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Verona Quartet to make its CCMS debut: a conversation with violinist Jonathan Ong

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by Mike Telin

After winning top prizes at the Wigmore Hall, Melbourne, Osaka, M-Prize, and Fischoff International Chamber Music Competitions, as well as the 2015 Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Verona Quartet have enjoyed a quick rise to the upper echelon of the chamber music world.

Committed to mentoring the upcoming generations of musicians, the Quartet serves on the faculty of Oberlin College and Conservatory, ENCORE! Chamber Music, and as Artistic Directors of the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance.

On Tuesday, April 28 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Verona Quartet — Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro (violins), Abigail Rojansky (viola), and Jonathan Dormand (cello) — will make their Cleveland Chamber Music Society debut. Their program features music by Scarlatti, Glass, and Janáček. The ensemble will be joined by pianist Yaron Kohlberg for Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A. Tickets are available online.

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Making its Cleveland debut, Verona Quartet closes Arts Renaissance Tremont season (May 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The original plan for the season finale of Arts Renaissance Tremont called for the Cavani Quartet — joint artistic directors of the series at St. Wendelin Church — to join the Verona Quartet, Oberlin Conservatory’s resident string quartet, to form an octet. But when a member of the Cavani became indisposed, the Verona agreed to play the whole program on Sunday afternoon, May 5.

Although the audience at St. Wendelin might have been surprised by the change in plans, nobody could possibly have been disappointed. Violinists Jonathon Ong and Dorothy Ro, violist Abigail Rojansky, and cellist Jonathan Dormand gave revelatory accounts of Mendelssohn’s first and Beethoven’s fifteenth quartets. And they very likely introduced all but a few cognoscenti in the audience to the fascinating music of Grażyna Bacewicz with the Fourth Quartet by the Lithuanian-Polish violinist and composer, who lived from 1909 to 1969.

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Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Verona Quartet with Wu Man (Feb. 25)

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by Mike Telin

If you are familiar with the Pipa — a Chinese lute-like instrument with a history that dates back more than 2,000 years — chances are that you first heard it played by Wu Man.

On February 25 in Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, the world’s premiere pipa virtuoso joined the Verona Quartet — Jonathan and Dorothy Ro (violins), Abigail Rojansky (viola), and Jonathan Dormand (cello) — for a program that traveled the musical globe to explore the question, What is home? The concert was presented as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.

Throughout the evening, the large audience was treated to a musical collaboration that never felt forced. As always, Wu Man’s innate sense of musicality proved that great virtuosity is not always about fast technical passages, it can also be found in the nuances of serenity. And the Verona, Oberlin’s Quartet-in-Residence, were unified partners, producing musically intelligent and technically flawless playing that seamlessly moved in and out of a spectrum of colors and stylistic emotions.

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Trail Blazing Musician Wu Man in Residence at Oberlin

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by Cathy Partlow Strauss

This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory

The pipa is not an instrument on which students at Oberlin Conservatory perform, but the lute-like instrument developed in China more than 2000 years ago is influencing increasingly more concert music found on stages throughout the world.

This is due in large part to the artist Wu Man, recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and a leading ambassador of Chinese music. She’ll be in residence at Oberlin February 24-25 and take part in three events across campus that culminate in a concert with Oberlin College quartet-in-residence, the Verona Quartet. All events are free and open to the public.

Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer, giving the pipa a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. The creative projects she has initiated have resulted in the instrument finding a place in numerous musical settings and genres, as well as in collaborations in theater productions, film, dance, and with visual artists.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man was an early trailblazer. She was hailed as a child prodigy at age 13 and went on to earn the first master’s degree in pipa the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She moved to the U.S. in 1990 and was awarded a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe in 1998.

Since then, she has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras and is the leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music written by composers including Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Tan Dun, and Bright Sheng.

Her notable career has also been marked by several “firsts.” She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2013, she was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year.

She is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble and is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets.

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ENCORE: A Tasteful showcase— “Tales of Travel & Transformation” (July 3)

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by Jacob Strauss

ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.

Cellist Max Geissler led off with composer-in-residence Andrew Rindfleisch’s Quiet Music for Solo Violoncello. Gymnastic hand positions land on natural harmonics in “Waltz Music.” Heavy rhythmic lines roll under chords played assertively by Geissler in “Fast Music,” then become quiet while wind chimes glisten in “Slow Music.” [Read more…]

ENCORE embraces the journey with “Tales of Travel & Transformation”

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by Stephanie Manning

Summer 2022 has seen a surge in travel, as those who were kept from family, friends, and favorite places over the past two years try to make up for lost time. The upcoming July 4 weekend should be one of the busiest yet. But for those staying in the Cleveland area, the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Music & Ideas Festival is offering audiences a musical getaway on July 3 at 4:00 pm with “Tales of Travel & Transformation.”

The featured performers, the Verona Quartet, are a group of world travelers themselves. Hailing from four different countries, the musicians — violinists Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro, violist Abigail Rojansky, and cellist Jonathan Dormand — have performed as a group across four continents. Over the past two years of their residency at Oberlin Conservatory, the Quartet has appeared in venues all over Northeast Ohio — this weekend, they will add the Gilmour Academy’s Dodero Center to that list.

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2021: A roundup of recordings

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As a guide to gift-giving (and don’t we all need a little help!), enjoy a chronological look over the CD reviews our correspondents have written over the last twelve months — plus a look ahead at some reviews to come in early 2022.

Note that many of these recordings are available as downloads rather than physical discs. And while streaming platforms are invaluable resources, it’s important to remember that payments received by the artists are generally small (and ridiculously confusing to calculate in some cases!)

Finally, don’t forget to make an end-of-year gift to your favorite local performing organization to support our musicians. Happy holidays!

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Music, Sports, and Ancient Greece festival: Oberlin faculty recital (Oct. 10)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

To open the academic calendar in recent years, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson has organized interdisciplinary festivals centered around intriguing themes. That continued earlier this month with “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” a topic that was examined through a variety of events, musical and otherwise, over the course of two days. I caught the tail-end of the festival via live stream: the fourth and final faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall on the evening of October 10.

The program was fresh and eclectic, featuring several works by lesser-known composers, and spanning from traditional classical to contemporary music and jazz — not to mention poetry.

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CD Review — Verona Quartet: Diffusion

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by Cait Winston

In their debut album Diffusion, the Verona Quartet celebrates folk music’s influence on string quartet language at the beginning of the 20th century — a style that reflects their values as an international ensemble with members hailing from all across the globe.

In a statement on their website, violinists Jonathan Ong (Singapore) and Dorothy Ro, (Canada), violist Abigail Rojansky (U.S.A.), and cellist Jonathan Dormand (U.K.) establish the idea of “cultural migration” as central to their identity as a quartet. They describe Diffusion as embracing “the spirit of intercultural exploration that permeates many of the great works of the string quartet canon.”

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