ONLINE PERFORMANCE
Due to the continued uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, with the safety of the artists and audience members as its top priority, CAIC is strategizing to bring its 20 / 21 Season performances and educational events online.
This performance will be broadcast on December 4, 2020 on Facebook and on the CAIC website at 7pm. Following the premiere broadcast, the performance will be available for on-demand streaming through December 6, 2020, free of charge.
Due to the continued uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, with the safety of the artists and audience members as its top priority, CAIC is strategizing to bring its 20 / 21 Season performances and educational events online.
This performance will be broadcast on December 4, 2020 on Facebook and on the CAIC website at 7pm. Following the premiere broadcast, the performance will be available for on-demand streaming through December 6, 2020, free of charge.
ARTISTS |
Karim Sulayman, tenor
Yi-heng Yang, fortepiano |
PROGRAM |
Where Only Stars Can Hear Us
Lieder by Franz Schubert |
KARIM SULAYMAN,
|
Lebanese-American tenor KARIM SULAYMAN has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, consistently praised for his sensitive and intelligent musicianship, riveting stage presence, and beautiful voice. A 2019 GRAMMY® Award winner, he regularly performs on the world’s stages in orchestral concerts and opera, as well as in recital and chamber music, while forging a standout path in the music of the Italian Baroque.
A native of Chicago, Karim’s musical education began with violin studies at age 3. He spent years as a boy alto the Chicago Children’s Choir and was hand selected by Sir Georg Solti and Leonard Slatkin as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony. He graduated with highest honors from the Eastman School of Music where he worked in the Collegium Musicum under the tutelage of Paul O’Dette, and earned a Masters degree from Rice University. He later moved to Paris, France where he studied with renowned tenor/haute-contre, Howard Crook. He also studied improvisation at the Second City Training Center in Chicago. In the 2019/20 season he reprised his role for the encore performance of Bernstein’s Mass at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he was presented in recital by Serenata Santa Fe and by East Carolina University’s Fletcher Recital Series, where he also takes up residency for master classes and private teaching. He debuted at Opera Idaho as Acis in Acis and Galatea, and with the Pittsburgh Symphony in Handel’s Messiah. He joined the Piffaro Renaissance Band for concerts of English carols and created the role of Gawain in the world premiere of Doug Balliett’s Gawain and the Green Knight with the Acronym Ensemble in New York City. A dedicated chamber musician, Sulayman was a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival under the direction of and in collaboration with pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode. He has since been presented by many leading chamber music festivals including Philadelphia, Palm Beach and Brooklyn Chamber Music Societies, Chamber Music by the Sea, Houston Early Music, Kettle’s Yard (UK), and Indianapolis Early Music Festival. In 2017, he appeared in concerts of French chamber works at the Roman River Festival in the UK which were recorded and aired by BBC Radio 3. His growing discography includes his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus, which was released to international acclaim on the AVIE label. Named “Critic’s Choice” by Opera News, and praised for his “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” by BBC Music Magazine, the album debuted at #5 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and #3 on the iTunes Classical Chart, and was honored with the 2019 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His sophomore project, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us, a program of Schubert songs with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang also on the AVIE label, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical and iTunes charts in March 2020 and has received widespread critical acclaim. He appears on the recording of Matt Frey’s chamber opera, One-Eleven Heavy for Navona Records, and has recorded the title role in Handel’s Acis and Galatea with Mercury Baroque, two releases for NAXOS in works of Grétry and Philidor with Opera Lafayette, Apollo’s Fire’s Sephardic Journey on AVIE, and an album of 21st-century chamber works, Piercing are the Darts, on New Focus Records. He is also featured in the ARTE documentary Leonard Bernstein – A Genius Divided, which premiered throughout Europe in the summer of 2018 and was subsequently released on DVD. His performance of Bernstein’s Mass with the CSO was recorded live for PBS Great Performances and was broadcast nationally in May, 2020. Additionally, Karim created a social experiment/performance art piece called I Trust You, designed to build bridges in a divided political climate. A video version of this experiment went “viral” on the internet, and was honored as a prizewinner in the My Hero Film Festival. He has been invited to give talks and hold open forums with student and adult groups about inclusion, empathy, healing from racism, and activism through the arts. |
YI-HENG YANG,
|
Pianist and historical keyboardist Yi-heng Yang has been noted for “astonishing skill and vividness” (The New York Times) and “absolute mastery” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).
As a guest soloist and collaborator, she performs frequently with groups such as the Sebastians, The Knights, and The Raritan Chamber Players. Her debut album of Mendelssohn violin sonatas on period instruments (Olde Focus) with Abby Karr garnered critical praise, as did a recording of the Brahms cello sonatas and pianos pieces op. 76 (Deux-Elles), on an original Stretcher piano, with Kate Bennett Wadsworth. Her album of 18th-century fortepiano-harpsichord duos with Rebecca Cypess, “Sisters, Face-to-Face: The Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands (ACIS),” won the 2018 AMS Noah Greenberg Award for contributions to historical performance. She has appeared with the Boston Early Music Festival, the New York Philharmonic Ensembles Series at Merkin Hall, The Serenata of Santa Fe Series, Sunday Chatter Albuquerque, The Dayton Early Music Series, The Frederick Collection, The Finchcocks Collection, The Cobbe Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe. Ms. Yang holds a doctorate in piano from the Juilliard School, and studied there with Robert McDonald, Julian Martin, and Veda Kaplinsky. She studied fortepiano with Audrey Axinn, and with Stanley Hoogland at the Amsterdam Conservatory. She has received grants from The Mustard Seed Foundation’s Harvey Fellowship, and The Dutch Ministry of Culture’s Huygens Award. Ms. Yang is on the faculty at The Juilliard School, where she teaches fortepiano, chamber music, and piano. She is also on the fortepiano faculty at The Mannes School of Music and is a director of The Academy for Fortepiano Performance in Hunter, NY. |
all performance and master class photography by Ryan Bennett, Mike Grittani, and Elliot Mandel