Ridgefield Press: Yuga Cohler takes over as Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra music director

The Ridgefield Press
Laurie Kenagy

After a search process that spanned two seasons and saw four exceptional finalists conduct concerts before large and enthusiastic audiences, the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra has named Yuga Cohler as the orchestra’s new Music Director.

Cohler will make his debut in his new role at the May 5, 2018 concert at Anne S. Richardson Auditorium at Ridgefield High School. The RSO Board of Directors appointed Maestro Cohler following the unanimous recommendation of the Music Director Search Committee comprised of RSO musician representatives, board members and executive director. The Search Committee received extensive input from surveys sent to RSO musicians and audience members following each of the finalists’ concerts.

Read the full article here.

International Piano: Yekwon Sunwoo at Portland Piano International

International Piano
James Bash

Sunwoo showed no signs of jetlag in his performance at Lincoln Concert Hall. His immaculate playing of Schubert’s Sonata in C minor D958 was filled with subtle nuances such as a slightly slow tempo for the recapitulation of a theme, which made it linger seductively. In the final Allegro he delivered a lightly rocking rhythm that became more demonstrative yet never overstated. The many hand-crossings were incisively executed, and the overall effect of the piece was emotionally satisfying.

Read the full review in International Piano‘s January/February 2018 issue, available digitally here.

21CM: The Future of Classical Music is... Instagram?

21CM
Elizabeth Nonemaker

We classical musicians have changed a lot about our concerts. More and more, we’re playing in nontraditional venues, we’re relaxing show etiquette, we’re developing programs that interact with audience members or respond to their needs.

I’ve been thinking about content as the engine behind transforming listening experiences ever since I came across Ray Lustig’s composagram project. These are typically 15-second musical moments set to video and published on Instagram. Lustig developed the project as a “low-stakes creative exercise,” but what sets this project apart is both its integration with technology and the cumulative effect of the pieces.

Read the full article on 21CM's website here.

New York Arts: Haochen Zhang at Carnegie Hall

New York Arts
Michael Miller

Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall
Saturday, November 18, 2017 7:30 PM
Haochen Zhang, Piano

Schumann – Kinderszenen, Op. 15
Schumann – Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13
Liszt – Transcendental Etude No. 5 in B-flat Major, “Feux follets”
Liszt – Trancendental Etude No. 12 in B-flat Minor, “Chasse neige”
Janáček – In the Mists
Prokofiev – Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83

I hesitate to review Haochen Zhang‘s impressive recital, because a previous commitment made it possible to hear only the second half. Even that, however, made it clear that he is a musician of extraordinary technical mastery and perception. Born in 1990, he is a graduate of the Curtis School of Music, where he studied under Gary Graffman, and winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—no mean credentials! He is already regarded as something of a hero in China—or, should I say, superstar—as a packed Zankel Hall attested: there were numerous contingents of Chinese families bringing children to inspire them and countless young Chinese women. I have never seen a performer, male or female, accoladed with so many bouquets. I should mention one bit of local color before moving on to the music, which was a teenager explaining to his younger brother (10 or so) about the Well-Tempered Clavier. Where else would one overhear an interchange like this between two young brothers?

In any case Haochen Zhang’s Liszt proved both musical and highly virtuosic. The grand fortissimi were powerful and the more introverted moments properly subdued. Even at the loudest bars, he maintained a warm, pleasing tone. Zhang’s approach to texture is selective. He blurs arpeggi with ample pedal, but at the same time he makes particular lines he wishes to emphasize stand out clearly. He is less interested in overall detail and clarity—a technique which should stand him in good stead when he plays in larger halls than Zankel.

One blessing this program offered was an opportunity to hear Janáček’s In the Mists complete. Mr. Zhang’s basic sound is large, but within this he was able to explore the more intimate aspects of these highly personal expressions. The composer’s tempi are largely slow: Andante-Molto Adagio-Andante, concluded by a Presto, which is a true presto only for a few moments. Each movement begins with a distinct tune of a melancholy bent, suggestive of Czech folk-music, which slips into either more rhapsodic, more passionate, or even pained excursions. Following the melodies is the essence of this work. This was a committed performance which visited many corners of Janáček’s tonal and dynamic palette, if there was anything to criticize, it might be that Mr. Zhang made the pieces seem more virtuosic than they actually are, and the music became rather too busy for us to enter into its melodic and poetic dimensions.

