$15 Cover @ the Door / Start 8pm / Doors 7:30pm / Seated Show
“In the Spirit of Brahms” is a concert of all three of Brahms’ sonatas for violin and piano. Rounding out the program, composer Francine Trester has written a set of miniatures for violin and piano that respond to Brahms’ “The Treasure Chest of the Young Kreisler,” a notebook that the twenty-year-old Brahms always carried with him. This notebook was filled with passages Brahms wished to keep, an old practice followed by Erasmus, Ben Jonson and John Milton, among others. The notebook gives us insight into Brahms’ innermost thoughts, and inspired Trester’s miniatures. Proceeds from this concert will go to Birthday Wishes (birthdaywishes.org), a charity that provides homeless children and their families with birthday parties, regardless of their living situation. This mission seems in keeping with this concert program, big hearted and warm, and very much “In the Spirit of Brahms.”
Lois Shapiro
Pianist Lois Shapiro “conjures enchantment” and “produces and inspires musical magic,” notes The Boston Globe. A New York Concert Artists Guild Award winner and highly sought-after soloist and collaborative pianist, she has appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad in concerts ranging from 18th-century period-instrument performances to premieres. Shapiro has recorded on Afka, Bridge, Channel Classics, Centaur, MLAR, and Pierrot.
Formerly an instructor of piano at Smith College, Brandeis University, New England Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music, Ms. Shapiro is currently on the faculty of Wellesley College and New England Conservatory, and additionally, serves as Artist-in-Residence at the Rivers School Conservatory of Music. She is a founding member of the highly acclaimed piano trio Triple Helix, which toured widely and made several recordings. She gives numerous masterclasses and lectures on subjects such as the nature of musicianship, late-Beethoven piano sonatas, and Robert Schumann’s music in cultural context. As an expression of her abiding interest in bringing the musical experience to underserved populations, she was recently awarded an Alumni Ventures grant from Yale University to create and offer innovative interdisciplinary music programs in the Boston public schools. Always seeking to inspire music-lovers of all ages, Ms. Shapiro has recently created an intergenerational orchestra called FIGCO and, in collaboration with the Longy School of Music Dalcroze Department, she co-produced a series of engaging and highly popular family programs in which she performed as narrator and pianist. She received her musical training at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and the New England Conservatory.
Richard Dyer has said of her playing, “She is a wonderful artist and a dangerous person to work with…What makes her dangerous is her imagination and her insight; these lead her directly into what is most interesting about the music. And her technical resources are such that she is able to do exactly what her imagination and insight intend…Shapiro has the great gift of making everything she does sound inevitable even when it is surprising.”
riversschoolconservatory.org/faculty/lois-shapiro
wellesley.edu/music/facstaff/shapiro
Francine Trester
Francine Trester is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music. Praised as “compelling” and “thought-provoking” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, Francine Trester’s “A Walk In Her Shoes” premiered this past September by Boston Landmarks Orchestra at the Hatch Memorial Shell. A setting of Trester’s own text, the piece commemorated the centennial of the 19th Amendment, and featured soloists Carrie Cheron, mezzo-soprano, and Brianna Robinson, soprano.
Trester’s "An Oman Odyssey," was commissioned by the Mirror Visions Ensemble and premiered at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center. Described as “haunting” and “showing imaginative musical writing…keening melody laden with emotion” (New York Classical Review), the cycle was also performed at the Louvre, Paris and in Glasgow.
Her opera "Keepers of the Light" was commissioned by and premiered at the Nahant Music Festival, and Shelter Music Boston commissioned "Florence Comes Home,” a chamber opera based on the life of composer Florence Price. “Florence Comes Home” was well received, with Anne Davenport of the Boston Musical Intelligencer writing, “Chamber Opera? With pared-down means, Trester created something as wide and comprehensive as anything Puccini wrote.”
The Bach, Beethoven and Brahms Society premiered her orchestral version of “Street Views” at Faneuil Hall, with soloists Kenneth Radnofsky and Elmira Darvarova. Her works have been performed nationally and internationally, and featured at Jordan Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Kosciuszko Foundation.
Trester earned her doctoral, masters and undergraduate degrees from Yale University and was a composition student of Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick, and a violin student of Syoko Aki. As a recipient of a Fulbright, Trester also studied composition with Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University. Her music is recorded on Affetto/Naxos. Works written for guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan can be heard on the Stone Records label and are available - along with several additional compositions for mixed instrumentation - through the American Composers Alliance.