92NY Presents Sharon Isbin, Guitar & Pacifica Quartet Play Boccherini, Schwantner, And More This Fall

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY), one of New York's leading cultural venues, presents Sharon Isbin, guitar & Pacifica Quartet play Boccherini, Schwantner, and more, on November 12, 2022 at 7:30pm ET at the Kaufmann Concert Hall.

The concert will also be available for viewing online for 72 hours from time of broadcast. Tickets for both the in-person and livestream options start at $25 and are available at 92ny.org/event/sharon-isbin-and-pacifica-quartet.

Boundary-defying guitarist Sharon Isbin is joined by one of her most treasured collaborators, Pacifica Quartet. Together, they reveal the colors and textures made possible by the combination of guitar and string quartet, performing an arrangement of Vivaldi's D-Major Concerto, the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Joseph Schwantner's Song of a Dreaming Sparrow, and Boccherini's "Fandango" Guitar Quintet. Isbin adds solo performances of Brouwer's El Decameron Negro, and selections by Turina and Piazzolla.

Program:

Vivaldi, Concerto in D Major for Guitar and Strings, RV 93 (arr. Pujol/ed. Isbin)

Leo Brouwer, El Decameron Negro

Joseph Schwantner, Song of a Dreaming Sparrow (World Premiere; 92NY commission)

Turina, La Oración del Torero, Op. 34

Piazzola, Four for Tango

Boccherini, Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D major, G.448, "Fandango"

About the Artists

Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility, multiple GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin was named the 2020 Musical America Worldwide Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever to receive the coveted honor in its 59-year award history. Hailed as "the pre-eminent guitarist of our time", she has ben soloist with over 200 orchestras and has given sold-out performances in many of the world's finest halls across 40 countries. including New York's Carnegie and Geffen Halls, Boston's Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, London's Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Paris' Châtelet, Vienna's Musikverein, Munich's Herkulessaal, Argentina's Teatro Colón, and Madrid's Teatro Real. She has served as Artistic Director and soloist of festivals she created for Carnegie Hall and the Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), New York's 92NY, and the national radio series Guitarjam.

American Public Television's presentation of the acclaimed one-hour documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over 200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad. Winner of the ASCAP Television Broadcast Award, the film is available with bonus performances on DVD, Blu-ray, and Amazon streaming. Watch the trailer at: www.sharonisbintroubadour.com Other recent national performances on PBS include the Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and Tavis Smiley. A frequent guest on NPR's All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion, Isbin has been featured on television throughout the world, including CBS Sunday Morning, Showtime's The L Word, and as soloist on the GRAMMY-nominated soundtrack of Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed. She performed at Ground Zero for the first internationally televised 9/11 memorial, in concert at the White House by invitation of President Obama, and as the only classical artist in the 2010 GRAMMY Awards. She has been profiled in periodicals from People to Elle, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as appearing on the covers of over 50 magazines.

Isbin's catalogue of over 35 albums from Baroque, Spanish/Latin and 20th Century to crossover and jazz-fusion, has sold nearly a million copies and reflects her remarkable versatility. Her two recent recordings were named Best of 2020 and feature world premieres composed for her: Affinity showcasing Chris Brubeck's dazzling guitar concerto, along with works by Leo Brouwer, Tan Dun, Antonio Lauro and Richard Danielpour; and Strings for Peace with India's legendary Amjad Ali Khan in a program of ragas for guitar, sarod and tabla. Her 2019 Souvenirs of Spain & Italy with the Pacifica Quartet showcases beautiful and rarely heard guitar quintets from the Baroque to mid-20th century, including works by Vivaldi, Boccherini and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and debuted at #1 on Amazon and #2 on Billboard; her Alma Española with opera star Isabel Leonard, the first Spanish art song album with guitar of its kind in 40 years, was honored with a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year. She appears as a guest artist on bluegrass star Alison Brown's album On Banjo to be released in 2023.

Other recent #1 bestselling titles include Sharon Isbin: 5 Classic Albums and Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions with rock and jazz guests Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Heart's Nancy Wilson, Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo. Her GRAMMY-winning Journey to the New World with guests Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor spent 63 consecutive weeks on top Billboard charts. Her Dreams of a World soared onto top classical Billboard charts, edging out The Three Tenors, and earned her a GRAMMY for Best Instrumental Soloist, making her the first classical guitarist to receive a GRAMMY in 28 years. Her world premiere recording of concerti written for her by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun received a GRAMMY and Germany's prestigious Echo Klassik Award. She received a Latin GRAMMY nomination and GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Music Artist (alongside Melissa Etheridge) for her Billboard Top 10 Classical disc with the New York Philharmonic of Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez/Ponce/Villa-Lobos concertos, the Philharmonic's only recording with guitar, which followed their Lincoln Center performances with Isbin as their first guitar soloist in 26 years. Other bestselling titles include Baroque Favorites for Guitar with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and her GRAMMY-nominated Journey to the Amazon with Brazilian percussionist Thiago de Mello and saxophonist Paul Winter. Her recordings have received many other honors, including Recording of the Year in Gramophone and CD Review, Recording of the Month in Stereo Review, and Album of the Year in Guitar Player.

