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"Coming To A Theater Near You II"
Viola Music by Film Composers

February 8, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street

Program

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Sonata for Violin and Viola (1949)
Con brio (but not too fast)
Theme with Variations
Scherzo-Rondo

Elizabeth Field, violin
Uri Wassertzug, viola

Peter Sculthorpe - Sonata for Viola and Percussion (1960)
Ann Roggen, viola

Lev Zhurbin - "Romance Funebre"
- "Red Wagon Rag"
- "Plume"
- "Less"

Leah Swann, Lev Zhurbin, Ann Roggen, Miranda Sielaff, Uri Wassertzug, violas

Stefan Levin - I Saknad for Viola and Tape (1995)
Liuh-Wen Ting, viola

Benjamin Britten - Elegie for Solo Viola
Mark Holloway, viola

Alexander Arutiunian (b. 1920)- Retro Sonata
Andante sostenuto-Allegro moderato
Andante sostenuto
Allegretto

Brett Deubner, viola
Luba Slepoi, piano

About the Performers and the Music

Violinist Elizabeth Field has been concertmaster of The Bethlehem Bach Choir since 2001 and frequent guest concertmaster for numerous Washington DC organizations including The Washington Bach Consort and The National Philharmonic. She performs regularly with her chamber group, ArcoVoce and The Vivaldi Project, featuring Ms Field as leader and soloist. She is currently Professor of Violin at George Washington University. From 1982 - 1991, Ms. Field performed extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The St. Luke's Ensemble, City Opera of NY and The Brooklyn Philharmonic. Along with her husband Uri Wassertzug, Elizabeth spends summers performing with the SunValley Summer Symphony. For more information please visit Ms. Field’s website at elizabethfield.com

Violist Uri Wassertzug has performed in many places around the world including Alaska, the UK, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Kennedy Center Opera House/ Washington National Opera Orchestra in Washington DC. He has played with many other symphony and opera orchestras as well. As a chamber musician Mr. Wassertzug has been a member and a guest performer with many groups, and appears frequently on the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Concerts series. Mr. Wassertzug is on the faculty of George Washington University. His own studies were at the University of Maryland, the Aspen Music Festival, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; some of his teachers included the members of the Guarneri Quartet, Isadore Tinkleman, and Robert Becker. As an afficionado of coffee, Uri has been roasting his own coffee beans for several years. He lives in Virginia with his wife, violinist Elizabeth Field, and their son.

"This charming piece is a perfect musical illustration of movies expressed through music. Castelnuovo-Tedesco (or Mario, as we refer to him for brevity) is an eclectic composer, well schooled in the canons of European art music. Just as a filmmaker uses camera techniques and editing to weave an impossible tale together, Mario draws freely from various precedents, mixing them in creative and unexpected ways. Just as a well-made movie suspends our disbelief, Mario transports us through these musical vistas. This is most notable in the second movement, where a simple folklike theme leads to almost Stravinskiesque harmonies. A Bachlike Minuet is punctuated by Prokofiev. An atmospheric idyll leads to a 17th-century Furlana. And the final fugue is a piece-within-a-piece that incorporates material from the first two movements, as a final movie sequence ties up the story with a twist."

Violist Ann Roggen has been awarded grants from Chamber Music America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with whom she has performed and recorded extensively for labels such as Sony, Telarc and Deutsche Gramaphon, including many “Live from Lincoln Center” broadcasts.
In recent seasons, Ms. Roggen has also performed with the American Ballet Theater, Cirque de Soleil, the New Jersey Symphony, and is a member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony.
She maintains an active and vital studio in New York City where she teaches viola and coaches chamber music. As a member of the Bennington College faculty, she has had great success in developing interdisciplinary cultural events designed to combine music with literature, history, dance and language in performance. Ann was recently elected to the national Board of the American Viola Society, and she serves as Vice President of the New York Viola Society. She has been successful in creating imaginative performance opportunities in New York City for dedicated violists to explore repertoire both old and new. Highlights of recent seasons include an evening of multiple viola repertoire with members of the London Symphony Orchestra, solo performances with the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra (Croatia), as well as recitals and master classes under the auspices of the American Cultural Centres in Zagreb and Vilnius, Lithuania. Ms. Roggen received her musical training at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and the Juilliard School. Her principal teachers and mentors have included Karen Tuttle, Lillian Fuchs, Joseph Fuchs and the Juilliard String Quartet.

