WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 8, 2010
7:30PM

EXCITING YOUNG VIRTUOSOS

KOSCIUSZKO FOUNDATION
15 EAST 65TH STREET
(Between 5th Avenue & Madison Avenue)

Gabriela Martinez - Piano
Noah Geller - Violin, Philadelphia Orchestra
Mark Holloway - Viola, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players
Joshua Roman - Cello

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
6 Moment Musicaux, Op. 16
- No. 1, Andantino
- No. 4, Presto

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10 No. 3
- Presto
- Largo e mesto
- Menuetto: Allegro
- Rondo: Allegro

KAROL SZYMANOWSKI
Variations in B flat Minor, Op. 3, M5
- Tema Andantino tranquillo e semplice
- Variation 1: L’istesso tempo
- Variation 2: Agitato
- Variation 3: Andante quasi tempo di mazurka
- Variation 4: Con moto
- Variation 5: Lento dolce
- Variation 6: Scherzando: Vivace molto
- Variation 7: Allegro agitato ed energico
- Variation 8: Meno mosso: Mesto
- Variation 9: Tempo di Valse: Grazioso
- Variation 10: Andantino
- Variation 11: Andantino dolce affettuoso
- Variation 12: Allegro con fuoco

GABRIELA MARTINEZ
Piano
Lauded by the New York Times as “compelling, elegant, and incisive,” Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez is quickly earning praise as a versatile artist who combines “panache and poetry” (Dallas Morning News) with a “sense of grace and clarity” (The Star Ledger).

Ms. Martinez has already amassed an impressive list of recital, concerto, and chamber music performance credits. Since making her orchestral debut at age 7, Ms. Martinez has appeared as soloist with orchestras such as the New Jersey, Fort Worth, Pacific and San Francisco Symphonies, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, MDR Rundfunkorchester, Symphonisches Staatsorchester Halle, Tivoli Philharmonic, and regularly performs with the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with numerous musicians and ensembles including Itzhak Perlman, and the Takacs, Biava and Calder quartets. Ms. Martinez has performed under the batons of conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Lawrence Foster, James Gaffigan, Dirk Brosse, Klauspeter Seibel, Giordano Bellincampi, Guillermo Figueroa, David Machado, Anne Manson, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, Egmon Colomer, Pedro and Cristobal Halffter, among others.

Ms. Martinez has performed at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and Alice Tully Hall in New York; Davies Hall in San Francisco; Bass Hall in Fort Worth; Palace of Versailles in Paris; Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg; Semperoper in Dresden; Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; the Verbier Festival; Dresden Music Festival; Snow and Symphony Festival in St. Moritz; Festival de Radio France et Montpellier; Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto; the New Hampshire Music Festival; the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center; and the Tokyo International Music Festival. She has performed both as soloist and chamber musician in over 50 concert halls in the U.S. and Germany, as well as in Salzburg, Copenhagen, Paris, The Netherlands, St. Moritz, Verbier, Sendai, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Montpellier, Rome, Venice, London, Spoleto, Brussels, Caracas, and Bogota.

Ms. Martinez has won numerous national and international prizes and awards. Her most recent accomplishments include first prize and audience award at the Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Dresden. She was a semifinalist at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she also received a Jury Discretionary Award. Ms. Martinez’s wide-ranging career includes world premieres of new music, live performance broadcasts, and interviews on TV and radio. Her performances have been featured on MDR Kultur (Germany), NHK (Japan), Radio France (France), RAI (Italy), Deutsche Welle (Germany), WQXR, WNYC, National Public Radio, CNN, PBS, 60 minutes, ABC, From the Top (USA), and numerous television and radio stations in Venezuela.

Born in Caracas in 1984, Ms. Martinez began her piano studies with her mother Alicia Gaggioni, and studied with Miyoko Lotto at the Perlman Music Program. She earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School as a full scholarship student of Yoheved Kaplinsky, and her doctorate with Professor Marco Antonio de Almeida in Halle, Germany. Committed to arts advocacy, Ms. Martinez was a member of the fellowship "The Academy- a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute.” Ms. Martinez has been a Career Grant recipient from the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts since 2002. In 2008, Ms. Martinez was appointed Concert Artist Faculty at Kean University in New Jersey.

NOAH GELLER
Violin, Philadelphia Orchestra
Violinist Noah Geller, winner of numerous competitions and prizes, has given lauded performances throughout the United States and abroad. A laureate of the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Mr. Geller recently performed recitals in Queenstown, New Zealand and chamber music with the New Zealand Trio in Auckland. Previously he received top prizes in the 2006 Corpus Christi International String Competition, the Skokie Valley Symphony Young Artists' Competition and Wisconsin Public Radio's Neale-Silva Young Artists' Competition in Madison, Wisconsin. Mr. Geller has also won competitions at the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara) and the Chicago Youth Symphony, resulting in solo performances with those orchestras. Following performances at the Tanglewood Music Center, he was awarded the Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize.

