The Petit Palais is delighted to welcome the Fondation des États-Unis for a free concert series in conjunction with its exhibition Le Paris de la Modernité (1905-1925). Each month, FEU artists in residency and alumni will sketch a panorama of early 20th-century music in the museum’s auditorium, from Debussy’s impressionist airs to Milhaud’s learned music and the beginnings of jazz.
About the Petit Palais
Built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, the Petit Palais building, a masterpiece by architect Charles Girault, became the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris in 1902. It features a fine collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and objets d’art dating from Antiquity to 1914, by artists such as Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Rodin, Cézanne, Mary Cassatt and Monet.
Concerts
Le Groupe des Six
Between 1916 and 1923, six French composers formed the Groupe des Six in reaction to Impressionist and Wagnerian music. Despite a common aesthetic, each developed a personal style. From the concision of Honegger to the nostalgic lyrical harmonies of Germaine Tailleferre, this program explores the work of these composers, precursors of modern music.
Musicians Jonathan Mutel, violin | Ian Thomaz, piano | Paolo Bautista, cello
Date November 19 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
Un petit rythme de Jazz
From the streets of New Orleans to the cabarets of Paris, this program explores the beginnings of jazz, from its origins in ragtime, negro spirituals and work songs to the swing of the Roaring Twenties.
Musicians Anson Jones, voice | Samuel Gaskin, piano
Date December 10 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
L’Âme des Poètes
Come and discover the French mélodie, a work as poetic as it is musical. Baritone Jared Andrew Michaud and pianist Christina Maria Koti explore the revival of French melody with Francis Poulenc, Eric Satie, Hedwige Chrétien and Lili Boulanger.
Musicians Jared Andrew Michaud, baryton | Christina Maria Koti, piano
Date January 28 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
If Rue Blomet could talk
Seeking to escape racial segregation, a number of black artists found a safe haven in Paris, enabling them to practice their art to the full. The most emblematic figure is probably Joséphine Baker, who sang J’ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris (I have two loves, my country and Paris). Other black composers and artists had a decisive influence on music in the early 20th century. To mark Black History Month, the Petit Palais and the Fondation des États-Unis have chosen to highlight the work of these often forgotten pioneering composers.
Musicians Khalid McGhee, baryton & piano | Jonathan Mutel, violin
Date February 25 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
De Montmartre à Montparnasse
The early 20th century marked a golden age for French music. From Gaubert’s impressionism to Milhaud’s polytonality and Ravel’s fantastic vision, this program explores the diversity and renewal of French composers during this pivotal period in Parisian artistic and cultural life.
Musicians Isabelle Pazar, flute | Ian Thomaz, piano
Date March 31 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
Un Américain à Paris
In 1926, following a trip to Paris, George Gerswhin wrote a symphonic poem, the impressions of an American visiting Paris, Un américain à Paris. Echoing this stroll through the capital, sometimes animated, sometimes melancholy, pianist John Kamfonas improvises around works presented in the exhibition Le Paris de la Modernité (1905-1925).
Musicians John Kamfonas, piano
Date April 13 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
La Ruche
Ensemble IMAGO, the ensemble in artistic residency at the Fondation des États-Unis, offers a plunge into the captivating world of early 20th-century Russian classical music. Like the Russian artists of the Hive, the dissonant harmonies, bold rhythms and innovative structures of Russian composers helped renew the forms of artistic expression of their art.
Musicians Thomaz Tavares, flute | Rieko Tsuchida, piano
Date April 14 | Time 4pm | Petit Palais Access
About the FEU Artists
As a keyboardist and improviser, Samuel Gaskin is interested in music of many genres. He has played harpsichord with the San Antonio Symphony, as well as piano in a number of jazz and folk music groups. Winner of the 2016 University of Michigan Organ Competition, Samuel explores the sometimes contradictory relationship between improvisation and composition. As a composer, his recent creations include Domenican Nights, for flute and piano, and In Memoriam: Chick Corea, written for the Unheard-of Ensemble. He holds a Master’s Degree in organ performance from the University of North Texas. Recipient of a Fulbright scholarship for the 2022-23 academic year, Samuel continues his organ studies as part of a Prix de Perfectionnement at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Versailles with Jean-Baptiste Robin, as well as independent studies with improviser/composer Thierry Escaich.
