Chris Grymes Open G Series:
Jakob Kullberg
6pm doors • 7pm show
About
Open G Records, founded by clarinetist Chris Grymes, is committed to producing music that is rooted in the classical tradition, but brings artists and their fans together in new and innovative ways.
Chris and Open G present Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg in an evening of recent music by Nordic composers. Kullberg has worked extensively with many of the leading lights of contemporary Scandinavia, premiering and recording major works by Per Nørgård, Kaija Saariaho, and Bent Sørensen, among others. A two-time winner of the Danish Grammy and an internationally-renowned performer and advocate of contemporary composers, Kullberg has chosen a program that features his favorite recent works by Nordic composers for cello, clarinet, and piano. He’s joined by Open G regulars Chris Grymes and Jeremy Gill.
Tickets
The Artists
Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Jakob Kullberg is one of the most active and diverse young Danish instrumentalists. Jakob is a top prize winner at international solo and chamber music competitions, and twice a winner of the Danish Grammy, most recently for his concerto CD Momentum, which was also nominated for the coveted Gramophone Award in London and recognized as “Album of the Week” by Q2 Music in New York. In 2011 he was awarded the Gladsaxe Music Prize. He has been an artist-in-residence for the Tivoli Garden Concert Hall, the International Carl Nielsen Violin Competition, and New Music Orchestra, Poland.
Jakob enjoys a unique working relationship with the Danish composer Per Nørgård, who has composed and dedicated numerous works for him; the two have developed a rare dialogical collaboration in which the composer utilises the creative potential of the cellist in an experimental composition process.
He is also a notable interpreter of the work of Bent Sørensen, and in 2011 he moved to Paris to focus on his collaboration with Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. As a teacher, Jakob has garnered attention by giving masterclass internationally at institutions including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Poland; he has held a teaching position at the Royal Danish Academy of Music since 2005. He has made countless appearances at prestigious international festivals such as the Aldeburgh Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Huddersfield Festival, and the Bergen International Festival.
A powerfully virtuosic and multifaceted clarinetist, Chris Grymes’ playing is “eloquent…animated and free of any interpretive self-indulgence” (The Strad) and “scintillating in its energy and technique” (The Clarinet). Chris is a musician with a stunningly broad portfolio: a tenured professor, a principal orchestral clarinetist, a concerto soloist, a chamber musician, a commissioning collaborative artist, and now the founder of his own indie classical label, Open G Records. At Open G Records, Chris oversees and curates a collective of musicians, composers, and recording engineers dedicated to the old-school craft of creating and performing serious classical music. The Open G artist roster produces recordings, live performances, newly-commissioned works, podcast interviews, and essays about music, art, life, and much more. Chris is a presenting partner at National Sawdust, New York City’s newest classical music hall, which allows Chris to curate and produce concerts featuring both established performers and composers as well as emerging artists.
Chris grew up in Virginia Beach, VA, where his first clarinet teacher was F. Edward Knakal. He went on to study with Eli Eban, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, and Nathan Williams. He now lives in New York City with his wife Rachel and his son Saul. Chris prefers his bourbon single-barrel, his Radiohead loud, and his basketball Hoosier red.
Described as “vividly colored” (New York Times), “replete with imaginative textures” (Dallas Morning News), and “exhilarating” (Philadelphia Inquirer), Jeremy Gillʼs music has earned him residencies and fellowships with the Bogliasco Foundation (2017), Copland House (2015), American Opera Projects (2013-14), and the MacDowell Colony (2013), and grants from New Music USA (2017, 2015) and Chamber Music America (2011). In 2017, Boston Modern Orchestra Project released a recording of his orchestral music, conducted by Gil Rose and featuring clarinetist Chris Grymes, oboist Erin Hannigan, pianist Ching-Yun Hu, and the Marsh Chapel Choir. He has worked extensively with the Grammy-winning Parker Quartet, who recorded his hour-long Capriccio for Innova Recordings in 2015. Recent and upcoming collaborators include conductors JoAnn Falletta, Stuart Malina, Gemma New, Steven Osgood, Gil Rose, and Jaap van Zweden.
Premieres of his music during the 2019-20 season include …and everywhere the sea for clarinet and piano, to open the Kennedy Centerʼs REACH; The Journey, a theater piece for soprano, bass-baritone, choir, and Pierrot ensemble, on the Illuminate Rotherhithe migration festival in London; and Concerto dʼavorio, a concerto for four-hands piano and orchestra, featuring pianists Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Gemma New.
