Piedmont Piano Company is pleased to present
Ensemble 1828
All-Schubert Recital
Ensemble 1828 — violinist Nicole Oswald, cellist Isaac Pastor-Chermak, and pianist Alison Lee — makes their debut with an eight-concert tour throughout Northern California in Summer 2019. Honoring Schubert’s last and most productive year with their name, Ensemble 1828 will present an all-Schubert program, highlighting two pieces composed in their namesake year and featuring varied groupings of violin, cello and piano. Come for the timeless solo piano impromptus, stay for the intimate duos for cello and piano and violin and piano, and come back after intermission for the epic, symphonic Piano Trio No.2.
$20 General Admission
Nicole Oswald recently received an Artist Diploma from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, studying under renowned concert violinist and pedagogue Charles Castleman as a graduate teaching assistant and Henry Mancini Institute fellow. Prior to attending Frost, Nicole studied violin at the Utrechts Conservatory, Netherlands and the Eastman School of Music. Nicole began her studies of music in her hometown of Boise, Idaho. She has accumulated many honors in the Northwest including; 1st prize at the Coeur d'Alene National Young Artists Competition 2012 and 3rd prize at the national level of the Music Teacher's National Association: Senior String Division competition held in NYC, 2012. Her string quartet also received 1st prize in the Boise Chamber Music Series: String Quartet Competition in 2012 and 2013. Alongside performing within numerous symphony orchestras, Nicole has performed contemporary music in many ensembles including, Ossia New Music, the Empire Film Music Ensemble, and the Slee Sinfonietta (University of Buffalo, NY). Nicole has been a guest artist at the Castleman Quartet Program and has studied chamber music with members of the; Pacifica, Fine Arts, Ying, Dover, Cavani, Concord, Juilliard, Bergonzi and Chilingirian String Quartets. She has appeared in solo master classes with; Rachel Barton Pine, Christian Tetzlaff, Mimi Zweig, Giora Schmidt, Csaba Erdélyi, Irvine Arditti, and Vadim Repin. While in Miami, Nicole was a chamber music coach for Miami Youth for Chamber Music, appeared as a guest performer with the Bergonzi String Quartet and played in the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra. In fall of 2018, Nicole will continue her studies as the teaching assistant of Andres Cardenes at Carnegie Mellon University.
A native of Fremont, California, Alison Lee is a pianist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the first prize winner of several competitions such as Thursday Musical’s Scholarship Competition, the Dorothy Van Waynen Piano Competition and the Pacific Musical Society Competition. She was awarded second prize in the 2016 Midwest International Piano Competition, where she performed Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with conductor Jason Weinberger and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony. Most recently, Alison was featured as a soloist with the Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra after winning their 2019 National Young Artists Competition.
In addition to her enthusiasm for the solo piano repertoire, Alison is passionate about playing chamber music. Her creative output includes frequent collaborations with her sister, pianist Katherine Lee, as well as with cellist Isaac Pastor-Chermak, with whom she has presented recitals featuring the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano. Other collaborative performances include appearances with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and violinist Charles Castleman.
Over the years, Alison has participated in numerous summer festivals: the Aspen Music Festival, The Banff Centre's Piano Master Class, Mänttä International Piano Masterclasses, Pianofest in the Hamptons, Seattle Piano Institute, and the Castleman Quartet Program. Through these festivals and master classes, she has worked with renowned pianists including Menahem Pressler, Angela Hewitt, Jerome Lowenthal, Matti Raekallio, Julian Martin, Anton Nel, Jeremy Denk, and Jonathan Biss.
Alison holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from the University of Minnesota, where she was a student of Lydia Artymiw. Prior to studying in Minneapolis, Alison studied with Jon Kimura Parker at Rice University and Angela Cheng at Oberlin Conservatory.
Isaac Pastor-Chermak is Principal Cellist of Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony; Associate Principal Cellist of Stockton Symphony; Assistant Principal Cellist of Opera San Jose; and a member of Santa Barbara Symphony, Monterey Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, and Dayton Philharmonic. He spends his summers at the Eisenstadt Classical Music Festival in Austria, where he is Assistant Principal Cellist, and the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, as Co-Principal Cellist. Mr. Pastor-Chermak is the cellist of Black Cedar Trio, the only professional flute-cello-guitar ensemble in the country, and Ensemble 1828, a piano trio, as well as a frequent sonata collaborator with pianists Miles Graber and Alison Lee.
Mr. Pastor-Chermak is in constant demand as a solo artist, performing more than 100 concerts every season on an 1889 Riccardo Antoniazzi cello. Some highlights of his 2018-19 season include the world-premiere recording of Elliott Miles McKinley’s String Quartet No.8 in August 2018; a recital of Debussy, Bernstein and Frank Bridge with Mr. Graber in December 2018; and an all-Schubert program with Ensemble 1828 in June 2019. Mr. Pastor-Chermak fits these creative projects around weekly symphonic programs throughout the country, as well as his local teaching and conducting obligations.
As an educator, Mr. Pastor-Chermak teaches a small-but-mighty studio of private students, who receive consistent high marks in regional competitions and have been admitted to the top conservatories in the country. He is founder and principal conductor of Solano Youth Chamber Orchestra. Pastor-Chermak sits on the Board of Directors of the East Bay Music Foundation, which supports outreach and performance opportunities for young musicians, and Calliope, a brand new ‘arts hub’ based in Albany, CA. Mr. Pastor-Chermak holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. with honors) and San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M. with honors). He makes his home in the North Berkeley hills, but is at home wherever the music takes him. isaacpastorchermak.com