Barry Centanni – A graduate of the Juilliard School, Barry is a freelance percussionist. In New Jersey, he is the principal percussionist for the Westfield Symphony, the Colonial Symphony, the New Jersey Pops and the New Jersey State Opera. In New York, Barry is a member of the New York Pops and serves as principal percussionist for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. His engagements with St. Luke’s have included recordings for Sony, Music Masters, Telarc and Deutsche Grammophon, including seven volumes of the works of Stravinsky, as well as appearances on "Live from Lincoln Center”.
On Broadway, he has performed for "The Phantom of the Opera", "Grand Hotel", "The Three Penny Opera", "The Good-bye Girl", "Man of La Mancha", "The Secret Garden", "Blood Brothers", "Grease", "The Scarlet Pimpernel", “Swan Lake”, "The Sound of Music", “The Music Man” and “Annie Get Your Gun”.
As a freelance musician, he has performed on “Late Night with David Letterman”, as well as “Saturday Night Live” and has appeared with artists such as Tony Bennett, Sting, Whitney Houston, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Elton John and Frank Sinatra. He has appeared with various orchestras accompanying Andrea Bocelli, the Moody Blues, David Byrne, Yes, Blues Traveller and at Madison Square Garden with Metallicca. He has also performed as an extra percussionist for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the American Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Little Orchestra Society, Concordia, Mostly Mozart, the New York Chamber Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the New York City Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
An active teacher, he has been on the faculty of New York University, SUNY Purchase, The College of New Jersey and Columbia Teachers College. Presently, he is the head of the percussion department at Montclair State University, and is Chairman of the percussion department of the Mannes School of Music.
Barry is married to violinist Sheryl Staples Centanni and they have been blessed with two wonderful children: Michael Patrick and Laura Alana.

Violist Miranda Sielaff has been featured in concerts at New York City's most prestigious and most cutting-edge performance spaces, including (Le) Poisson Rouge, Miller Theater, Bargemusic, and Carnegie Hall. As a member of the Allsar String Quartet, Miranda programs and performs on a concert series entitled "Hearing the Sacred" at the Museum of Biblical Art. Praised for its "ingenious and compelling" programming by critic Steve Smith, the series has featured new and old works side by side in the context of hearing sacred music in conjunction with specific art exhibits. Miranda has played with The Knights since 2002. Other ensembles with which she regularly performs include SONYC, Wet Ink, and Columbia Composers. In 2007 she toured with the Lucerne Festival Academy to Essen and Tokyo, and in January 2008 she was featured in Carnegie Hall's Making Music: Pierre Boulez. Upcoming projects include a re-imagination of Ligeti's Viola Sonata that includes jazz improvisers, to be staged at New York's Cornelia Street Cafe. Miranda holds degrees from Rice University and the Juilliard School.

Violist Leah Swann maintains a varied career in New York City that combines orchestral playing and chamber music, freelance writing and arts administration. In 2007, Leah completed her Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with and was teaching assistant for Martha Katz. She moved to New York after being selected as a fellow in The Academy – A Program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute, a two-year fellowship that provides performance opportunities around New York, professional development support, and teaching experience. In 2007-08, Leah performed six times in Carnegie Hall as part of the Academy's chamber music series, and teaches at the Long Island City High School in Queens. Leah also performs regularly with the Orchestra of St Luke's and the New York City Ballet, and joined NYCB for their summer season in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Hailed by Billboard Magazine as "one of New York's fastest-rising composers and instrumentalists", LJOVA (Lev Zhurbin) stands at the forefront of his generation as the premiere bridge between the world's musical cultures. Ljova was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between performing as a violist in diverse groups ranging from his own LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, to string quartets, jazz combos and Gypsy bands; studying and arranging music for Yo-Yo Ma, the Kronos Quartet, Jay-Z and others; and composing original music for film, TV, theatre and the concert stage.

An active freelancer in NYC, Liuh-Wen Ting was a member of the Meridian Quartet for six years, and most recently has collaborated with the Manhattan String Quartet, Ensemble l'art pour l'art, the Cassatt String Quartet, and renowned Persian vocalist Shahram Nazeri. Liuh-Wen has been on the staff of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College since 1993, and is a faculty member of the prep division at the Mannes School of Music. She has performed at international festivals such as The Prague Spring Music Festival, Ostrava New Music Days, The Warsaw Autumn Music Festival, and Primavera en la Habana international electro-acoustic music festival. Her discography includes solo and chamber music for Albany, Mode, and Capstone Records.