Mr. Zhang closed the program with Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7, a bright, virtuosic work, which enabled him to go out in a blaze of technical display, but not without musical substance. The first movement is troubled and dramatic, the second more intimate and lyrical.

One felicitous gambit of Mr. Zhang’s appeared in several of the more intimate sections. He likes to slow the tempo slightly and holds to a steady meter and appropriate pianissimo. This reminded me of a similar approach which Alfred Brendel favored, when he was playing. However, as Zhang handled them, these passages sounded all the same. The mood, texture, and color seemed imposed like a method rather than like an expression that emerged organically from the music that preceded it. Perhaps this is a reminder that Haochen Zhang is only twenty-seven, something we are like to forget, given the general maturity of his playing. We can look forward to many years of outstanding playing and musical development ahead.

After the concert Mr. Zhang, surrounded six deep by his young countrywomen, signed copies of his latest CD on the BIS label. This includes Schumann’s Kinderszenen, which he played in the recital (before my arrival, unfortunately!), Liszt’s second Ballade, Janáček’s Sonata “From the Streets”, and Brahms’ Three Intermezzi, Op. 117. As we await Haochen Zhang’s return to New York, we can enjoy his playing on this excellent disc.

BBC Music Magazine: Yekwon Sunwoo's Cliburn Gold 2017

BBC Music Magazine
Rebecca Franks

Cliburn Gold 2017 (4-star rating)

Superbly assured pianism from the recent winner of the Van Cliburn competition, sensitive in Haydn and full-blown in Ravel’s La Valse.

Top 17 of '17

8VA's Top 17 of '17

January 2017
Strings Magazine
Inaugural Youth Music Culture Guangdong feature
 

April 7, 2017
WQXR
Israel Chamber Project performs on a WQXR Facebook livestream

May 1, 2017
The Guardian
In-depth interview with Maestro Long Yu covering his musical inspirations

May 18, 2017
New York Times
Grand Teton Music Festival featured as one of top 10 Spring and Summer Classical Festivals

June 16, 2017
New York Times
The Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold medalist, Yekwon Sunwoo performs on New York Times' Facebook Livestream.
 

June 29, 2017
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
AFP features a story about Serenade! Washington DC Choral Festival, produced by Classical Movements, which is picked up by outlets such as Daily Mail

July 2017
OperaWire
A feature on Classical Movement's Prague Summer Nights (PSN) in addition to reviews of PSN operas including Die Zauberflöte and  Le Nozze Di Figaro plus more.

August 4, 2017
Times Square Billboard
Beijing Music Festival (BMF) and Long Yu featured in Times Square in celebration of BMF's 20th anniversary

August/September 2017
The Economist 1843 Magazine
Grand Teton Music Festival featured as a cultural event worth traveling for

September 2017
Gramophone
Gerard Schwarz celebrates his 70th birthday with a 30-disc retrospective
 

October 10, 2017
Strings Magazine
Julian Schwarz guest blogs about the whimsical passion of Lalo's Cello Concerto in D minor

October 23, 2017
The New Yorker
Maestro Gerard Schwarz's performance with the Juilliard Orchestra highlights overlooked great mid-century composers David Diamond, William Schuman, and Jacob Druckman

November 18, 2017
Haochen Zhang sells out solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall

December 14, 2017
TIME
Yuga Cohler leads Young Musician Foundation's Debut Chamber Orchestra in the second edition of Yeethoven

January 2018
BBC Music Magazine
Anne Akiko Meyers's performance of Bernstein's Serenade featured in BBC Music Magazine's CD mount.

