After the Carte Blanche event in the English Garden of the Château de Fontainebleau, the Fontainebleau Schools of Music and Fine Arts (EAAF) are coming to the FEU on Thursday, July 28. The concert will include two works written by resident composers Thomas Gurin and Aron Frank, who were selected for the summer academy at Fontainebleau this July.
Founded during the same time period with the shared desire to contribute to the development of the Franco-American friendship, the EAAF and the FEU are continuing their partnership post-pandemic.
Our institutions have several objectives and missions in common including hosting intercultural student exchange programs, giving access to French culture to American students studying in France, encouraging creativity and interdisciplinary projects.
This is what our collaboration is based on, and so it is a pleasure to invite the FEU resident musicians to join the students in Fontainebleau for the EAAF summer sessions and for the EAAF to come to FEU to present the young talents to the Parisian audience on the last Thursday of July. — Diana Ligeti
Practical information
Date: July 28 | Time: 19:30 | Facebook event
Program
Camille Saint-Saens (1835 – 1921)
Quartet for piano and strings in Si bemol major, op 41 (Allegretto, Andante maestoso ma con moto)
Vivian CHEN, piano
Julia DANITZ, violin
Bram FISHER, viola
Mingchen MM, cello
Aron Frank (1989)
L’écho du Temps (creation for the 2022 session of the EAAF summer academy)
Amy OH, violin
Sae Bae HAE, piano
Tom Gurin (1995)
Glisten and Break (creation for the 2022 session of the EAAF summer academy)
Julia DANITZ, et Bartu ELCI-OZSOY, violin
Bram FISHER, viola
Mingchen MA, cello
Vivian CHEN, piano
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
Quintet for piano and strings in fa minor op. 34 (Allegro non troppo, Andante, Scherzo Allegro, Poco Sostenuto-Allegro-Presto)
Xiaofu JU et Sae Bae HAE, piano
Amy OH et Ilana ZAKS, violin
Shuhan WANG, viola
Chris ELLIS, cello
Resident composers
Aron Frank is an award-winning composer, performer, and music educator. After beginning the study of violin at age seven, shortly thereafter he began composing music and studying analysis, counterpoint, and music theory with Judd Danby. Aron is a graduate of the Indiana University – Jacobs School of Music, where he received the Bachelor and Master of Music (MM) degrees, studying composition with Claude Baker, Sven-David Sandström, Aaron Travers, Don Freund,
and P.Q. Phan, film scoring with Larry Groupé, and violin performance with Federico Agostini.
His music for films has been screened recently at the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey (Jury Prize), and at Film Independent’s “Project Involve” in Los Angeles. Aron’s music for the concert stage draws from wide-ranging artistic influences, including modernist art and literature. His works have been performed in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, by soloists and ensembles at the Tanglewood Music Institute, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Indiana University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Music Educators National Conference, and by the Wabash Valley Youth Symphony, Americas Chamber Orchestra, and Mariah Wind Quintet.
As a recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship, Aron served as artist-in-residence at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris for the 2021-22 academic year. During this period of time, he studied composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris with Régis Campo, and he is currently a student of film composer Marie-Jeanne Séréro (CNSMDP). Following a month of intensive study at the Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau this summer, Aron will begin a second artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, for the duration of the 2022-23 year.
Tom Gurin, a graduate of Yale University, is a Paris-based composer and performer. He is the current recipient of a Fullbright Harriet Hale Woolley award at the Fondation des États-Unis and studies composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris “Alfred Cortot”. He frequently collaborates with musicians and visual artists throughout Paris, with projects ranging from traditional concert premieres to “en plein air” events and sound art works. He is the 2022 recipient of the Rosalind Swenson Fulbright Award to extend his stay in Paris.
His music has been premiered at the Mannes School of Music in New York City as part of the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, the Yale School of Art, the Antwerp Royal Conservatory, highSCORE New Music Festival in Pavia, Italy, and more. For the month of July 2022, he will be participating in the composition program at the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau.
Additionally, Gurin is a former U.S. Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation and holds an artist diploma with great distinction from the Royal Carillon School in Belgium. He has performed hundreds of carillon concerts throughout North America and Europe. His recent performances in France include Annecy and Taninges, as well as an upcoming concert in Perpignan, where he was also the first prize winner in the city’s 2022 carillon composition contest.
Guest musicians
Amy has recently graduated and received her Bachelor of Music at The Juilliard School where she studied with Prof. Catherine Cho and Prof. Joel Smirnoff. She is a semifinalist of the Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Violinists and the Louis Spohr Competition. She has attended the Great Mountains Music Festival and the Ishikawa Music Academy from 2014-2018, the Singapore International Violin Festival in 2019, and Kneisel Hall from 2020-2021. She is starting her graduate studies with Prof. Ani Kavafian at Yale University in the Fall.
