Borromeo String Quartet, Yura Lee '05 A.D. Awarded Two of Three $25,000 Avery Fisher Career Grants
Borromeo Quartet by Liz Linder
For immediate release:
April 10, 2007
The Borromeo String Quartet, NEC’s Quartet-in-Residence, and violinist Yura Lee ’05 A.D. will each receive 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grants of $25,000 at a festive Lincoln Center concert, April 10. They will be honored along with a third grantee DaXun Zhang, a double bassist from Northwestern University. On the same program, renowned violinist Joshua Bell, who received a Career Grant in 1986, will be given the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize.
The awards will be announced by Avery Fisher Artist Program chairman Nathan Leventhal, Charles Avery Fisher, and Nancy Fisher. Performances by the three career grant winners, along with a tribute to Bell, will take place before an invited audience in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center. The program will be taped for broadcast on April 17 on New York’s WQXR radio station and nationally syndicated by the WFMT Radio Network.
Created in 1974, the Avery Fisher Artist Program was established as part of a major gift to Lincoln Center by the late philanthropist and music lover, Avery Fisher. The career grants have been given out since 1976 with approximately 105 musicians honored. Among those are Gil Shaham, Leila Josefowicz, Edgar Meyer, and Hilary Hahn. NEC-trained musicians or faculty have received an impressive number of the awards including Christopher O’Riley ‘81 A.D., Alisa Weilerstein (of NEC’s Weilerstein Trio), Andres Diaz ’85 A.D., Stefan Jackiw ’06 A.D., Max Levinson ‘95 A.D., Alison Eldredge, and Richard Stoltzman.
The grants, which this year rose to $25,000 from $15,000, are intended for use in furthering a career. Up to five may be awarded within a single year and must to go U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents. Recipients are nominated by a panel of nationally regarded musicians. Winners are chosen by the Executive Committee, which this year included pianists Emanuel Ax and Wu Han, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and David Finckel, Henry Fogel (President of the American Symphony Orchestra League), Anthony Fogg (Artistic Administrator of the Boston Symphony) and others.
Biographies
Borromeo String Quartet, NEC Quartet-in-Residence
Nicholas Kitchen, Kristopher Tong, violins; Mai Motobuchi, viola; Yeesun Kim, cello
Considered "simply the best there is" by the Boston Globe, the critically acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet is one of the most sought after string quartets in the world, performing over 100 concerts of classical and contemporary literature across three continents each season. In its original configuration, the entire quartet came to NEC as students and was awarded an Artist Diploma in 1992. Immediately upon graduating, the members were asked to join the faculty and have been in residence ever since. The BSQ can next be heard in performance at NEC at its annual Guest Artist Award concert on May 9 in Jordan Hall. On that occasion, the ensemble joins forces with two NEC students, violist Sarah Darling and clarinetist Will Amsel, who were selected in competitive auditions.
From the beginning, audiences and critics alike have championed the Borromeo’s revealing explorations of Schönberg, Brahms, Ligeti, Kurtag, and Janáček, and its affinity for making challenging contemporary repertoire approachable. Lauded for its mastery of the complete Beethoven and Bartók quartet cycles, the BSQ is currently focused on the work of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Besides teaching and performing at NEC, the Borromeo Quartet has enjoyed a long-standing and celebrated residency at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where this season it is completing a cycle of the 15 Shostakovich Quartets. The ensemble also maintains relationships with New York's Tenri Cultural Institute, Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo, the Taos School of Music in New Mexico, and the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, where first violinist Nicholas Kitchen serves as artistic director. With a grant from Chamber Music America, the BSQ continues its innovative multimedia public school residency program, and its work with NEC’s Learning Through Music program.
Highlights of the BSQ’s 2007-08 season include artist residencies in Israel at the Jerusalem Music Academy and in France for ProQuartet, the premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra with the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra of Ohio, a series of educational projects with the Library of Congress, and studio recordings of music by composer Steven Mackey.
In 2003, the Borromeo made classical music history with its pioneering record label, the Living Archive Recorded Performance Series, making it possible to order DVDs and CDs of most of its concerts around the world. The series promotes the impact of live performance, and allows listeners the chance to explore in greater depth the music they have just heard in concert, as well as explore new and rarely performed works. Gramophone Magazine hailed the “great clarity and beauty” and “ravishing fury” of the BSQ’s studio recording of masterworks by Beethoven. Its CD featuring works of Maurice Ravel was honored with the Chamber Music America/WQXR Award for Recording Excellence in 2001. In 2004 the Aaron Copland House honored Borromeo's commitment to contemporary music by creating the Borromeo Quartet Award, an annual initiative that will premiere the work of important young composers to audiences internationally.
The BSQ has enjoyed collaborations with John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, Osvaldo Golijov, Steven Mackey, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller, and Jennifer Higdon. It is currently performing Hope Cycles, a new work by Lior Navok commissioned for the ensemble by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress. In 2000, the Borromeo String Quartet completed two seasons as a member of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two and served as Ensemble-in-Residence for the 1998-99 season of National Public Radio's Performance Today. Awards include Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award in 2001, Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award in 1998 and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1991, as well as top prizes at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France in 1990.
Violinist Yura Lee ’05 A.D.
Born in South Korea in 1985, violinist/violist Yura Lee has enjoyed an exceptional career since coming to the United States in 1994. A student of Miriam Fried and Paul Biss, she received the Artist Diploma from NEC in 2005. In recent seasons she has appeared with many prestigious orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and Tokyo Philharmonic, among others. The 1999-2000 season saw her Carnegie Hall debut with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra, following subscription concerts in Washington, D.C.
In 2006, Lee was the first prize winner in the Leopold Mozart Competition, where she was also awarded the Mozart Prize, Mozart Medal, Jugendjury Prize, and the Public Prize. Also in 2006, Lee was the fourth prize laureate in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and second prize winner in the Premio Paganini Competition in Italy.
In the 2002-03 season, Lee was nominated and represented by Carnegie Hall for its ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) series, for which she gave recitals at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall and at nine celebrated concert halls in Europe, including Wigmore Hall (London), the Musikverein (Vienna), and the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam).
As a chamber musician, Lee regularly performs at the Verbier, Caramoor, and Salzburg Festivals, among others. During the summers of 2004-2006, Lee participated at the Marlboro Festival of Music in Vermont.
In 1997, Lee received the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by National Public Radio. She has been featured on The Late Show with David Letterman, CNN/fN, Fox on Arts, WABC-TV in New York, KBS in South Korea and ZDF Arte in Germany.
Yura Lee plays the 1778 Joseph and Antonio Gagliano violin, on loan from the Steans Institute for Young Artists, Ravinia Festival, Chicago.
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