American pianist and collaborator, Khalid McGhee, is dedicated to exploring the convergence of musical genres. Originally from Saint Louis, Missouri, he received comprehensive training in classical piano and voice, while also covering genres like gospel, jazz, soul and musical theater. A Blue-Chip Full-tuition Scholar at the Northern Arizona University – Kitt School of Music, he received a Bachelor of Music with Distinction in Piano Performance. He continued his studies at the Institut für Musik der Hochschule Osnabrück in Lower-Saxony, Germany, winning prestigious awards such as the Deutschland Stipendium (twice) and a Fulbright grant. Parallel to his musical pursuits, Khalid’s deep-rooted passion for diverse cultures, human behavior, and cross-cultural communication is evident in his studies in pedagogy and linguistics, as well as his impactful work as an educator and collaborator. During his recent Fulbright experience, he actively explored the use of music as a tool to enhance language learning and promote social integration among school students with migrational backgrounds. He currently resides in Paris as an artist-in-residence and Harriet Hale Woolley Scholar at the Fondation des États-Unis, pursuing a Higher Diploma at the École Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot.
Jared Michaud won first prize in the Federation’s Lieder Art Grant Competition 2022 (New York), the 4th SGSM International Singing Competition (Slovenia) and the Elisabeth Schumann Lieder Duo Competition 2022 (London). Recently, they have taken courses and given concerts in Lied duet with Anna-Lucia Richter and Ammiel Bushakevitz in Nuremberg with the Heidelberger Frühling Liedzentrum, and with Wolfram Rieger in Barcelona with Schubertiada. They also represented France as one of the few emerging artist Lied duos in the Young Europe Sings program, co-funded by the European Union. The duo has performed in recital in the UK, USA and Greece, appearing in venues such as St. James Piccadilly in London, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan, Yale University, the Rhodes International Music Festival and the Theocharakis Foundation in Athens. Beyond singing and recital, Jared has appeared as soloist in numerous operas and concerts, including the Nostos Festival at the Stavros Niarchos Center in Athens. In 2022, he made his Welsh National Opera debut in the Young Company production of Cheryomushki, where he sang the role of Barabashkin, and in 2023, Jared sang in the chorus at the prestigious Grange Park Opera Festival. Jared received his Master’s degree from Trinity Laban Conservatory of Music & Dance, where he graduated with Distinction as a Kathleen Roberts Vocal Scholar, and his Bachelor’s degree from Yale University, where he graduated with Distinction and cum laude. Jared Michaud joins the FEU’s community of artists in 2023 as a Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Scholar.
Jonathan Mutel is a recognized classical violinist, open to various musical horizons. His passion for chamber music and symphonic repertoires has led him to perform in France (Philarmonie de Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Salle Gaveau) but also in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and China. At the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, he perfected his playing and expanded his repertoire thanks to his teacher Peter Brunt. It is in this context that he explored new musical horizons, such as the baroque repertoire on period instruments, the modern repertoire, and musical improvisation. He studies jazz violin at the conservatory and teaches violin at the music school of Fontenay-le-Fleury.
Isabelle Pazar, flutist and winner of the 2022-23 Fulbright scholarship, studies flute pedagogy and traditional techniques of the French flute school. Her research project led her to study alongside flutist Patricia Nagle at the École Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot. Isabelle’s love of musical composition, and particularly of the Romantic era, brought her to Paris to study the flute in her native land. Originally from the United States, and more specifically Maine, Isabelle is a doctoral candidate in music performance at Stony Brook University in New York, where she had the good fortune to study with renowned flutist 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 teacher. She also helped teach music history. She also studied with flutist Sooyun Kim of the renowned 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 2023-2024, Isabelle is thrilled to continue her studies in Paris as artist-in-residence at the Fondation des États-Unis.
Ian Tomaz is an American pianist currently based in Paris, France. He has studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot since 2021, working with Pascal Roge. He is in residence at the Fondation des Etats Unis in 2022-2023 as a Harriet Hale Woolley Scholar, performing concerts as an Artist in Residence at the FEU and around Paris while working on the major solo, chamber and art song compositions of Francis Poulenc. Since moving to Paris, he has performed at Salle Cortot, Musee J.J. Henner and the Centre Culturel Czech and was also chosen as a full scholarship participant for the Academie de Musique Francaise, playing for renowned French pianists including Michel Beroff, Jacques Rouvier, Anne Queffelec, Marie Catherine Girod and Francoise Thinat. He began his studies at the ENMP thanks to the generous support of the Bourse Marandon from the Societe des Professeurs de Français et Francophones D’Amérique in New York.
