YEZU WOO

VIOLINIST

BIOGRAPHY

YI QUN XU 

CELLO

BIOGRAPHY

PAOLO BARTOLANI

PIANist,
​artistic director of rosmf

BIOGRAPHY

 2022
​Holiday Concert
 at 
Jamesport Meeting House
1590 Main Rd, Jamesport, NY 11947
 
Sunday, December 18th, 2022, at 5:00pm
 
Yezu Elizabeth Woo, violin
Yi Qun Xu, cello
Paolo Bartolani, piano

Ticket price:
General audience: $60
Friends of Rites of Spring Subscribers and Jamesport Meeting House Supporters $35
Children Under 16 FREE

BUY TICKETS

 Come to celebrate the holiday season!
Benefit Holiday Concert with Rites of Spring Music Festival return this December!  
Come to celebrate the holiday season with a music program of American songs and classical lyrical pieces. Beginning now, reserve your tickets for an experience that will fill Jamesport Meeting House with the sounds of the holiday season.​
After the concert you can share a glass of wine with the musicians and share moments of cheerfulness together. 

Music Program
Amy Beach               Romance for violin and piano 
Bruce Wolosoff      Circe for cello & piano 
John Corigliano        STOMP for solo violin 
Florence Price         Adoration for violin and piano 
William Grant Still   Gamin for violin and piano 
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson   Lamentations / Black Folk Song Suite for cello solo
I.          Fuguing Tune     IV.      Perpetual Motion
Samuel Barber            Canzone for Violin and Piano 
Jessie Montgomery   Duo for violin and cello 
Henry Mancini          Moon River for violin, cello and piano

​Rites of Spring Music Festival is supported by private donors and with public funds. From Suffolk County, Grant from SCOCA. the office of Cultural Affairs. 
In collaboration with Jamesport Meeting House

Yezu Elizabeth Woo, violin
Praised for “her technical quality, beauty of sound, and above all, the projection of an uncommon musical sensibility" (El Norte, Monterrey), Violinist Yezu Elizabeth Woo made her debut at Carnegie Hall at age 16, where she became the youngest performer to play all 24 of Niccolo Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin. Yezu has been invited to perform at the Lincoln Center, United Nations (NY), the Smetana Hall (Prague), Musikverein (Vienna), Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and the Berlin Philharmonie, and has recorded for EMI Classics, ECM Records, and MOOK Sound. She was the Artistic Director and co-founder of Shattered Glass, a NYC string ensemble, which debuted to great acclaim in 2012. Winner of the Korean national award, "Outstanding International Musician of the Year" by the Arts Critics Association, as well as "Artist of the Year'' by the Gangwon Foundation, Yezu was appointed as Honorary Ambassador of the City of Chuncheon, where she is currently serving as the Artistic Director of New York in Chuncheon Music Festival. Her commitment to Korean traditional and new music has led her to performances at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) ‘ART FESTA’ as part of the ongoing peace process between the two Koreas, as well as seeing collaborations with the KBS Korean Traditional Orchestra. Born in Freiburg, Germany, Yezu moved to the U.S. from South Korea at age ten to study with Albert Markov. She received her B.M. Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, M.M. Degree at The Juilliard School, Performance Certificate from Bard Conservatory, and her Doctorate Degree at Stony Brook University. Her principal teachers include Albert Markov, Catherine Cho, Laurie Smukler, Arnaud Sussmann and the members of the Emerson Quartet. Yezu is a recipient of Fulbright Scholarship (‘19-20) in Germany, where she was a member of the Ensemble Modern Academy, Frankfurt, and a researcher at the Isang-Yun-Haus in Berlin. She currently splits her time between New York and Berlin.

Yi Qun Xu, cellist
Praised for displaying “great poise and masterful technique” and possessing “an amazing rich tone” by The Day, cellist Yi Qun Xu has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States. A native of China, she came to the U.S. after winning multiple top prizes in Chinese national cello competitions. 
Yi Qun is the recipient of the 2022 Presser Music Award and the first-prize winner of the 2021 New York International Artists Cello Competition. As the winner of the 2018 Sanders-Juilliard-Tel Aviv Museum prize, she was presented in recital at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She is also the first prize winner at the International Antonio Janigro Competition.
As a passionate chamber musician, she has been heard at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Cellists of Lincoln Center Concert and the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival. She has collaborated with artists including Itzhak Perlman and members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Tokyo, Ébène Quartets.
Yi Qun is a member of The Juilliard School Pre-College and Music Advancement Program faculty. She also serves as Joel Krosnick’s teaching assistant at The Juilliard School. Yi Qun has taught at Heifetz International Music Institute’s Junior Program. She is very excited to join The Perlman Music Program’s Winter Residency to teach chamber music in December, 2022. She has performed for community engagement events for communities throughout the United States and China.
Her performances are featured on Alec Baldwin’s podcast “Here is the Thing” and WQXR’s “Midday Masterpieces.” She can be heard on tours with Musicians from Marlboro during both 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons. Yi Qun is the founding Artistic Director of Noree Chamber Soloists. 

Paolo Bartolani, pianist, Founder and Artistic Director of Rites of Spring Music Festival
Paolo Bartolani is a pianist, musicologist and music manager, working in both classical and contemporary music. He graduated in 1989 from the Santa Cecilia Music Conservatory in Rome (Italy). He studied with Eduardo Hubert, and after graduation, with Charles Rosen, György Sándor and Andor Foldes. He also studied French piano repertoire with Germaine Mounier at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. In 1994, he received his Master in Musicology of the 20th century degree under the direction of Hugues Dufourt at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in collaboration with IRCAM / Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Paolo performs as a soloist and also as a member of chamber ensembles in Europe and United States.
He writes articles for the musicology journals Sonus-Materials for Contemporary Music and Music/Reality. In 2006, he created a Master Degree Program in Cultural Enterprise Administration at the University of Perugia, where he also teaches.
At the Venice Biennale, from 2008 to 2012, Paolo was the General Coordinator of ENPARTS - European Network of Performing Arts, which promotes the creation of new works in dance, music and theater by young artists. From 2009 to 2014 he was the Director of the Résonnance Italy, a nonprofit organization based in Switzerland, where he was responsible for its artistic and humanitarian program, "bringing music to places where it is not heard."  The members of the organization – singers, instrumentalists, conductors – have performed more than two hundred concerts in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons in order to promote musical sensibilities and share the joy of music.
He has been the General Coordinator of Music Up Close Network at Santa Cecilia National Academy in Rome. The Network includes seven European orchestras who promote new orchestral works and support a new generation of musicians to connect with young audiences.
He founded the Rites of Spring Music Fest in 2016 to promote classical and contemporary music on the North Fork of Long Island, and to combine music, history and the natural environment. The Festival currently is a non-profit organization 501c3 and he is the Artistic Director and Responsible for developing the Festival’s program. 

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