Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Llíria Conservatory - 20:00
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN — Piano Trio in c minor, op. 1 no. 3
Vicente Huerta – Violin
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Meagan Milatz – Piano
Robert SCHUMANN — Märchenbilder, op. 113
Arianna Smith – Viola
Meagan Milatz – Piano
———— intermission ————
Johannes BRAHMS — Piano Quartet in c minor, op. 60
Vicente Huerta – Violin
Arianna Smith – Viola
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Meagan Milatz – Piano
Friday, May 27, 2022
Clemente Room, Valencia - 18:30
Luigi BOCCHERINI — Sonata for 2 cellos
Kristina Winiarski – Cello
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART — Piano quartet in g minor K 478
Rui Fernandes – Violin
Arianna Smith – Viola
Kristina Winiarski – Cello
Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan – Piano
———— intermission ————
Ernest CHAUSSON — Concert, op. 21
Kai Gleusteen – Violin
Rui Fernandes – Violin
Vicente Huerta – Violin
Kei Tojo – Viola
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Meagan Milatz – Piano
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Llíria Conservatory - 20:00
Claude DEBUSSY — En bateau
Catherine Ordronneau – Piano
Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan – Piano
Wiltold LUTOSLAWSKI — Bucolics, 5 pieces for viola and cello
Kei Tojo – Viola
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY — Pezzo elegiaco (from Piano Trio, op. 50)
Kai Gleusteen – Violin
Cameron Crozman – Cello
Catherine Ordronneau – Piano
——Intermission——
Camille SAINT-SAENS — Piano quartet in B falt major, op. 41
Kai Gleusteen – Violin
Kei Tojo – Viola
Kristina Winiarski – Cello
Catherine Ordronneau- Piano
Festival Artists
Cameron Crozman — cello
Named “Canada’s next big cello star” by CBC Music and the 2019-20 Classical Revelation artist of Radio-Canada, Canadian cellist Cameron Crozman performs everywhere from the Paris Philharmonie to Quidi Vidi Brewery in St. John’s, NL. He has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras and performed recitals and chamber music across Canada, the USA, and Europe. As the recipient of the Canada Council Michael Measure’s prize, he was the featured soloist with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada during their 2012 tour of Canada and the USA. An avid collaborator and chamber musician, Cameron regularly shares the stage with world-renowned artists including James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, André Laplante, and James Campbell.
Cameron’s debut album, Cavatine, recorded on the ca. 1696 “Bonjour” Stradivarius cello, was released to critical acclaim on the ATMA Classique label in 2019, and described by the French publication Classica Magazine as displaying “technical perfection with a personal style that leaves us wanting to hear more.” His most recent release from January 2021, Tapeo, features a program of Spanish-inspired music. His performances have been broadcast on CBC/Radio-Canada, Radio France, Radio Classique, and Medici.tv.
Cameron was one of 6 cellists from around the world chosen to take part in Gautier Capuçon’s 2016-17 Classe d’Excellence at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. After studies with Paul Pulford in Canada, he went on to receive his Master’s level in cello and chamber music from the Paris Conservatoire studying cello with Michel Strauss, chamber music with Claire Désert, and baroque cello with Bruno Cocset. Deeply committed to innovation in classical music, Cameron constantly imagines new ways to share his art with the world. He is active in leading projects commissioning and premiering new music from Canadian composers including Allan Gordon Bell, Alexina Louie, Kelly-Marie Murphy, and Liam Ritz. Believing in the power of music to tell stories, he has recently taken on projects assisting as artistic director in collaboration with Jeunesse Musicales Canada in Montreal and the Festival of the Sound in parry Sound, ON. He is also at the creative forefront of new chamber music festivals in the Okanagan Valley and in Lliria, Spain, a UNESCO city of music.
Passionate about teaching the next generation, he has been invited to give masterclasses at the Académie Rainier III in Monaco, Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, and the Victoria Conservatory among others. Cameron is grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Sylva Gelber Foundation, and CBC/Radio-Canada in his projects. Cameron currently plays the Spanish cello “El Tiburon” attributed to Juan Guillami of Barcelona ca. 1769 generously on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Instrument Bank.
Rui Fernandes — violin
Born in Lisbon, Rui Fernandes received a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Luso-American Foundation for Development and the Northwestern University (USA), where he studied with Gerardo Ribeiro, having obtained a Master’s degree and a Performance Certificate.
