PMP ALUMNI SPECIAL PERFORMANCE
REMEMBERING ROGER
Celebrating the Legacy of Roger Tapping
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Pre-performance salon talk and concert
6:00 PM
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota | 3975 Fruitville Rd, Sarasota, FL 34232
$30 General Admission
David Kaplan, piano; Michelle Ross, violin; Max Tan, violin; William Frampton, viola; Lev Mamuya, cello
Roger Tapping, former violist of the Juilliard Quartet, passed away in January 2022. This concert was conceived by Michelle Ross and Max Tan as an opportunity for PMP alumni from different generations to pay tribute to a mentor whose legacy lives through them.
A beloved faculty member of The Perlman Music Program for many years, Roger Tapping inspired generations of musicians for his wit and charm, biting humor, and consummate artistry. Michelle Ross’ String Quartet, titled “For Roger,” will receive its Sarasota premiere at this concert. Her work is built on themes of a Haydn string quartet, a favorite of Roger’s and incidentally, the last quartet that Michelle played with him.
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478
Michelle Barzel Ross String Quartet – in memory of Roger Tapping (2022)
Robert Schumann Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44
Pianist David Kaplan has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. Balancing solo performances with meaningful collaborations, David has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Britten Sinfonia and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin; performed recitals at the Ravinia Festival, Sarasota Opera House, Washington’s National Gallery, Music on Main in Vancouver, and Strathmore; and played with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets.
As a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, he performs frequently in New York’s most exciting venues, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to National Sawdust, as well as creating innovative residencies as far away as Abu Dhabi, Mexico, and Scotland. He is a veteran of numerous distinguished chamber music festivals and series, such as the Seattle Chamber Music, Bard, and Mostly Mozart Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Barge Music. He is an alumnus of Tanglewood and the Ravinia-Steans Institute, and performs regularly as an alumnus of the Perlman Music Program, including with Itzhak Perlman at Miami’s Arscht Center.
He serves as Co-Artistic Director of Lyrica Chamber Music, a community series in Morris County, NJ currently in its 31st season. The recipient of a DMA from Yale University in 2014, Kaplan earned his Bachelor from UCLA, where he has also served on the faculty since 2016, and was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano in 2020. David is proud to be a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist, and when at home in Los Angeles, he enjoys practicing on his childhood piano, a 1908 Hamburg Steinway model A. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars.
Michelle Barzel Ross is an Iraqi (Mizrahi)-American violinist, composer, and improviser. A protégé of Itzhak Perlman, Michelle is known for her debut album, pop-up project and blog Discovering Bach: Complete Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach. A gifted improviser across genres, Michelle is featured on Movement 11’ of the GRAMMY winning Best Album of the Year: We Are, by Jon Batiste.
Passionate about expanding the bounds of contemporary music as both a performer and creator, recent premieres include both a chamber work and electronic installation at Lucerne Festival and Lucerne Festival Forward 2022. Michelle was recently the soloist in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres at the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur with the Experiential Orchestra and James Blachly. Collaboration highlights include performing Bach Double Concerto with Itzhak Perlman, Michael Tilson Thomas and San Francisco Symphony, and her Zankel Hall Debut with Harry Bicket.
A passionate chamber musician, Michelle will be performing as guest first violinist with the Juilliard String Quartet for their winter US and International 2023 tours, has been an artist at Marlboro Music Festival and tours frequently with Musicians from Marlboro. Guest concertmaster appearances include with Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de la Radio France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Michelle is a member of Ensemble Échappé, a guest with International Contemporary Ensemble, co-curator of Lucerne Festival Forward and faculty at Lucerne Festival Contemporary. Recent album releases include her solo cello composition The Whale Song for Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, and her featured performances on Samuel Adler: Chamber and Instrumental Music. Michelle is the recipient of the 2012 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund, and was recently Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Michelle holds a M.M. from the Juilliard School and a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University. Teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho and Ronald Copes. Michelle studied composition with Dr. Samuel Adler, Dr. Kendall Briggs, and Dr. Andrew Thomas.
