Cassatt String Quartet Welcomes Violist Rosemary Nelis And Cellist Gwen Krosnick To The Ensemble

First violinist Muneko Otani and second violinist Jennifer Leshnower have welcomed the arrival of violist Rosemary Nelis and cellist Gwen Krosnick to The Cassatt String Quartet. For the first time with this new formation, the ensemble and renowned pianist Ursula Oppens will premiere Tania León's Ethos Piano Quintet, written especially for Ms. Oppens and the quartet. The performance is scheduled to take place on Friday, April 15, 11:30 am (EDT) at CUNY's Elebash Hall as a part of a two-day symposium celebrating composer and professor Tania León's Pulitzer Prize win for Stride and recent retirement from Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

This is a free virtual event. Click here for more information and to register.

Violinist Muneko Otani is currently on the faculty of Columbia University, Artist Associate at Williams College, and assistant to Lewis Kaplan at the Mannes College of Music. She has also taught at the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg.

As the first violinist of the Cassatt String Quartet, she has appeared in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as well as in Europe and Asia. Major venues have included Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Bastille Opera House.

As a chamber musician, she has collaborated with Walter Trampler, Martin Lovett, Marc Johnson, Paul Katz, Kazuhide Isomura, Ursula Oppens, Masuko Ushioda, Colin Carr, and Lawrence Lesser.

Ms. Otani has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, the Tanglewood Music Center, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival; and at Yale University, as assistant to the Tokyo Quartet.

She has served as a panelist for the Juilliard Concerto Competition, the 2019 Postacchini International Violin competition, the Barlow Prize for composition, and Chamber Music America's Residency Program.

Ms. Otani received a Bachelor of Music degree in both Performance and Education from the Toho Academy of Music in Japan, where she studied with Toshiya Eto. She continued her training at the New England Conservatory, where her principal teachers were Masuko Ushioda and Louis Krasner.

Ms. Otani plays a 1770 J. B. Guadagnini of Parma violin.

Violinist Jennifer Leshnower, who joined the Cassatt String Quartet in 1994 as second violinist, has performed in North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. She is also the founding director of Cassatt in the Basin!, an educational chamber music residency established in 2005 in her hometown of Odessa, Texas.

A former member of the Thouvenel String Quartet, Ms. Leshnower has concertized with members of the Cleveland, Tokyo, Vermeer, Orion and Amadeus Quartets, pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Ursula Oppens and Lydia Artymiw, flutist Ransom Wilson and cellist Colin Carr among others. She has championed new music, having collaborated with leading 21st-century composers including John Corigliano, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, Augusta Read Thomas, Yehudi Wyner and Peter Schikele.

Ms. Leshnower coaches chamber music worldwide including masterclasses in Italy's Orvieto Musica, Mexico's San Miguel Chamber Music Festival, Ireland's Trinity College and Royal Irish Academy of Music, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Syracuse University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2006, she had the opportunity to perform at the Library of Congress on the Library's "Ward" Stradivari (1700).

Leshnower trained at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University with Sergiu Luca, and the Peabody Conservatory with Sylvia Rosenberg. She participated in the Meadowmount and Aspen Music Festivals, the National Repertory Orchestra having coached with members of the Guarneri, Tokyo and Juilliard Quartets.

Ms. Leshnower performs on a rare 1655 Jacobus Stainer violin.

Violist Rosemary Nelis has performed as chamber musician and soloist throughout the United States and Europe, and joined the Cassatt String Quartet in 2022. Highlights of Ms. Nelis's recent and current seasons include performances of the complete middle and late Beethoven string quartets; solo recitals of works by Kenji Bunch, Elliott Carter, and Dorothy Rudd Moore; and several important premieres, including the North American premiere of Jörg Widmann's String Quartet No. 7, Study on Beethoven II, and the world premiere of Roger Tapping's string quartet, Reverberations.

Nelis has worked with composers Missy Mazzoli, David Lang, Christine Southworth, Marcelo Zarvos, Jefferson Friedman, Dan Visconti, Andy Akiho, Kenji Bunch, Don Byron, James MacMillan, Brett Dean, Yu-Hui Chang, Jörg Widmann, and Joan Tower. She studied composition both with Ms. Tower and John Halle. As a baroque violist, she has appeared with The Sebastians, Baroquelyn, and with Juilliard415, with whom she performed on a Scandinavian tour in 2019.

