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KATHERINE JACOBSON FLEISHER,
piano
Katherine Jacobson Fleisher began piano studies
at age 6 in her home state of Minnesota, where
she attended St. Olaf College and earned a bach-
elor’s degree in music. She continued studies
at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she
worked with Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin
and earned a master’s degree, and later at the
Peabody Conservatory of Music. There she
studied with Leon Fleisher, who had a profound
influence on her career and later became her
husband and performing partner. Together they
recorded the duo-soloist version of Mozart’s Pi-
ano Concerto No. 7, K. 242, with the Stuttgart
Chamber Orchestra for Sony in 2009. Jacobson
Fleisher has been a soloist with such ensembles
as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Sym-
phony Orchestra, New York String Orchestra,
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Sym-
phony Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orches-
tra, Île de France National Orchestra, Stuttgart
Chamber Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra
of Portugal, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Aspen
Festival Chamber Orchestra, Calgary Philhar-
monic Orchestra, Duluth Symphony Orchestra,
and Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. She is also
world-traveled performer of solo and chamber
repertoire, having appeared in England, Ireland,
Norway, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Germany,
Portugal, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, and
Brazil, as well as all across North America. Ja-
cobson Fleisher performed the North Ameri-
can premiere of Phanos Dymiotis’s Concertino
for Piano and Chamber Orchestra as well as
the world premieres of several works, includ-
ing Gordon Jacob’s three-piano concerto and
works she commissioned from such contem-
porary woman composers as Dina Koston and
Luna Pearl Woolf. Katherine Jacobson Fleisher
returns tonight for her third season at Ravinia,
where she made her Chicago Symphony Orches-
tra debut in 1987 conducted by Leon Fleisher.
ARGUS QUARTET
The Argus Quartet was the top-prize winner of
both the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh
Competition and M-Prize Chamber Arts Com-
petition in 2017, and that fall it began a two-
year appointment at the graduate quartet in
residence at The Juilliard School, where it will
work closely with the Juilliard String Quartet
and under whose auspices it gave its Lincoln
Center–debut recital this May. The quartet was
previously the 2015–17 fellowship quartet in
residence at the Yale School of Music, where it
was mentored by the Brentano String Quartet,
and also held a residence at Caramoor during
2016–17. In the summer of 2017, the Argus Quar-
tet spent several weeks in residence at Ravinia’s
Steans Music Institute; violist Dana Kelley also
attended RSMI as an individual artist during the
summers of 2014 and 2015. The Argus Quartet
is dedicated to reinvigorating the audience–per-
former relationship through innovative concerts
and diverse programming. In that spirit, the
ensemble’s repertoire includes not just master-
works of the chamber music canon, but also a
wide range of pieces by living composers. As
passionate advocates for the music of our time,
the quartet has also held a residency with New
Music on the Point under the guidance of the
JACK Quartet, and it was also selected as one
of three ensembles to perform works from the
Kronos Quartet’s “Fifty for the Future” commis-
sioning project at Carnegie Hall. Argus has itself
recently commissioned new quartets from Don-
ald Crockett, Grammy nominee Eric Guinivan,
2014 Hermitage Prize winner Thomas Kotcheff,
and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Juri Seo,
receiving supporting grants from Chamber Mu-
sic America and Caramoor. The quartet has also
performed works by such top contemporary
composers as Augusta Read Thomas, Garth
Knox, Jason Eckardt, Christopher Theofanidis,
Martin Bresnick, and Andrew Norman. In ad-
dition to Ravinia, the Argus Quartet’s recent
and upcoming engagements include Carnegie’s
Weill and Zankel Halls, the Albany Symphony’s
American Music Festival, Bang on a Can at the
Noguchi Museum, the Hear NowMusic Festival,
and the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam.
LEON FLEISHER,
piano
Leon Fleisher has been playing the piano since
age 4—he was even withdrawn from kindergar-
ten and given a succession of private tutors for
his formal education so he could focus upon
musical studies. Following his first public recital
at age 8, he became immersed in the budding
classical music scene of San Francisco, where he
met his most influential teacher, Artur Schnabel.
Eight years later, Fleisher made his orchestral
debut with the New York Philharmonic under
the baton of Pierre Monteux, and another eight
years later he became the first American to win
the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
After making several recordings with George
Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, in 1965 he
suddenly became afflicted with focal dystonia,
rendering two fingers on his right hand immo-
bile. Not discouraged, Fleisher continued per-
forming left-hand piano repertoire and devoted
himself to conducting and educating successive
generations of musicians. Through extensive
therapy, he eventually regained the full use of
his hand, and in 2004 he released the album
Two Hands
to universal critical acclaim. Many
of his other albums remain definitive examples
of the repertoire, particularly of Brahms’s and
Beethoven’s piano concertos, the latter of which
were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame
in 2008. Fleisher’s numerous honors include
the Johns Hopkins University President’s Med-
al and several honorary doctorates, including
from the Cleveland Institute of Music and The
Juilliard School. He was made a Commander in
the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2005, re-
ceived the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007 and
was named “instrumentalist of the year” in 1994
by
Musical America
and in 2010 by the Royal
Philharmonic Society. Leon Fleisher this year
celebrates his 90th birthday and his 33rd season
performing at Ravinia, where he first appeared
in 1945. He has also been on the faculty of Ra-
vinia’s Steans Music Institute for now 22 sum-
mers, including for its 1988 inaugural season.
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