ENSEMBLE
Arash Amini, cello
Cyrus Beroukhim, violin
Oren Fader, guitar
Blair McMillen, piano
Chris Nappi, percussion
Andrew Sterman, woodwinds
Ann Cecil Sterman, flutes
Arash Amini, cello
Cellist Arash Amini has performed as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician throughout the U.S.- including in Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Miller Theater, Minnesota Orchestra Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, and Wolf Trap, and throughout Switzerland, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Botswana. He performed his New York debut recital in Alice Tully Hall in 2010, presented by Musicians Emergency Fund. He has performed at two Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops in Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival, Smithsonian Institution, Verbier Festival and Academy, Bard Music Festival, Juilliard’s FOCUS! Festival, and the Rencontres Musicales d’Evian, and on Great Performers at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art’s Summergarden Series, and the Curtis Alumni Recital series, among others. He has also performed chamber music with André Watts, Barbara Hendricks, Nigel Kennedy, Cho-Liang Lin, Mischa Maisky, Julian Lloyd Webber, and Sharon Isbin. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with David Soyer, and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Aldo Parisot, Arash Amini is a co-founder, the Artistic Director, and an Artist Member of the New York-based chamber music society, America’s Dream Chamber Artists, with whom he performs throughout the U.S. He is cellist of Mark O’Connor’s piano trio- which includes a collaboration with Rosanne Cash, with whom he has also performed throughout the U.S. He also performs frequently in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and as a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and American Modern Ensemble. He has also performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, and Peridance, and as Principal Cellist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Riverside Symphony, Long Island Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Amici New York at the OK Mozart Festival, Continuum, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and Juilliard’s and The Curtis Institute’s orchestras.
Arash Amini has performed countless world and U.S. premieres, including works for solo cello by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and Jindřich Feld, chamber works by Jennifer Higdon, Tania León, Behzad Ranjbaran, and Steven Gerber, and Iannis Xenakis’ last work. As for performances outside of the concert hall, he has appeared with the Rumi Ensemble and Iranian classical singer Shahram Nazeri, in the Downtown Messiah with the East Village Opera Company; at the United Nations, New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge, Galapagos Art Space, The Stone, Drom, Cornelia Street Café, The Cell, Don’t Tell Mama, and The Bottom Line; and in concerts of the music of Led Zeppelin, The Commodores, and Video Games Live, among others. His performances have been heard on WQXR’s McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase and NPR; he has been featured in The New York Times, The New York Sun, and Houston Chronicle; Chamber Music, The Strad, and Muso magazines; on the Arte television network in Europe, and on Voice of America television and Internet broadcasts worldwide; and has recorded for the EMI, Naxos, New World, Albany, Naïve Classique, DTR, and Bridge Records labels. Arash Amini is a Daniel Pearl World Music Days Artist and a Musicians Emergency Fund Artist. He has served on the faculty of the Mark O’Connor Strings Conference in San Diego. www.adcany.org
Praised as the “crème de la crème” on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” violinist Cyrus Beroukhim has received international recognition as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. His recent performances of Bach and Vivaldi Concerti with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields were heralded as “flawless and sensitive” by the Zeitung im Espace Mittelland (Switzerland). He has appeared at major venues worldwide including Novell Hall in Taipei, Theaterplatz and Paul Klee Zentrum in Bern, Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, Kravis center in Palm Beach, The Barns at Wolf Trap in Washington D.C., Qualcomm Hall in San Diego, Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and various halls throughout Japan, Germany, Luxembourg, and Israel.
Currently based in New York City, Mr. Beroukhim is a member of Fountain Ensemble, Manhattan Sinfonietta, America’s Dream Chamber Artists, and the Zukofsky Quartet, currently in residence at Bargemusic. In November 2008, the quartet presented the complete Milton Babbitt cycle at Columbia University’s “Composer’s Portraits” series and the University of Chicago’s “Contempo” series. Mr. Beroukhim also enjoys exploring the music of other living composers, and has premiered works by Jonathan Dawe, Noel Zahler, and Joshua Fineberg, among others. He has recorded numerous records for Vanguard Classics, Arabesque, Furious Artisans, Aeon, and New World Records, and has been broadcast live on NPR, WQXR 96.3 (New York), and K-Mozart (Los Angeles). As an established musical leader, he currently serves as concertmaster of the New York Symphonic Ensemble, Sympho Orchestra, and the Barbad Chamber Orchestra.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from Iranian descent, Mr. Beroukhim began his violin studies at the age of two. His early musical training was nurtured by Mimi Zweig and culminated in a successful debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at age 15. He pursued his undergraduate degree at the Oberlin Conservatory under Roland and Almita Vamos, and went on to receive his Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School, where he studied with Cho-Liang Lin. In May 2007, he received his Doctorate of Music from The Juilliard School as a C.V. Starr Foundation Fellow.
