CONCERTO NIGHT – A Dazzling Evening of Virtuosity
Friday, June 27, 7 p.m.
Harrigan Centennial Hall
Join us for an electrifying evening of concertos at the Sitka Music Festival’s Concerto Night! This special program features Grammy-winning cellist Zuill Bailey alongside renowned violinist Helen Kim in Saint-Saëns’ lyrical La muse et le poète—a work of exquisite beauty and interplay between violin and cello. The evening continues with Piazzolla’s fiery Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, featuring Kim as the soloist in this passionate reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
A sought-after performer, Helen Kim made her orchestral debut with the Calgary Philharmonic at age six and has since performed with major ensembles, including the Boston Pops, Atlanta Symphony, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of The Juilliard School, she has won more than 100 national and international awards and has appeared at top venues and festivals, including Alice Tully Hall, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the La Jolla International Music Festival, performing alongside artists like Hilary Hahn, Cho-Liang Lin, and Gary Hoffman.
The evening concludes with Chopin’s sublime Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by acclaimed pianist Natasha Paremski with string orchestra. A masterpiece of poetic lyricism and virtuosic brilliance, this concerto is the perfect way to cap off a night of breathtaking artistry.
Program
Camille Saint-Saëns – La muse et le poète, Op. 132 (15 min)
Featuring Helen Kim, Violin Soloist, and Zuill Bailey, Grammy-winning Cello Soloist
Astor Piazzolla – Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas)
Helen Kim, Violin Soloist
With the Vega String Quartet, Allison Bailey, Viola, and John-Henry Crawford, Cello
— Intermission —
Frédéric Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 1
Featuring Natasha Paremski, Piano Soloist
With the Vega String Quartet, Allison Bailey, Viola, and John-Henry Crawford, Cello
About the Artists
Zuill Bailey, Cello
Zuill Bailey, widely considered one of the premiere cellists in the world, is a Grammy Award winning, internationally renowned soloist, recitalist, Artistic Director and teacher. His rare combination of celebrated artistry, technical wizardry and engaging personality has made him one of the most sought after and active cellists today.
Mr. Bailey has been featured with symphony orchestras and music festivals worldwide. He won the Best Solo Performance Grammy Award in 2017, for his recording of Michael Daugherty’s Tales of Hemingway, with the Nashville Symphony led by Giancarlo Guerrero. His extensive discography includes his newest release – the world premier recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Cello Concerto with the Santa Rosa Symphony.
Mr. Bailey received his Bachelor’s Degree from the Peabody Conservatory where he was named the 2014 Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni, and received a Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School. He performs on the “Rosette” 1693 Matteo Gofriller Cello formerly owned by Mischa Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet.
Helen Hwaya Kim, Violin
Helen Hwaya Kim joined the music faculty in 2006 at Kennesaw State University with a stellar performance background. She made her orchestral debut with the Calgary Philharmonic at the age of six, and has gone on to become a respected and sought-after artist. She has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops at Boston’s Symphony Hall, as well as with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras.
Ms. Kim earned her Bachelor and Master's Degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Cho-Liang Lin and Dorothy DeLay. While at Juilliard, she served as Concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra and was the winner of the Juilliard Concerto Competition at both the Pre–College and College levels. She is the recipient of more than one hundred national and international awards. She won the prestigious Artists International Competition in New York and, as a result, gave debut recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall and the Aspen Summer Music Festival.
A native of Canada, Ms. Kim has been engaged by many of Canada's leading orchestras, including the National Arts Center Orchestra, Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, McGill Chamber Orchestra, and the Windsor, Regina, Victoria and Prince George Symphonies. She has also appeared with the DeKalb, New Orleans, Aspen and Banff Festival Orchestras, and with orchestras in the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.
Ms. Kim has been profiled on national and international television and has appeared on CBC, PBS and CBS networks. Her performances have been aired on NPR and CBC radio networks.
Ms. Kim has toured extensively throughout Canada and the United States, including performances at Alice Tully Hall and the Santa Fe and La Jolla International Music Festivals, where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin, Gary Hoffman, Andre Previn, and the Orion String Quartet. She performed Bach’s Double violin concerto with Hilary Hahn at the Amelia Island Chamber music festival. Other festival highlights include performances at the Highlands-Cashiers, Banff, Zenith and Sitka International Chamber Music Festivals.