Sae Hae Bae is a versatile and magnetic artist, actively performing solo and chamber concerts throughout Canada, USA, Korea, and Europe.
Born in South Korea, she has won numerous prizes in piano competitions and scholarships at various institutions. Sae Hae has graduated from the Eastman School of Music, University of Toronto, and Glenn Gould School under the tutelage of Marietta Orlov.
Violinist, Julia Danitz is currently a Doctorate of Musical Arts candidate at CUNY Graduate Center, and is a graduate of The Juilliard School with a Master of Music. Before then, she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at Columbia University, where she was enrolled in the rigorous dual degree Columbia-Juilliard exchange program. Her violin tutelage includes noteworthy professors such as Daniel Phillips or Yoko Takebe Gilbert, among others.
She has performed at many prestigious summer music festivals including the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival and School, among others. At Tanglewood she had the privilege of collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.
From 2019-2021 Julia was invited to be on the artist roster of the Center of Musical Excellence and spent the summer of 2021 performing as soloist with the Vienna International Orchestra as part of a tour around Austria.
Julia maintains a musician’s collective, Sonora Collective, which performs living composers work as well as contemporary and underrepresented repertoire in the classical music canon in unique concert spaces in NYC.
Born in 1997, Christopher Ellis has been described as “a rapidly rising cello star” (The Irish Times). Christopher grew up in Ireland and attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music with Aisling Drury Byrne before continuing his studies at the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique et Danse Paris studying with Marc Coppey, where he graduated with the highest honours of a ‘Premier Prix’. As a soloist Christopher has performed internationally at SuperCello Festival Beijing, Piatigorsky Cello Festival Los Angeles, Cesllo Biennale Amsterdam, Pablo Casals Masterclasses France and Kronberg Academy Masterclasses and has appeared at festivals in Ireland including Kilkenny Arts Festival, Clandeboye Festival, Sligo Chamber Music Festival and Killaloe Music Festival. As a chamber musician, Christopher has shared the stage with artists such as Barnabás Kelemen, Lars Anders Tomter, Finghin Collins, The Vogler Quartet, Elina Vähälä and Marc Coppey. A recent highlight for Christopher was making his debut as soloist with the Irish Chamber Orchestra at the Cellissimo Festival in Galway, Ireland. In 2021 Christopher was awarded a music bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, which he will use to commission new works for solo cello by Irish composers. Christopher is currently studying with Brinton Smith at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Bram Fisher is an undergraduate student at New England Conservatory in Boston, studying viola with Martha Strongin Katz and composition with Stratis Minakakis. Previously, Bram studied at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he received the Bernard Rogers Memorial Prize in composition. He has been a six-time finalist of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Competition and a 2016 finalist in the National Young Composers Challenge; he was also a winner of the 2017 MATA Jr. Festival and the 2018 Uel Wade Scholarship Competition. A devoted chamber musician, Bram has been coached by members of the American, Borromeo, Chiara, Cleveland, Dover, ETHEL, Juilliard, Jupiter, Omer, Ulysses, Verona, and Ying String Quartets. In the past he has served on the executive board of OSSIA New Music and has spent many summers playing and writing chamber music at Yellow Barn’s Young Artists Program, Greenwood Music Camp, Madeline Island Chamber Music, and Bowdoin International Music Festival. Bram plays a viola made by the Vermont-based violinmaker Douglas Cox, on generous loan from the Virtu Foundation.
Pianist Xiaofu Ju started learning piano at the age of 4. He is a graduate from Music Middle School. Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Ting Zhou. Ju is currently pursuing his Master of Music Degree at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Yoheved Kaplinsky. In 2019, he published a collection of his poetry, On the Path Seeking for the Ruins of Spring.
Since his orchestral debut at age 14 with Shanghai Philharmonic, he has successfully played with orchestras such as China Central Opera House, Shanghai Philharmonic, Jiangsu Symphony, and the Hong Kong Youth Philharmonic, among others.
Ju has had the honor to study and play for many influential pianists, including Jörg Demus, Gary Graffman, etc…
Ju was awarded first prize in the Second Hong Kong International Piano Competition, among others. He was a finalist of The Pearl River Piano Competition in China and recipient of several scholarships such as the Juilliard Kenneth M. and Josephine J. Bissell Scholarship.
In recent seasons, Ju has performed with many orchestras like China Philharmonic, but he also appeared in recitals in New York, Paris, Fontainebleau, Beijing, etc… ; in 2021 he premiered Philip Glass Concerto No.3 with Novus-Classica Camerata at MISA festival in Shanghai (China premiere). He was also chosen to be the first ambassador of Pearl River Piano.