About the Alumni Artists
Anson Jones is a singer, composer, and songwriter from New York City whose work pulls in turns from modern jazz, modern classical music, and popular music. She graduated from Princeton University in the class of 2022, where she won the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts and the Isodore and Helen Sacks Memorial Prize in Music. She is a 2022-2023 Fulbright-Harriet hale Woolley scholar , composing a suite of music inspired by Parisian examples of glass architecture. In between academic projects, she enjoys making more commercial music – she loves indie, rock, and folk music, and in June 2022 she released an EP of jazz-rock fusion on Modern Icon Recordings. For both her commercial and academic music, she’s played with her own groups around New York City, joined in writer’s showcases like the New York Songwriters’ Circle and the 5PM Concert Series, and performed at the 2020 Litchfield Jazz Festival. Anson is passionate about many other fields as well – she has passions for music cognition, computer science, art, and architecture. She has even worked at a series of architecture firms and as a data science intern at a neuroscience lab. Her range of interests all inform her approach towards music-making as an interdisciplinary process.
Embracing his penchant for improvisation alongside his passion for the classical and contemporary repertoire, Greek American pianist John Kamfonas has given performances around the world, from New York to India, Paris to Beijing, which have been described as possessing “a grandeur that lifted the music into the sublime…and a delicacy that took one’s breath away.” (National Herald, New York) As one of few improvising classical pianists, Mr. Kamfonas performs music ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Debussy and Rachmaninoff interwoven with spontaneously conceived improvisations making each concert unique and unpredictable. He gave his New York debut at Merkin Hall in 2012 and has performed in numerous summer festivals in recent years including the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), Aspen Music Festival, Beijing International Music Festival and Academy, and at the Greencastle Summer music festival (Indiana). Other recent solo concerts include performances at Steinway Hall (New York), Baruch Performing Arts Center (New York), Salle Cortot (Paris), La Fondation des Etats-Unis (Paris), Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris, and Columbia University Global Center in Paris as a guest artist of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. In 2012, Mr. Kamfonas conducted a residency in Bangalore India through the Bangalore School of Music where he performed a sold out solo concert at the Alliance Francaise auditorium, several house concerts around town, and taught a series of masterclasses. Several interactions with Indian classical musicians furthered his interest in cross cultural musical collaboration which led eventually to an invitation to collaborate alongside various members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble for a series of concerts at DePauw University during the summer of 2017 where he performed with Tabla master, Sandeep Das. In 2018, Mr. Kamfonas went on a two continent tour in the US and Europe with cellist Eric Edberg performing works by Alan Hovhaness, an American composer heavily influenced by eastern musical styles. As a devoted proponent of contemporary music, Mr. Kamfonas has performed and given world premieres of works by world renowned composers of today including George Tsontakis, Eric Ewazen, and Victor Kioulaphides whose piano trio was given its world premier in 2012. Interested in the cross section of improvisation and contemporary composition, Mr. Kamfonas performed “Engrenages”, by Alexandros Markeas as the improvising soloist with the Versailles conservatory saxophone quartet in 2017. Mr. Kamfonas currently resides in Paris where he has completed residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts and the Fondation des Etats-Unis, the site of a concert series he founded in 2015 called the “Rendez-Vous Musicaux” presenting resident American musicians in collaborations with guest musicians living in France since 2015. This was also the venue for a solo recital part of which was broadcast nationally on France’s TV channel TF1 in 2016. Mr. Kamfonas serves on the faculty of the American Conservatory of Paris and has given masterclasses and improvisation workshops in universities and schools throughout the US. He holds degrees from Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music and the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris; he is currently pursuing his PhD jointly at the Paris Conservatory and the Sorbonne University. His principal teachers include Jean-François Zygel, Phillip Kawin, Jean-David Coen, Marian Rybicki, and Jean Fassina.
