Daedalus String Quartet with Wilhelmina Smith and Linda Kelsey | Music in the Park Series

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The Daedalus String Quartet is joined by Twin Cities cellist Wilhelmina Smith and actor Linda Kelsey for the final Music in the Park Series performance of the 2016-2017 season. Praised for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, the New York-based Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Wilhelmina Smith has received critical acclaim as a solo recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral soloist in the United States and abroad. Rounding out this special performance is Minnesota’s own Linda Kelsey, a multiple Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actor with an extensive and impressive array of stage and screen credits. Kelsey, Smith and the Daedalus will explore music and literary texts associated with Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata.

About Daedalus String Quartet

Min-Young Kim, violin
Matilda Kaul, violin
Jessica Thompson, viola 
Thomas Kraines, cello

Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. In the thirteen years of its existence the Daedalus Quartet has received plaudits from critics and listeners alike for the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances. The New York Times has praised the Daedalus Quartet’s “insightful and vibrant” Haydn, the “impressive intensity” of their Beethoven, their “luminous” Berg, and the “riveting focus” of their Dutilleux. The Washington Post in turn has acclaimed their performance of Mendelssohn for its “rockets of blistering virtuosity,” while the Houston Chronicle has described the “silvery beauty” of their Schubert and the “magic that hushed the audience” when they played Ravel, the Boston Globe the “finesse and fury” of their Shostakovich, the Toronto Globe and Mail the “thrilling revelation” of their Hindemith, and the Cincinnati Enquirer the “tremendous emotional power” of their Brahms.[expand title=”Continue Reading”] Since its founding the Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues; in the United States and Canada these include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Great Performers series), the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Boston’s Gardner Museum, as well as on major series in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Abroad the ensemble has been heard in such famed locations as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan.

The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág and György Ligeti. Among the works the ensemble has premiered is David Horne’s Flight from the Labyrinth, commissioned for the Quartet by the Caramoor Festival; Fred Lerdahl’s Third String Quartet, commissioned by Chamber Music America; and Lawrence Dillon’s String Quartet No. 4, commissioned by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts.  In 2013, the Fromm Foundation awarded a commission to the Daedalus Quartet and composer Huck Hodge; the quartet will premiere Hodge’s new work, based on the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, Carl Jung, and the contemporary Buddhist poet Ko Un, in the 2015/16 season.

The Quartet has also collaborated with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists: these include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang, and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera, Ricardo Morales, and Alexander Fiterstein; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein.

To date the Quartet has forged associations with some of America’s leading classical music and educational institutions: Carnegie Hall, through its European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars program; and Lincoln Center, which appointed the Daedalus Quartet as the Chamber Music Society Two quartet for 2005-07. The Daedalus Quartet has been Columbia University’s Quartet-in-Residence since 2005, and has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. In 2007, the Quartet was awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award. The Quartet won Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funded a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island from 2007-2010.

The Daedalus’ most recent recording, for Bridge Records, features the string quartets of George Perle, and has been described as “disc with some unforgettable contemporary chamber music” (Classical Lost and Found), and the Strad Magazine praised the quartet’s “exemplary intonation and balance.”  In the spring of 2014, the Daedalus Quartet recorded Joan Tower’s “White Water” (written for Daedalus) as well as her “Dumbarton Quintet” (with pianist Blair McMillen). The quartet’s debut recording, music of Stravinsky, Sibelius, and Ravel, was released by Bridge Records in 2006. A Bridge recording of the Haydn’s complete “Sun” Quartets, Op. 20, was released on two CDs in July 2010. An album of chamber music by Lawrence Dillon (Fall 2010) and the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl (Fall 2011) followed. 

Among the highlights of the Daedalus Quartet’s 2013-14 season were an appearance at the San Miguel Chamber Music Festival, a weeklong residency at the University of Iowa on the music of composers exiled by the Nazi regime, and the premiere of a new arrangement of Benjamin Britten’s song cycle “Winter Words” with the tenor Rufus Muller.

The award-winning members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University.[/expand]

About Wilhelmina Smith

Cellist Wilhelmina Smith made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra while a student at the Curtis Institute of Music.  She has since forged a versatile musical career based on the strength of her beautiful sound, commitment to a vast repertoire and impassioned performances marked by intelligence and integrity.  Hailed by the New York Times as “winningly individual,” her performances have received critical acclaim: Strad magazine described her performance of the Bach C minor Suite as “memorable […] an intelligent and individual reading [in which] there was an abundance of ideas.” She has performed as a solo recitalist across the US and in Japan, and as a soloist with orchestras in the US and abroad.  As a chamber musician she has performed with musicians such as Paul Tortelier, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Dawn Upshaw, Benita Valente and members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Brentano, Miami, Borromeo and Galimir String Quartets in major venues across the US and Europe.
[expand title=”Continue Reading”] In September 2000, Ms. Smith was invited by Esa-Pekka Salonen to perform as guest principal cellist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the opening week of the season, and in the fall of 2004 she was invited to perform as guest principal cellist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.  In recent seasons, she has been soloist with international orchestras such as the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra in Russia and the Orquesta Millennium in Guatemala.  She won the Nathan and Doris Patz prize in the 1997 International Leonard Rose Cello Competition.  Strings magazine presented her in a solo recital at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.  In March 2003, she performed a recital with marimbist Makoto Nakura in Tokyo and Kobe, Japan that was broadcast nationally on NHK (Japan’s national public television).

