A Viennese Birthday Concert -- online!

MOZART, Gran Sestetto Concertante K.364

Arnold SCHOENBERG, Verklaerte Nacht, Op.4

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Ryan Jacobsen and Caitlin Stokes, violins

Alexandra Simpson and Sarah Lee, violas

Jonathan Lee and Isaac Pastor-Chermak, cellos

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On Saturday, July 25, join cellist Isaac Pastor-Chermak and friends for a double celebration -- the return of in-person concerts, and Isaac celebrating a “milestone” birthday! Following indoor and outdoor concerts earlier that weekend, Isaac and friends will take to the internet for an online broadcast of this program, professionally recorded by David Bowles of Swineshead Productions.

As always, simply buy a ticket to the concert, and you’ll receive a link to the broadcast the night before the event. The concert will be available on-demand for a week after the broadcast.

Isaac’s 2021 birthday program places string sextets from the two “greatest generations” of Viennese composers in dialogue on the same program.

Representing the “First Viennese School” is Mozart’s Gran Sestetto Concertante of 1779, his own arrangement of the Sinfonia Concertante K.364 for six soloists. Here, Mozart has taken one of his most beloved pieces of any genre, and distilled it into a high-octane showpiece for six virtuoso players. If you know the Sinfonia Concertante, you’ll enjoy hearing it in a new light; if not, you’ll love this piece anyway!

120 years later, composers of the “Second Viennese School” systematically deconstructed the familiar system of harmony in classical music, paving the way for atonal and serial music and the 20th-century classics we know and love. Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht, from 1899, is the first significant work of the Second Viennese School. Before your eyes and ears, you’ll hear classical harmony being stretched to (and past!) its breaking point in this absolutely life-changing 30-minute work.

For this double celebration, Isaac has brought in some of his favorite colleagues from around the Bay Area and beyond.

Violinist Caitlin Stokes enjoys a varied career of solo, chamber music, and orchestral performance while also maintaining an active interest in arts administration and advocacy. In the spring of 2020, she was selected as a teaching artist for the inaugural Colorado Lullaby Project. In 2018 Caitlin performed Cicero’s Dream by Daniel Kellogg with Boulder high schools as part of the Midori Residency in Boulder. Her passion for community engagement has also led her to participate in panel discussions and deliver public pre-concert lectures. Caitlin has concertized internationally as a chamber musician in both Brazil and Italy. She has also attended numerous summer festivals and worked with artists such as Martin Beaver, Giora Schmidt, James Buswell, Mikhail Kopelman, Ani Schnarch, and Brian Lewis. As an orchestral musician she has performed under the batons of Marin Alsop, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Rossen Milanov. Caitlin received her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Violin Performance at CU Boulder and a Graduate Certificate in Arts Administration. She currently holds a staff position on the College of Music Advancement Team and aspires to combine her artistic abilities with her experience in administration into a unique, multi-faceted career path.

An accomplished violinist, conductor, and teacher, Ryan Jacobsen’s passion for music has taken him across the country. As a violinist, he has won several prestigious competitions, including the MusicFest Northwest Young Artist competition as well as the Whitman Symphony Concerto and Aria competition. Most recently, Ryan was invited to perform alongside the University of Colorado, Boulder faculty on the Faculty Tuesday series. In the summer of 2019 he concertized internationally as part of the graduate string quartet in residence at the Siena International Music Festival. Ryan is an active orchestral musician and plays with various orchestras throughout the Front Range in Colorado as well as several festival orchestras around the northwest. Ryan earned his Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters of Music at the University of Colorado, Boulder with a Teaching Assistantship. In his spare time, he enjoys attending concerts, backpacking through the canyons of Utah, and reading.

Violist Sarah Lee is a member of the Monterey Symphony and Santa Cruz Symphony. She has also performed with numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles and performed solo works across the U.S. and internationally. Besides performing with classical musicians, Sarah has performed with various pop artists such as Michael Bublé, Childish Gambino, Sarah Brightman, Lights, and actor Leonard Nimoy. Sarah is a passionate and dedicated educator. She is Suzuki certified and is faculty at Crowden Music Center, where she teaches group classes as well as individual lessons. Sarah also teaches at Harmony Project, an El Sistema Based program that provides high quality music education to underserved communities, and runs a private studio in San Francisco. She is also excited to have been recently appointed as Applied Music Faculty for violin and viola at West Valley College. She received her Bachelors of Music in Viola Performance at Indiana University and Masters of Music at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Violist Alexandra Simpson has traveled the world as a performer and educator: from Bucaramanga, Colombia to Cornwall, England. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently receiving an Artist Certificate in Chamber Music from San Francisco Conservatory of Music through the generosity of the Peter F. Ostwald Scholarship, and teaches in the underserved city of Richmond at East Bay Center for Performing Arts. Alexandra has earned her Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory, with the Donald Green and Lotta Crabtree Scholarships, and both a Master of Music and Master of Musical Arts from Yale School of Music. While at Yale, Alexandra taught New Haven schoolchildren through Yale Music in Schools initiative and developed a passion for teaching in underserved communities. Alexandra performs regularly in the Bay Area, playing at SFCM, Piedmont Center for the Arts, Strings in Emeryville, and with Benicia Chamber Players, In August of 2019, she accompanied Kygo at the closing act of Outside Lands.

Cellist Jonathan Lee, a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the Principal Cellist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and performs regularly with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Jonathan has performed in many of the major concert halls of the world including the Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, Mozarteum, and Haydn Hall. An avid chamber musician, he has appeared on numerous concert series and music festivals including the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. He is also the Artistic Director of the Immaculata Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati, Ohio. Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and an MBA from UC. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at CCM under Ilya Finkelshteyn.

Cellist Isaac Pastor-Chermak enjoys a diverse and varied career in symphony and opera orchestras, chamber music, and solo and recording engagements, as well as engaging deeply with his community as a conductor, educator, and nonprofit board member. He is Principal Cellist of Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony; Associate Principal Cellist of Stockton Symphony; Assistant Principal Cellist of Opera San Jose and Fresno Philharmonic; and a member of Berkeley Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Monterey Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, and Dayton Philharmonic. He spends his summers at the Eisenstadt Classical Music Festival in Austria and the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, and in the world of chamber music, performs with Black Cedar Trio and sonata collaborators Alison Lee and Miles Graber. Pastor-Chermak sits on the Board of Directors of East Bay Music Foundation and Calliope – East Bay Music and Arts. isaacpastorchermak.com