Jean
Huang
黃竹君,
violin
http://www.violinjeanius.com/
"Left
speechless after having the chance
to watch and listen to Jean Huang close up." –The WBUR-FM
(2020).
Taiwanese violinist Jean Huang's active performing career has
brought her to concert halls internationally and throughout the
United States. Huang holds Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral of
Musical Arts degrees in Violin Performance with honors from the New
England Conservatory with the Doctoral thesis topic "A Performative
Analysis and the Critical Edition: Francis Poulenc Violin Sonata,"
under the guidance of Sean Gallagher and Pascal Rogé. Passionate for
teaching, Huang currently maintains a private studio in Boston, with
students ranging from six years old to adults. She also serves as
the violin faculty at the New England Conservatory School of
Continuing Education and preparatory school.
"Superior leading."
–The Boston Musical Intelligencer (2019).
Maintaining an active professional career, Jean serves as the
concertmaster of the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra and has received
recognition for her leading and artistry by Cape Cod Times and other
prominent music critics. Jean also serves as a member of the Phoenix
Orchestra (Boston), where she participated as the principal
violinist and performed 16 episodes of the "Chronophone" online
chamber music series on Twitch during the pandemic, covering the
western music history from pre-baroque to modern era. Praised for
her poised and expressive playing, Jean enjoys performing standard
repertoire and contemporary music. She also works as the first
violinist in CØDA contemporary ensemble and gives regular concerts
at the Old South Church in Boston.
"A consummate artist -- so poised, in control,
expressive, and exciting and moving to listen to"
–Victor Rosenbaum (2018).
Jean loves performing, believing music can provoke the wildest
imagination. As a result, she often looks for a three-way connection
between composer, performer, and audience. Jean is recognized for
her lecture-recitals discussing topics such as "Musician's role,"
"Baroque Dances," and "Evolutionary Violinist." During those
recitals, she combines virtuosic violin playing, her musicology
background, and multi-media commentary that audience members of all
experience levels can understand.
Wishing to become a musician rather than merely a violinist, Huang
delves into all aspects of the field. In the summer of 2013, she
took violin-making lessons and created her first violin, based on a
Guarnerius model. She enjoys everyday coffee and often
wanders around the Greater Boston area for new inspirations from
nature in her sound.
Victor Rosenbaum,
piano
Renowned teacher and former NEC
faculty for over five decades
vrosenbaum@aol.com
"The appeal of Rosenbaum’s playing is in his musical
temperament, in which fervor and gentleness are happily combined and
in the velvet of his tone.....he makes up for all the drudgery the
habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of finding the real,
right thing".
Internationally known pianist and teacher, Victor Rosenbaum, has
been a prominent figure in Boston’s musical community for more than
five decades, since Gunther Schuller, newly appointed President of
New England Conservatory, hired him to teach piano, theory, and
chamber music in 1967. Of his very first recital as an NEC faculty
member, the Boston Globe wrote: Rosenbaum “makes up for all the
drudgery the habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of
finding the real, right thing”. His critical praise continues
to this day. Describing his most recent CD, “Brahms: The Last Piano
Pieces” (Bridge), which was released in fall 2020, Glyn Pursglove of
MusicWeb International said: “Rosenbaum’s account of of these
pieces seems to me impeccable. The whole disc is magisterial; a
mature pianist bringing deep thought and empathy to a series of
mature pieces which stand revealed, as clearly as I have heard, as
masterpieces. This will be the disc I turn to when I next want to
hear any of these remarkable pieces”. Rosenbaum has just
retired from NEC and will devote his time to guest teaching, master
classes, recording, concerts, and an upcoming Artist-in-Residence
position in Taiwan in the spring of 2023.
Rosenbaum has concertized widely
as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe,
Israel, Brazil,
Russia,
and Asia (including 25 annual trips to Japan) in such prestigious
halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg,
Russia. A committed chamber music performer, he has collaborated
with such artists as Leonard Rose, Leslie Parnas, Paul Katz,
Laurence Lesser, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein,
Roman Totenberg, Eric Rosenblith, James Buswell, Malcolm Lowe,
Walter Trampler, and the Brentano, Borromeo, Shanghai, and Cleveland
String Quartets, and was a member of two trios: The Wheaton Trio and
The Figaro Trio. Festival appearances have included Tanglewood, the
Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (in Israel),
Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Musicorda, Masters de
Pontlevoy (France), the Heifetz Institute, the International
Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, the International Music
Seminar in Vienna, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the
Festival at Walnut Hill School, the Puerto Rico International Piano
Festival,The Art of the Piano Festival in Cincinnati, the Atlantic
Music Festival, PianoTexas, and the Eastern Music Festival, where he
headed the piano department for five years. Rosenbaum is also a
contributor to the online site “Musicale” (WeAreMusicale.com).
Concert appearances have brought him to Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo,
Beijing, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and New York,
among others. In addition to his absorption in the music of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (in particular Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms), Rosenbaum has performed
and given premieres of works by many 20th and 21st Century
composers, including John Harbison, John Heiss, Peter Westergaard,
Norman Dinerstein, Arlene Zallman, Donald Harris, Daniel Pinkham,
Miriam Gideon, Stephen Albert, and many others. A musician of
diverse talents, Rosenbaum is also a composer and has frequently
conducted in the Boston area and beyond.
Rosenbaum, who studied with Elizabeth Brock and Martin Marks while
growing up in
Indianapolis,
and went on to study with Rosina Lhevinne at the
Aspen
Festival and Leonard Shure in New
York (while earning degrees at Brandeis University and Princeton),
has become a renowned teacher himself. During his long tenure on
the faculty of New England Conservatory, he chaired its piano
department for more than a decade, and was also Chair of Chamber
Music. On the faculty of Mannes School of Music in New York from
2004-2017, he has also been Visiting Professor of Piano at the
Eastman School of Music, a guest teacher at Juilliard, and presents
lectures, workshops, and master classes for teachers’ groups and
schools both in the U. S. and abroad, including London’s Royal
Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Guildhall School, the
conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Beijing Central
Conservatory, Shanghai Conservatory, the Toho School in Tokyo, Tokyo
Ondai, most major schools in Taiwan, the Sibelius Academy in
Helsinki, and other institutions such as the Menuhin School near
London, and the Jerusalem Music Center. Rosenbaum’s students have
established teaching and performing careers in the US and abroad,
and have won top prizes in such competitions as the Young Concerts
Artists, Charles Wadsworth International Competition, New Orleans
International Competition, Casagrande International Piano
Competition, Gina Bachauer Competition, and the New York
International Competition, among others. Rosenbaum’s sixteen years
as Director and President of the Longy School of Music (1985-2001)
transformed the school into a full-fledged degree granting
conservatory as well as a thriving community music school.
In addition to his Brahms disc, Rosenbaum’s recordings on the Bridge
and Fleur de Son labels include a Mozart CD, three Schubert discs,
one of which was described as “a poignant record of human
experience”, and two recordings of Beethoven which the
American Record Guide named as among the top classical recordings of
2005 and 2020.
The Jerusalem Post wrote of Rosenbaum: “His obvious
consciousness of everything he was doing....resulted in rich and
subtle nuances of dynamics and shadings and in organically shaped,
well-rounded phrases; [while] there was refreshing spontaneity and
genuine temperament....the reign of intellect never faltered”.
The New York Times put it succinctly after his performance at
Tully Hall: Rosenbaum “could not have been better”. And a
review in the Boston Globe summed up the appeal of Rosenbaum’s
playing: “Fervor and Gentleness Combined”.
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