Program 1

The Chamber Orchestra Kremlin
Featuring acclaimed Piano Soloist Sara Davis Buechner

Program: Music by Tchaikowsky and Mozart

Founded in 1991 by a Russian-American violinist and conductor, Misha Rachlevsky, this 17-member string orchestra has earned national and international recognition as a leading Russian ensemble.  It has performed over 1300 concerts -- nearly 500 in Moscow, the rest on tours in 24 countries of Europe, North and South America and the Far East. The orchestra has recorded over 30 CDs, receiving widespread international acclaim and awards such as the Diapason d'Or in France, Critics Choice in London's Gramophone and in the New York Times, Record of the Year in Hong Kong and others. Of about 900 compositions in the orchestra's repertoire over 20 were written especially for the orchestra by composers from Russia, Europe and the USA.  The orchestra, comprising some of Russia’s finest young string players, has consistently earned high praise from reviewers.  The group has completed 25 tours in the United States:

"The result was complete surrender of the audience, all taken captive by the artistry, youth and beauty of the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin." Oakwood Register, Dayton OH, 10-13-09
 
"The orchestra’s bristling performance of the work (written when Mozart was a teenager) certainly had a frisson of danger about it, with the Presto played so fast, it evoked someone fleeing. Misha Rachlevsky, the ensemble’s music director (who founded it in 1991), elicited warm, full-blooded and virtuosic playing with colorfully shaped, gleaming phrases."  New York Times

more information at http://ChamberOrchestraKremlin.ru/ 

Date, time:	Saturday, February 4, 8 PM
Location:	Cabrillo College Crocker Theatre
Ticket Sales:	Tickets may be purchased online at TicketGuys.com 831-656-9507

 

 

Program 2

Piano Soloist Sara DavisBuechner

Program: Mozart's Divertimento in D and Concerto in C Major, K. 415  and Tchaikowky's Serenade for Strings

Sara Davis Buechner (born: David Buechner, 1964) is a transsexual American concert pianist and educator. Buechner received her undergraduate degree from Juilliard School, and received her doctorate in music from the Manhattan School of Music. Buechner was awarded 9th prize for piano at the 1983 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition. A major prize-winner of many of the world's most prestigious international piano competitions - Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna - she established her early career by winning the Gold Medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a Bronze Medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Buechner underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1998.

Sara Davis Buechner has been celebrated as a pianist of noteworthy accomplishment, virtuosic mastery, artistic sensitivity and extraordinary versatility. With an active repertoire of nearly 100 piano concertos ranging from Bach to Wuorinen, she has appeared as soloist with America's most prominent orchestras: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra; and abroad with the Japan Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Kuopio Philharmonic (Finland), Slovak Philharmonic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Spain). She was a featured artist at the "Piano 2000" Gala Concerts at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra, and made her debut at Lincoln Center's "Mostly Mozart" Festival. In addition to her frequent North American concert appearances and radio broadcasts, she tours widely throughout the Far East on a yearly basis. Growing in popularity in Canada, she has recently performed with the CBC Radio Orchestra, Orchestra London, Victoria Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic, McGill Chamber Orchestra and Calgary Philharmonic and has toured widely as a soloist throughout Canada. She was recently the subject of a feature article in MacLeans Magazine.

In recent seasons Sara Davis Buechner was the featured artists at the piano 2000 gala concerts in Washington DC with the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, and made her recital debut at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. She played solo recital at Rockefeller University in NYC, chamber music with the Rosetti Quartet, concerto appearances in NY, Sacramento and San Jose, and another tour of Japan.

Sara Davis Buechner is a champion of young American composers and has given premieres of solo, concerto and film-interactive works by Larry Bell, Pierre Charvet, Richard Danielpour, Dick Hyman, Kenneth Lampl, Henry Martin and Paul Moravec. She recently gave both the Boston and NY premieres of Larry Bell's hour long cycle of Prelude and Fugues. She appears regularly with the Film Society of Lincoln Center (Walter Reade Theatre), as one of the few pianists to actively perform piano scores to silent movies, notably the 150-minute long restored version of Ben-Hur (1925), and the Danish classic Master of the House (1925). She has also collaborated on dance projects with choreographer Neta Pulvermacher and toured extensively with the Mark Morris Dance Group.

Sara Davis Buechner was a former faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music in NYC and the faculty of New York University. In 2003 she was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia - Vancouver. She has also presented lectures and master-classes worldwide, including at the Boston and Peabody Conservatories, Indiana and Northwestern Universities, the Juilliard School of Music in New York, Kobe-Yamate Gakuen in Osaka, Japan, the Shandelee Festival, the Royal Academy in London, and throughout Japan and Korea. She plays the Yamaha Piano exclusively.

Profiles of Sara Davis Buechner have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Paris Match, Noticias del Argentina, Out, Blade and Frontiers magazines; and she has been featured on the television programs Entertainment Tonight, Extra, In the Life, and Bynon. Her appearances on radio include profiles on NPR's The Fishko Files and Performance Today, WFMT's Dame Myra Hess Recital Series and WNYC's New Sounds with John Schaefer.