Her performances of contemporary works for solo cello have won particular praise – Henri Dutilleux himself proclaimed as “outstanding” her performance of his piece for solo cello.  A commitment to the future of music has lead her to participate in important premieres and to develop working relationships with major and emerging composers of our time.  In 2010 she collaborated with Esa-Pekka Salonen for a performance of his cello concerto, “Mania”, and in 2011 gave the US premiere of his solo cello piece, “Knock, Breathe, Shine.”  She has also worked with composers such as George Crumb, Henri Lazarof, Ned Rorem, George Perle, Osvaldo Golijov, Derek Bermel, Jennifer Higdon, Eric Zivian, Robert Cuckson, Bruce Adolphe and many others.

Ms. Smith is much in demand by chamber music groups and festivals throughout the country.  She has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Boston Chamber Music Society, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Palisades and the Musicians from Marlboro touring program.  La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Caramoor, El Paso Chamber Music Festival  are among the many festivals in which she has participated, and will make her debut appearance at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival this summer . Ms. Smith is the founder and Artistic Director of Salt Bay Chamberfest on the coast of Maine, now in its twentieth year , and has been Artistic Director of the Pensacola “ClassicFest” in Florida since 1997.

In addition to being a former member of the Mannes Trio (Faculty Artists-in-Residence at Mannes College The New School for Music in New York), in the summer of 1999, Ms. Smith joined several internationally acclaimed musicians to form Music from Copland House – an innovative chamber ensemble that features the music of Aaron Copland, his influences, his contemporaries, and his legacy.  In 2005 she joined violinist Jennifer Koh and violist Hsin-Yun Huang in forming the Variation String Trio.

Ms. Smith’s solo CD of sonatas by Britten and Schnittke with pianist Thomas Sauer was released on the Arabesque label in December of 2006.  She has also released numerous recordings of chamber music, including the complete chamber works of Aaron Copland (Arabesque) and works by Sebastian Currier (Koch), John Musto (Koch) and Aaron Jay Kernis (Koch).  In addition, she has performed frequently with Sting and has performed on recent recordings for both Sting and Bruce Springsteen.  She currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her husband Mark Mandarano and children August and Giovanna.[/expand]

About Linda Kelsey

Linda Kelsey’s career has spanned decades in Hollywood and on national stages. As a graduate of The University of Minnesota, she received a McKnight Fellowship in acting, which launched her professional career at the Guthrie Theatre, appearing as Miranda in The Tempest, Maggie in The Lovers, and Teresa in The Hostage. She has also appeared at the Long Wharf Theater as Creena in A Pagan Place, directed by John Lithgow. At the Ahmanson Theater she portrayed Mary Warren in The Crucible, with Charlton Heston, and at the Kennedy Center she was Nellie in the Eva Marie Saint production of Summer and Smoke. She costarred in the highly acclaimed West Coast premiere of Duet for One, at the Back Alley Theater.
[expand title=”Continue Reading”] Her television career includes guest starring roles on over thirty television series, including Touched by an Angel, ER, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, MASH, The Twilight Zone, Streets of San Francisco, St. Elsewhere, Ray Bradbury Theater, and Midnight Caller. As Billie Newman on the acclaimed series, Lou Grant, Linda received five Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. In addition to Lou Grant as a series regular, she played the role of Kate Harper on Day by Day, for NBC. Linda also co-starred in the role of Carol for Billy Crystal’s series, Sessions, for HBO.

Linda has starred in the made for television movies, A Perfect Match, Something For Joey, His Mistress, A Family Torn Apart, If Someone Had Known, and A Place to Be, and Baby Girl Scott. In the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin, she portrayed Lucy Mercer. She also appeared in the feature film Midnight Man, with Burt Lancaster.

Her recent onstage credits include Frieda in The Minnesota Jewish Theatre production of The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, Annie in the Guthrie production of When We Are Married, Sister Aloysius in Doubt for the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire and a variety of roles at the Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, among them: Juliana, in The Other Place, Vera in 4000 Miles, Agnetha in Frozen, Mother Superior in Agnes of God, Penny in You Can’t Take It With You, Cora in Going to St. Ives, Mary Stuart in Mary Queen of Scotts, Constance in Good Night, Desdemona, Dorthea in Eleemosynary, Marion in Biography, and Kate in Dancing at Lugnhasa. 

Linda has toured, since 2002, in the role of Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst which was first staged at the Phipps Center for the Arts. She co-created, with soprano Anne Marie Ketchum and pianist Victoria Kirsch, This and My Heart Beside, a theatre/concert piece, interspersing spoken readings of Emily Dickinson’s texts with musical settings of her poems by four American composers. This and My Heart Beside premiered in Los Angeles in 2009.[/expand]

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[icon color=”Accent-Color” size=”small” image=”icon-calendar”] Date & Venue

Sunday, April 23, 2017
Saint Anthony Park United Church of Christ

Join us at 3pm in the church for a pre-concert talk with the artists.

Concert length is estimated to be 2 hours with one intermission.

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Single tickets are on sale now. You may purchase tickets online or by calling the Schubert Club Ticket Office at 651.292.3268.

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[icon color=”Accent-Color” size=”small” image=”icon-music”] Program

Leoš Janáček: String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” (1923)

Sergei Taneyev: Allegro from String Quartet No. 2, Op. 5

Tchaikovsky: Andante cantabile from String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11

INTERMISSION

Beethoven, arr. anon. (1832): String Quintet after the Sonata Violin & Piano No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 “Kreutzer” (1802-4)

Pieces will be performed together with readings from Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Sophia Tolstaya’s Song Without Words.

Concerts are estimated to be 2 hours with intermission.

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