January 2018
The Strad
The second Youth Music Culture Gongdong featured on cover with Artistic Director Yo-Yo-Ma

February 2018
Strings Magazine
Highlights of the 20th Beijing Music Festival in October 2017

MWA Quarterly: Notes on a 21st Century Virtuoso, Yuga Cohler

MWA Quarterly
By Karine Monié

FROM MUSIC TO TECH, YUGA COHLER EVADES CLASSIFICATION, USING HIS BRILLIANT MIND TO CREATE INNOVATIVE, ONE-OF-A-KIND EXPERIENCES

Music has always been part of Yuga Cohler’s life, but it took him a few years to feel passion for it. “Both of my parents are musicians, so I started at a very early age— piano at 3 and violin at 5,” he says. “However, I didn’t really start enjoying music until I was 12, when I went to my first music camp.” Since then, Cohler has never put aside creative discipline, which today is an important part of his life.

At only 28 years old, Cohler is already an internationally-known orchestral conductor, while also working as a senior software engineer and manager at Google, having graduated summa cum laude in computer science from Harvard University. “My grandfather is a computer scientist and he taught me QBasic when I was 6,” he says. “It aroused my interest in math, logic and puzzles. I think that an understanding of the systemic facets of technology that my work cultivates—an appreciation for design, an apprehension of large-scale systems, a belief in process—is essential to anybody looking to engage in 21st-century culture.”

As if it isn’t enough to be a science expert, Cohler is also a musical genius. These seemingly disparate fields are complementary for Cohler. “My junior year of college, I interned at Goldman Sachs as a strategist in the investment banking division,” he confesses. “I worked 11- to 12- hour days and listened to Kanye West all day long at my desk. Through that experience, I came to understand that the structures underlying Kanye’s music are no different from those that underlie classical music, and thought it would be interesting to put on concerts that explicitly point out similarities like these.”

Appointed music director of the Young Musicians Foundation (YMF) Debut Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles in 2015, Cohler explored this idea of combining popular and classical music through “The Great Music Series,” starting with “Yeethoven,” a concert that boldly compared the works of Kanye West and Beethoven. “Many of the best cultural innovations are born from combinations of distinct traditions,” explains Cohler, referencing modern cuisine as an example. “Popular music owes much of its theoretical backbone to the tradition of Western classical music, and I think the values inherent in classical music can help popular music evolve in interesting ways. At the same time, classical music can learn from the iron-clad ties to modern-day culture by which popular music is defined.”

Listening to hip-hop, electronic music, Korean and Japanese pop, among many other genres, Cohler’s open mind and impressive path are a testament to both his talent for and love of innovation that he showcases all over the planet. Having a close relationship with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Cohler appeared several times in concert on Japanese national television and recently did an international tour with the orchestra and musician Yoshiki. Frequently invited to Europe and different places in the United States, and currently a director of the Asia/America New Music Institute, Cohler is successful in everything he does. Although Cohler is unconvinced that music is essential, “...I think it’s inevitable,” he offers. “You don’t need music to survive, but if you’re surviving, you’re probably either consuming or producing music. For me, music is a platform through which you can reach anybody, because it’s not tied to any predetermined meaning. That lack of intrinsic significance makes music an ideal medium for a type of universal communication.”

Reaching all types of communities through the vitality of an orchestra, transcending categories while inventing another, more global vision is definitely among Cohler’s most impressive skills. With his creativity and ambition exceeding music, Cohler describes his dream project: “A start-up/media company that produces content designed to make its audience think more deeply and deliberately. It would promote and provoke thought by integrating the expected with the unexpected, the commonplace with the extraordinary, the popular with the sophisticated.” Some people are born with many talents and they know how to make the most of them. Whether through music or technology, Cohler always finds a way to create something unique from a variety of influences.

The Strad: Yo-Yo Ma on making artistic connections and raising balanced musicians

The Strad
Charlotte Smith

This month Yo-Yo Ma returns as artistic director of his Chinese education initiative Youth Music Culture Guangdong, a programme that aims to create balanced, astute and connected musicians. Charlotte Smith explores the ideas behind the cellist’s approach

Photo ©Li Lewei, courtesy of YMCG

‘Classical musicians today have moved away from improvisation, but it’s an essential part of owning the music,’ he says. ‘In the classical tradition, pretty much all musicians played, arranged and composed. Clara Schumann composed and Heifetz made arrangements and Kreisler wrote all those little pieces. It’s today’s insistence on professionalisation and specialisation that has separated those skills. It’s the commoditisation of music. We are told to stick with what we do well, as opposed to develop the whole individual. But what’s valuable is the musician who can do all of those things. Of course there will be some skills that stand out, but musicians should continue to feed themselves with all aspects of musical life. It’s an idea that was cherished by the Enlightenment – that we should treasure the person who can be a generalist, the conduit for a world of wonder and awe.’