Ms. Nelis received both Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Bard College and Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Steven Tenenbom and majored in Chinese Language and Literature. Ms. Nelis was the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship during her Masters studies at The Juilliard School, where she worked with Roger Tapping and Misha Amory. She also spent time at the University of Glasgow, Qingdao University, and Yale School of Music, working with violists Duncan Ferguson and Ettore Causa. Nelis has spent summers performing chamber music at Yellow Barn, Bard Music Festival and Kneisel Hall.

A devoted teacher, Ms. Nelis serves on the faculty of Kinhaven Music School, and works privately as a mentor to young violists and chamber music groups.

Cellist Gwen Krosnick, who joined the Cassatt Quartet in 2022, has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as recitalist and chamber musician.

Krosnick's recent projects have included the Boston Beethoven Cycle, which she curated with her violinist colleague Ari Isaacman-Beck at Pucker Gallery. A chronological survey of the complete Beethoven string quartets, this series interspersed those pieces with contemporary solo and quartet works. She has also given concerts and premieres of works by Lei Liang, Jeffrey Mumford, Richard Wernick, Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran, Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Roger Sessions, Donald Martino, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Krosnick was the founding cellist of Trio Cleonice, with whom she performed from 2008 to 2016 across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including in such venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Slovak Philharmonic in Bratislava, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Jordan Hall in Boston.

Gwen Krosnick is a graduate of the double-degree program at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian Language and Literature while studying with Darrett Adkins. She received a Master of Music degree with Honors from New England Conservatory, where she worked with Natasha Brofsky, Vivian Weilerstein, Roger Tapping, and Donald Weilerstein.

Krosnick has taught on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Vivace Cello Festival, New England Conservatory Preparatory School, the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, and Junior Greenwood. Krosnick now teaches at Kneisel Hall, where she has served as Artist-Faculty since 2019.

Hailed for their "mighty rapport and relentless commitment" (Jay Harvey Upstage, 2021), 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; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing Central Conservatory. At the Library of Congress, the Cassatts performed on the Library's matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments.

The Cassatt's upcoming projects include premiere performances and recordings of works by Daniel S. Godfrey, Dylan Schneider, Gerald Cohen, and Shirish Korde; collaborations with Ursula Oppens, Eliot Fisk, Oskar Espina Ruíz, Colin Williams, and Narek Arutyunian; their annual residencies in Texas and Maine; hometown concerts in the New York City area; and appearances at Music Mountain, Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Jordan Hall.

Alex Ross has named the Cassatt Quartet's work three times in his "10 Best Classical Recordings" roundup in The New Yorker Magazine. The group's prolific discography of over forty recordings includes new quartets by Steven Stucky, Daniel S. Godfrey, Sebastian Currier, and Samuel Adler. They have recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels.

The quartet has been featured on NPR's "Performance Today," WGBH Boston, WQXR and WNYC of New York, Canada's CBC Radio, and Radio France. They have appeared in numerous virtual concert series and performances across online platforms.

Formed in 1985 with the encouragement of the Juilliard Quartet, the Cassatt String Quartet served as the inaugural participants in Juilliard's Graduate String Quartet Residency. They have received major awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the USArtists International, Chamber Music America, CMA/ASCAP, Banff International String Quartet Competition, Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Association, 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.

The CSQ has played nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. The New York Times praised their "bold and probing account" of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 (Anthony Tommasini, 2015). Concerto Net wrote: "Wherever one encounters the Cassatt Quartet...one is astonished both at their prowess and their unfailing inspiration" (2018). SoundWordSight praised their "wonderful performance, with a beautifully integrated sound" (Jeffrey James, 2017); and Jay Harvey said their "performance's rapturous reception by the large audience was both predictable and well-deserved" (Jay Harvey Upstage, 2021).

The Cassatt Quartet is deeply committed to nurturing young musicians, and has given classes for composers and performers at the American Academy in Rome; the Toho School in Tokyo; the Bowdoin International Music Festival; Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Syracuse Universities; and the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1995, the CSQ has been in residence at the Seal Bay Festival of Contemporary American Chamber Music in Maine; and, since 2005, at Cassatt in the Basin!, an annual educational residency in Odessa, Texas.

The Cassatt Quartet is noted for its brilliance in both contemporary and traditional repertoire, and has collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland and Vermeer Quartets; pianists Ursula Oppens and Marc-André Hamelin; clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, and didgeridoo player Simon 7; the Trisha Brown Dance Company; and composers Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, John Corigliano, Tania León, Shulamit Ran, and Augusta Read Thomas.

Named for the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet consists of violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower; violist Rosemary Nelis; and cellist Gwen Krosnick.

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