New Music for Strings at National Sawdust

Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a performer, composer, and researcher, she has opened up new sonic worlds for the violin. Notably, she has mastered the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin’s lowest string without retuning. This technique, which she calls Subharmonics, has earned Mari considerable renown in the concert music world and beyond. She is also a pioneer in the field of interactive computer music. At the same time, she has earned international acclaim as a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire.

As a composer, Mari’s commissions include the International Computer Music Association, Harvestworks, Music from Japan and others, supported by grants including New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, New Music USA/Meet The Composer, Japan Foundation, Argosy Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts.  In 2010, Mari won the Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, and invited as Composer-in-Residence at IRCAM in Paris. In May 2011, Mari was presented in a solo recital at the Bohemian National Hall in NYC by the Vilcek Foundation, in recognition of her groundbreaking work as a foreign-born artist; subsequently she was named one of 2011’s “Immigrants: Pride of America” by the Carnegie Corporation, published in the New York Times. Mari’s 2010 CD, The World Below G and Beyond, is devoted entirely to her own compositions and focuses on works using Subharmonics and interactive computer music. In 2011, Mari presented her “I-Quadrifoglo”, her first string quartet with interactive computer at New York’s Symphony Space, commissioned by the Cassatt String Quartet through 2010 Fromm Foundation Commission Award from Harvard.   In 2016, she released a solo CD Harmonic Constellations (New World Records) featuring works for violin and electronics by American composers. Mari’s latest CD (2017), Voyage Apollonian (Innova Records) features her works for Subharmonics and interactive compositions using a motion sensor. Mari’s work has been featured in major publications including the New York Times written by Matthew Gurewitsch, and in Scientific American written by Larry Greenemeier. In October 2014, Mari received the Inaugural Award Of Composers Now Creative Residencies at The Pocantico Center of The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

As a violinist, Mari has premiered many notable works, including John Adams’s Violin Concerto (Japanese premiere), Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII (US premiere), Tania Léon’s Axon for violin and computer (world premiere), and Salvatore Sciarrino’s 6 Capricci (US premiere), among others. In 2007, Mari introduced Jean-Claude Risset’s violin concerto, Schemes, at Suntory Hall with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. The cadenza she wrote for the concerto, incorporating advanced Subharmonics, was subsequently published in STRINGS magazine. In November 2010, Mari appeared as a soloist with the Hamburg Symphony performing John Adams’ Dharma at the Big Sur, under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer, conductor.

In 2013, Mari inaugurated a new summer program as the Director of the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival in collaboration with IRCAM. The program focuses on high-level performers using the latest technology.   Since 2016, Mari is using “µgic”, an original prototype WIFI sensor extracting her bowing movement and musical expressions.  For this project, she won a grant from Harvestworks “Creativity + Industry = Enterprise” program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and The Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund.   Since 1998, Mari has been teaching a graduate course in Interactive Computer Music Performance at Juilliard.

The Parhelion Trio—Sarah Carrier (flute), Ashleé Miller (clarinet), and Andrea Christie (piano)—is a New York City based, all-female ensemble dedicated to bringing contemporary music to diverse audiences through innovative programming. In 2016, The Parhelion Trio was a semi-finalist in the inaugural M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest chamber competition in the world, and was offered a one-year management prize. Highlights from past concert seasons include performances at National Sawdust,  Metropolitan Museum of Art “ETHEL and Friends” Series, Cornelia Street Café, Southampton Cultural Center, CUNY Graduate Center, Stony Brook University and the 2014 National Flute Association Convention among many others. The trio was also featured in a June 2016 interview with Dan Dunford on Episode 44 of his music podcast “Divergent Paths”, which can be downloaded on iTunes.

The Parhelion Trio’s upcoming 2017 season includes a New York Premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s Triple Set, a work commissioned by The Flute Clarinet Duo Consortium, and a Spring residency through “New Music Adelphi XII” at Adelphi University.  In June 2017, Parhelion will be Trio in Residence at New Music for Strings Festival in New York, which will include performances alongside members of the Emerson String Quartet at Carnegie Hall. The trio will be a guest ensemble this summer at Avaloch Farm Institute in New Hampshire and will collaborate with the Flute Clarinet Duo Consortium at the 2017 National Flute Association Convention in Minneapolis.

Parhelion regularly commissions works from leading composers to explore the ensemble’s unique potential. In the past three seasons, Parhelion has premiered over 20 new works dedicated to or written by the trio. Recent and upcoming premieres include compositions by Sidney Boquiren, Pierre Jalbert, David Loeb, Daniel Felsenfeld, Sunny Knable, and Whitney George. As strong advocates for contemporary music, The Parhelion Trio has presented workshops and performances for young composers of the New York Philharmonic’s “The Composer’s Bridge” program. Parhelion has presented lecture-recitals and masterclasses for students at Adelphi University and St. Joseph’s College Brooklyn.