Still in the United States, he studied Pedagogy, with a special focus on Suzuki methodology, with Betty Haag. He was a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas and the American String Teachers Association. Between 1995 and 1997, he worked at the Talent Music Institute of Des Plaines as Assistant of Professor Gerardo Ribeiro at Northwestern University School of Music.
Rui Fernandes was awarded in the violin competitions of the Portuguese Musical Youth and in the Young Musician Award, intermediate and higher level. He also won the Audience Award “Major Blythe Award” at the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.
Rui Fernandes regularly collaborates with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, with which he has toured, and performs with numerous orchestras and at various music festivals across Europe, Asia, Africa and America. He has worked with Maestros such as Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Brüggen, Kent Nagano, Leonard Slatkin, Pierre Boulez, Pinchas Zukerman, Rudolph Barshai, Shlomo Mintz, Sir Georg Solti, Zubin Mehta, among others.
Rui Fernandes taught violin and violet at the Lisbon Academy of Music from 2004 to 2014. His students have been awarded on more than 50 occasions, having won the main national and international competitions held in Portugal.
Rui Fernandes is the Director of the Lisbon Music Academy and Artistic Director of Lisbon Music Fest.
Kai Gleusteen — violin
Canadian born violinist, Kai Gleusteen started at the age of five years old in his native city, Calgary. Early on, he met with success in national music competitions in addition to receiving top academic awards. Already at a young age, he had the opportunity to study with the most renowned violinists and teachers of his time, including Nathan Milstein, Ivan Galamian, Josef Gingold, Dorothy Delay, and Zakhar Bron. By the age of seventeen, Kai was awarded the top prize in the Commonwealth Concerto Competition in Australia, he had received the prestigious Skene Award in Scotland and had formed his first chamber orchestra: The Group of Twelve.
A strong believer in the musician as a multi-dimensional human being, Kai chose to combine his musical studies with academic pursuits. At the University of Michigan, he studied anthropology, geophysics, and philosophy. He received a Master’s Degree from Rice University under the tutelage of the person who would become his greatest inspiration on both a personal and musical level, the violinist Camilla Wicks.
In 1991, Kai moved to Europe to live in the heart of Western Culture. Paris and Prague were his bases for nine years, allowing him to develop and perform both as a soloist and leader of numerous orchestras. In the year 2000, he won the concertmaster position of the Orchestra ‘del Gran Teatre del Liceu’ and subsequently moved to Barcelona. In 2003, he created the Gran Teatre del Liceu Chamber Orchestra and was appointed professor at the Escuela Superior de Musica de Catalunya. He continues to perform extensively as a soloist and a recitalist throughout Europe and North America and has released numerous critically acclaimed recordings.
Kai plays on a violin made by J.B. Guadagnini in 1781.
Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan — piano
Born in Havana in 1994, Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan first studied piano in Cuba. In 2019, he was a finalist in the Clara Haskil Competition where he received the Young Critics’ Coup de cœur award.
Jorge has had the opportunity to appear on stages across Europe. He has performed at the Salle Pleyel, as a prelude to the concert of the Orchestre de Paris, and in 2015 he was invited by Boris Berezovsky to perform before his recital at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. He was also selected to participate in the KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen where he received the first prize as well as the Audience Prize.
Following this success, he was invited to play as a soloist with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille under the direction of Lawrence Foster as part of the Kissinger Sommer Festival in July 2016. Several recitals followed at the Beethovenfest in Bonn, at the Herkulessaal in Munich (broadcast by Bayerische Rundfunk) and a recital alongside Elisabeth Leonskaja for the Stars and Rising Stars Festival, also in Munich. Since then, he has been invited to perform at the La Roque d’Anthéron Festival, the Piano Jacobins Festival and in Riga with the Latvian National Orchestra under the direction of Vassily Sinaïski, among others.
Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan had the opportunity to perform chamber music with principal players of the Orchestre National de France and to perform Beethoven’s 3rd Concerto under the direction of Felix Mildenberger at the Radio-France Auditorium. He is also invited to replay it as the first part of a chamber music concert by Christian Zacharias in 2020.
As part of the Trio Zeliha, he recorded a CD for the Mirare label which was released in November 2020, receiving praise from such personalities as Alfred Brendel and Manahem Pressler. It was selected as Grampahone’s January Editors choice and received 5 Diapasons as well as 5 Etoiles from Classica. Since, the trio has been invited to perform during the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo’s season. They have won 1st prize at the Luigi Boccherini International competition and benefit from the coachings with members of the Trio Wanderer; the Ysaye, Ebène, and Modigliani quartets; as well as Hortense Cartier-Bresson, Roland Pidoux, Olivier Charlier, Emmanuel Strosser, and Lise Berthaud.