An avid performer of new music, she can be heard on the recent CD release of the works of Alvin Singleton on Albany records. Helen performed the world premiere of the “Concertino” by Chen Yi, scored for solo violin and orchestra that was commissioned especially for her and the KSU Orchestra and was recently released by Centaur in 2016.
Ms. Kim currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where she served as Assistant and Associate Concertmaster for the Atlanta Symphony for three seasons. She is currently the Assistant Concertmaster of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and recently joined the roster of the Atlanta Chamber Players.
Natasha Paremski, Piano
With her consistently striking and dynamic performances, pianist Natasha Paremski reveals astounding virtuosity and profound interpretations. She continues to generate excitement from all corners as she wins over audiences with her musical sensibility and a powerful, flawless technique.
Natasha is a regular return guest of many major orchestras, including Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Grant Park Festival, Winnipeg Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with whom she has performed and toured frequently since 2008 in venues such as Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, and Cadogan Hall. She has performed with major orchestras in North America including Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony, NAC Orchestra in Ottawa, Nashville Symphony. She has toured extensively in Europe with such orchestras as Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre de Bretagne, the Orchestre de Nancy, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester in Zurich, Moscow Philharmonic, under the direction of conductors including Thomas Dausgaard, Peter Oundjian, Andres Orozco-Estrada, Jeffrey Kahane, James Gaffigan, JoAnn Falletta, Fabien Gabel, Rossen Milanov and Andrew Litton. In addition, she has toured with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica in Latvia, Benelux, the United Kingdom and Austria as well as appearances with National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in Taipei.
Natasha has given recitals at the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Wigmore Hall, Schloss Elmau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Verbier Festival, San Francisco Performances, Seattle’s Meany Hall, Kansas City’s Harriman Jewell Series, Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater, Ludwigshafen BASF Series, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Tokyo’s Musashino Performing Arts Center and on the Rising Stars Series of Gilmore and Ravinia Festivals.
A passionate chamber musician, Natasha is a regular recital partner of Grammy winning cellist Zuill Bailey, with whom she has recorded a number of CDs. Their Britten album on Telarc debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart, remaining there for a number of weeks, in addition to being featured on The New York Times Playlist. She has been a guest of many chamber music festivals such as Jeffrey Kahane’s Green Music Center ChamberFest, the Lockenhaus, Toronto, Sitka Summer Music, and Cape Cod Chamber Music festivals to name a few.
Natasha was awarded several prestigious prizes at a very young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists prize in 2006 at the age of eighteen, the Prix Montblanc in 2007, the Orpheum Stiftung Prize in Switzerland. In September 2010, she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. Her first recital album was released in 2011 to great acclaim, topping the Billboard Classical Charts, and was re-released on the Steinway & Sons label in September 2016 featuring Islamey recorded on Steinway’s revolutionary new Spirio technology. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Fabien Gabel on the orchestra’s label distributed by Naxos.
With a strong focus on new music, Natasha’s growing repertoire reflects an artistic maturity beyond her years. In the 2010-11 season, she played the world premiere of a sonata written for her by Gabriel Kahane, which was also included in her solo album.
Natasha continues to extend her performance activity and range beyond the traditional concert hall. In December 2008, she was the featured pianist in choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Danses Concertantes at New York’s Joyce Theater. She was featured in a major two-part film for BBC Television on the life and work of Tchaikovsky, shot on location in St. Petersburg, performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and other works. In the winter of 2007, Natasha participated along with Simon Keenlyside in the filming of Twin Spirits, a project starring Sting and Trudie Styler that explores the music and writing of Robert and Clara Schumann, which was released on DVD. She has performed in the project live several times with the co-creators in New York and the U.K., directed by John Caird, the original director/adaptor of the musical Les Misérables.
Natasha began her piano studies at the age of four with Nina Malikova at Moscow’s Andreyev School of Music. She then studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music before moving to New York to study with Pavlina Dokovska at Mannes College of Music, from which she graduated in 2007. Natasha made her professional debut at age nine with El Camino Youth Symphony in California. At the age of fifteen she debuted with Los Angeles Philharmonic and recorded two discs with Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.
Born in Moscow, Natasha moved to the United States at the age of eight, becoming a U.S. citizen shortly thereafter, and is now based in New York City where she is Artistic Director of the New York Piano Society, a non-profit organization that supports pianists whose professions lie outside of music.