The Parhelion Trio was formed in 2010 at the Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance at Mannes.

Both an accomplished violinist and composer, Anne Sophie Andersen is an unusually diverse artist seeking to explore music from a variety of angles. Her compositions range from orchestral and ensemble works to works for solo instruments and with live electronics. She has written, performed and lectured on works by Schubert, Carter and Grisey and was a speaker at the 2015 TEDxSBU conference.

One of Ms. Andersen’s greatest passions is performing and promoting works by living composers, and she has collaborated with several composers in the US as well as her native region of Scandinavia. She also enjoys exploring the worlds of jazz and improvisation and performed as a soloist with the Stony Brook University big band in 2013, collaborating with artists such as Ray Anderson.

Anne Sophie Andersen is the board leader and a faculty member of the festival “New Music for Strings” which celebrated its opening season in August 2016. A biannual event in Ms Andersen’s native city of Aarhus, Denmark, the festival is centered around the creation of new music for strings. Among the faculty are members of the Emerson Quartet as well as internationally recognized Scandinavian artists.

As a chamber musician, Anne Sophie Andersen has worked with members of many of the world’s most outstanding ensembles, such as the Cleveland Quartet, the Alban Berg quartet and, most importantly, the Emerson Quartet whose members she collaborates with frequently. She is the founder of Stony Brook Chamber Ensemble (now Three Village Chamber Players), a Long Island based chamber music outreach group. She has served as an assistant concertmaster of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and undergraduate instructor at Stony Brook University and as faculty at Adelphi University.

Ms. Andersen was ranked second in New England Conservatory’s 2010 Mozart concerto competition In 2009, she was a semifinalist of the all-instrument competition ‘Ljunggrenska Tävlingen’ in Sweden and in 2008, she was ranked first in the national stipend competition of the Swedish conservatories. She has appeared as a soloist with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the symphony of the Royal Academy, Aarhus, the Malmö New Chamber Orchestra and the Øresund Chamber Orchestra and recorded for the Swedish label CY contemporary.

Anne Sophie Andersen was a fellow of the 2016 Concert as Theatre program at the Banff Cantre and a laureate of the 2015 Future Music Lab at Atlantic Music Festival (Maine, USA). Past festivals include the Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop and Vermont residency, Menuhin Music Academy (Switzerland), Carl Flesch Academy (Germany), Aurora Chamber Music Festival (Sweden), International Mozarteum Summer Academy (Austria) and Stony Brook University Chamber Music Festival.

Ms. Andersen has performed in masterclasses for artists such as Christian Tetzlaff, Maxim Vengerov, Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, Nikolai Znaider, Midori Goto, Gerhard Schulz and Liviu Prunaru.

Anne Sophie Andersen holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in violin and the Master of Arts degree in composition from Stony Brook University (NY), where she studied with prof. Philip Setzer (Emerson Quartet), prof. Peter Winkler (composition) and prof. Daniel Weymouth (composition). Ms Andersen also holds a Graduate Diploma in violin performance from New England Conservatory (2011), a soloist Diploma in violin performance from Malmo Academy of Music (Sweden, 2009) and a Masters in violin performance from Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus (Denmark, 2005). Past teachers include Masuko Ushioda, Terje Moe Hansen and Marta Libalova.

Canadian pianist Andrea Christie is a versatile performing artist with a flair for late-romantic works and a passion for contemporary music.  Equally at home as soloist and chamber musician, she is the pianist of the NYC-based Parhelion Trio, an all-female ensemble that is dedicated to performing both new music and traditional classics.  A native of Victoria, British Columbia, Christie has been playing piano since the age of four.  Her formal training began at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where she made her solo orchestral debut at age 14, performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.

Andrea Christie received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from SUNY Stony Brook and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia.  Her principal mentors include Jane Coop, Christina Dahl and German Diez.  As a recipient of numerous scholarships and fellowships, she has participated in residencies and summer festivals across North America and Europe including Tanglewood, the Mozarteum, Academy Prag-Wien-Budapest, International Festival of Contemporary Music at Mannes, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, Vancouver International Song Institute, Orford Academy, and Morningside Music Bridge.

As an educator, Dr. Christie serves as a lecturer at Adelphi University, and is on the piano faculties of the Greenwich House Music School and the Herald Music School.  Dr. Christie has previously served for four years on the piano faculty at Stony Brook University’s Pre-College Division.