Providing a rich classical and contemporary repertoire in the heart of historic Newburgh and the Hudson Valley region.
"War and Healing"
with
American String Quartet
Tom Sleigh
Join the renowned American String Quartet and poet Tom Sleigh Sunday, Nov. 14 for “War and Healing,” a program of music and verse dedicated to victims of international conflict. The inspiring collaboration acknowledges times of hardship while recognizing the sacrifices made by veterans.
​
Poetry readings are interspersed with such musical compositions as
Shostakovich’s “String Quartet No. 8”
Bach’s “Prelude in F Minor”
Beethoven’s “String Quartet Op. 95,”
Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings"
Robert Sirota’s “Triptych”
The Quartet
Peter Winograd joined the American String Quartet in 1990. He gave his first solo public performance at the age of 11, and at age 17 he was accepted as a scholarship student of Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School. Recognized early as an exceptionally promising young artist, Winograd was a top prize winner in the 1988 Naumburg International Violin Competition. He then made his New York debut to critical acclaim and has since appeared as a guest soloist with numerous orchestras and in recital across the country and abroad. Born into a gifted musical family, Winograd began his studies with his parents. His mother was a professional pianist, and his father was the founding cellist of the Juilliard Quartet and a conductor of the Hartford Symphony in Hartford, Connecticut, where Winograd grew up. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard. His violin is by Giovanni Maria del Bussetto (Cremona, 1675).
A founding member of the American String Quartet, Laurie Carney holds the distinction of performing quartets longer than any other woman in this elite field. The ASQ began concertizing while she was still an undergraduate at Juilliard. Apart from the Quartet, she has performed trios with her husband, cellist William Grubb, and pianist Anton Nel; duos with violist Michael Tree; and as an ensemble partner with such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Salvatore Accardo, Cho-Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, and Frederica von Stade. A champion of new music, she gave the premiere of Gianpaolo Bracali’s Fantasia for violin and piano. Robert Sirota composed his Violin Sonata No. 2 for her, and in season. Carney has held teaching positions at the Mannes College of Music, Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, and Shepherd School at Rice University. Her violin is by Carlo Tononi (Venice, 1720).
The Strad magazine hailed violist Daniel Avshalomov as “one of the finest occupants of that chair, both instrumentally and musically, of any quartet now active.” Avshalomov performs in recitals and collaborations and as a featured performer and concerto soloist at festivals across the country. He was a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and was a frequent guest artist with the Guarneri Quartet. He has shared the stage with Norbert Brainin (first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet), Misha Dichter, Bruno Giuranna (a founding member of I Musici), Maureen Forrester, the Juilliard and Tokyo quartets, and the Bolshoi Ballet (as a solo violist). Avshalomov’s articles appear in Notes and Strings; he has edited several viola works for publication and contributed to ASTA’s Playing and Teaching the Viola. Avshalomov developed a lecture-demonstration, “Inside Passages,” first presented to the New York Viola Society in 2000. He performed the world premiere of Giampaolo Bracali’s Concerto per Viola, which RAI has broadcast in Europe, and the American premiere of Alessandro Rolla’s Esercizio 3. On his CD, Three Generations Avshalomov, Avshalomov performs works for viola and piano composed by his grandfather, father, and brother. The CD was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His viola is by Andrea Amati (Cremona, 1568).
Since his Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, cellist Wolfram Koessel has performed as a chamber musician, recitalist, and soloist throughout the world. The Strad magazine praised his “exceptionally attractive cello playing.” As a soloist, he has performed concertos throughout the United States as well as with Japan’s Osaka Symphony Orchestra and orchestras in Germany and South America. His collaborations include performances with legendary tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, distinguished dancer Mikhail Baryshnkov, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, among many others. Koessel also appears with a wide range of ensembles, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Tro+ (a group he formed with violinist Yosuke Kawasaki and pianist Vadim Serebryani), which performs creative and collaborative concerts throughout Japan, the United States, and Canada. Koessel served as music director of the Mark Morris Dance Group from 2004 to 2008 and has toured extensively with the company, performing in several world premieres. In 2009, he was the featured performer in a new dance work, performing Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in C. His cello is by Giovanni Cavani (Modena, 1917).
​
To find out more, please visit https://www.americanstringquartet.com/
The Poet
Tom Sleigh is the author of ten books of poetry, including Army Cats, winner of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Space Walk which won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award. In addition, Far Side of the Earth won an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Dreamhouse was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and The Chain was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. Station Zed was published in 2015 and includes his long poem about Iraq, “Homage to Basho", a version of which received Poetry Magazine’s Editors Prize. In 2018 a book of prose collecting his essays on refugees in the Middle East and Africa, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In An Age Of Refugees, is being published simultaneously by Graywolf Press as a companion piece to House of Fact, House of Ruin.
His newest book, The King’s Touch, which highlights themes of war and healing, was recently published by Graywolf Press. Widely anthologized, his poems and prose appear in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, Threepenny, The Village Voice, and other literary magazines, as well as The Best of the Best American Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing, and The Pushcart Anthology. He has received the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, a Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, a Fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, an Individual Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, a Guggenheim grant, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, among many others.
He is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College and lives in Brooklyn. During the last decade, he has also worked as a journalist in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, and Libya.
​
To find out more, please visit http://www.tomsleigh.com/
"War and Healing"
Tom Sleigh
with
American String Quartet
Sunday, November 14, 2021
at 3 PM
St. George's Church
105 Grand St. Newburgh, NY
Proud Recipient
of the 2013-2014
for outstanding contribution to the cultural environment of the community.
Learn More..