Isabelle Pazar’s Harriet Hale Woolley and Printempo project will be hosted by our neighbors, the Collège franco-britannique. Isabelle will be accompanied by fellow FEU resident Ian Tomaz on piano, who will perform his solo Printempo concert at FEU on June 25. The program features works by two Japanese composers, Sato Matsui and Yuko Uebayashi, who both live in Paris. Sato Matsui is one of the founding members of IMAGO, who have been in artistic residency at FEU since 2021.
To end her series of concerts at FEU celebrating female composers, Isabelle Pazar will perform works composed by France-based composers, Sato Matsui and Yuko Uebayashi, both of whom have beautifully enriched and diversified the musical culture world-wide through their music. Sato Matsui was born in Chitose, Japan, studied music in the United States at New York City’s Juilliard School, and in 2019 moved to Paris, France after receiving a Fulbright scholarship. Her music is influenced by traditional Japanese sonorities and her training as a classical violinist. Matsui’s Goldenrod Sonata for Flute and Piano was commissioned by Pazar’s current flute mentor in the United States, Carol Wincenc, and was premiered by Wincenc in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Juilliard School in February 2020. Wincenc shares how this piece is “depictive of her child-like, fun loving nature.”
Yuko Uebayashi was born in Kyoto, Japan and moved to Paris in 1998. Her compositions have been described as being influenced by both French impressionist music and Japanese film music. Yuko Uebayashi’s Sonate pour Flûte and Piano was commissioned by Pazar’s current Paris mentor under the Harriet Hale Woolley grant, Jean Ferrandis, and pianist, Emile Naoumoff. Uebayashi is said to have “admired Ferrandis’s playing for its ‘very soft, fine pianissimo, akin to glasswork; a passionately eloquent and fiery forte, the instruments singing with gentle, tender-hearted elegance.’”
This concert is paying homage to Pazar’s mentors in both the U.S. and France, while also demonstrating how female France-based composers continue to enchant audiences with their original compositions drawing from the vibrance of Paris life in which they live, the artists for whom they compose, and their rich cultural backgrounds.
~Isabelle Pazar
Practical Information
Date Tuesday, June 4 at the Collège franco-britannique, main entrance | Time 7:30 PM | Facebook Event
Program
Sato Matsui (b.1991)
Goldenrod Sonata for Flute and Piano
I. Sea of Gold
II. Evening Musk
III. Flutter by
Yuko Uebayashi (1958)
Sonate pour Flûte et Piano
I. Leno
II. Presto
III. Calmato
IV. Allegro
FEU Resident Musicians
Isabelle Pazar, flautist and 2022-23 Fulbright scholarship winner studies flute pedagogy and traditional techniques of the French flute school. Her research project led her to study alongside flautist Patricia Nagle at the École Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot. The love of musical composition and particularly the Romantic era brought Isabelle to Paris so that she could study the flute in her homelands. Originally from the United States, and more specifically from Maine, Isabelle is a doctoral candidate in musical performance at Stony Brook University in New York, where she had the chance to study with the renowned flautist Carol Wincenc. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College after studying with Assistant Flute Professor Judy Grant, creator and director of the Boston Flute Academy. In 2017, she received a scholarship from Boston College to attend the Cremona Italy International Music Festival and Competition. Isabelle earned a master’s degree in music performance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2020, where she studied flute with Dr. Cobus du Toit and worked as an assistant studio flute instructor. She also helped teach music history. She also studied with flutist Sooyun Kim of the famous Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in New York, and performed in several MasterClasses for flutists Leone Buyse, Elizabeth Rowe, Mario Caroli, Linda Toote, and Lorne McGhee. Recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship for the year 2023-2024, Isabelle is delighted to continue her studies in Paris as an artist in residence at the Foundation of the United States.
Ian Tomaz is an American pianist currently based in Paris, France. He has been a student since 2021 at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot, where he studies with Pascal Roge. He is spending the year 2022-2023 as a Harriet Hale Woolley Fellow at the Fondation desUnis, giving concerts as artist in residence at the Fondation desUnis and in the Paris region while working on major compositions solos, chamber and scholarly songs by Francis Poulenc. Since moving to Paris, he has given concerts at the Salle Cortot, the JJ Henner Museum and the Czech Cultural Center and has also been chosen as a full fellow for the Académie de Musique Française, playing for renowned French pianists such as Michel Beroff, Jacques Rouvier, Anne Queffelec, Marie Catherine Girod and Françoise Thinat. He began his studies at ENMP thanks to the generous support of the Marandon Scholarship from the Society of Professors of French and Francophones of America in New York.