Jacqueline Leclair, oboe
Oboist Jacqueline Leclair resides in New York City and Montréal Québec and is a member of Signal and Sequitur. She can frequently be heard performing with other New York City ensembles. As of August 2012, Dr. Leclair is Assistant Professor of Oboe at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. From 2007-2012, she was Assistant Professor of Oboe at Bowling Green State University (Ohio). 2010-2012, she also served as BGSU’s MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music’s Director.
Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIIa Supplementary Edition by Jacqueline Leclair is published by Universal Edition, Vienna, and Dr. Leclair’s recording of the piece is on Mode Record’s collection of all the Berio Sequenzi and other solo works.
Summer festivals for which Dr. Leclair has served as faculty and/or performer include the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Chamber Music Conference at Bennington College (VT), June In Buffalo (NY), Chamber Music Festival of Aguascalientes (Mexico), East/West Festival (Kazan, Tatarstan) and the Sebago Music Festival (ME) among others.
In addition to performing a variety of classical and other musics, Dr. Leclair specializes in the study and performance of new music. She has premiered many works, and she regularly presents classes in contemporary music and its techniques at schools such as UCLA, the Eastman School of Music, Brigham Young University, The North Carolina School for the Arts and University of California San Diego.
Dr. Leclair has recorded for labels such as Nonesuch, CRI, Koch, Neuma, and CBS Masterworks, receiving critical acclaim in particular for her premiere recording of Roger Reynolds’ Summer Island.
Dr. Leclair studied with Richard Killmer and Ronald Roseman at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester and SUNY Stony Brook, earning a Bachelor of Music, Performer’s Certificate, Masters Degree and Doctorate of Musical Arts.
The New York Times has reviewed Dr. Leclair’s performances as “astonishing” and as having “electrifying agility”; and the New Yorker has referred to her as “lively” and “wonderful.”
Laura Koepke, bassoon
Laura Koepke has performed with many of New York’s finest orchestras, including numerous concerts with the world-renowned Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra, on European and US tours, and at home in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall. She has also performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Composers Orchestra, New York Pops, American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York City Opera, and the Westchester Philharmonic.
In addition to performing in New York City, Ms. Koepke is the newly appointed principal bassoonist of the Erie Phiharmonic, and is the principal bassoonist of “CityMusic Cleveland,” a celebrated and innovative chamber orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio.
From 1998 to 2009 Ms. Koepke was a member of the internationally acclaimed woodwind quintet, “Quintet of the Americas.” Three recordings with the quintet include “Dancing in Columbia” (MSR Classics,) “Karel Husa-Recollections” (New World Records,) and “Sounds of Brazil” (MSR Classics.) Ms. Koepke has performed as a guest artist with Zephyros Winds, North Country Chamber Players, Sequitur, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Ms. Koepke has performed at the Bard Festival, Bang on a Can, and Festival of the Hamptons. Other festival appearances include the Lincoln Center Festival, Bar Harbor Music Festival, Maverick Concerts, and the Weekend of Chamber Music Festival.
Ms. Koepke joined the music faculty at the State University of York at
Fredonia in 2007. Previous teaching positions include New York University, Manhattan School of Music Pre-college, Aaron Copland School of music at Queens College, and Western Connecticut State University.
She graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College and holds a Masters Degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University School of Music, where she studied with Stephen Maxym and Frank Morelli.
Yevgenia Strenger, violin
Yevgenia Strenger joined the New York City Opera orchestra in 1979 and became the concertmaster of the NYCO in 2001. She is also a member of the New York City Ballet and has been a frequent player with the New York Philharmonic for many years. Ms. Strenger made her debut with the Lvov Symphony (Ukraine) when she was thirteen, performing concertos by Conus and Sibelius. Upon graduating with honors from the Moscow State Conservatory she toured the Soviet Union as a member of the Kalinin String Quartet. Ms. Strenger, in addition to orchestral playing, has appeared on television, radio and in recitals and chamber music concerts in USA, Russia and Belarus.
David Oei, piano
David Oei was a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the age of nine and has since performed with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies. Mr. Oei is the winner of five Interlochen Concerto Competitions and the Concert Artists Guild, WQXR Young Artists, Young Musicians Foundation and Paul Ulanowsky Chamber Pianists Awards. A perennial fixture on the New York City chamber music scene he has made guest appearances with the Audubon Quartet, Strathmere Ensemble, Claring Chamber Players, Friends of Mozart, Da Capo Chamber Players, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, St. Luke’s and Orpheus Chamber Ensembles and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2012 he performed the Mozart Concerto K.466 and the Brahms Concerto No. 1 with the Strathmere Festival Orchestra.
Founding director of the Salon Chamber Soloists and a founding member of the Aspen Soloists, Festival Chamber Music and the Intimate P.D.Q. Bach he is also currently a member of the Elysium Chamber Ensemble, LED Trio and the HD Duo with pianist Helene Jeanney besides enjoying a longtime collaboration with violinist Chin Kim. A former regular artist at Bargemusic and Chamber Music Northwest he has performed at various festivals including Caramoor, Sitka, Bard, Gretna, Seattle, Washington Square and Kuhmo (Finland). Mr. Oei is an Affiliate Artist of Innovative Music Programs, a company that develops and implements creative ideas with people in the visual and performing arts the world over.