For Ma, making connections – between people, cultures, artistic modes and genres, and musical skills – is the key to developing into a complete and healthy artist and, crucially, to tapping into the flexibility necessary to negotiate difficult and changing times. ‘That’s why at this year’s YMCG we are focusing on the music of Beethoven,’ he continues. ‘Beethoven was a pivotal personality in a rapidly changing world, both as a culmination of the Classical era and a herald of the Romantic. He was an improviser, a virtuoso pianist and a composer, and shows us that being many things produces the great creativity we need to understand change.’ Just as the young Ma reacted to the huge upheaval of his family’s move to the US with a desire to learn, consume and, ultimately, to express himself creatively, 21st-century musicians can also follow Beethoven’s lead in using instability and unrest as fuel for their own imaginations, and by doing so, making sincere and meaningful connections with audiences and fellow musicians.

To read the full article, get the January 2018 issue.

Bachtrack: Variations of tension, energy and contrast with Long Yu and the Hong Kong Phil

Bachtrack
Alan Yu

First, a disclaimer: I have been an admirer of Long Yu’s conducting skills – not that he can do no wrong, but that he can usually make up for it by delivering tension, energy and contrast in whatever is at hand. Friday evening’s collection of variations with the Hong Kong Philharmonic was a case in point.

Long Yu’s première of Er Huang in Hong Kong was a resounding success, traversing the full gamut of emotional latitude the work afforded, from contemplative introspection to boisterous clamour. He laid bare the variety of orchestral colours and kept us on tenterhooks with a superb sense of timing.

Read the full Bachtrack review here.

Time: How a Live Orchestra Is Mashing Up Kanye West and Beethoven

Time Magazine
By Raisa Bruner

Rap icon Kanye West and classical legend Ludwig van Beethoven are, at first glance, polar musical opposites. But one project, dubbed Yeethoven, is bringing their music together in a bi-coastal mash-up concert that cuts through the distance of centuries and styles.

But why Kanye and Beethoven? It comes down to their shared status as iconoclasts of their eras. “[Beethoven] was emblematic of making really dynamic and meaningful changes in his art form, just as Kanye does in his,” explains Yuga Cohler, one of the project’s creators. “You might think Kanye’s one thing and only certain types of people listen to it, and ditto Beethoven. But that’s actually not the case.” Instead, project masterminds Cohler and Johan — who goes by a single name — argue that there’s a “common musical and cultural backbone” that runs straight from classical to contemporary hip-hop. Bringing the two genres together in live symphony, they hope, can help listeners discover a new way to appreciate music, no matter their age or musical taste.

Taking place in L.A. on Dec. 14 and in New York City on Jan. 18 with support from the Young Musicians Foundation (YMF) and Lincoln Center, Yeethoven II is now in its second year, after a sold-out 2016 concert. Cohler regularly conducts the YMF Debut Chamber Orchestra, while Johan is an independent artist and producer and arranger for hip-hop and pop acts like rapper Vic Mensa and singer Alessia Cara.

TIME spoke to the duo about their process of piecing together the perfect orchestral mash-up, how a “risky project” like this one can help popularize classical music and why Kanye makes a great case study as an artist with unexpectedly broad appeal.

TIME: Why did you select these two artists to bring into dialogue? What makes them good parallels?

Yuga Cohler: I had always been a big fan of Kanye’s music, and I knew other musicians were as well. I was really interested in doing a project with the [YMF] Orchestra involving him. So the first person I called was Johan, who was studying composition at Yale at the time. We talked about comparing [Kanye] to Stravinsky and a bunch of other classical composers, but we settled on Beethoven.

