Pianist Ursula Oppens & Cassatt String Quartet to Perform In-Person at Music mountain, September 5, 2021

 The celebrated pianist Ursula Oppens joins the esteemed Cassatt String Quartet for an in-person concert at Music Mountain, 225 Music Mountain Rd, Falls Village, CT 06031, on Sunday, September 5, 2021, at 3 PM EDT. Owing to the pandemic, this concert will be available in three settings: in the historic Gordon Hall and masked; on the Music Mountain's Great Lawn over a picnic (with flat screens and amplification); and live stream free on the Music Mountain website on the day of the performance: https://www.musicmountain.org/index.php/.

The full program follows:

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel           Selections from Das Jahr for piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart        String Quartet in B Flat Major, K. 589, “Prussian”

Amy Beach                                     Piano Quintet in F Sharp Minor, Op. 67 

For further information, please visit the event website: https://www.musicmountain.org/event-detail.php?id=23, tickets of $45 for the Gordon Hall and $30 for Great Lawn are available for purchase on the Music Mountain website: https://ci.ovationtix.com/36135/production/1048361?performanceId=10690665. 

Ms. Oppens and the Cassatt String Quartet have collaborated frequently for many years.  Earlier in 2021, Cedille Records released Fantasy: Oppens plays Kaminsky, which included Ms. Kaminsky’s String Quintet performed by Ms. Oppens and the Cassatts. 

Widely admired for her original and perceptive readings of new music and the standard repertoire, Ursula Oppens has premiered and/or commissioned works by John Adams, Luciano Berio, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Anthony Davis, Julius Hemphill, John Harbison, Laura Kaminsky, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Charles Wuorinen, and many more.

A prolific and critically acclaimed recording artist with five Grammy nominations to her credit, Ms. Oppens is renowned for her cult classic The People United Will Never Be Defeated by the late iconoclastic composer Frederic Rzewski. That 1979 release, for the Vanguard label, marked her first Grammy nomination. In 2016 she put out a new recording of The People United Will Never Be Defeated, also nominated for a Grammy, and earlier Grammy nominations were for Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano; Oppens Plays Carter; a recording of the complete piano works of Elliott Carter for Cedille Records (also named a “Best of the Year” selection by The New York Times long-time music critic Allan Kozinn); and Piano Music of Our Time featuring compositions by John Adams, Elliott Carter, Julius Hemphill, and Conlon Nancarrow for the Music and Arts label. Ms. Oppens recently added to her extensive discography by releasing Fantasy: Oppens plays Kaminsky in 2021 for the Cedille label, in which she collaborated with the Cassatt String Quartet for a piano quintet. She also recorded Piano Songs, a collaboration with Meredith Monk, as well as a two-piano CD for Cedille Records devoted to Visions de l’Amen of Oliver Messiaen and Debussy’s En blanc et noir performed with pianist Jerome Lowenthal.

As guest soloist, Ms. Oppens has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, and London Philharmonic Orchestras, among others, and has collaborated with the Arditti, Cassatt, Juilliard, and Pacifica quartets.

Ms. Oppens teaches at Mannes College, and is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. In 2019, Ms. Oppens was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New England Conservatory.

Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York; Tanglewood Music Theater; the Kennedy Center,Washington, DC; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris; Centro National de las Artes, Mexico City; Maeda Hall, Tokyo; and Beijing Central Conservatory. At the Library of Congress, the Cassatt performed on the library’s matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments.   

Esteemed music critic Alex Ross named The Cassatt three times to his “10 Best Classical Recordings” in The New Yorker, and the ensemble has been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today,” Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WQXR and WNYC, on Canada’s CBC Radio, and on Radio France.

The Cassatt’s numerous awards are from the National Endowment for the Arts, the USArtists International, Chamber Music America, CMA/ASCAP, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet the Composer, and the Amphion, Copland, Fromm and Alice M. Ditson Music Foundations. Since 1995, the ensemble has been on the performing artist roster for the New York State Council on the Arts.

With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt has offered classes for composers and performers at the American Academy, Rome; the Toho School, Tokyo; Bowdoin International Music Festival; Columbia; Cornell; Princeton; Syracuse Universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. The quartet is in residence annually at Maine's Seal Bay Festival of American Contemporary Chamber Music and Cassatt in the Basin! in Texas. 

Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Vermeer Quartets, pianists Ursula Oppens and Marc-Andre Hamelin, clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, didgeriedoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and composers Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower and John Corigliano. The Cassatt’s discography includes new quartets by Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky; Guggenheim fellow Daniel S. Godfrey; and Grawemeyer and Rome Prize winner Sebastian Currier. 

Named for the celebrated impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet consists of Muneko Otani, violin; Jennifer Leshnower, violin; Ah Ling Neu, viola; and Elizabeth Anderson, cello. 

For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at (212) 772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.
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