Ju has performed in the Salzburg Congress, the Rose Theatre at Lincoln Center, the Shanghai Concert Hall among others, in addition to venues in New York, Norway, Japan, Singapore, etc…
Mr. Ma won the first prize in The Cleveland Music Festival Competition and The China National Cello Competition. He won the fourth prize in The Schoenfeld International String Competition. He made his recital debut at Shanghai Concert Hall in 2015. Mr. Ma has collaborated with international musicians. He performed concertos with Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013 and 2014. He performed in the Seiji Ozawa Academy orchestra tour with Seiji Ozawa in 2015 in Japan. He performed the Mendelssohn string octet with Josef Spacek in 2018. In 2019, Mr. Ma performed with Clive Greensmith, Martin Beaver, Scott St. John and Peter Lloyd in the Beethoven 250 gala concert in The Colburn School. Mr. Ma had received full scholarships from Aspen Music Festival, Music Academy of The West, Sarasota Music Festival and Meadowmount Music Festival.
Bartu Elci-Ozsoy, an 18-year-old violinist, conductor, and composer, made his Paris debut in 2019 at the age of 15 conducting his own 1st Symphony and playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at the Théâtre des Variétés.
After the show, Maestro Jean-Claude Casadesus began to teach and mentor him. In the same year, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in the class of Alexis Galpérine. In 2020, he began studying conducting at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Dominique Rouits and Julien Masmondet. He received his conducting diploma in 2021 and was admitted to the advanced diploma level. He is also studying conducting with David Molard Soriano.
In 2022, Bartu graduated from the Paris Conservatoire and will begin his Master’s degree studies in class of Sarah Nemtanu.
Bartu was invited in August 2019 to the 5th Festival Etoiles Symphoniques in Normandy. He conducted the Orchestre Petites Mains Symphoniques at the festival’s closing concert.
A committed musician, Bartu has implemented many solidarity projects since the breakup of COVID-19. He is currently composing for a project he initiated with CIAMO, an art school in Benin, to raise awareness of biodiversity extinction.
In 2021 and 2022, Bartu studied at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. He played in several concerts at the EAAF last summer. In August and October 2021, he performed with Ensemble Calliopée.
In 2022, he participated as a guest conductor and violinist in the 18th Festival Musiques au Pays de Pierre Loti in Rochefort and played in a concert of the 22nd edition of the European Young Talents Festival in Paris.
Shuhan Wang first picked violin as her first instrument and later started to learn viola under the tutelage of Professor Li Sheng at Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music. To expand her exploration on music, she began her Bachler of Music degree at The Juilliard School as a protégé of Professor Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang.
Over the past years, Ms. Wang is a prize winner of numerous awards, such as the 10th International Youth Competition memory of E.A. Mravinsky, in Saint Petersburg (November 2016).
As a solo violist, she has held performances on many stages, for instance she had her first own recital at the Shanghai Music Hall in 2016, as well as numerous solo performances at the Shanghai Symphony Hall, among others.
With a great passion on chamber music, Ms. Wang has performed in major chamber music festivals including Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (2019) as well as Chamber Music Art Week for Piano Trio and String Quartet Invitational Conference, held by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. At this performance she received an honorable recognition as part of the Phoenix Quartet. Meanwhile, Ms. Wang is designated as guest chamber music artist of Jiangsu Center for the Performing Arts since 2021.
Jewish-American violinist Ilana Zaks has performed with numerous orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony or even Boston Civic. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Perlman Music Program, studying with legendary Itzhak Perlman. She has also participated in masterclasses with Augustin Hadelich, Kim Karshkashian, Michael Stern, etc… She also studied with Donald Weilerstein for 12 years at New England Conservatory.
Ilana’s passion resides in creating theatrical multidisciplinary collaboration, including contemporary works, popular recital works, and works she commissions. An advocate for contemporary music, Ilana won an NEC EM grant for her commissioning project of four violin and percussion duo works featuring multidisciplinary collaborations. The result was her debut and first ever visual album The Persistence of Memory, which was released in July 2020.
She graduated from Yale University in 2022, where she was an artist fellow at the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), in which she directed, and recorded the music for her third film, The Intermedial Performer, available on YouTube. In the summer of 2021, in addition to being featured at the Boston Concerts in the Courtyard series, Ilana was a Presidential Public Service Fellow at Yale where she worked in community outreach, education and social justice, arts and cultural programming. In 2021-2022, she was a Young Concert Artists Semifinalist, a Blended Reality fellow at Yale’s CCAM, and violin teacher for secondary lessons and the Music in Schools Program at Yale.