Johan: We were trying to figure out why classical musicians find Kanye so compelling, especially on his last two albums [2013’s Yeezus and 2016’s The Life of Pablo]. We were trying to find a classical musician who had a similar impact on their time.

Why is Kanye particularly interesting to classical composers?

Johan: He’s a risk taker, really innovative. He gets away with things musically that are pretty radical for someone who gets that attention: the fact that millions of people listen to his albums; the fact that Yeezus was borderline unlistenable as pop music, but really interesting as more of an art project, as well as The Life of Pablo. I was around a lot of composers and found they were interested in the fact that this guy was doing such crazy stuff. When I was in grad school at Yale, I studied with David Lang, a Pulitzer-prize winning composer. He was like, “Oh, Yeezus is really good.” This dude is like 55, and he’s talking to us about how Yeezus was really cool!

Cohler: Johan and I thought about this a lot. In those two albums, he willfully deviates from the traditional verse-chorus format, which is obviously a hallmark of pop music. The decision to do that, and then the decision to branch out into other, new formal language, was really reminiscent to us of what classical composers constantly try to do.

How do you create music that’s a true dialogue between the two artists? What’s your process like to figure out how to mash it up in a way that makes sense?

Cohler: We’ll go through the track listings of Yeezus and The Life of Pablo and we’ll talk about which songs are most interesting or have elements that are most reminiscent of Beethoven or classical composition. Then we ask, what are compositions by Beethoven that do the same thing? Is there sonic similarity, is there cultural similarity, is there compositional similarity? From there, Johan arranges and orchestrates them.

Johan: It always starts with the Kanye. That has to be turned into an orchestral thing, no matter what. It’s not like we’re running through the whole song; we’re grabbing the iconic material from a song of his. We’ll get the 16 bars or something that are really iconic, figure out how to make that sound unbelievable with an orchestra, and then figure out a way to add the Beethoven and develop them to interact. It’s important that the pieces communicate what we’re talking about. If they’re both there, we want people to recognize each piece of material separately before they start to hear them intertwined, so people can really get what’s going on. That’s a big part of the whole concert for us: making it clear.

Was there a particular Kanye song that was especially successful — or challenging — to adapt?

Cohler: For me it’s the arrangement of “Waves.” It’s hard to describe; the melody is in bass, but the accompaniment is in treble, which is this sort of unique thing. We compare that to Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, which is an unlikely candidate. But when you bring the two together, you can actually hear how the voicings are very similar.

Johan: It’s the second movement of the 8th Symphony, right?

Cohler: Yeah.

Johan: They were pretty tricky. We also did one with “Ultralight Beam” and a quartet —

Cohler: It’s the string quartet of Op. 132 — the slow movement from that.

Johan: That was about trying to show these really spare elements. They’re both really slow and spread out, so finding a way to keep the momentum going while illustrating how much space there was in both of these was tricky to keep it as a compelling piece of music. But I think it came out well.

You’ve spent a lot of time exploring the Kanye-Beethoven mashup. Are there any other pairings you’re interested in?

Johan: Personally, I think something with Daft Punk would be cool.

Cohler: It has to be a really organic connection. I don’t think it works to make this into a trope — one classic composer and one pop artist — that cheapens the art. Kanye is very special, I think everyone would agree.

Johan: There’s few people who are simultaneously doing stuff as weird as he is and on as such gigantic a scale in terms of reach.

Have you ever reached out to him? Do his people know you’re doing this?

Johan: I think he knows, but we don’t know for sure. I do string arrangements for the hip-hop world, so… We’ll see what happens.

What do you hope audiences take away from listening to this?

Cohler: One of the really positive aspects of the show in 2016 was that so many different types of people came. It was definitely not your typical hip-hop or pop concert; it skewed a little bit older. It was absolutely not at all your typical classical concert; it was much younger than that. You have people of all different backgrounds, bound by either this interest in Kanye or the concept. There’s this common musical and cultural backbone to both of them, and we can all appreciate it in a single group. That’s the message of the whole thing.

Johan: People are smart and discerning listeners of music. Those same people who were applauding at Kanye were also applauding at the Beethoven stuff; they were just excited about good music.