Other recordings include J.S.Bach Complete Lute Suites, Aaron Jay Kernis' Double Concerto with violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Wayfaring Stranger with mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, and concerti by Joaquin Rodrigo which the composer praised as "magnificent". She is also featured on the GRAMMY Foundation's Smart Symphonies distributed to over five million families.

Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with some of the finest new works of our time, and has premiered over 80 works written for her by world-renowned composers, including more concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamber works. Works for her by John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner and Lukas Foss are featured on her American Landscapes, the first-ever recording of American guitar concerti. (In November 1995, it was launched in the space shuttle Atlantis and presented to Russian cosmonauts during a rendezvous with Mir.) She premiered Concert de Gaudí by Christopher Rouse with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by the U.S. premiere with the Dallas Symphony. Among many other composers who have written for her are Joan Tower, David Diamond, Aaron Jay Kernis, Leo Brouwer, Howard Shore, Ned Rorem and Ami Maayani, with highlights including John Duarte's Joan Baez Suite, and a duo by rock guitarist Steve Vai which they performed in Paris' Théâtre du Châtelet. Recent premieres of works written for her include Of Love and Longing by Richard Danielpour co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125th anniversary and by Chicago's Harris Theater; Affinity: Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck which honors his father Dave Brubeck; Song of a Dreaming Sparrow by Schwantner which she premieres with the Pacifica Quartet in New York City and on tour in November 2022; and the North American premiere of Tan Dun's Yi2 concerto in January 2023.

Highlights include tours with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Austria's Tonkünstler Orchestra and Belgium's Philharmonique de Liege, a week of performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Filarmonica Toscanini in Milan, MIDEM Classical Awards in Cannes, a 21-city Guitar Passions tour with jazz greats Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, and most recently performances with the Detroit, National and Montreal Symphonies, and sold-out recitals in the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and Carnegie Hall including a collaboration with Sting. Her latest partnership, NStrings for Peace, with sarod master Amjad Ali Khan in an extraordinary program of ragas for guitar and sarod, is an eloquent and impassioned call for harmony-in music, religion, and culture throughout the world. Strings for Peace debuted on a multi-city tour of India and continues to appear throughout North America.

Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was seventeen, and appears as soloist with orchestras throughout the world, including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Montreal, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey, Louisville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Buffalo and Utah Symphonies; the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France; and BBC Scottish, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Belgrade, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Tokyo Symphonies; and chamber orchestras including Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Scottish and Lausanne. Her festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Ravinia, Grant Park, Caramoor, Chautauqua, Interlochen, Santa Fe, Mexico City, Bermuda, São Paulo, Hong Kong, Montreux, Strasbourg, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Ravenna, Prague and Budapest festivals.

As a chamber musician, Isbin has performed with the Emerson String Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, soprano Jessica Rivera, a Guitar Summit tour with jazz greats Herb Ellis, Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges, trio recordings with Larry Coryell and Laurindo Almeida, and duo recordings with Carlos Barbosa-Lima. She collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and has shared the stage with luminaries from Aretha Franklin to Muhammad Ali.

Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age nine in Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and for ten years with noted Bach scholar and keyboardist Rosalyn Tureck with whom she collaborated on landmark editions/recordings of the Bach lute suites for guitar (Warner Classics/G. Schirmer). She received a B.A. cum laude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. She authored the Classical Guitar Answer Book, and is Director of guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School (which she created in l989 becoming the first and only guitar instructor in the institution's 100-year history). Her students from over 20 countries are among the world's leading performers, and include four 1st Prize winners of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition.

Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17 and donates her time to perform benefits for the David Lynch Foundation, along with Katy Perry, Sting, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, to bring TM to at-risk communities. In her spare time, she enjoys trekking in the jungles of Latin America, cross-country skiing, snorkeling and mountain hiking. Please visit her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

With a career spanning nearly three decades, the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet has achieved international recognition as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. The Quartet is known for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often-daring repertory choices. Named faculty string quartet-in-residence at the Indian University Jacobs School of Music in 2012, the Quartet was previously quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and most recently received its second Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for Contemporary Voices (2020), featuring the works of three Pulitzer Prize-winning women. The Quartet also leads the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet quickly won chamber music's top competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In 2002 the ensemble was honored with Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award and the appointment to Lincoln Center's The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and in 2006 was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. With its powerful energy and captivating, cohesive sound, the Pacifica has established itself as the embodiment of the senior American quartet sound.

