The Taos School of Music kicks off its 60th anniversary with its first ever winter community residency!
March 3-5, 2023
Three of the School’s most exciting recent alumni returned to Taos to engage with the Taos community. This residency is the first of what will be a permanent program for the School moving forward. The alumni were led by TSoM faculty cellist Nina Lee of the famed Brentano String Quartet.
Schedule
Friday, March 3
The quartet visited both Ranchos Elementary and the Anansi School, where presented 5 entertaining educational program for students in grades 3-5. Teachers at each school prepared their students by learning about the instruments in a string quartet, the composer Antonin Dvorak and his journeys in the United States, and what it takes to become a professional musician,
Saturday, March 4
The quartet performed on the Santa Fe Pro Musica series in Santa Fe, NM.
Sunday, March 5
On Sunday, the quartet performed two concerts. The first visit was to the Taos Retirement Village for a lunchtime concert. Then, it headed to the Taos Ski Valley to perform a concert for that community.
Repertoire
The repertoire was carefully chosen by the musicians to connect to the spiritual and physical landscape of Taos. The centerpiece is Dvorak’s “American” quartet – a work in which he celebrates the music of both indigenous populations and African-Americans.
Haydn: String Quartet Op. 63, No. 3
Dvorak: “American” Quartet
“Deep River” Spiritual
Performers
21-year old violinist Clara Neubauer attends The Juilliard School as a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship in the studios of Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin. She has recently performed at festivals including the Ravinia Steans Institute, Taos School of Music, Music@Menlo, Perlman Music Program, Bravo! Vail, Four Seasons Festival, Music From Angel Fire, and La Jolla Summerfest.
Winner and Silver medalist at the 2020 National YoungArts competition, Clara was the first prize winner in the 2019 Symphony of Westchester Competition and the 2017 Adelphi Young Artist Competition and was recently featured on the WQXR Young Musicians Showcase.
Clara made her concerto debut with the National Repertory Orchestra at the age of 10 and her Lincoln Center debut at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Young Ensembles Concert in 2013. An avid chamber musician, Clara was a winner of the 2017 Young Musicians Competition at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and a Young Performer at the Music@Menlo Chamber Music Institute for five years.
She has collaborated with artists including Shai Wosner, Frans Helmerson, Anne-Marie McDermott, Daniel Phillips, Robert McDonald, Carter Brey, and the Dover Quartet.Clara shared the stage with Bernadette Peters and Robert DeNiro hosting a 9/11 Memorial benefit and can be heard leading the audio tour guide “for children and families” at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, available as a free app at the App Store.
In her free time, Clara loves to cook, read, and play ping-pong.
Alexander Goldberg, 21 – a violin student of Ani Kavafian – is pursuing a Master’s Degree at the Yale School of Music after having graduated from Yale with a Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy. At Yale, Alex won the Joseph Lentilhon Selden award for “verve, idealism and constructive interest in music and the humanities” and the Head of College Cup for “outstanding scholarly achievement and creative promise.” He previously studied with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory of Music. Alex has attended and performed at the Sarasota Music Festival, the Heifetz International Music Institute, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Aspen Music Festival, Music@Menlo (where he received a merit scholarship) and attended the Taos School of Music. Alex made his debut as a soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra at age 8, his Carnegie Weill Hall debut at age 11, and appeared on NPR’s From The Top. He has also performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras in the Boston area, including the Concord, Brockton, and Quincy orchestras. An avid chamber musician and recitalist, Alex is also passionate about combining concerts with lectures on music, art, and literature. Recent projects in this vein include a lecture-recital on the links between Goethe, Brahms, and Romanticism in literature and music and a live-streamed recital on the concept of motion in Plato, Euripides, Bach, and Ysaÿe as part of the Literary Music Series.
Violist Laura Liu – a native of Miami, Florida – studies with Cynthia Phelps, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Misha Amory at The Juilliard School. Last season she was a finalist in The Juilliard School Viola Competition and named as a contestant in the 5th Tokyo International Viola Competition. Previously, she was a 2019 National YoungArts Foundation Winner, assistant principal viola of the 50th Anniversary New York String Orchestra Seminar, and the 2019 Southeastern Region winner of the NFMC Wendell Irish Viola Award. Ms. Liu is a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship at the Juilliard School.
An active chamber musician, cellist Nina Lee has collaborated with many acclaimed artists and performed throughout the United States. She performs regularly at the Yale School of Music as a member of the School of Music’s ensemble-in-residence, the Brentano String Quartet, which presents creative programs of works from across history and standards of the classical canon. She also coaches graduate-level chamber music ensembles at the School of Music. In the summers, Lee performs and teaches at Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music. Previously, she taught at Princeton University and Columbia University
An advocate of music education, Lee has served as a returning guest faculty member at the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar at Stanford University and at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop. In 2012, she made a cameo appearance in A Late Quartet, a film which featured the Brentano String Quartet on its soundtrack.
Lee’s principal teachers have been Joel Krosnick, David Soyer, and Anne Fagerburg-Jacob. She has received degrees and certificates from the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.