Oren Fader, guitarist, has performed hundreds of concerts in the U.S., Europe and Asia with a wide range of classical and new music groups, including the Met Chamber Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mark Morris Dance Group, Da Capo Chamber Players, New World Symphony, Absolute Ensemble, Poetica Musica and Speculum Musicae. Recent concerto performances include the “Aranjuez Concerto” with the Manchester Chamber Festival Orchestra, and a new concerto, “Zephyr” by David Del Puerto, with the New Paths in Music Chamber Orchestra. A champion of contemporary music, he has premiered over 150 works with guitar. He also performs, tours and records with the new music ensembles Cygnus, Fireworks, and Glass Farm. Mr. Fader has just returned from a three week tour performing in Turkey (Istanbul International Festival), Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan (US State Dept.). The past 2 summers he performed works of Carter, Davidovsky and Chin at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Mr. Fader can be heard on over 30 commercial recordings and films, including the classical guitar parts for the recent film “Everything is Illuminated.” His latest solo recordings include “Another’s Fandango”, featuring 500 years of guitar music, and “First Flight”, a disc of 10 premiere solos written for Mr. Fader by New York City composers. Since 1994, Mr. Fader has been on the guitar and chamber music faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. www.orenfader.com
Blair McMillen, piano/keyboards
Blair McMillen has established himself as one of the most sought-after and versatile pianists today. The New York Times has described him as “prodigiously accomplished and exciting,” “riveting,” and one of the piano’s “brilliant young stars.” Recent performances include solo appearances at the Moscow Conservatory, Casals Hall (Tokyo), Miller Theatre, Bard Summerscape, Caramoor, Le Poisson Rouge, Bargemusic; and with the American Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His CD “Soundings” was released to wide critical acclaim in 2004. Other solo recordings include “Powerhouse Pianists” on Lumiere, “Concert Music of Fred Hersch” on Naxos, and “Multiplicities: Born in ’38” on Centaur.
Dedicated to new and groundbreaking projects, Blair McMillen has premiered hundreds of pieces, and he constantly works with established and emerging composers in commissioning new works for the piano. Pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players and the American Modern Ensemble, he performs regularly with the downtown-NYC based Avian Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensembles, and the Locrian Chamber Players, among others. An active educator, improviser, and self-taught jazz pianist, he is on the piano faculty at Bard College and Conservatory. www.blairmcmillen.com
Chris Nappi has performed and recorded with Steve Reich and Musicians, the SEM Ensemble, Newband, Ben E. King. As a composer he has created music for the dance, theatrical productions and multi-media installations and has recorded for the Ear-Rational, Mode, New Tone, Renè Block Editions, Tzadìk, Wergo, and Zuma labels. He is on the faculties of Adelphi University, The Manhattan School of Music, Preparatory Division, and has been a guest lecturer/performer at the Ostrava Center for New Music, Czech Republic.
Andrew Sterman‘s music has attracted praise from New York (NYTimes: “beautiful and sensitive playing”) to Paris (Liberation: “Fabuleuse”) and Australia ( The Age: “a sound as pure as moonlight” ). In addition to presenting his original ensembles, he has performed with a huge variety of major artists from Frank Sinatra, Philip Glass, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, to New York’s premier new music ensembles, ISCM, EOS Orchestra, Bang On A Can, MATA, and of course is well known for his work in the Philip Glass Ensemble. Equally committed to composed and improvised music, Sterman’s comprovisations integrate both approaches into a wholly new concept. In the concept of comprovisation, the piece and the performance are inseparable; performers are free to play their parts in a highly intuitive way, while the written composition controls the fundamental expression of the piece. This inspires improvisations unique to each piece which could not occur in another setting. In Sterman’s music, traces of classic American song, contemporary composition, free-jazz, world music and many other influences come together to create a unique and deeply moving whole.
Blue Canvas With Spiral is available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/sterman. Visit Andrew on the web at www.andrewsterman.com.
Ann Sterman’s four solo CDs released on the EMI and ABC labels in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong have sold over 60000 copies and earned her an ARIA (Australian Grammy) nomination both as performer and producer. She has been a regular guest on television on Good Morning Australia and on national radio and has won nine major solo competitions in Australia. She has a particular interest in new music, having premiered many new Australian works for Contemporary Menu, Musicus Novus, and with her own ensemble Newbridge whose novel performances of Pierrot Lunaire, in which all the musicians were directed and choreographed, received rave reviews in the Melbourne Age. She has premiered new works in three MATA festivals in New York, and several works with the Avian Ensemble of which she is a member. Last year she appeared in the BAM Next Wave festival. Ann has played principal flute with the Philip Glass Ensemble on tours of Greece, Italy and Australia performing the most arduous of Glass’s repertoire including Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Anima Mundi. She has appeared on the Carnegie Hall stage as soloist with Trey Anastasio and Patti Smith. She was principal flutist with the Malvern Symphony Orchestra for ten years. Ann can be heard on countless commercials and on the soundtracks of several Hollywood films including Secret Window, Taking Lives, No Reservations and Mr Nice. Ann is the featured soloist on the international cast recording of Beauty and the Beast. She has recorded for Avian, Sony, EMI, ABC, Disney, CBS-TV and Warner Bros. Her Bachelor and Masters degrees in music are from the University of Melbourne. Her teachers included Julius Baker, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Mardi McSullea. Ann lives in Manhattan with her husband and two small children. She’s very excited to be performing with Avian ensemble again.