The GVO Performs Rachmaninoff, Daugherty, and Shostakovich, 12/2

On Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 7:30pm, The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) performs Resistance, a thrilling concert of grand orchestral repertoire including Rachmaninoff's Vocalise featuring GVO concertmaster Andrew Pak, Michael Daugherty's Raise the Roof with principal timpanist Gerard Gordon in the athletic solo role, and Shostakovich's defiant Symphony No. 10 at Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church (152 West 66th St.). The concert is part of GVO's 2017-2018 season "On the Town," a celebration of its home borough of Manhattan led by Music Director Barbara Yahr.

About Andrew Pak, violin
Andrew Pak grew up in Orange County, California and started piano lessons with his mother at age 6. After watching a Jascha Heifetz video one year later, Pak decided to learn the violin, winning several regional and statewide competitions in both piano and violin. He made his concerto debut at age 13 performing Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto with the Concordia Orchestra at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in LA. Pak moved to NYC to attend Stuyvesant High School and Mannes Pre-College of Music, where he won both schools' concerto competitions on piano and was the concertmaster of each symphony. Pak graduated with a B.S. in Management Science and Minors in Economics and Music from MIT, and spent one year at the London School of Economics General Course. After 10 years at Goldman Sachs, Andrew has been working for 4 years at Mizuho Securities in Fixed-Income Sales covering central banks, asset managers, hedge funds, and other institutional investors.

Andrew maintains his pursuit of musical excellence outside Wall Street. Since 2014, he has been the co-concertmaster of the Greenwich Village Orchestra. Andrew has performed regularly with the Redeemer Presbyterian Church Music Ministry and the New York Piano Society on both piano and violin. In 2011, he played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Orfeo Music Festival Orchestra in Vipiteno, Italy. As a GVO Board Member, Andrew is focused on building music therapy and community outreach programs. Andrew thanks his piano teachers (Namyoung Pak, Judith Tanksley, Lucille Straub, Gena Raps, David Deveau) and violin teachers (Anne Thatcher, Barbara Krakauer, Roman Totenberg) for their lifelong encouragement and support. He lives in the Hudson River town of Piermont, NY with his wife Minna and daughter Naomie.

About Gerard Gordon, timpani
Recognized for his natural aptitude for percussion, Gerard Gordon is noted as being the first musician to win a position in the Inter-School Orchestra (ISO) Symphony without prior formal training. This achievement provided him with a scholarship and the recognition of several newspapers. He is currently the Principal timpanist/percussionist for the Greenwich Village Orchestra, the Queens College Symphony Orchestra and is member of the Riverside Orchestra.

Gordon's recent engagements include performing the Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra by Ney Rosauro with the Queens Philharmonic and performing with the chamber ensemble of the Astoria Symphony. As a member of the Greenwich Village Orchestra for over 20 years, Gordon has performed several concertos including Ney Rosauro's Marimba Concerto No. 1 and Phillip Glass' Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra with Jonathan Haas.

Gordon is an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division and is a member of the Metropolitan Chamber Music Society. His past teachers include Bill Trigg, Jeff Kraus and he is currently studying with Michael Lipsey of the Talujon Percussion Quartet. He is a Bachelor's of Music candidate at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. In 2004, Gordon appeared as a featured soloist performing the Rosauro Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra with the GVO. He is married to wife Karyn and they have two children, Gerard Jr. and Liam.

About the Greenwich Village Orchestra
The Greenwich Village Orchestra was founded in 1986 by a group of musicians from the New York Metropolitan area. The 70-member community orchestra is made up of accountants, actors, artists, attorneys, carpenters, editors, physicians, professors, photographers, computer programmers, retirees, scientists, students, and teachers. For more than thirty years, the Greenwich Village Orchestra has had a single purpose: to bring the best performances of great music to its dedicated audiences. The GVO is committed to making music at the highest possible level and enriching the lives of our players and our audience through emotionally charged, exhilarating performances.

The GVO regularly performs with internationally acclaimed soloists. In recent years, the orchestra has performed alongside soloists such as violinists Andrés Cárdenes, Itamar Zorman, and Hye-Jin Kim; cellists Edward Arron, Raman Ramakrishnan, David Heiss, and Brook Speltz; soprano Christine Goerke; mezzo-sopranos Jennifer Johnson Cano and Naomi O'Connell; baritone Jesse Blumberg; trumpet soloist Brandon Ridenour; and more.

About Barbara Yahr
Now in her sixteenth season with the GVO, Music Director Barbara Yahr continues to lead the orchestra to new levels of distinction. With blockbuster programming and internationally renowned guest artists, the GVO under Barbara's baton, has grown into an innovative, collaborative institution offering a full season of classical music to our local community.

A native of New York, Yahr's career has spanned from the United States to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her previous posts include Principal Guest Conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, Resident Staff Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Maestro Lorin Maazel and conductor of the Pittsburgh Youth Orchestra. She has appeared as a guest conductor with such orchestras as the Bayerische Rundfunk, Dusseldorf Symphoniker, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Frankfurt Radio, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, Janacek Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony, and the National Symphony in Washington D.C. She has also conducted the orchestra in Anchorage, Calgary, Chattanooga, Columbus, Detroit, Flint, Louisiana, New Mexico, Lubbock, Richmond as well as the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber, Rochester Philharmonic, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony and the Chautauqua Festival Symphony Orchestra. She has also appeared in Israel conducting in both Jerusalem and Elat and as an opera conductor, has led new productions in Frankfurt, Giessen, Tulsa, Cincinnati, Minnesota and at The Mannes School of Music in NYC. She has coached the actors on the set of the Amazon Series, Mozart in the Jungle, and last season, conducted the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Yahr is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Middlebury College where she studied piano and philosophy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Conducting from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Max Rudolf and an MM in Music Theory from the Manhattan School of Music. She was a student of Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock, Maine.

Yahr's commitment to finding new ways to reach a broader population with music ultimately led her into the field of music therapy. She is a Board Certified Music Therapist, with an MA in music therapy from NYU and post-graduate certification from the world-renowned Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy in New York City. Her pioneering, community music therapy project, Together in Music, brings orchestral music to the special needs community with uniquely interactive programs. Barbara is married to Alex Lerman and has two adult step-children, Abe and Dania, and a 15 year-old son, Ben.