Violist Mark Holloway is an active chamber and orchestral musician, both within the United States and abroad. He was principal violist at Tanglewood and has played chamber music at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Angel Fire, Sarasota, Prussia Cove, Banff, Taos, and Giverny festivals. He plays as a substitute with the New York Philharmonic, the American Symphony, where he has appeared as principal violist, and Orpheus. Mark was principal violist of the Haddonfield Symphony and the NY String Orchestra, and was a member and guest principal violist of both the Portland Symphony (Maine) and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. He received first prize in the American String Teachers' Association MA Competition and has played at Bargemusic, the 92nd Street Y, on WQXR’s Young Artists’ Showcase, live on WGBH, on NPR’s “Performance Today” and with the Brandenburg Ensemble, Boston Symphony, Boston Musica Viva, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Mark’s festival appearances include Caramoor, Boston Chamber Music Society, Richmond Festival, Mainly Mozart, Festival Mozaic, Hotchkiss, Jupiter Chamber Players, Concordia Chamber Players, Lyric Chamber Music Society, and the Mostly Music festival. He received his diploma from the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Michael Tree, and a B.M. Summa cum laude from Boston University where he was a student of Michelle LaCourse.
Hailed by the American Record Guide as an “outstanding violist,” Mark has been fortunate to work with some of the leading composers of our time, including Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Paul Moravec, Joan Tower, and George Tsontakis. He has also recorded music of Webern, Stravinsky, and Moravec for upcoming releases on Naxos. Next season he will join the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two.

Violist Brett Deubner is one of the most accomplished violists of his generation. Inspiring worldwide critical acclaim, the Newark Star-Ledger commented "There is a burning intensity to Deubner's playing, and a refreshing variation in the color of his viola tone." Vienna’s Doblinger Press “Klang Punkte” has joined in these accolades by describing his performances as “Virtuoso and sparkling.”
A native of San Francisco and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Mr. Deubner has inspired the dedication of over 16 new concertos for viola, and numerous sonatas and chamber music compositions. His solo engagements include performances with the Knoxville Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the North Shore Philharmonic, Bachanalia Chamber Orchestra, the Astoria Symphony, the Bucks County Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ecuador.
In 2007 Mr. Deubner recorded the two concertos of Frank Lewin with the New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia conducted by Rossen Milanov for the Albany Label and he premiered and recorded the viola concerto of Trent Johnson with the National Chamber Orchestra of Ukraine.
During the 2008-2009 season Mr. Deubner premiered and recorded Andrew Rudin’s Viola Concerto concerto with Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia and Amanda Harberg’s “Elegy” for solo viola and string orchestra with the Filharmonica del Quito. He also premiered “Tranfiguraciones” for solo viola, flute and orchestra with the Camerata del Loja of which he is the artistic advisor and principal guest conductor. Other appearances during the 2008-2009 season include performances of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, the Telemann and Hindemith concertos with the Bucks County Symphony Orchestra, and the Mozart Symphonia Concertante in Portland, and Samuel Adler’s 5 Scherzi for Viola, Guitar and Chorus with the Eastman Chorale in Rochester and Merkin Hall in New York City.
Next season takes Brett Deubner to concerto engagements in Seattle, Montana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Buenos Aires, Ecuador, Rome, Madrid, Uzbekistan and Tokyo. He is premiering 5 new viola concertos written especially for him.
Brett Deubner serves on the faculty of Temple University's Boyer School of Music and Dance in Philadelphia and Kean University in New Jersey. An active chamber music collaborator and guest at music festivals, Brett Deubner has given master classes throughout North and South America and Europe.

A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Ms Luba Slepoi started playing piano at the age of 6 and continued her musical studies at Mussorgsky School of Music and later at St. Petersburg State Conservatory. Her concert appearances in Russia included performances with orchestra and solo recitals at St. Petersburg State Capella, Philharmonic Hall, and Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory Hall.
Upon immigrating to the United States in 1989, she worked as a vocal accompanist at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music while pursuing her BS degree in Computer Science.
From 1996 she participated in the series of Master Classes at International Summer Festivals such as Holland Music Sessions, Nice Festival Academy, studying with Boris Berman, Brigitte Engerer, Menahem Pressler and performing in the frame of above mentioned festivals.
Luba Slepoi made her Weil Recital Hall debut with the Zephyr Duo as a prize winner in the Artists International Competition. Both as a solo artist and chamber musician, she has performed throughout the Metropolitan New York area in venues such as Trinity Church, Mannes and Manhattan Schools of Music, the Connell Library, Drew University, Watchung Art Center, Summit Presbyterian Church, Atlantic Highlands Chamber Music Series and others.
Ms. Slepoi currently maintains a private piano studio. She is an active member of Music Educators Association of New Jersey and sits annually on a panel of judges for the association.