Lili & Maurice, hand-picked gems of the French 20th century

Cécile Chaminade, Mel Bonis, and Lili Boulanger are a group of highly esteemed female composers who established their careers at the turn of the 20th century. These women were able to overcome the hegemony of male-dominated society and catapulted even more female artists onto the music scene. The program aims to showcase the women’s achievements that made a highly influential mark during a prolific period in French musical literature between the end of Romanticism and the outset of Modernism. Works by Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel, two of the most famous male composers of the time period, will also be presented to better highlight the lineage of these composers. And it includes various combinations of instruments like cello, piano, voice, and flute.

The Program

Gabriel Fauré (1870-1877)
Apres un rêve, Trois Mélodies
Andrew Briggs, Suejin Jung

Mandoline, Cinq mélodies de Venise
Solange Adamson, Suejin Jung

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
Clairières dans le ciel
I. Elle était descendue au bas de la prairie
V. Au pied de mon lit
Solange Adamson, Suejin Jung

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944)
La lisonjera, Op. 50
Suejin Jung

Mel Bonis (1858-1937)
Mazurka, ballet op. 108
Suejin Jung

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
La flûte enchantée, Shéhérazade
Solange Adamson, Thomaz Tavares Paes, Suejin Jung

About the Musicians

Lyric soprano Solange Adamson sings a variety of operatic roles in the US and Europe. A student of Vladimir Chernov and Olga Toporkova, she began studies this fall at École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot, in the Cycle de perfectionnement. An avid performer of new music, she collaborated with composer Gabrielle Owens to create a song cycle based on the 13th century poetry of Beatriz de Dia which premiered in 2019. With Opera UCLA, she created the roles of Sor Andrea in Carla Lucero’s opera Juana, and the Queen in Nicki Sohn’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. In the 2017/18 season, she performed the roles of Indiana Elliott in Virgil Thompson’s The Mother of Us All, Dardano in Handel’s Amadigi, both with Opera UCLA, and the Abbess in Puccini’s Suor Angelica with the Center for Opera Studies in Italy.

Praised as « an artist with an already expanding reputation and great future » (The Well-Tempered Ear); cellist Andrew Briggs is a world traveler. Recent performances include recitals in Bergen, Netherlands and Narbonne, France; collaborations with the principal cellist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam, NL); recital performances in Paul Hall, NYC; with Axiom Contemporary Ensemble in Alice Tully Hall, NYC; and concerto appearances in Wisconsin and Colorado. Last season, Andrew was a member of the Colorado Symphony cello section, principal cellist of the Crested Butte Music Festival, and guest artist on recital series in Chicago, New York City, and Denver. Completing his Masters Degree at The Juilliard School, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin with his doctoral project, « Piatti and the Body: An Integrative Approach to Learning the 12 Caprices, Op. 25 », on Youtube. Currently Andrew resides at the Cité des Arts in Paris, France and is a Harriet Hale Woolley and Fondation des États-Unis alumnus (2018-2019). He is the new cellist of Ensemble Kimya, and associate artist of the Terres Vibrantes Music Festival in Auvergne, France.

Korean American pianist Suejin Jung has appeared in concert at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Steinway Hall, Count Basie Theatre, le Poisson Rouge, and other opportunities through the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation. Highlights of 2019-2020 season include an artist residency at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France as a recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship, performance at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, and guest artist appearance at the Vršac International Chamber Music Festival in Vršac, Serbia. Her interview and performances have been broadcasted live on WWFM radio and aired nationally in a documentary Piano Forte on PBS. She studied at The Juilliard School and is a candidate of DMA at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University. Currently, she is pursuing a stage de perfectionnement at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris where she is working closely with Anne Queffélec.

Flutist Thomaz Tavares Paes has been praised by the Virginia Gazette as a « polished performer, with a pure, direct sound…embracing the work’s lyrical and virtuoso demands. » A native New Yorker later raised in Brazil, Thomaz Tavares completed his Bachelor’s degree in flute performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music under the tutelage of Thomas Robertello with a “Premier Young Artist” scholarship. He later started his graduate studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris under international soloist Jean Ferrandis, and recently obtained his Diplome Supérieur D’Execution with unanimous distinction from the jury. Tavares is a recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship for the 2019-2020 academic year, during which he will be exploring French solo and chamber music of the Belle Epoque period as well as interning with the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe.

Header image by Maximilien Gremaud.

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