Born in New York and raised in Brazil, flutist Thomaz Tavares is currently based in Paris, where he leads an active solo, chamber, and orchestral performance career. He is flutist with the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe under the baton of Maestro Nicolas Krauze, and is an occasional guest performer with Ensemble Calliopée, VociHarmonie, and the Open Chamber Orchestra of Paris. Tavares was previously the professor of flute at the Conservatoire Provinois in the medieval town of Provins, as well as guest professor at the Conservatoire Jean Baptiste Lully in Paris. An active and devoted pedagogue, Tavares has given numerous recitals, lectures, and masterclasses throughout France, the United States, and Brazil. Praised for his “innate sense of musical aesthetics in all styles” by Vociharmonie and for his “polished, lyrical and virtuoso” playing by the Virginia Gazette, Tavares has made numerous solo and chamber appearances at the historical Salle Cortot in Paris and the Château de Fontainebleau. He has performed at the Festival d’Auvers sur Oise, Journées de Ravel, Harmonies du Perche, the Festival de Fontainebleau, the Melodieuse in Luberon, the Dartington Summer Festival, and Talis Sarajevo, to name a few. Tavares holds his Bachelor’s degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was the recipient of the Premier Young Artist Scholarship. He moved to Paris in order to study under the tutelage of the renowned international soloist Jean Ferrandis at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where he obtained his Diplôme Supérieur d’Execution with unanimous distinction from the jury and in 2020, followed by his terminal degree the Diplôme Supérieur de Concertiste. Tavares was a recipient of the 2019 Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship at the Foundation des États-Unis, for which he undertook a dual performance research on the musical repertory of the French Belle Époque with Jean Ferrandis and the compositions of Yuko Uebayashi under advisorship of the composer herself.
Since making her Carnegie Hall debut in 2011, prize-winning pianist Rieko Tsuchida has performed internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. Tsuchida made her professional concerto debut in 2011 performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the California Symphony. She has also performed as a soloist with the Ashdod Symphonic Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and San Domenico Orchestra. Her many prizes include the SONY USA Foundation Grant in 2016 from the Salon de Virtuosi, YoungArts NFAA Finalist, and 3rd Prize in the IIYM International Piano Competition. She has also been invited to perform at other prestigious festivals and venues such as the Verbier Festival Academy, Salle Gaveau, and more. Tsuchida currently lives between New York and Paris. In October 2022 she released an album with London Opera cellist Tessa Seymour of Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano as part of a project funded by Académie Musicale de Villecroze. Recent performance highlights include her recital debut at Salle Cortot, the Eiffel Tower, and concerts in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York. Tsuchida also recently became Artistic Director of Classical Music Collection Japan (CMCJ), a project funded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to promote the classical music culture of Japan. She will make her concert debut in Japan with CMCJ this winter in Tokyo’s Oji Hall. Tsuchida earned her Bachelor of Music Degree at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Boris Slutsky. She completed her Master of Music Degree at The Juilliard School in the studios of Dr. Matti Raekallio and Joseph Kalichstein.
About the Guest Musicians
A cellist since a young age, Paolo Bautista underwent his training at the CRR de Paris, the Pol Supérieur 93, and the Haute Ecole de Genève. He has worked with renowned musicians and teachers such as Victor-Julien Laferrière, Gregorio Robino, Raphaël Merlin, Philippe Barry, and many others. He has performed with orchestras and chamber music ensembles in numerous concert halls. A versatile and inquisitive musician, he is passionate about various intellectual domains that he connects to art and his practice. He now specializes in teaching and chamber music repertoire while continuing to compose in a wide range of styles, such as Metal, rap, classical, and contemporary music.”
Greek pianist Christina Maria Koti is musician-in-residence at the Hellenic Foundation in Paris for the year 2023-2024, where she studies privately with Susan Manoff, while pursuing an artist diploma in voice/piano duet at the École Normale de Musique de Paris with Pascal Rogé and François Le Roux. She holds a Master’s degree in piano performance under Professor Deniz Gelenbe-Arman at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, with a scholarship from Trinity College of Music, and previously obtained a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honors from Glasgow University. With her duo partner, baritone Jared Andrew Michaud, she won first prize in the Federation’s Lied Art Scholarship Competition 2022 (New York City), the Elisabeth Schumann Competition for Lied Duo 2022 (London), and the 4th SGSM International Singing Competition, Lied Duo category (Slovenia). The duo has also been selected to represent France at the Young Europe Sings (YES) 2023-2024 Academy. Christina Maria has recently taken part in the following masterclasses and festivals with Jared: the Heidelberger Frühling Liedzentrum masterclass with Anna-Lucia Richter and Ammiel Bushakevitz, the Schubertiada International Lied Duo with Wolfram Reiger, the Colla Voce/Horto Festival workshop, and the London Song Festival. Christina Maria has also taken part in festivals and competitions as solo pianist, such as the Gnessin Academy Summer Festival, the Concorso Internazionale Pianistico citta Villafranca di Verona, the Glasgow Music Festival, and the Dinu Lipatti International Piano Competition. She won the Founders’ Prize for Pianistic Accompaniment (London 2022) and was selected as one of the Young Artists of the Toronto Music Festival (summer 2023) in the Art of Song program.