The Pacifica Quartet has proven itself the preeminent interpreter of string quartet cycles, harnessing the group's singular focus and incredible stamina to portray each composer's evolution, often over the course of just a few days. Having given highly acclaimed performances of the complete Carter cycle in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Houston; the Mendelssohn cycle in Napa, Australia, New York, and Pittsburgh; and the Beethoven cycle in New York, Denver, St. Paul, Chicago, Napa, and Tokyo (in an unprecedented presentation of five concerts in three days at Suntory Hall), the Quartet presented the monumental Shostakovich cycle in Chicago, New York, Montreal and at London's Wigmore Hall. The Quartet has been widely praised for these cycles, with critics calling the concerts "brilliant," "astonishing," "gripping," and "breathtaking."

Recent season highlights include defining performances at Shriver Hall with Marc-André Hamelin and for the Montreal International String Quartet Academy, as well as appearances on North America's major chamber-music series, including concerts in Charlottesville, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Kansas City, and Vancouver.

An ardent advocate of contemporary music, the Pacifica Quartet commissions and performs many new works including those by Keeril Makan, Julia Wolfe, and Shulamit Ran, the latter in partnership with the Music Accord consortium, London's Wigmore Hall, and Tokyo's Suntory Hall. The work - entitled Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory - had its New York debut as part of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center series.

In 2008 the Quartet released its Grammy Award-winning recording of Carter's quartets Nos. 1 and 5 on the Naxos label; the 2009 release of quartets Nos. 2, 3, and 4 completed the two-CD set. Cedille Records released the group's four-CD recording of the entire Shostakovich cycle, paired with other contemporary Soviet works, to rave reviews: "The playing is nothing short of phenomenal." (Daily Telegraph, London) Other recent recording projects include Leo Ornstein's rarely-heard piano quintet with Marc-André Hamelin with an accompanying tour, the Brahms piano quintet with the legendary pianist Menahem Pressler, and the Brahms and Mozart clarinet quintets with the New York Philharmonic's principal clarinetist, Anthony McGill.

The members of the Pacifica Quartet live in Bloomington, IN, where they serve as quartet-in-residence and full-time faculty members at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Prior to their appointment, the Quartet was on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana from 2003 to 2012, and also served as resident performing artist at the University of Chicago for seventeen years.

2022/23 TISCH MUSIC SEASON

In this first season curated by 92NY's new Vice President of Tisch Music Amy Lam, the season will feature 39 events, more than 20 92NY debuts, 31 premieres, and four 92NY commissions. The 22/23 season includes premieres of Joseph Schwantner's guitar quintet Song of a Dreaming Sparrow, a song cycle by Anthony Cheung, and works by Laurie Anderson, Timo Andres, Marcos Balter, Christopher Cerrone, Nicholas DiBerardino, Reena Esmail, inti figgis-vizueta, John Glover, Ted Hearne, Fred Hersch, Stephen Hough, Jimmy López, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Mary Prescott, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Darian Donovan Thomas, Scott Wollschleger, Pamela Z, and more.

Select Highlights:

This season marks the first time 92NY is presenting a fully integrated concert season across genres, including performances by Kate Baldwin, Joshua Bell, Regina Carter, Angela Hewitt, Larisa Martinez, Branford Marsalis,Kelli O'Hara, Eric Owens, Pepe Romero, Caroline Shaw, Sir András Schiff, Daniil Trifonov, and Jessica Vosk.

The World Premiere of a 92NY-commissioned piece from composer Jimmy López, performed by J'Nai Bridges and theCatalyst Quartet.

The New York premiere of Difficult Grace by cellist Seth Parker Woods and dancer Roderick George, presented in collaboration with Harkness Dance Center.

An in-depth two-day Julius Eastman retrospective featuring LA-based music collective Wild Up in three concerts, as well as exhibits, and panel discussions with Eastman friends and scholars examining the life of one of the 20th century's most iconoclastic voices.

The Bach Collegium Japan, conducted by Masaaki Suzuki with baritone Roderick Williams

92NY's signature series exploring the American songbook, Lyrics and Lyricists, continues to explore the best of Broadway, while also highlighting significant contributions to American culture by singer-songwriters across a variety of musical genres such as Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, the Mamas and the Papas, and more.

Two co-presentations in a collaboration with the World Music Institute featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Songs for Babyn Yar, originally produced by UK's Dash Arts.

Two performances as part of an ongoing partnerships with The Curtis Institute of Music.

Jazz, which has been a staple of 92NY's Tisch season since Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus took to the stage in 1955, will be performed by world-class musicians like Branford Marsalis, Fred Hersch, and Regina Carter not just within the renowned Jazz in July series, but throughout the year.

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY's programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit www.92NY.org.