His television credits include “Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts”, “CBS News Sunday Morning” and the “Today Show”. He has recorded a wide range of chamber works for Delos, ADDA, Vanguard, CRI, Pro Arte, Arabesque, Albany, Grenadilla, Festival Chamber Music and New World Records. Mr. Oei was the Music Director and Production Advisor for Music-Theatre Group’s productions of Stanley Silverman and Richard Foreman’s “Africanis Instructus” and “Love and Science”. He was also the Music Director for the Sundance Theater Workshop production of the Wallace/Foreman opera “Yiddisher Teddy Bears”. In the summer of ’07 he conducted the Washington Square Festival Chamber Orchestra in a Gershwin/Weill concert titled “Music as Political Statement” and has since recorded the Strauss and Rachmaninoff Sonatas for cello and piano with Ruth Sommers and “The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke” by Viktor Ullmann for piano and speaker with Lutz Rath. His first duo CD with Eriko Sato titled “Five Not-So-Easy Pieces” has been release on their new label Prestissimo.
A former affiliated teacher at SUNY Purchase and the Volunteers Coordinator and Head Coach for Manhattan Special Olympics, Mr. Oei is a faculty member of Summertrios, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Hoff-Barthelson Music School and the Mannes College Of Music. He is also a member of Alaria, Mannes Extension Division’s ensemble-in-residence, which has offered the Chamber Music At Mannes program and an annual Weill Recital Hall series for over two decades. Mr. Oei lives in NYC with his wife, violinist Eriko Sato, and their pit bull mix, Jazz.
Tzu-En Lee, violin
Violinist Tzu-En Lee was born in Tainan, Taiwan, where she began studying violin when she was only five years of age. From ages seven to seventeen, she won numerous local and national competitions, foremost of which was the Taiwan National Violin Competition. At the local level, she won the Tainan County and City Competitions, the Kao-Hsiung County and City (2008) Competitions, the Kao-Hsiung City Gun-Du-Bae Competition (1998), and the Yunlin County Competition. She studied in the Music Department of the Tainan University of Technology, where she was the principal second violin in the school’s orchestra, conducted by Huei-Ming Twu.
Since coming to the United States, Tzu-En Lee has studied violin performance at Mannes College, The New School for Music, in Manhattan. She graduated with a diploma in the Spring of 2012 and is currently pursuing further studies in the graduate program at Mannes under the tutelage of violinist Yuri Vodovoz. She is a member of the Mannes Community Orchestra, playing first violin, second stand. In addition to her studies, Ms. Lee has enjoyed taking part in the musical life of NYC as a free-lance musician. Since the founding in 2009 of the Pocket Opera of New York, she has performed with its orchestra on two productions (Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutti” and Handel’s “Messiah”), under the artistic leadership of its conductor Wei-En Hsu. Violinist Tzu-En Lee has also sought out opportunities for performing music by contemporary composers. She has participated in the Second and Third Annual Social Networking Concerts, produced and curated by American composer Douglas Townsend at Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan. (In the 2011 concert she was part of an ensemble led by pianist David Oei which performed a new piano reduction of Townsend’s triple violin concerto. In the 2012 concert she was part of a string quartet which included violinist Muneyoshi Takahashi and which world-premiered a work by Australian composer Houston Dunleavy. Both performances were audio podcast and videotaped for YouTube.)
Muneyoshi Takahashi, violin
Violinist Muneyoshi Takahashi is an active freelancer in New York area. He is currently a member of Albany Symphony Orchestra and Iris String Quartet. He has been concertmaster of Ensemble du Monde, Nova Philharmonic, One World Symphony, Toho Gakuen Orchestra Academy, and guest concertmaster of the Japan Philharmonic. He has also played with orchestras such as the American Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Izmir Symphony(Turkey), New Japan Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, and the Rochester Philharmonic.
A graduate of Eastman School and the top honor recipient from Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, he has studied violin with Koichiro Harada, founder of the Tokyo String Quartet and Mikhail Kopelman, former leader of the Borodin String Quartet. He was semi-finalist of Japan Music Competition and Grand-Prix winner of Toho Transcendental Technique Competition.
He had master classes with Thomas Brandis, Zakhar Bron, Vadim Gluzman, Rainer Küchl, Philippe Quint, Shinichi Suzuki and Zvi Zeitlin. He has participated in renowned festivals such as Pacific Music Festival, Takefu International Music Festival and Miyazaki International Music Festival, where he had opportunities to work with artists such as Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, and Toshio Hosokawa.
Mr. Takahashi is also devoted in education. He has been Director of Hamilton-Madison House Music School. He also coaches Trinity-Florentine Orchestra of Inter School Orchestras of New York.