Vega Quartet
“The music, when it began, simply took over and created a space of its own. Nor did the quartet impose an interpretation on the music; rather, the musicians played with a deceptive simplicity and fluidity that made difficult passages seem childlike in their straightforwardness. ”
— The New York Times
The Vega String Quartet, Quartet-in-Residence at Emory University, is cultivating a new generation of chamber music lovers through dynamic performances and innovative community engagement. The New York Times raved that "[the Quartet’s] playing had a kind of clean intoxication to it, pulling the listener along…the musicians took real risks in their music making" and the L.A. Times praised their “triumphant L.A. debut.” They concertize both nationally and internationally, most recently in Baltimore, Chicago, Nashville, Sacramento, Berlin, San Miguel, the Brahmssaal in Vienna’s Musikverein and the Kleine Zaal in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. The Quartet's major performing projects at Emory have included performing the complete cycle of Beethoven quartets, as well as pairing Bach’s complete works for solo violin, viola and cello with the six Bartók quartets. Recent highlights include debuting at the 2023 Kneisel Hall Chamber Festival and opening the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta’s 2023 - 24 season alongside Mark and Maggie O’Connor. The Vega’s 2023 - 2024 season will feature collaborations with flutist Ransom Wilson, cellist Zuill Bailey, and the Juilliard Quartet. Regular commissioners of new music, the quartet will be premiering Joel Thompson’s newest string quartet in March of 2024.
Vega is the brightest star in the Lyra constellation. According to Greek mythology, this constellation represents the lyre which belonged to the legendary musician Orpheus.
A unique aspect of the Quartet’s residency at Emory is bringing performance into the classroom, collaborating with academic professors to create interdisciplinary parallels and conversations. They also enrich the cultural life of their community, having founded the Emory Youth Chamber Music Program, which gives intensive training in small ensemble playing to advanced pre-college students. The Quartet was appointed to the roster of the Woodruff Arts Center’s Young Audience program, engaging thousands of students throughout the greater Atlanta school system. They have also held residencies in Augusta, Jacksonville and Juneau which combined traditional concerts with educational outreach, performances in non-traditional venues and masterclasses for area students.
The Vega Quartet has won numerous international awards, including at the Bordeaux String Quartet Competition, as well as top prizes from the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, the Carmel Chamber Music Competition, and the National Society of Arts and Letters String Quartet Competition. They have toured throughout Asia, Europe and North America and have appeared at Weill Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Bargemusic, and Duke Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, London. The members of the Vega Quartet collaborate with some of the world's finest musicians including David Shifrin, Mark and Maggie O’Connor, Andres Cardenes, Eliot Fisk, Christopher O’Riley, William Preucil, Richard Stoltzman, Robert Spano, Charles Wadsworth, Soovin Kim, and the Eroica Trio. They also commission, premier and record works by leading composers. The Quartet is a frequent guest at numerous music festivals, including Amelia Island, Aspen, Brevard, Highlands-Cashiers, Juneau Jazz & Classics, Kingston, Mostly Mozart, Rockport, San Miguel de Allende, and SummerFest La Jolla.
Allison Bailey, Viola
Allison Bailey began violin studies at the age of four, developed a love for orchestral playing, and became the youngest member of the Prince William Symphony Orchestra at age ten. Ms. Bailey attended Peabody Conservatory of Music, the University of Oregon, and the Manhattan School of Music. She holds a Bachelor’s degree, Graduate Performance Diploma, a Master’s degree in violin performance, and a Master’s degree in orchestral performance.
Prior to returning to Virginia in 1999, Ms. Bailey lived and worked in New York City, where she experienced a variety of performing engagements including frequent orchestral performances at Carnegie Hall, recording sessions at Sony studios for Quincy Jones Productions, performing on the soundtrack to the A&E Biography of Irving Berlin, and coaching actress Juliana Margulies in a violinist role for the NBC hit drama Homicide.
Ms. Bailey has served as guest conductor for All-County, District, and Regional Orchestras in Fairfax and surrounding counties in addition to serving as adjudicator for the New York Orchestra Festival at Carnegie Hall and state assessments throughout Virginia. She has also served as audition coach for Senior Regional Prep Day in Fairfax and Spotsylvania Counties, and faculty member of the Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts in Richmond.