Sara Davis Buechner's recording of piano music by George Gershwin was selected as a "Record of the Month" by Stereophile magazine; her 1997 world premiere recording of the Ferruccio Busoni version of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) was profiled in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times; and her recording of Hollywood piano concertos by Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman won Germany's Deutsches Schauplatten Preis for best soundtrack. Pro Piano has released her CD of the complete piano music of Stephen Foster, and her fourth recording for Koch International was recently released featuring piano music by Rudolf Friml. Her extensive discography also includes more than ten disks for the Yamaha Disklavier and Piano Soft systems.

Date, time:	Sunday, February 5, 3 PM
Location:	Cabrillo College Crocker Theatre
Ticket Sales:	Tickets may be purchased online at TicketGuys.com 831-656-9507

 

 

Program 3

Cadenza Chamber Orchestra
Director Maya Barsaq with piano soloist John Orlando and violinist Rebecca Jackson

Program:
Beethoven Romances I and II
Trinitas - of Anica Galindo
Mozart Piano Concerto in B Flat, K. 450

Cadenza, formerly The Santa Cruz Chamber Orchestra is comprised of recognized professional musicians dedicated to providing exceptional music and education to the Santa Cruz community. We champion new compositions and have presented Two world Premieres, Six US Premieres and Three West Coast Premieres thus far. We have also presented favorites from the Chamber Music Repertoire spanning centuries.

Maya Barsacq is the founder and conductor of Cadenza / SCCO now in it's sixth season. An ardent and dedicated advocate of classical music and especially contemporary classical music, Barsacq has strived to champion new compositions since the inception of the orchestra. She has conducted Two world Premieres, Six US Premieres and Three West Coast Premieres with Cadenza. She also works as a freelance music director, conducting opera, and musical theater pieces. Barsacq is a strong advocate of music education and appreciation in and out of the classroom. She also hosts a radio show - The Aeolian Impromptu - on KUSP and is the proud recipient of the 2005 Gail Rich Award for her dedication to the arts. 

 

 

 

 

 

Violinist Rebecca Jackson Hailed as "riveting" by The San Francisco Examiner, Korean-American Rebecca Jackson, is a native of California. Ms. Jackson received her B.M. from The Juilliard School and a graduate degree from UC Santa Cruz where she studied with Roy Malan. In 2008, she founded Music in May (Mim), an annual chamber music festival in Santa Cruz. Next season Mim celebrates its 5th anniversary (www.musicinmay.org). She is member of the Cabrillo Music Festival and Sarasota Opera Orchestra and regularly performs with the San Francisco Opera & Ballet. Always looking for a good cause, Ms. Jackson has performed in numerous benefit concerts that have raised a total exceeding $100,000. Rebecca has produced an album with Emmy Award Winning composer John Wineglass entitled "Love Songs", available on Itunes and CD Baby. January 2012 they travel to Haiti to help support the relief efforts through their music. Ms. Jackson's acting and original composition was featured April 2010 at Exit Theater (San Francisco) in the production, "The Wind and Rain." In addition to being an age group triathlete, she served as Miss Santa Cruz County 2005.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pianist John Orlando graduated summa cum laude with a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in performance from the University of Southern California. His teachers there were John Crown and Alice Ehlers. He has also worked with Dorothy Taubman, Edna Golandsky, Sergei Babayan, John Perry, Gyorgy Sandor, John Bloomfield, Robert Durso, Pawel Skrzypek, Halida Dinova and Helene Wickett..

In 1968 Dr. Orlando was chosen first prize winner in the "Young Artist's Competition" sponsored by the Fresno Philharmonic Association. In 1986 he gave the world premiere of the Concerto for Piano and Winds, written for him by New York composer, Anthony Newman. During the Spring and Summer of 1997 Dr. John Orlando premiered piano works written for him by Anthony Newman and George Barati on an international tour with performances in the United States, Australia, Italy, and Brazil. He has performed with the San Jose, Santa Cruz County, and Fresno Symphonies, the Cabrillo Festival, and the Institute for the Development of Intercultural Relations for the Arts in Santa Cruz. He is a founding member of the Johannes Trio and in 2005, he toured California with the Akademos Quartet in a performance of the Shostakovich Piano Quintet. In February 2010 Dr. Orlando performed the Rondo in D Major and the Concerto in D Minor for piano and orchestra by Mozart as soloist with the San Francisco Sinfonietta in the new music recital hall at Cabrillo College and at Herbst Hall in San Francisco.

Dr. Orlando has held teaching positions at the Universities of Southern California and Santa Clara. Dr. Orlando has been a music instructor at Cabrillo College since 1969. Currently he is an instructor emeritus at Cabrillo College where he was head of the piano department with teaching assignments in class piano, online music appreciation and online music history. Dr, Orlando is the founder and director of the Cabrillo College Distinguished Artists Concert & Lecture Series. He was one of the first recipients of the Gail Rich Award for community service in the Arts in Santa Cruz County and was chosen Best College Teacher and Best Performer in Santa Cruz County by the Good Times Weekly local newspaper.

Date, time:	Saturday, March 31, 2012 ,8 PM
Location:	First Congregational Church, 900 High St.,Santa Cruz, CA
Ticket Sales:	Contact Person: John Orlando, 831-688-1518 or  831-539-0000 or email  joorland@gmail.com

 

 

Distinguished Artists Concert & Lecture Series (DACLS) is a non-profit affiliate
of the Aptos Community Foundation in Aptos, California