Ravinia 2019, Issue 2, Week 4

PAUL BISS, viola Violist and violinist Paul Biss is an alumnus of Indiana University, where he received a bach- elor’s degree and studied with Josef Gingold, and The Juilliard School, completing a master’s degree under the tutelage of Ivan Galamian. He has also studied chamber music with such artists as Walter Trampler, Claus Adam, Janos Starker, and William Primrose. For many years Biss was a member of the Berkshire String Quartet, which was in residence at Indiana University, and has appeared at many music festivals, including Ravinia, Marlboro, La Jolla, Lockenhaus, Naantali, Casals, and the Ysaye at London’s Wigmore Hall. As both a violinist and violist, he has collaborated with Christoph Eschenbach, Menahem Pressler, Gidon Kremer, Pinchas Zukerman, Miriam Fried, Michael Tree, Janos Starker, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Gary Hoff- man, as well as the Mendelssohn, Fine Arts, and Alexander String Quartets. Biss has also reg- ularly appeared in recital and as a soloist with orchestras in North America, Europe and Is- rael, with recent concerts taking him to Brazil and Korea. He became a professor at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in 1979 and has conducted approximately 100 performanc- es of symphonic music as well as 13 operas for the school’s opera program before retiring from the position in 2008. Biss has also led orchestras in Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Korea, and Israel, where he was awarded a prize by the Ministry of Culture for the performance of contempo- rary work. Previously the assistant conductor of the Akron Symphony, he is also a former fac- ulty member of MIT and the universities of Tel Aviv and Akron, and has held a professorship of violin and chamber music at the New England Conservatory since 2006. Paul Biss joined Ra- vinia’s Steans Music Institute faculty in 1994, and tonight marks his 23rd season as a performer at the festival. MARCY ROSEN, cello A native of Phoenix, AZ, cellist Marcy Rosen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and counts such figures as Gordon Epperson, Orlan- do Cole, Marcus Adeney, Felix Galimir, Karen Tuttle, and Sandor Vegh as mentors. Today she is on the faculties of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and the Mannes College of Music in New York to pass on her ex- pertise, and she has also been part of the staffs of the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, University of Delaware, and Marlboro Music Festival. With the Mendelssohn String Quartet, which she was a part of for 31 years, from its founding through its final perfor- mance in 2010, Rosen was also a resident artist at the North Carolina School for the Arts and Harvard University. The quartet won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1981, and Rosen won the same competition as a solo artist in 1986, the same year that she became ar- tistic director of the Chesapeake Chamber Mu- sic Festival. Rosen made her concerto debut at age 18 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and has since been featured with such ensembles as the Dallas, Phoenix, Jupiter, and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and Orpheus and Concordia Cham- ber Orchestras. Her concert credits also include Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks, the Phillips Collec- tion, and the Corcoran Gallery, and she has re- cently toured to China, Korea, and Columbia to give both concerts and master classes. Rosen’s solo work is enhanced by her chamber music ac- tivities, which have featured collaborations with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff, Peter Serkin, Mitsuko Uchida, Isaac Stern, Rob- ert Mann, Kim Kashkashian, Jessye Norman, and the Juilliard, Emerson, and Orion String Quartets, among many other artists. Marcy Rosen has been on Ravinia’s Steans Music Insti- tute faculty since 2017 and appeared on the fes- tival’s stage for 10 seasons with the Mendelssohn String Quartet between 1989 and 2009. Tonight she is making her first independent appearance at Ravinia. GILBERT KALISH, piano Under the tutelage of Isabelle Vengerova, Leon- ard Shure, and Julius Hereford, pianist Gilbert Kalish earned a bachelor’s degree at Columbia College and completed graduate studies at Co- lumbia University. In a single year, he gave his New York–debut recital at Carnegie Hall and made his European debut at Wigmore Hall. Ka- lish subsequently touredNorthAmerica, Europe, and Australia and became a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a new music group active during the ’60s and ’70s. He also regularly played with the Boston Sympho- ny Chamber Players during this period, tour- ing Europe, South America, and Japan. Kalish is frequently a guest of the Concord, Emerson, and Juilliard String Quartets and the New York Woodwind Quintet, and he recently worked with the Talich Quartet. He has long-standing partnerships with cellists Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnick, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and, most famously, mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, with whom he played for 30 years. Chamber music consumes most of Kalish’s performing time, but he has also often been a soloist at such festivals as New York’s Mostly Mozart and England’s Brigh- ton and Aldeburgh. He has premiered works by such composers as Elliot Carter, George Crumb, Charles Ives, Leon Kirchner, George Perle, Ralph Shapey, and David Diamond. Kalish has appeared on a wide range of recordings for the Columbia, Desto, Folkways, Acoustic Research, Bridge, and Nonesuch labels, among many others. His discography includes Haydn’s com- plete sonatas and a reference recording of Ives’s “Concord” Sonata on Nonesuch, with which he recorded works by numerous American com- posers. The 2002 recipient of Chamber Music America’s National Service Award, Kalish also holds a 1987 honorary doctorate from Swarth- more College and is currently on the faculty of SUNY–Stony Brook. Gilbert Kalish has been on the faculty of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute for 17 seasons, dating back to 1991. He first per- formed at Ravinia in 1986, and tonight marks his 11th season on the festival’s concert stage. JUNE 24 – JUNE 30, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 93