Treats and Surprises end the Washington Square Music Festival season and celebrate the beginning of the winter holidays. Composers Johann Hummel, W.A. Mozart, Astor Piazzolla, and Pēteris Vasks are featured on November 7, 4 pm in St. Mark’s Church-in the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street. Lutz Rath will conduct the Festival Chamber Ensemble, and the celebrated performing soloists are: violinist Mayuki Fukuhara, cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio, pianist David Oei, and baritone Kenneth Overton.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7 at 4 pm - free
The Festival Chamber Ensemble
Lutz Rath, conductor
Mayuki Fukuhara, violin
Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello
David Oei, piano
Kenneth Overton, baritone
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street, New York NY 10003 (corner of Second Ave.)
Subway: N, R at 8th St.-NYU; 6 at Astor Place
info@ ws-mf.org
Johann Nepomuk Hummel: double concerto for piano and violin op 17
Soloists: David Oei, Mayuki Fukuhara
Astor Piazzolla: Libertango
Piazzolla: Oblivion
Pēteris Vasks: Dolcissimo
Sara Sant’Ambrogio, soloist
W.A. Mozart "Non piu andrai" from Le Nozze di Figaro
3 Spirituals
Kenneth Overton, soloist
Violinist Mayuki Fukuhara is a member of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble and a principal violinist of Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Mr. Fukuhara began his musical studies at the age of seven. By the age of 12, he had already won the International Music Festival Grand Prix in Japan. He came to the United States as a scholarship student at the Curtis Institute, later doing post graduate work at Mannes College of Music. Formerly a student of Ivan Galamian, Jaime Laredo, and Felix Galimir, he performs regularly with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York Collegium, Claring Chamber Players, and the Brandenburg Ensemble, and recently appeared as concertmaster of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Fukuhara spends his summers performing with the Saito Kinen Orchestra of Japan under the direction of Seiji Ozawa, and teaches at Bennington’s Chamber Music Conference. He can be heard on numerous recordings for Deutsche Grammophone, Sony Classical, Music Masters, Musical Heritage, Nonesuch, and Decca London. Mr. Fukuhara is a founding member of the Strathmere Ensemble.
David Oei, pianist, was a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the age of nine and has since performed with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies. Mr. Oei is the winner of five Interlochen Concerto Competitions and the Concert Artists Guild, WQXR Young Artists, Young Musicians Foundation and Paul Ulanowsky Chamber Pianists Awards. A perennial fixture on the New York City chamber music scene he has made guest appearances with the Audubon Quartet, Claring Chamber Players, Da Capo Chamber Players, NY Philharmonic Ensembles, and the Washington Square Music Festival. He is currently the director of the Mezzrow Classical Salon, a monthly chamber music series. Post covid shutdown, the series is now in its sixth season at St. John’s Church in the Village.
His television credits include Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, CBS News Sunday Morning and the Today Show. He has recorded wildly. In this pandemic era the Sato-Oei Duo has recorded several videos for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Washington Square Music Festival, Concerts on the Slope, among others. These videos can now be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuevQqvzZD32luLhbYnDR6w.
Baritone Kenneth Overton is a 2020 Grammy Award Winner for Best Choral Performance in the title role of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in this fall as Lawyer Frazier in Grammy Award Winning Production of Porgy and Bess, a reprisal of the role of Ralph Abernathy in I Dream with Opera Carolina and Charlottesville Opera, Germont in La Traviata for Fort Worth Opera and Mr. McGuire in Tobias Picker’s Emmeline for his Tulsa Opera Debut. On the concert stage he will appear with the National Philharmonic as a soloist in Mozart’s Requiem as well as the World Premier of Hailstork’s A Knee on the Neck
Born in Germany, cellist and conductor Lutz Rath was a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s for 25 years and performed in solo and chamber music recitals internationally. Over the years he has been a regular performer in the Washington Square Music Festival, of which he is currently artistic director and the Hilo Chamber music Festival in Hawaii. Since 1985 he has participated in the Chamber Music Conference at Bennington College. He produces and performs unusual programs and repertoire from Forbidden Music to spoken phonetic DADA poems, narrating melodramas and improvising to live calligraphy.
Mr. Rath has been a member of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and for 10 years the cellist of the International String Quartet, which won Grand Prix in the International Chamber Music Competition, Evian, France. While with the Quartet, he toured Europe, Asia, South America, and the US, and recorded on Nonesuch, Musical Heritage, VOX, Ungarton and Sandpiper. Rath was the cellist of the Elysium Quartet and toured the USA and Greece, recording with Lukas Foss and Stanley Drucker on the Elysium label. He conceived and played the music for the documentary film Waiting for Beckett, and he produced the sound track for the Ellis Island Museum.
Cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including Beijing, Boston, Budapest, Chicago, Prague, Osaka, & San Francisco. She has performed thousands of concerts on six continents in venues from Aspen to Amsterdam, from the Hollywood Bowl to Stockholm, from Kennedy to Lincoln Centers & from Marlboro to Musikverein in Vienna. She has won numerous international competitions and won a Grammy Award for Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles. Ms. Sant'Ambrogio has collaborated with the New York City Ballet & with such artists as Sting and Rufus Wainwright to Yo Yo Ma in genres from rock to Spanish pop. Her solo recordings have been featured on movie soundtracks, most recently as the opening track on the HBO film, “A Matter of Taste.” Sant'Ambrogio has won numerous international competitions and won a Grammy Award for Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles." Ms. Sant'Ambrogio has been profiled in Strad, Vogue, Gramophone, Elle, Strings, Vanity Fair, Fanfare, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CBS, ABC, PBS, Fox, USA and CNN. Ms. Sant'Ambrogio was the subject of a feature length documentary, which aired on PBS and international networks.
The Washington Square Music Festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with the City Council and Council Member Margaret Chin. Generous grants from The Earle K. & Katherine F. Moore Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Washington Square Association, The Margaret Neubart Foundation Trust, New York University Community Affairs & NYU Community Fund, Salamon-Abrams Family Fund, Washington Square Park Conservancy, Con Edison, The Bleecker Area Merchants’ and Residents’ Association, Le Poisson Rouge, and North Square Restaurant.