NEC Prep Students Perform with Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Chang at Deval Patrick Inauguration Gala

For Immediate Release:
January 2, 2007

Nineteen young string players, ages 9 to 18, from New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School, Walnut Hill School, and Project STEP will perform with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Lynn Chang of the NEC Prep faculty at Governor Deval Patrick’s inauguration gala, January 4 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The ensemble will perform Ashokan Farewell, a haunting lament that figured prominently in Ken Burns’s PBS television documentary, The Civil War. Also on the program is the traditional fiddle tune Boil Them Cabbages Down. The audience for the gala is expected to number in the thousands.

The young NEC players include eight violinists, three violists, three cellists, and one double bass. A diverse group, the musicians include students from NEC Prep, Walnut Hill, and members of Project STEP, the String Training and Education Program for Students of Color co-founded in 1982 by NEC, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston University School of the Arts. Julia Carey, a composer and keyboard player who studied at NEC Prep and is now in the NEC-Harvard joint degree program, prepared the arrangements for the concert.

The NEC players and Chang were expressly invited to participate in the gala by Ma, one of several inaugural headliners that include Patti Austin, Herb Reed and the Platters, and Eguie Castrillo’s Mambo Kings Orchestra. Chang has worked with Ma on numerous occasions since they were both students at Harvard University and they have performed Ashokan Farewell as an encore in concerts they’ve played together. It was while they were undergraduates that they met the incoming Governor, also a Harvard student, who was organizing a benefit concert at Phillips Brooks House at which the two string players performed.

A top prizewinner in the International Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, Chang is a busy chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. Since 1982, he has been a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society. He has also appeared at the Wolf Trap, Great Woods, Marlboro, Tanglewood, Musicordia, and Killington music festivals and as a soloist with orchestras in Miami, Salt Lake City, Oakland, Seattle, Honolulu, Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong. He has recorded Made in America with Ma on the Sony label.

Ma, although he did not attend NEC, has strong relational ties to the Conservatory. His father-in-law, John L. Hornor ’53, ’55 M.M., ’57 A.D. studied voice at NEC and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees. His two children have both received musical training at NEC Prep. His son Nicholas studied piano with Jean Stackhouse. His daughter Emily, a violinist, studied with Marylou Speaker Churchill and played in the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. Ma, himself, coached and performed with pianist Patricia Zander of the piano and chamber music faculty. He has also performed many times in NEC’s Jordan Hall both as soloist with orchestra and chamber musician.

Composed by Jay Ungar, Ashokan Farewell was the only piece of new music used in the Ken Burns Civil War series. Ungar, a fiddler who along with Molly Mason has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and Great Performances, leads an annual Fiddle & Dance Workshop at Ashokan in upstate New York. It was at the end of one summer session that he wrote the nostalgic tune. Burns first heard it on the recording made by Unger’s band Fiddle Fever and chose it for his series. He also engaged Ungar’s group to perform traditional pieces for the soundtrack. In the documentary, Ashokan Farewell underscores the reading of a poignant and tragically prescient letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou of Smithfield, Rhode Island, to his wife Sarah. A member of the Union Army, Ballou stresses that despite his love for wife and family he is irresistibly drawn to fight in a conflict that was critical to the survival of “American civilization.” A week after writing the letter, Ballou was killed at the First Battle of Bull Run.

The names of NEC and Project STEP students taking part in the inauguration gala, their ages, hometowns, and studio teachers are:

Violin

Francesca Bass (11 yrs) Brookline, Lilia Muchnik

Yuki Beppu (9 yrs) Lexington, Kazuko Matsusaka

Benjamin Brookstone (17 yrs) Natick (NEC at Walnut Hill School for the Arts), Yuri Mazurkevich

Julia Churchill (11 yrs.) Newton, Anait Arutunian

Hillary Ditmars (16 yrs) Westford, James Buswell

Njeri Grevious (11 yrs) Stoughton, Farhoud Moshfegh, Project STEP

Yong Murray (12 yrs.) Groton, chamber music only

Brian White (11 yrs) Lexington, Kelly Barr

Momo Wong (12 yrs) Brookline, Fudeko Takahashi

Hikaru Yonezaki (11 yrs) Newton, Fudeko Takahashi

Viola

Lauren Brown (12 yrs) Boston, Dubravka Moshfegh, Project STEP

Christopher Chang (18 yrs) Newton, Lisa Suslowicz

Becky Kalish (12 yrs) Newton, Marylou Churchill

Nadeerah Lamour (11 yrs) Brockton, Dubravka Moshfegh, Project STEP

Cello

Emma Churchill (11 yrs) Newton, Nancy Hair

Jonah Ellsworth (12 yrs) Cambridge, Andrew Mark

Lev Mamuya (10 yrs) Newton, Laura Blustein

Patrick McGuire (16 yrs) Westford (NEC at Walnut Hill), Andrew Mark

Bass

Jordan Calixto (12 yrs) Marblehead, Helen Stevenson, Project STEP

Arranger

Julia Scott Carey (Harvard/NEC) Julia is making the arrangements of Ashokan Farewell by Jay Unger and Boil Them Cabbages Down, American traditional.

For more information, visit NEC’s website

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY

Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.

The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, contemporary improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.

NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, most of them in Jordan Hall, its world-renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of From the Top, a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.

Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Public Relations Manager
New England Conservatory
617-585-1143
epfeifer@newenglandconservatory.edu

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