Arkady Leytush, guest conductor
One of Russia’s most gifted conductors, Leytush has directed orchestras in Europe and the United States to great acclaim. Critics as have described him as “a conductor in the Grand Russian Tradition” and his dynamic interpretations have made him an audience favourite. Leytush’s artistry is known throughout the former Soviet Union, but it was not until 1994 that he gained recognition in the United States when he, on a week’s notice, made a stunning debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, replacing Yuri Temirkanov.
Since 1980 Leytush has worked with a wide variety of Orchestras including Novosibirsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre (Russia), New World Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquestra Filarmonic De Buenos Aires, Orquestra Nacional Do Porto, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra, Plovdiv Philharmonic, Kremlin Orchestra, Varna and Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Leytush is Artistic Director/Conductor of The New Symphony Orchestra of Israel and Artistic Director/Conductor of Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of National Orchestra of Ukraine, Music Director of Interfaith Committee of Remembrance (Brooklyn Philharmonic)
Arkady Leytush made numerous transcriptions and orchestrations of music by composers such as Bach, Buxtehude, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Albeniz, Sisler, Czerny, Guastavino, Shostakovich, Borodin, Liadov, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Dargomyzhski, Artsibushev, Sokolov, Mayer.
Douglas Townsend, composer
Douglas Townsend was actively composing, teaching, coaching ensembles and producing concerts until shortly before his death, on August 1, 2012, at the age of 90. Townsend was a native New Yorker. After graduating on the eve of WWII from Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, he studied composition with a succession of well-known composers: Aaron Copland (on a scholarship to Tanglewood), Stefan Wolpe (for five years), Otto Luening (on two scholarships to the Middlebury Composers’ Conference), Tibor Serly (a friend of Béla Bartók’s) and Felix Greissle (Arnold Schoenberg’s son-in-law).
When Townsend was 17, his Contra Dances won a nationwide contest for student composers and was performed by the CBS Symphony on a national radio broadcast, with the film composer Bernard Herrmann conducting. His professional career began one day after he turned 24, when his Sonatina No. 1 for Piano Solo was premiered at Carnegie Hall by the internationally known concert pianist Ray Lev. Thereafter, Townsend composed and premiered over 100 works, including several symphonies and concertos, chamber and ballet music, film scores and incidental music for theatrical productions.
His vocal works include operas, operettas and choral music, and he wrote extensively for wind ensembles and symphonic bands. In the last five years of his life, he oversaw 65 performances of his orchestral, band, chamber and choral works in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Through grants for his work as a musicologist, Townsend brought to light, edited and prepared for performance over 60 compositions from the 18th and 19th centuries. Townsend enjoyed having his own YouTube channel and over 2,500 friends on Facebook.
Olivier Fluchaire, violin
Hailed by the New York press as “a spectacular virtuoso, [playing] with effortless brilliance, unbridled passion, and a remarkable flair,” violinist Olivier Fluchaire has established himself as one of today’s most exciting new violinists.
Performing extensively as featured soloist and chamber musician, he has been concertizing throughout the United States, Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, South Korea, Lithuania, Russia, and his native France.
Mr. Fluchaire was invited to solo with the Camerata Lysy Orchestra, Jupiter Symphony, Hunter Symphony, New York Repertory Orchestra, Manhattanville College Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Bronx, The French Philharmonia Orchestra, Bachanalia Orchestra, Arctic Chamber Orchestra, University of Alaska-Anchorage Sinfonia Orchestra and the Affetti Chamber Orchestra. His most recent concerto tour, performing the Mendelssohn violin concerto throughout Alaska, was reviewed as “a world-class performance […] technical and artistic perfection.”
Olivier Fluchaire was fortunate to perform on many occasions alongside his mentor, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, notably in J.S. Bach’s concerto for two violins and with members of the Guarneri, American, and Emerson string quartets. He has recorded for VOX label and his performances were broadcasted on France 3 Television, Bronxnet Television, the BBC Television, National Educational Television, Radio France, MDR Leipzig, “The Listening Room with Robert Sherman” WQXR-FM and National Public Radio.
Highlights for Mr. Fluchaire’s 2012-13 season include performances of the Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Beethoven violin concerti as well as Bill Whelan’s double concerto for violin and fiddle. He will also perform chamber music on numerous concert series and record for MSR Classics label.
As an avid teacher, Olivier Fluchaire serves on the violin, viola and chamber music faculty at Hunter College, CUNY (New York, NY), Manhattanville College (Purchase, NY) and the College of Staten Island, CUNY (Staten Island, NY). During the summer, he teaches and performs at Summit Music Festival (Purchase, NY) and the Affetti Festival (Anchorage, AK) where he also serves as Associate Music Director.
Olivier Fluchaire studied with Daniel Phillips, Patinka Kopec, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Guen En Shen and Jacques Ghesthem. He is graduate of the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School in London UK, completed his bachelors and masters degrees, on a merit scholarship, at the Manhattan School of Music and his doctor of musical arts degree, as a recipient of a New York Times Fellowship, at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
Olivier Fluchaire performs on a rare violin by Andreas Gisalberti made in 1720 in Parma, Italy.
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