Taiwanese American violinist Max Tan has been praised as “eloquent” by The New York Times and “warmly rhapsodic” by the Boston Globe. He is a performer, educator, curator, and writer. Max has been featured on WNYC/WQXR and Belgian radio Musiq3 and Canvas as a semifinalist in the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition. Appearing as a soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra amongst others, he has also performed solo recitals and chamber music throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Max is an alumnus of Harvard College with a concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology and a secondary in Music. He continued his graduate studies at the Juilliard School, receiving his Master of Music in 2017 and Artist Diploma in 2019. Max is currently a Celia Ascher Doctoral Fellow at Juilliard where he is a music history teaching fellow to Dr. Elizabeth Weinfield.
After serving as assistant to violin faculty Catherine Cho in Juilliard’s College Division, he now continues his assistant position in the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. An educator with a private studio class, he is fascinated with the intersection of academia, philosophy, and performance. With diverse interests in arts advocacy and global citizenship, Mr. Tan is on the roster of the Si-Yo Music Foundation and a co-founder of the Versoi Ensemble. During the pandemic, Max worked to support organizations connecting musicians with isolated audiences and recovering COVID-19 patients in isolation, such as DOROT, Project Music Heals Us, and Virtual Bedside Concerts. He also curates his own livestream program on Groupmuse called “Max Tan and Friends” which just finished its second season.
Max is the founder and artist curator of the Sarasota-based arts organization Soundbox Ventures, which recently launched the successful salon series, Listen Hear, and is currently presenting a full season of programs designed to empower audiences to discover the artistic process in meaningful, personal ways.
Violist William Frampton has been praised by critics for his “impressive” performances (The New York Times) and “a glowing amber tone” (the Boston Globe). Since his New York recital debut in 2009 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, William has enjoyed a career of performances around the world as a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral player. Highlights include over 100 performances with a string quartet led by Midori Goto in tours of Asia and North America, appearances as guest artist with Escher Quartet and Johannes Quartet, and world premieres of chamber music by J. Mark Stambaugh and a concerto by Peter Homans.
William is Principal Viola of American Symphony Orchestra, Associate Musician with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and member of Harlem Chamber Players String Quartet. He performs in the Broadway orchestras of Hamilton, Wicked, and The Lion King, and on film scores including The Joker, West Side Story, The Greatest Showman, The Girl on the Train, and many others.
William is Artistic Director of Music at Bunker Hill, a chamber music series in Southern New Jersey he co-founded in 2008 that brings five professional chamber music performances to Gloucester County, New Jersey every year. The community built as a result of Music Bunker Hill has brought regular collaborations with schools, libraries, orchestras, and civic organizations, contributing to the cultural life of Southern New Jersey. He has performed at festivals including Bard Summerscape, Verbier, and IMS Prussia Cove, and as soloist with conductors including Joseph Silverstein and David Hoose. He holds degrees from New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School, and studied with Kim Kashkashian, Samuel Rhodes, Choong-Jin Chang, and Byrnina Socolofsky. William teaches viola and chamber music at The College of New Jersey.
Cellist Lev Mamuya is a musician, writer, and arts administrator whose work focuses the relationship between art and its consumers and interrogates the way cultural documents are received and evaluated.
Having received a BA in History and Literature from Harvard in 2018, he completed his MM in cello performance at New England Conservatory in 2019, studying with Paul Katz and Yeesun Kim. Mamuya’s work today continues to operate across multiple practices and disciplines.
A critic, non-fiction writer, and poet, his work has appeared in The Drift, San Francisco Classical Voice, Boston Musical Intelligencer, and The Harvard Advocate. He was the recipient of the runner-up award at the 2022 Rubin Institute for Music Criticism.
An experienced soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician, Mamuya has performed recently with the Semiosis Quartet, Boston Public Quartet, Castle of Our Skins, and A Far Cry. He has previously appeared as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Florida Orchestra, the South Bend Symphony, the Ann Arbor Symphony, and the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Finally, Mamuya is a dedicated arts administrator—having served as the publisher of The Harvard Advocate during his undergraduate years, he has since worked for From the Top, America’s largest national platform celebrating young classically-trained musicians, and executed various arts-administrative projects as a freelance consultant.
