FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 12, 2010
CONTACT:
Gene Murrow
Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc.
(212) 866 – 0468
Email
SALON/SANCTUARY CONCERTS
Monica Huggett, violin, and Audrey Axinn, fortepiano
Internationally celebrated baroque violinist Monica Huggett, the first Artistic Director of The Juilliard School's new Historical Performance Program, accompanied by fortepianist and Juilliard faculty member Audrey Axinn, offers a recital of violin sonatas from the classical period at 8 pm on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium. The Auditorium at 417 East 61st Street is part of the 18th-century Mount Vernon House and Museum complex, and providing an unusually intimate and historically resonant venue for these works.
Listing Information
Date:
Thursday May 6, 2010
Time: 8 pm
Location: Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium
417 East 61st Street (between York and First Avenues),
Manhattan
Public Transportation: N, R, W or 4, 5, 6 trains to Lexington Avenue/59th Street
M31 or M57 bus
Artists: Monica Huggett, baroque violin
Audrey Axinn, fortepiano
Program: Violin sonatas by Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, and von Weber
Tickets: $25 per concert, general admission
Order online at: www.gemsny.org
Telephone: (212) 866 – 0468
Email
OR at the door
Program
Sonata in D Major, D. 384
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Sonata in E-flat Major. KV 380
Wolfgang A. Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Sonata in F Major, Op. 24, "Spring"
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
Sonata in G Major, Op. 10, no. 2
Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826)
About the Artists
Monica Huggett has an international reputation as one of the foremost baroque violinists of our time. During her studies of modern violin at the Royal Academy of Music she was introduced to the baroque violin and immediately felt a complete empathy with the instrument. She has been one of its most fervent champions ever since. From age seventeen, Monica has earned her living solely as a violinist and artistic director – beginning in London as a freelance violinist – and currently as the newly-appointed first artistic director of the Juilliard School’s Historical Performance Program and Artistic Director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra. In the intervening four decades, she co-founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman; founded her own London-based ensemble Sonnerie; worked with Christopher Hogwood at the Academy of Ancient Music; with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert; and toured the United States in concert with James Galway. She has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra, Montreal; Tafelmusik, Toronto; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; the Seville Baroque Orchestra; and Concerto Copenhagen. She also performs frequently as a solo violinist all over the world. She has recorded for EMI, Decca, Teldec, Erato, Phillips and many other labels.
Audrey Axinn appears regularly throughout the United States and Europe performing on early and modern keyboard instruments. She debuted as a fortepianist in 1999 at the Boston Early Music Festival and has become a sought-after specialist in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century music. Critics have written: “Axinn is an artist…her touch is magical and the fluidity of her playing exceptional. Her musical sensibility reminds one of Landowska.”
She has performed recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp, the Willet-Holthuysen Museum in Amsterdam and the the Cappella de’Turchini in Naples and here in New York at the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, Bargemusic, the 92nd Street, Merkin Concert Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has partnered with some exceptional performers including Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Eugene Fodor, Matt Haimovitz, Daniel Heifetz, Gil Morgenstern and Hila Plitmann and has recorded for Koch International and Newport Classics labels.
Ms. Axinn is on the faculty of The Juilliard School where she teaches fortepiano chamber music. She is currently in her second year as Assistant Dean at the Mannes College of Music where she also teaches classes in performance practice and instrumental accompanying. She holds a Masters degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School, as well as degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and Manhattan School of Music.
Ms. Axinn has studied for many years with esteemed piano pedagogue, Zitta Zohar. She studied in the Netherlands on a Fulbright Scholarship with Stanley Hogland and Bart van Oort and has also worked with Malcolm Bilson and Jos van Immerseel.
About the Series
The Salon/Sanctuary series offers an opportunity to hear early music in the kinds of spaces for which it was intended. Sacred music is presented in the intimate Church of the Epiphany, while salon repertoire will be heard in the 1799 Abigail Adams Smith Museum.
Salon/Sanctuary is sponsored by the Gruson Fund for Brain Tumor Research and Care and produced by Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. Both believe that our need for the arts becomes ever more urgent in times of stress, whether our plight involves a stagnant economy or intractable illness. A simple concert becomes a sacred window of tranquility, and the salon becomes a sanctuary from daily troubles.
Tickets for each of the five series concerts are $25, general admission. All proceeds after expenses benefit scientific research in search of a cure.
About the Sponsor
The Gruson Fund for Brain Tumor Research and Care is a non-profit organization dedicated to encourage and support scientific research to advance the treatment of and the eventual cure of brain tumors. In furtherance of this objective, The Gruson Fund: Funds research into the causes of brain tumors and the most advantageous techniques and types of treatment available to brain tumor patients, advances research on an international level by supporting lectures, collaborative projects and fellowships among educational institutions and hospitals; and works with educational and other non-profit organizations having the same objectives as The Gruson Fund.
For further information, please see: www.grusonfund.org
The Church of the Epiphany has generously donated their space for these concerts.
About the Producer
Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. (GEMS) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to advancing and promoting the music of the medieval, Renaissance, baroque and classical periods in New York City. GEMS promotes excellence in our field by producing projects of exceptional quality (e.g. Sinfonia New York’s concerts, The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters, the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 at St. Ignatius of Loyola, our annual fall showcase concerts), supports the professional community with a number of critical services (publicity and marketing, online ticketing, front-of-house), and secures work for New York based musicians throughout the country via our active booking agency, GEMS Live!
For further information or to set up an interview:
www.gemsny.org Email (212) 866-0468
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Media services provided by: Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc., 340 Riverside Drive #1-A, New York, NY 10025; www.gemsny.org.