Williams College Department of Music Presents Brahms’s Violin Sonatas
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass – Joanna Kurkowicz, violin and Doris Stevenson, piano will give a concert of all three of Brahms’s violin sonatas on Friday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on the Williams College campus. This free event is open to the public.The masterful sonatas composed in 1879, 1886, and 1888 contain some of Brahms’s most personal and expressive music. “As long as the West wants to uphold the deepest, broadest, and the finest part of its musical tradition, Brahms will be with us. For that long, we will know the Brahms Effect: music at once warmly, lyrically, Romantically expressive and at the same time remote, Olympian.” -Jan Swafford
Praised in GRAMOPHONE Magazine for “disciplined virtuosity” violinist Joanna Kurkowicz, Artist in Residence at Williams College enjoys an active and versatile career as an award-winning soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and concertmistress.
She has performed worldwide in such venues as Carnegie Hall, New York, Jordan Hall, Boston and the Grosse Saal, Salzburg, and has appeared as a soloist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, the Jefferson Symphony, the San Luis Obispo Symphony, the New England String Ensemble, the Berkshire Symphony, the Poznan Philharmonic, the Polish National Radio Orchestra in Katowice and others. She has received awards from the Samuel Chester, Presser, Saint Botolph, Kosciuszko, and Olevsky Foundations, the Harvard Musical Association, the Irving McKlein International Competition, the Carmel and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, and in Poland, the Henryk Wieniawski and Tadeusz Wronski International Competitions.
Ms. Kurkowicz currently serves as concertmistress of the Boston Philharmonic and the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra. She holds the position of Artist in Residence at Williams College and is on the faculty at Tufts University. Joanna Kurkowicz is a strong advocate of contemporary music and has premiered many works by living composers. Miss Kurkowicz has recorded for Chandos, Bridge, Centaur, Neuma, Albany, CRI, New World and Archetype Records. For more information please visit www.joannakurkowicz.com.
Pianist Doris Stevenson, Artist in Residence at Williams College, leads a busy life as recitalist and chamber musician in addition to teaching at Williams. She has played on many of the great stages of the world including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Salle Pleyel in Paris and Symphony Hall as soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra. She has played with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, Ruggiero Ricci and Paul Tortelier, great artists of the past. The list of distinguished artists she has performed with includes cellists Andre Navarra, Leslie Parnes and Gary Hoffman, violinists Mark Peskanov and Elmar Olivera, violist Walter Trampler and singers Kaaren Erickson, Robert Hale and Catherine Malfitano.
She is a founding member of the Sitka Summer Music Festival in Alaska and has appeared in many other chamber music festivals including the Grand Canyon festival, Steamboat Springs Strings in the Mountains, Marin Music Fest, Chamber Music/LA and the Park City International Music Festival. She served for ten years on the piano faculty of the University of Southern California where she was also pianist for the master classes of famed cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky.
Her many recordings include David Kechley's Winter Branches with Douglas Moore, a work for two pianos and percussion of Ileana Perez Velazquez on her new CD released last week by Albany Records, the Brahms Sonatas for cello and piano with Nathaniel Rosen, the Saint Saens violin sonatas with Andres Cardenes and Mendelssohn complete works for cello and piano with Jeffrey Solow. A Stravinsky CD with Mark Peskanov received a Grammy nomination.