Jorge Gonzalez Buajasan has been studying in Paris since 2006. In 2008, he obtained a scholarship from the Cuban Ministry of Culture. In 2014 he was admitted to the CNSMD in Paris in the class of Hortense Cartier-Bresson and Fernando Rossano. Over the years, he also received advice from musical personalities such as Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Menahem Pressler and Radu Lupu.
Vincente Huerta — violin
Vincente Huerta began his studies at the Unión Musical de Llíria at the age of five, then he studied at the conservatories of Valencia and Barcelona with and finished his studies in the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels with professors T. Adamopoulos and Agustín León Ara, obtaining the highest awards and the Virtuosity Award “Avec la plus grand distinction.” He won First prize in the Martínez Baguena, Ciudad de Soria and Gyenes violin competitions.
He has collaborated with world-famous artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Jorge Bolet, Gerard Causé, Marçal Cervera, Yvry Gitlys, and Nobuko Imai. As a soloist he has performed with an extensive repertoire in most European countries under the baton of conductors like; Gianandrea Noseda, Meir Minsky, Michael Thomas, Robert Jansens, L Dewez, E García Asensio, Max Bragado, Henri Adams, Odón Alonso, Boguslaw Madey, Álvaro Albiach, and many others.
Vicente Huerta has been a violin teacher at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, as well as at the Universitat de Valencia, his students receiving the most important awards in the main international competitions (Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Tibor Varga, Wienawsky, Queen Elisabeth…), as well as prominent positions in many European orchestras.
He recorded the violin part of the original soundtrack composed by Alberto Iglesias for the film “La Piel que Habito” by Pedro Almodóvar, being awarded the “Goya” prize for the best Soundtrack in 2012.
He has been developing an intense pedagogical activity, with many students getting positions in orchestras in Spain and Europe, and he is regularly invited as a teacher in the principal Spanish youth orchestras; JONDE (National Spanish Youth Orchestra), OJA (Andalusia), EGO (Basque Country), JORVAL (Valencian region), OJRM (Murcia), and others.
Meagan Milatz — piano
Montreal-based pianist Meagan Milatz is quickly emerging as one of the most sought-after collaborative artists in Canada. She regularly shares the stage with top international musicians including Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; Stefan Dohr, Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic; and cellist Matt Haimovitz, among many others. Her duo “meagan&amy” along with violinist Amy Hillis launched onto the scene with their debut album Roots in 2019, before embarking on a 50-concert, Canada-wide tour as winners of the first-ever Pan-Canadian Partnership Recital Tour offered by Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Debut Atlantic and Prairie Debut. They have been presented at the Ottawa Chamberfest and Lanaudière festival, and their performances broadcast on CBC/Radio-Canada.
Chosen as one of CBC’s “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30,” Meagan has appeared as a soloist alongside orchestras such as the Edmonton, Regina, Sherbrooke, and McGill Symphonies. She was top prize winner in the Shean Piano Competition, CFMTA National Piano Competition, and Canadian Music Competition as well as a recipient of a Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award.
Meagan began her studies in Saskatchewan with Cherith Alexander and holds a Master’s degree from McGill University studying piano with Ilya Poletaev and fortepiano with Tom Beghin. She has also studied collaborative repertoire under the tutelage of Philip Chiu. Enthusiastic about helping the next generation of young musicians, she has been on faculty as a collaborative pianist at Domaine Forget and frequently coaches students at McGill.
She has been executive director of Concerts Noncerto’s “Sans-Souvlaki Série de l’Instrument” outdoor concert series since 2020, which was created to give musicians in Montreal the chance to perform during the two summers of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meagan is currently researching the relationship of music and mental health by exploring expression in the piano music of Robert Schumann as brought out through performance on period instruments as part of a project called “Inner Worlds.”
Catherine Ordronneau — piano
Having performed her first recital at the age of twelve, it wasn’t until the age of twenty, after two years of law school that Catherine Ordronneau decided to devote herself entirely to music. Taught by Colette Fernier, Monique Deschaussées, Sergio Perticaroli, and encouraged by François-René Duchâble, she received the highest distinction at both the Conservatory in Rouen and later at the Ecole Normale Alfred Cortot in Paris. Catherine was also awarded the Yvonne Lefébure Foundation Prize leading to television and radio broadcasts and concert engagements.
