Ravinia 2019, Issue 1, Week 1

6:00 PM SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 2019 BENNETT GORDON HALL BILLY CHILDS JAZZ/CHAMBER ENSEMBLE BILLY CHILDS, piano STEVE WILSON, saxophone ADAM ROGERS, guitar CAROL ROBBINS, harp ALEX BONEHAM, bass CHRISTIAN EUMAN, drums AVALON STRING QUARTET BLAISE MAGNIÈRE, violin ANTHONY DEVROYE, viola MARIE WANG, violin CHENG-HOU LEE, cello Tonight’s program will be announced from the stage. AVALON STRING QUARTET Formed at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in 1995, the Avalon String Quartet quickly be- came an esteemed ensemble through its partic- ipation in Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Work- shop at Carnegie Hall in 1997 and its grand-prize victory at the Fischoff Chamber Music Compe- tition the following year. Additionally, the quar- tet took high honors in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 1998, the same year it participated in Ravinia’s Steans Music In- stitute and made its New York debut on the Al- exander Schneider Series at the New School of Music. The Avalon Quartet continued to gather accolades over the next two years, earning top prizes at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and Concert Artists Guild Competition in 1999 and the ARD International Music Competition in 2000, also making its Carne- gie Hall debut that year. During this period, the ensemble became the first quartet-in-residence at the Caramoor Center and worked closely with the Juilliard Quartet at The Juilliard School, the Emerson Quartet at the Hartt School of Music, and the Vermeer Quartet at Northern Illinois University, where it has itself been in residence since 2007. The Avalon Quartet has since performed at Alice Tully Hall and Bargemusic in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, the Herculessaal in Munich, and the Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as well as at the Bath, Aldeburgh, and La Jolla Festivals. In addition to regular appearances on the Dame Myra Hess series, the quartet performs an annual concert series in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Fullerton Hall. In 2015 the ensemble re- leased its first recording on Cedille Records, Illuminations , featuring works by Debussy, Britten, Stacy Garrop, and Osvaldo Golijov, and recently appeared on the premiere recording and performance (at Ravinia) of the Cavatina Duo’s Sephardic Journey . The Avalon String Quartet is making its fifth appear- ance at Ravinia, where it first performed in 2000 and performed in the inaugural Bridges Competition winners’ concert last summer. BILLY CHILDS A native of Los Angeles, Billy Childs grew up immersed in jazz, classical, and pop music influences. A prodigious talent at the piano earned him public performances by age 6, and at 16 he was admitted to USC’s Community School of the Performing Arts (now known as the Colburn School of Music), going on to earn a Bachelor of Music degree in composition under the tutelage of Robert Linn and Morten Lauridsen. By the time of his graduation from USC, Childs was already an in-demand per- former in LA’s jazz scene, and he soon teamed up with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard to embark on a successful performing and recording tour. He has recorded and performed with a num- ber of other influential jazz musicians, includ- ing J.J. Johnson, Joe Henderson, and Wynton Marsalis, before landing a record deal with Windham Hill in 1988, when he released Take For Example, This… , the first of four critically acclaimed albums for the label. Childs subse- quently wrote and produced I’ve Known Rivers (1995) on Stretch/GRP, The Child Within (1996) on Shanachie, and two volumes of jazz/cham- ber music, Lyric, Vol. 1 (2006) and Autumn: In Moving Pictures, Vol. 2 (2010), which together earned him two Grammy Awards and five nom- inations. He most recently won a Grammy, his fifth, for his 2017 album Rebirth . As a compos- er, Childs has been commissioned by such fig- ures as Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Cho- rale, Kronos Quartet, Jazz at Lincoln Center Or- chestra, American Brass Quintet, Ying Quartet, and Dorian Wind Quintet. His honors include a Chamber Music America Composer’s Grant (2006), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2013), and he has been president of Chamber Music America since 2016. Billy Childs has been co-di- rector of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute Pro- gram for Jazz since 2017 and on its faculty for an additional three years. Tonight he gives his first full concert at the festival, having presented one of his original works at last year’s Bridges Competition winners concert. RAVINIA MAGAZINE | MAY 31 – JUNE 9, 2019 104