In recital, Mr. Geller has appeared at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago as part of the Chicago Youth Symphony's Distinguished Alumni Recital series. He has also performed in a live Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast at the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison. Through the Merit School of Music in Chicago, Mr. Geller performed the world premiere of Eugene O'Brien's Two Inventions for Violin and Cello, broadcast on WFMT radio. As a chamber musician, Mr. Geller has appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival, Alice Tully Hall, Sejong Center, and the Taos School of Music in New Mexico.

As an orchestral musician, Mr. Geller has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has served in concertmaster and principal positions for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra under James Levine. Mr. Geller recently joined the first violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

A previous student of Jennifer Cappelli and Hyo Kang, Mr. Geller is currently completing his Master of Music degree at the Juilliard School where he studies with Donald Weilerstein and Cho-Liang Lin. Mr. Geller plays a violin made in 1783 by Nicolo Gagliano II on loan from an enthusiastic benefactor.

MARK HOLLOWAY
Viola, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players
Violist Mark Holloway is a chamber musician sought after within the United States and abroad. He has appeared at such festivals as the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia, Music from Angel Fire, Banff, Taos, Mainly Mozart, Caramoor, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. He has played chamber music in France, Switzerland, Russia, and at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England. His current activities include performances with the Jupiter Chamber Players and appearances as a substitute with the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre, and the American Symphony, where he has played as guest principal violist. He has been principal violist of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the New York String Orchestra, and was a member and guest principal of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. He has also appeared with Chamber Music at the 92nd Street Y, and, with the Brandenburg Ensemble, he played at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. He has recently recorded music by Stravinsky, Webern, and Paul Moravec for the Naxos label. A member of Chamber Music Society Two, Mr. Holloway studied at The Curtis Institute of Music with Michael Tree, and received his bachelor of music summa cum laude from Boston University as a student of Michelle LaCourse.

JOSHUA ROMAN
Cello
Dubbed a “Classical Rock Star” by the press, cellist Joshua Roman has earned a national reputation for performing a wide range of repertoire with an absolute commitment to communicating the essence of the music at its most organic level. Before embarking on a solo career, he was for two seasons principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, a position he won in 2006 at the age of 22.

Roman’s 2009–10 season engagements include debuts as concerto soloist with the Albany, Arkansas, and Santa Barbara Symphonies, the New Philharmonic Orchestra in Illinois, Oklahoma’s Signature Symphony, and Kentucky’s Lexington Philharmonic. In recent seasons he has performed with the Seattle Symphony, where he gave the world premiere of David Stock’s Cello Concerto, as well as with the Symphonies of Edmonton, Quad City, Spokane, and Stamford, and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, among others. In 2008, Roman performed Britten’s third Cello Suite during New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival in a pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall. In April 2009, he was the only guest artist invited to play an unaccompanied solo during the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s debut concert at Carnegie Hall.

In addition to his solo work, Roman is an avid chamber music performer. He has enjoyed collaborations with veterans like Earl Carlyss and Christian Zacharias, as well as the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the International Festival of Chamber Music in Lima, Peru. He often joins forces with other dynamic young soloists and performers from New York’s contemporary music scene, including Alarm Will Sound, So Percussion, and artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two. In spring 2007, he was named Artistic Director of TownMusic, an experimental chamber music series at Town Hall in Seattle, where he creates programs that feature new works and reflect the eclectic range of his musical influences and inspirations.

Committed to making music accessible to a wider audience, Roman may be found anywhere from a club to a classroom, whether performing jazz, rock, chamber music, or a solo sonata by Bach or Kodály. His versatility as a performer and his ongoing exploration of new concertos, chamber music, and solo cello works have spawned projects with composers such as Aaron Jay Kernis, Mason Bates, and Dan Visconti. One of Roman’s current undertakings is an online video series called The Popper Project — wherever the cellist and his laptop find themselves, he performs an étude from David Popper’s High School of Cello Playing and uploads it, unedited, to his YouTube channel. Roman’s outreach endeavors have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers, and displacement camps, communicating a message of hope through music.

The Oklahoma City native began playing the cello at the age of three on a quarter-size instrument, and played his first public recital at age ten. Home-schooled until he was 16, Roman then pursued his musical studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Richard Aaron. Roman received his Bachelor’s Degree in Cello Performance in 2004, and his Master’s in 2005, as a student of Desmond Hoebig, principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Joshua Roman was named “Musical America’s New Artist of the Month” in August 2009. He is grateful for the loan of an 1899 cello by Giulio Degani of Venice.