2pm: Violin and Piano Recital with Mark Peskanov and Doris Stevenson

American virtuoso violinist and artistic visionary Mark Peskanov was born in Odessa. Peskanov sang before he could walk or talk, and soon became a star violin student at the famed Stolyarsky school. At fifteen, he emigrated to the United States, where he was immediately accepted at the Aspen Music Festival and the Juilliard School. His phenomenal facility and musicianship won him both the Aspen and Juilliard concerto competitions, bringing him to the notice of Isaac Stern and Mstislav Rostropovich and rocketing him into the top echelons of the music world. Upon his debut with the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Tribune called him a “sensational soloist.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer proclaimed, “Violinist Adds Glory to Odessa” and the New York Times declared, “Mark Peskanov is a tremendous young violinist and his Friday evening concert at Carnegie Hall was a triumph…He has it all—technique, temperament, and taste.” Peskanov is a staunch champion of American composers. He premiered the John Williams Concerto with the St. Louis Symphony, and the Stanley Wolfe Concerto (written for Peskanov) with the New York Philharmonic. He has performed more than fifty concertos with virtually every major U.S. orchestra and in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, South America and Japan. Peskanov’s major accolades include the Avery Fischer Career Grant, the first Frederick R. Mann Award, and Carnegie Hall’s first Isaac Stern Award. Peskanov inaugurated Tokyo’s Suntory Hall with Yo-Yo Ma and Stern, and Weill Recital Hall with Stern, Midori and Gil Shaham. Collaborating with these colleagues prompted Peskanov to turn intensively to the chamber music repertoire’s more intimate, complex, and dialogical possibilities. His delight in chamber music, his independent artistic vision, and his desire to mentor promising musicians as he had been mentored, led to Peskanov’s present role. Since 2005, he is president and artistic/executive director of Bargemusic. Peskanov has curated over 3,000 chamber concerts at Bargemusic, encompassing a vast range of genres and styles, presenting over 200 concerts annually to New York audiences. Under his leadership Bargemusic continues to evolve as an innovative, influential, and integral component of New York City’s cultural world.

Doris Stevenson has won lavish praise from critics and public alike in performances around the world. She has soloed with the Boston Pops, played at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Salle Pleyel in Paris, Sala de Musica Arango in Bogota, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Her acute sensitivity and musicianship have made her a sought-after partner with some of the leading lights in string playing. She has performed with Gregor Piatigorsky, Ruggiero Ricci and Paul Tortelier, great players of the past. Early in her career she was invited by Heifetz and Piatigorsky to perform with them in their chamber concerts. She was pianist for the cello master classes of Piatigorsky, who described her as “an artist of the highest order.” The list of distinguished artists she has performed with includes cellists Andre Navarra, Leslie Parnas and Gary Hoffman, violinists Charles Castleman and Elmar Olivera, violists Walter Trampler and Paul Neubauer and singers Kaaren Erickson and Catherine Malfitano. She is a founding member of the Sitka Summer Music Festival in Alaska and has toured throughout that state, playing in many remote Native Alaskan communities. She has participated in many chamber music festivals and has performed in 48 of the 50 states.She  recently performed with cellist Zuill Bailey at the Phillips Gallery in Washington D.C., at Bargemusic in New York and at Smith College. She plays a score of outreach concerts each season for the Piatigorsky Foundation in schools, libraries, prisons, and remote communities, bringing live classical music with commentary to people who wouldn’t otherwise hear it. Doris Stevenson is deeply committed to performing new music. In the last three years she has played in concert the works of twenty living composers. She was the first woman to perform Frederick Rzewski’s masterpiece, De Profundis for speaking pianist, which she brought to New York City to perform as a Williams in New York concert. Her many recordings include six major works by David Kechley and two by Ileana Velazquez-Perez, the Saint Saens violin sonatas with Andres Cardenes, the complete Mendelssohn cello works with Jeffrey Solow, and the Brahms Sonatas with cellist Nathaniel Rosen. A CD of Stravinsky rarities with violinist Mark Peskanov received a Grammy nomination. Miss Stevenson taught for ten years at the University of Southern California and has been Lyell B. Clay Artist in Residence at Williams College since 1987.

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