Catherine chose to avoid the international competition circuit in favour of taking the time to study repertoire in its historical context. Being a great lover of nature, a fan of Marcel Proust and having spent many years in Normandy, she explores in depth the composers who were inspired by this region, such as Roussel, Debussy, and Saint-Saëns. She deepens her understanding of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms with numerous trips to Germany and her knowledge of the language and by reading Goethe and Heine. Her interpretation of Chopin is nourished by the time spent in Poland and a close examination of his letters.
Catherine’s approach to music is very much appreciated not only by solo piano audiences throughout Europe and North America but also by various renowned chamber musicians. She is regularly invited to perform in chamber music festivals throughout these countries and devotes a large part of her time to her duo with Kai Gleusteen and the Trio Liceu.
Arianna Smith — viola
Known for her captivating spirit and ability to move from “soft and sultry to all around smiles” (Splash Magazines), America violist Arianna Smith quickly established herself as a young prodigy, performing at such prestigious venues as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the Symphony Center and Harris Theater in Chicago, as well as the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series Live from Preston Bradley Hall. Ms. Smith has also been invited as a young performing artist at such festivals as the Verbier Academy, the Perlman Music Program, the Kronberg Academy, Festival de la Vézère, and Les Rencontres Musicales de Saint Cézaire sur Siagne with l’ensemble Calliopée.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Smith has given collaborative performances with world-renowned artists such as Steven Isserlis, Christian Tetzlaff, Mate Bekavac, the Ébene Quartet, James Galway, Arnold Steinhardt, Daniel Hope, Viviane Hagner, Claudio Bohorquez, Rachel Barton Pine, and Paul Coletti.
In the United States, you can hear Arianna’s performances featured on National Public Radio’s “From the Top,” WFMT’s “Live from WFMT” and “Introductions,” as well as KUSC’s “Sundays Live Program from LACMA.”
Ms. Smith is currently an artist in residence at The Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and recently joined the Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz roster of 2017. She is a concertist at the École Normale Supériur de Musique after having finished a year contract at the Opera National de Paris and her masters degree at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. In May of 2014 she received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, California under the tutelage of Paul Coletti. Ms. Smith was born in Chicago, and raised by the musical family of Roland and Almita Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago along with their talented assistant, Marko Dreher.
Kei Tojo — viola
Kei Tojo, viola, finished a master’s degree at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris (CNSMDP) in the class of Jean Sulem and continued her studies with Tabea Zimmermann in Berlin. She also studied with Jeffrey Irvine at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the United States.
She arrived in Paris in 2010 and successively won international competitions such as the Lionel Tertis in England (2nd prize and the prize for the contemporary piece), the William Primrose in the United States (honorable mention and Best Bach performance prize), the Hradec Beethoven in the Czech Republic (2nd prize). She has also won the 2nd prize, the J.S.Bach Award, the Special Prize for a Japanese Work, and the Public Prize at the 3rd Tokyo International Viola Competition in Japan. Passionate about orchestra, she was selected by the Academy of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2012/13 season, the Orchestre de Paris for the 2014/15, and Karajan-Akademie of the Berlin Philharmonic 2017/19.
Kristina Winiarski — cello
Sought after as a chamber musician and soloist around the world, Swedish cellist Kristina Winiarski had her professional solo debut at the age of 16 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center of Performing Arts in Washington DC, USA.
She has since then performed with many renowned ensembles, such as the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Maryland Philharmonic, St Petersburg State Symphony, Zagreb Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in August 2021 she had an acclaimed debut with the Royal Philharmonic in Stockholm. She is regularly invited to chamber music festivals all over Europe and has given concerts in Denmark, Germany, Poland, Russia, France, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Israel, Mexico and South Korea. Among the many awards she has received are the “Nicholas A. Firmenich” Prize from the Verbier Festival 2018, the Anders Wall “Giresta” Scholarship in 2019, and during season 2017/2018 she was a laureate at the prestigious “Classe d’excellence de Violoncelle” with cellist Gautier Capucon at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. She has made recordings for the Swedish Radio P2, Radio France and medici.tv. Kristina plays on the “Lynn Harrell” cello built by David Tecchler in Rome, 1711, kindly loaned from the Swedish Järnåker Foundation.