’s En blanc et noir. Over the years, Ms. Oppens has premiered works by such leading composers as John Adams, Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Anthony Davis, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, David Hertzberg, Laura Kaminsky, Tania Leon, György Ligeti, Erik Lundborg, Witold Lutoslawski, Harold Meltzer, Meredith Monk, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Bernard Rands, Frederic Rzewski, Allen Shawn, Alvin Singleton, Joan Tower, Lois V Vierk, Amy Williams, Christian Wolff, Amnon Wolman, and Charles Wuorinen. As an orchestral guest soloist, Ms. Oppens has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee.
Abroad, she has appeared with such ensembles as the Berlin Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Deutsche Symphonie, the Scottish BBC, and the London Philharmonic Orchestras. In addition to collaborating with the Cassatt Quartet, she has performed chamber music with the Arditti, Cassatt, JACK, Juilliard, and Pacifica quartets. Ursula Oppens teaches at Mannes College, The New School, and is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. In 2019, Ms. Oppens was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New England Conservatory.
Cassatt String Quartet
Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the New York City-based Cassatt
String Quartet has performed throughout the world, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York; Tanglewood Music Theater; the Kennedy
Center, Washington, DC; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris; Centro National de las Artes,
Mexico City; Maeda Hall, Tokyo; and Beijing Central Conservatory. At the Library of Congress,
the Cassatt performed on the library’s matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments.
Esteemed music critic Alex Ross named the Cassatt three times to his “10 Best Classical
Recordings” in The New Yorker, and the ensemble has been featured on NPR’s “Performance
Today,” Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WQXR and WNYC, on Canada’s CBC Radio, and on
Radio France.
The Cassatt’s numerous awards are from the National Endowment for the Arts, the USArtists
International, Chamber Music America, CMA/ASCAP, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust,
Meet the Composer, and the Amphion, Copland, Fromm and Alice M. Ditson Music Foundations. Since 1995, the ensemble has been on the performing artist roster for the New York State Council on the Arts.
With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt has offered classes for
composers and performers at the American Academy, Rome; the Toho School, Tokyo; Bowdoin
International Music Festival; Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Syracuse universities, and the
University of Pennsylvania. The quartet is in residency annually at Cassatt in the Basin! in Texas. Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland and Vermeer Quartets, pianists Ursula Oppens and Marc- Andre Hamelin, clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, didgeridoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and composers Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower and John Corigliano. The Cassatt’s discography includes new quartets by Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky; Guggenheim fellow Daniel S. Godfrey; and Grawemeyer- and Rome Prize-winner Sebastian Currier.
Named for the celebrated impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet consists of Muneko
Otani, violin; Jennifer Leshnower, violin; Ah Ling Neu, viola; and Elizabeth Anderson, cello.
Composer
Victoria Bond leads a multifaceted career as composer, conductor, lecturer, and artistic director of Cutting Edge Concerts. Bond’s opera, Clara, premiered at the Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival in Germany in 2019. Recent commissions include: The Adventures of Gulliver (American Opera Project through a commissioning grant from Opera America); Blue and Green Music (Chamber Music America commission for the Cassatt String Quartet); The Miracle of Light (The Young Peoples Chorus of NYC, commission, premiered by Chamber Opera Chicago).
Recent recordings include Instruments of Revelation (Naxos American Classics), Soul of a Nation: Portraits of Presidential Character (Albany Records), The Voices of Air (Albany).
Recent performances include: scenes from Mrs. President (Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble), scenes from Clara (The German Forum), Mrs. President (Rochester Lyric Opera).
Ms. Bond has composed eight operas, six ballets, two piano concertos and orchestral, chamber, choral and keyboard compositions. She has been commissioned by ensembles including the Houston and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, Cleveland and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, Michigan Philharmonic, Cassatt String Quartet, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Soli Deo Gloria Music Foundation, American Opera Project, Young Peoples’ Chorus of NYC, Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Choral Society of the Hamptons, American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Her compositions have been performed by the Dallas Symphony, New York City Opera, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Anchorage Opera, Irish National Orchestra (RTE), Shanghai Symphony and members of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, among others. Victoria Bond is principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera, Chicago, a position she has held since 2008. Ms. Bond is the recipient of the Victor Herbert Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Walter Hinrichsen Award, the Perry F. Kendig Award and the Miriam Gideon Prize.
Blue and Green Music - is the name of a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe on which I have based my string quartet. The painting is an abstract study in motion, color and form, with the interplay of those two colors that dance with each other in graceful, sensuous patterns. O’Keeffe was influenced by music and said, “Since I cannot sing, I paint.” Her painting is filled with music and it was my task to discover what it evoked. There clearly had to be two distinct motifs to express the two colors and once I had them, they developed their own sense of direction and form. Limiting myself to these two motifs, I have varied them during the course of this four-movement quartet to illuminate their many facets, from simple and austere through intense and forceful, concluding with a playful dance movement. ----Victoria Bond
Program
1) Piano solo "Das Jahr" Fanny Mendelssohn
2) String Quartet "Blue and Green Music" world premiere on-line Victoria Bond, Commission has been made possible by the 2019 Chamber Music Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.
3) Piano quintet Op 67 in F sharp-minor Amy Beach
I. Adagio- Allegro moderato
II. Adagio espressivo
IIi. Allegro agitato