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Chamber music in America is being kept alive through the efforts and imagination of new artists each year. Composer Steven R. Gerber and long-time friend and violinist Kurt Nikkanen created Trio a la carte to bridge the worlds of chamber music of the past one hundred and fifty years.
Trio a la carte performs the music of composer Steven R. Gerber along with works by other 20th century composers. The musicians Kurt Nikanen, violin, Arash Amini, cello and Steven Gerber, piano, comprise the trio. For programming variation the trio will also work with a guest pianist (other than Mr. Gerber) for the performance of more traditional works of standard trio repertory.
The flexibility of Trio a la carte allows the musicians and the presenter to offer traditional repertory and modern music programming in tandem while keeping versatility and programming possibilites open for all booked performances.
The possiblilites for presenting creative programs with these performers is as varied as the existing repertoire for solo, duo and trio chamber works.
Kurt Nikkanen has been a public favorite and a veteran of the concert stage internationally for over two decades. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1965, he began his violin studies at the age of three, later studying with Roman Totenberg and Jens Ellerman. At twelve he gave his Carnegie Hall debut, performing the Saint-Saëns Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with the New York Symphony; two years later he was invited by Zubin Mehta to perform the Paganini Concerto No.1 with the New York Philharmonic for a Young People's Concert. In 1986 he gained his Bachelor's Degree from the Juilliard School where he was a scholarship student of Dorothy DeLay.
An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, Kurt Nikkanen has given numerous performances (including some territory premieres) of the John Adams Violin Concerto, with orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Oregon Symphony, Hallé Orchestra and Cincinnati Symphony (all under the composer's direction). He has also performed the work with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Norrkoping Symphony, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Lahti Symphony and on tour in New Zealand. Other contemporary projects include Aaron Jay Kernis' Concerto for violin & guitar, which he performed at the 1998 Aspen Festival conducted by Hugh Wolff; and HK Gruber's violin concerto Nebelsteinmusik, performed with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under the composer's direction in April 1999. With the National Chamber Orchestra of Washington, he recently recorded Steven R Gerber's violin concerto, which was written especially for him, for Koch International. He has also just given the world premiere of John Zorn's Contes de Fées for violin & chamber orchestra, with the EOS Orchestra of New York. More information can be found at Kurt Nikkanen.com.
The new cellist of Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz Trio, Arash Amini has performed as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician throughout the U.S., including in Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, and the Kennedy Center, and throughout Switzerland, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Botswana.
He has performed at two Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops in Carnegie Hall, the 1999 Irene Diamond Concert with André Watts in Alice Tully Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Verbier Festival and Academy in Switzerland, the Rencontres Musicales d’Evian, and the Smithsonian Institution, on Great Performers at Lincoln Center, the Alexander Schneider Young Artists Series in Weill Recital Hall, the Schneider Concerts at The New School, the Museum of Modern Art’s Summergarden series, Trinity Church’s Concerts at One, and the Curtis Alumni Recital series, and for The Creative Coalition and the Americans for the Arts Gala. He has also performed chamber music with Barbara Hendricks, Nigel Kennedy, Cho-Liang Lin, Mischa Maisky, Julian Lloyd Webber, and David Geringas.
A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with David Soyer, and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Aldo Parisot, Arash Amini is a Co-Founder, the Artistic Director, and an Artist Member of America’s Dream Chamber Artists, a new and exciting chamber music society based in New York. He has performed countless world and U.S. premieres of solo and chamber music works and performs frequently in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Riverside Symphony, Long Island Philharmonic, and as the newest member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
His performances have been heard on WQXR and National Public Radio and he has been featured in The New York Times, Chamber Music and The Strad magazines, on the Arte television network in Europe, and on Voice of America television and Internet broadcasts worldwide, and has recorded for the EMI, Naxos, New World Records, and Bridge Records labels.
Steven R. Gerber was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C. and now lives in New York City. He received degrees from Haverford College and from Princeton University, where he received a 4-year fellowship. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, J. K. Randall, Earl Kim, and Milton Babbitt.
Steven remains an active performer of his own compositions as well as select works of other contemporary and modern composers. His facility at the keyboard was developed in his early years of study as a piano student and have remained a vital part of his musicianship and compositions.
Recent works of Gerber's include a Viola Concerto written for Yuri Bashmet and premiered by Bashmet at his summer festival in Tours, France; String Quartets No. 4 and 5, written respectively for the Fine Arts and Amernet String Quartets; "Spirituals" for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by Concertante Chamber Players for performances in 2000 at the Library of Congress and Merkin Hall (NYC) and in Harrisburg; a Clarinet Concerto for Jon Manasse, premiered by him with the National Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Piotr Gajewski, and "Fanfare for the Voice of A-M-E-R-I-C-A," commissioned to celebrate VOA's 60th anniversary, and premiered at the VOA auditorium on a 9/11 memorial concert in 2003. The Fanfare has since then been performed by the Wheeling Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) Orchestra, and by the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the new Music Center at Strathmore as part of the 2005 ASOL convention.
Gerber's music is well-known also in Russia and Ukraine, where he has had numerous tours with literally dozens of performances of his orchestral works as well as many concerts of his solo and chamber works.
Current projects include a commission from The Lark Ascending for a new work for woodwinds. In spring, 2006 KOCH International will issue a new CD of nine of his solo and chamber works, spanning the period 1967-2001, all performed by violinist Kurt Nikkanen, along with violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Cyrus Beroukhim, cellist Brinton Smith, and pianist Sara Davis Buechner.
Visit Steven at his website for a detailed biography, selection of compositions and commissions about his life and work. Go to Steven Gerber.com
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