In addition to her post as Concertmaster of the Manassas Ballet Theatre Orchestra, Ms. Bailey also serves as Associate Concertmaster of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster of the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, and is an active freelance musician in the Washington area. In recent years Ms. Bailey has been a featured soloist with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and chamber musician at the Sitka Music Festival in Alaska and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina.
John-Henry Crawford
Born in the small Louisiana city of Shreveport, cellist John-Henry Crawford has been lauded for his “polished charisma” and “singing sound” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and in 2019 was First Prize Winner of the IX International Carlos Prieto Cello Competition and named Young Artist of the Year by the Classical Recording Foundation.
At age 15, Crawford was accepted into the legendary Curtis Institute of Music to study with Peter Wiley and Carter Brey where he served as principal cellist of the Curtis Orchestra. He went on to complete an Artist Diploma at the Manhattan School of Music with Philippe Muller, a Master of Music at The Juilliard School with Joel Krosnick, and pursue further study in Chicago with Hans Jørgen Jensen. He has given concerts in 25 states as well as Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Mexico, the Canary Islands (Spain), and Switzerland at venues such as The International Concert Series of the Louvre in Paris, Volkswagen’s Die Gläsern Manufaktur in Dresden, and the inaugural season of the Tippet Rise Arts Center in Montana. Crawford gave his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra as First Prize Winner of the orchestra’s Greenfield Competition and has performed Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Memphis Symphony, Dvorak and Gulda Cello Concertos with the Shreveport Symphony, and Haydn’s C Major Cello Concerto with the Highland Park Strings.
While in Chicago, Crawford appeared on WFMT’s Impromptu series and toured extensively with Steinway artist and pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion. He has appeared twice with Christopher O’Riley on National Public Radio’s From the Top. An advocate for the importance of social media, Crawford commands a strong Instagram presence, attracting tens of thousands of viewers to his project #The1000DayJourney, where he films artistic cinematic videos daily from his practice and performances for over 55,000 followers (@cellocrawford) to give a glimpse into the working process of a musician, recently passing the 1000-day mark.
Crawford’s numerous competition prizes also include Grand Prize and First Prize Cellist at the 2015 American String Teachers National Solo Competition, the Lynn Harrell Competition of the Dallas Symphony, the Hudson Valley Competition, and the Kingsville International Competition. He has competed in the Tchaikovsky and Queen Elisabeth competitions and was accepted at the prestigious Verbier Academy in Switzerland for study under the tutelage of Ralph Kirshbaum and Torleif Thedeen.
Crawford has been a fellow at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico, the National Arts Centre’s Zukerman Young Artist Program in Canada, The Fontainebleau School in France, and the Perlman Chamber Music Program. He was invited to perform at Boston’s French Cultural Museum in a chamber music concert with Boston Symphony concertmaster Malcolm Lowe, Curtis President Roberto Diaz, and members of the Borromeo Quartet, and was the only student performer on a tour series to Costa Rica, Mexico, and Brazil, collaborating with artists Soovin Kim, Roberto Diaz, and Jason Vieaux as part of Curtis on Tour. While a student at Curtis, Crawford’s recital performances were broadcast on WHYY public television in Philadelphia. He was interviewed for the recently released documentary Maestro about conductor Paavo Järvi, and is also interviewed and quoted in Dan Coyle’s The Talent Code by Dan Coyle, a best-selling book about the science and neurology behind skill development.
Crawford is from a musical family and performs on a rare 200-year old European cello smuggled out of Austria by his grandfather, Dr. Robert Popper, who evaded Kristallnacht in 1938. He also performs on a fine French bow by the revolutionary bowmaker Tourte “L’Ainé” from 1790. Before attending Curtis, Crawford studied with concert cellist Andres Diaz of Southern Methodist University. In addition to music, he enjoys reading about astrophysics, running, performing magic tricks, and photography.
About the Sitka Music Festival
The Sitka Music Festival (SMF) inspires audiences, sparks creativity, and strengthens community across Alaska through live chamber music performances, music education, and training by artists of the highest caliber.
For over 50 years, SMF has presented classical music at the highest artistic standards. Throughout its history, SMF musicians have shared their music with Alaskans who would otherwise not have access to live chamber music of the highest caliber and, in turn, Alaskans have shared their music, traditions, and ways of life with the visiting musicians. These shared experiences have taken SMF musicians to more than 40 Alaskan communities, many of which are small, remote villages off the road system. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, SMF remains dedicated to bringing exceptional music experiences to communities statewide.