(postponed)
Piano Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano K. 498 “Kegelstatt"
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Andante
Menuetto
Rondeaux: Allegretto
Frank Renk, clarinet; Chi-Yuan Chen, viola; Tina Chong, piano
Introduction and Devil’s Dance from A Soldier’s Tale
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Sheryl Renk, clarinet; Nuvi Mehta, violin; Tina Cong, piano
Fantasy Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Op. 26
Robert Muczynski (1929-2010)
Allegro energico
Andante con espressione
Allegro deciso
Sheryl Renk, clarinet; Yao Zhao, cello; Tina Cong, piano
Intermission
Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, Op. 157b
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Ouverture
Divertissement
Jeu
Introduction et final
Frank Renk, clarinet; Nuvi Mehta, violin; Tina Cong piano
Concerto for Two Clarinets in E-Flat Major, Op. 35
František Krommer (1759-1831)
Allegro
Adagio
Rondo
Sheryl and Frank Renk, clarinets; Tina Cong piano
Sheryl Renk
Sheryl Renk is the Principal Clarinetist of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. She was the Principal Clarinetist of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra for ten years and was formerly a member of the San Francisco Symphony. During that time Sheryl joined the orchestra on several European, Asian and United States tours, and she performed on numerous San Francisco Symphony recordings.
Prior to the above positions, Ms. Renk performed extensively throughout the West Coast with various orchestras, opera orchestras and chamber music groups. She has appeared as soloist with several orchestras as well as a duo performance with renowned clarinet soloist Richard Stoltzman. She has also performed on many movie and commercial soundtracks, mostly recorded at the famed Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.
Ms. Renk completed her music education at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where she studied with Donald Carroll. She continued her clarinet studies with Rosario Mazzeo, formerly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Festivals attended include the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, the La Jolla SummerFest Chamber Music Festival, the Durango Music Festival in Colorado, the Cascade Music Festival in Oregon, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Bear Valley Music Festival. Ms. Renk is the Clarinet Professor at San Diego State University.
Frank Renk
Frank Renk is clarinetist and bass clarinetist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. He is also the principal clarinetist of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. Frank was formerly the principal clarinetist of the Sacramento Philharmonic and the California Symphony. Frank has also performed on many movie and commercial soundtracks, mostly at the famed Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.
Mr. Renk continues to perform occasionally with the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. He also performs numerous chamber music concerts throughout the West Coast and has appeared as soloist on occasion.
Music Festivals that Mr. Renk has attended include the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the La Jolla SummerFest chamber music festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the “Music from Bear Valley” Music Festival and the Cascade Music Festival of Oregon.
Frank completed his music education at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University where he studied with Donald Carroll. He continued studying the clarinet with Rosario Mazzeo, formerly of the Boston Symphony.
Mr. Renk also teaches a large number of students in the San Diego area. In November 2006 Frank Renk was profiled in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Nuvi Mehta
Nuvi Mehta has a gift for capturing the mind and heart of every person in his audience. The L.A. Times likens him to a young Gary Cooper, saying, “His old-fashioned Hollywood charisma extends to an eloquent and theatrical way of speaking that is almost entirely lost today.”Combining drama and music education in his concerts, he is creating a new generation of classical music lovers.
Appointed Director of Special Projects for the San Diego Symphony in 2006, Mehta launched the Symphony’s Classical EdgeSeries - multi-media concerts, introducing new patrons to ‘the stories behind the notes’ – the series developing a large dedicated following. Widely considered one of the finest speakers on classical music, Mehta’s on stage demonstrations and “What’s the Score?” talks, draw up to 1000 patrons a night.
Conducting appearances have taken Mehta across the United States, to Europe and to Mexico. He has been a guest of the San Diego Symphony, the New World Symphony the Knoxville Symphony, the Fine Arts Chamber Orchestra of Mexico City, and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared as violin soloist with the San Diego Symphony, the Marquette Symphony, the Ann Arbor Symphony, the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the American Youth Symphony, and as concertmaster and soloist with the New World Symphony.
Since 2004, as Artistic Director of the Ventura Music Festival Association, Mehta has expanded the range of festival concerts adding community outreach, On Stage Talks and Up Close events with artists. The Ventura Music Festival today presents the most illustrious artists in the world of Classical music, Jazz and Crossover.
Mehta is a graduate of Indiana University and The Juilliard School. He studied violin with Josef Gingold, Szymon Goldberg, David Cerone, and in masterclasses with Nathan Milstein. Conducting teachers include Otto Werner Mueller, and Charles Bruck and in masterclasses with Leonard Bermnstein.
He lives in Jamul, California.
Tina Chong
Hailed as a “paradigm of lyricism” by the Charleston Gazette, pianist Tina Chong has established herself as an up and coming young artist in North America. After her orchestral debut at the age of nine, Tina has appeared as a guest soloist numerous times with orchestras throughout the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, including the Calgary Philharmonic, the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, and the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Tina’s recital career has brought her to such venues as the Sala Chopin in Mexico City, the Sheldon Center in St. Louis, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the National Arts Centre and Rideau Hall in Ottawa. She’s been recently featured in the Harbor Music Festival, Lachine Festival, Young Musicians Forum, and the WFMT Series of Chicago. Her performances have been described as “…mature and yet fresh, imbued with tradition and yet inhabited by individuality, the marks of an artist.” (Peter Jacobi, The Herald Times)
Tina captured the “Best Canadian Prize” at the 2011 Montreal International Musical Competition. Winner of an impressive number of awards, she is the grand prizewinner of the 2010 CMC International Stepping Stone Competition in Canada and second prizewinner of the 2009 Jacques Klein Piano Competition in Brazil. Other top placements include the Aspen Music Festival concerto competition and the Seneca Chamber Orchestra Competition.
