CD Release Concert - Elizabeth Chang & Steven Beck

Performance of works by Reger, Stravinsky, and Bartók
Suggested donation: $30
Tickets available in advance or at the door

St. John's in the Village
218 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10014

About the Artists
Elizabeth Chang, violinist, enjoys a multi-faceted career as performer, teacher, and arts administrator. Her performing career has taken her to more than twenty countries and her chamber music appearances have included collaborations with many of today's leading artists. She is currently professor of violin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a member of the violin and viola faculties of the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School, and Artistic Director of Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival.

Committed to the organic intersection of performance, teaching, and artistic leadership, Ms. Chang has, over the course of her career, launched and led various performance and teaching projects. She is Artistic Director and co-founder of the Lighthouse Chamber Players (Cape Cod) as well as co-founder and co-organizer of the Five College New Music Festival, the UMass Amherst Bach Festival and Symposium, Musique de Chambre en Val Lamartinien (Burgundy, France), and Long River Concerts (Roxbury, CT). She also co-founded the NYU Intensive Quartet Workshop in the summer of 2002 and founded and directed The School for Strings Intensive Chamber Music Workshop from 2003-2007. As part of the Five College New Music Festival, she created the Violin Duo Project with the goal of engaging students in the performance of newly commissioned music. More than 50 short duos with pedagogical intent have been composed for and premiered by students, adding substantially to the literature for this genre. Ms. Chang has also worked closely herself with several composers on new works for violin and including violin, most notably and extensively with Salvatore Macchia, Eric Sawyer, and Lewis Spratlan. She has hosted many pedagogy events at UMass as well as the Zoom speaker series “Music, Community Engagement, and Social Action.”

Prior to her appointment to UMass, Ms. Chang toured and recorded extensively with Orchestra of St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and performed with a number of new music groups based in New York City. She was formerly an Artist Faculty member of New York University and of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University; for many years she also served as head of chamber music and as violin faculty member at The School for Strings and as a member of the faculty of the Harlem School of the Arts.

In 2021, Ms. Chang released the critically acclaimed CD “Transformations: Works by Kirchner, Sessions, and Schoenberg” with Albany Records, with pianist Steven Beck. In May 2024, Bridge Records will release the CD “Sonatas and Myths: Works by Szymanowski, Dohnanyi, and Bartok,” also with Steven Beck.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Chang is a graduate of Harvard University and was the recipient of the Presidential Scholar in the Arts Award and the Beebe Fellowship for Study Abroad awarded by New England Conservatory. She was a student of Louise Behrend, Joseph Fuchs, Roman Totenberg, Max Rostal, Leon Kirchner and Luise Vosgerchian.

Pianist Steven Beck continues to gather acclaim for his performances and recordings. Recent career highlights include performances of Beethoven’s variations and bagatelles at Bargemusic, where he first performed the Beethoven sonata cycle.

Steven Beck is an experienced performer of new music, having worked with Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Wuorinen, George Crumb, George Perle, and Fred Lerdahl, and performed with ensembles such as Speculum Musicae and the New York New Music Ensemble. He is a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Knights, and the Talea Ensemble. He is also a member of Quattro Mani, a piano duo specializing in contemporary music. As an orchestral musician he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Orpheus, the Mariinsky Orchestra and many others.

Mr. Beck’s discography includes Peter Lieberson’s third piano concerto (for Bridge Records) and a recording of Elliott Carter’s “Double Concerto” on Albany Records. He is a Steinway Artist.