A native of Banff, Canada, Tina began her musical studies at the age of three. She is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where she studied under the guidance of Angela Cheng. Tina is now pursuing an Artist Diploma and Doctorate of Music degrees at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as a student of Arnaldo Cohen. She is a recipient of the Indiana University Chancellor’s Fellowship and is currently being supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Chi-Yuan Chen
Taiwanese violist Chi-Yuan Chen holds the Viola Principal chair of San Diego Symphony Orchestra and is a faculty member at San Diego State University. He was the winner of the 2004 International Paris Viola Competition, Ville d’Avary, the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and the recipient of the Henri Kohn Award at the Tanglewood Music Festival for his contributions to chamber music. Mr. Chen has established himself as one of the leading violists in his generation. In 1999 he made his American concerto debut at Boston’s Jordan Hall performing William Walton’s Viola Concerto.
Mr. Chen has performed with numerous ensembles, including the Boston Chamber Music Society, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra and the Gardner Museum Chamber Ensemble in Boston where he was the principal violist from 1999-2002. An advocate of chamber music, Mr. Chen has performed with internationally renowned artists such as Colin Carr, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Toshio Hosokawa, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Yo-Yo Ma, William Preucil, George Perle and Paula Robison, as well as members of the American, Arditti, Brentano, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Mendelssohn and Miami string quartets.
A founding member of the Great Wall String Quartet (resident ensemble of Beijing’s Great Wall International Summer Academy), Mr. Chen has performed regularly and toured extensively in Asian countries, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau and Taiwan. As the only string quartet invited by the United Nations, the Great Wall String Quartet participated in a documentary film for the 2009 World’s Heritage Festival, a DVD recording of which has been added to the UN’s library archive. The quartet recently (2012) released their debut album titled The Great Wall. In 2013 the album was awarded “Best Performance in Classical Music” at the 29th Golden Melody Award in Taiwan.
Mr. Chen began violin study at the age of six and made his public debut in Taiwan at age ten. The following year he switched to viola and shortly thereafter made his string quartet debut in Hong Kong at the City Cultural Center. As a concert violist, Mr. Chen toured internationally, performing at the White House in Washington, D.C., Suntory Hall in Tokyo, National Concert Hall in Taipei, City Hall in Hong Kong, Carnegie Hall in New York, Disney Hall and Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Victoria Hall in Geneva and the National Centre of Performing Arts in Beijing.
Yao Zhao
Hailed in New York Concert Review as “… a superb cellist with intense and sensuous sound” and described by the Los Angeles Times as “…being able to handle the most intricate musical works with unblinking ease and expressive zeal,” cellist Yao Zhao performs with a rare and captivating dynamism that has secured him a successful career as the tenured Principal Cello for San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and as a faculty member at San Diego State University. He is one of the founding members of the award-winning Great Wall String Quartet, and in 2013 he was honored as one of China’s Ten Extraordinary Cellists of the Generation.
Mr. Zhao made his first concert appearance at age five, and his solo debut in the Beijing Concert Hall at age nine. He garnered further attention in 1988 upon winning second prize at the First Chinese National Cello Competition, and he went on to win more than 13 competitions, awards and honors. His career has seen him performing in over 40 cities around the world, including a successful solo debut at the Weil Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall) in New York. Some of his many festival appearances include Ojai Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Mainly Mozart Music Festival, Idyllwild Arts Summer Festival, Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, Global Chinese Orchestra in China, the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra in Japan and Korea and the Qingdao International Music Festival. And, since 2018, Mr. Zhao was invited to serve as principal cellist for one of the longest running of all professional orchestra festivals, the Grand Teton Music Festival. Mr. Zhao’s many recordings – as both a soloist and an ensemble artist – are often featured on radio stations K-MOZART, KPBS, CNR.CN and KUSC.
The Great Wall String Quartet, with 1st violinist Wei Lu (Concertmaster of the Deutsches Symphonie in Berlin), 2nd violinist Qi Zhou (violinist of the Munich Philharmonic), violist Chi-Yuan Chen (Principal Viola of the San Diego Symphony) and Mr. Zhao on the cello, concluded their debut season to great acclaim in 2009; they released their first recording – Great Wall – in September of 2012. The Quartet won the Best Performance Award at the 2013 24th Golden Melody Award in Taiwan, and their second album – Tango – which was released in the summer of 2015, was awarded the Best String Quartet Album at the 11th HiFi Album Award in China. The Great Wall String Quartet was chosen as the only western music ensemble to represent the Great Wall of China in a documentary for UNESCO about six great historical sites in Beijing.
Mr. Zhao is also a dedicated teacher, giving master-classes at universities and conservatories in Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, Taiyuan, Wuhan, Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei and Jakarta and as well as serving on the faculty at San Diego State University. He has been named Honorary Advisor of the Macau Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Beijing in 1976, Yao Zhao began his studies on the cello and piano at age four under the instruction of his father, Xuelian Zhao, who is a distinguished cellist and teacher. He attended the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and later, in the U.S., attended Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California where he studied under renowned pedagogue, Professor Eleonore Schoenfeld.