David Shifrin and the Miró Quartet – Rendezvous with Benny Goodman
David Shifrin, clarinet | Miró Quartet: Daniel Ching, violin | William Fedkenheuer, violin | John Largess, viola | Joshua Gindele, cello
Sunday January 12, 2025 – 3PM
Sedona Performing Arts Center – 995 Upper Red Rock Loop Rd, Sedona, AZ 86336
Program
Beethoven: String Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2
Allegro
Adagio cantabile
Scherzo. Allegro
Allegro molto, quasi presto
Alan Shulman: Rendezvous for Clarinet and Strings
David Schiff: Swing Arrangements
Smooth One
How am I to Know
Temptation Rag
Intermission
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581
Allegro
Larghetto
Menuetto – Trio I – Trio II
Allegretto con variazioni
Venerated clarinetist David Shifrin joins the Miro Quartet, one of America’s most celebrated string quartets, for a concert honoring the legacy of the “King of Swing,” Benny Goodman. With music ranging from Mozart to Peter Schickele to Goodman (including big band arrangements), this irresistible program will be sure to knock your socks off!
David Shifrin, clarinet
Winner of both the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000), David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator.
Mr. Shifrin has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit, Fort Worth, Hawaii and Phoenix Symphonies, among many others in the United States, as well as with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan. He has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie’s Hall’s Zankel Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, as well as the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. A much sought after chamber musician, he has collaborated frequently with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, Emerson, Orion, Dover and Miró String Quartets, as well as Wynton Marsalis, André Watts, Emanuel Ax and André Previn.
An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, Mr. Shifrin served as its Artistic Director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the United States with CMSLC and hosted and performed in several national television broadcasts on PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center. He also served as Artistic Director of Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest from 1981 through 2020, and is currently Artistic Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival.
In addition, Mr. Shifrin has served as Principal Clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under the direction of Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas Symphonies, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China’s Central Conservatory in Beijing.
Mr. Shifrin’s recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations and his recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built elongated clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review. His recordings of the Copland Clarinet Concerto and Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata have been released on iTunes via Angel/EMI and Deutsche Grammophon. His most recent recordings include the Trios with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han on the ArtistLed label, a recording for Delos of works by Carl Nielsen, and new recordings of clarinet quintets by Peter Schickele, Richard Danielpour, Aaron Jay Kernis, Valerie Coleman, Chris Rogerson and Duke Ellington (arr. Schiff).
“This recording is not only not lousy, it’s perfect in every respect…The best thing about it is David Shifrin…He musters the full spectrum of colors possible for a clarinet, from sine-wave purity to hairy, rough-edged humanity.”
— Auxiliary Input
Mr. Shifrin has been instrumental in broadening the repertoire for clarinet by commissioning and championing the works of 20th- and 21st-century American composers, including John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Alvin Singleton, Hannah Lash, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Valerie Coleman, Richard Danielpour and Peter Schickele.
In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize and Career Grant, Mr. Shifrin was the recipient of a Solo Recitalists’ Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 2016 Concert Artists Guild Virtuoso Award. He was given an Honorary Membership by the International Clarinet Association in 2014 in recognition of lifetime achievement, and at the outset of his career he won the top prizes at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions. In recent years he received the Distinguished Alumni Awards from the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Music Academy of the West, and a Cultural Leadership Citation from Yale University. He was recognized with the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award at the 2018 Chamber Music America Conference for historic service to the small ensemble music field, and in 2019 he was awarded the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music.
Mr. Shifrin performs on a Backun “Lumière” clarinet made by Morrie Backun and Légère premium synthetic reeds. He is represented by CM Artists New York.
Daniel Ching, violin
Daniel Ching, a founding member of the Miró Quartet, began his violin studies at the age of 3 under tutelage of his father. At age 5, he entered the San Francisco Conservatory Preparatory Division on a full twelve‐year scholarship, where he studied violin with Serban Rusu and Zaven Melikian, and chamber music with Susan Bates. At the age of 10, Daniel was first introduced to string quartets.A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daniel studied violin with Kathleen Winkler, Roland and Almita Vamos, and conducting with Robert Spano and Peter Jaffe. He completed his Masters degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with former Cleveland Quartet violinist Donald Weilerstein. He also studied recording engineering and production with Thomas Knab of Telarc, and subsequently engineered the Miró Quartet’s first promotional disc. Daniel is on faculty at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches private violin students and coaches chamber music. He concurrently maintains an active international touring schedule as a member of the Miró Quartet.
Daniel is a discerning connoisseur of all things cinematic and electronic. Before he became a busy parent, Daniel was an avid skier and a dedicated reader of science fiction—he looks forward to returning to those passions, someday. In his free time, Daniel enjoys hosting happy hours with friends and lounging at home with his wife Sandy, their two sons, and two cats.
William Fedkenheuer, violin
William Fedkenheuer is widely respected as a performer, teacher, and consultant. Uniquely drawing on two decades of experience onstage and off as a member of three internationally renowned string quartets (The Miró, Fry Street, Borromeo Quartets), he dedicates his life to serving others through performance, teaching, personal and professional development.
Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, William became the youngest member of The Calgary Fiddlers in 1983 and was named a Canadian national fiddle champion in 1989 before making his solo debut with the Calgary Philharmonic in 1994.
As a soloist and chamber musician, William performs on the world’s most prestigious stages including Carnegie Hall, Esterhazy Castle, Suntory Hall, and the Taipei National University of the Arts and appearances in the media include NPR, PBS, NHK, and the Discovery Channel as well as Strings and Strad magazines. Recipient of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Martin E. Segal Award, collaboration highlights include commissions and premiere’s of major new works by Kevin Puts, Osvaldo Golijov, and Gunther Schuller and performances with Leon Fleisher, Sasha Cooke, Colin Currie, Wu Han, Jeffrey Kahane, Audra McDonald, Midori, David Shifrin, and Dawn Upshaw. William serves as an Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music and oversees its Young Professional String Quartet Program.
William also maintains an active schedule as a consultant and professional development coach. Drawing on his past twenty-five years of experience developing highly effective strategies, principles and tools for how to thrive as a classical musician, ensemble, and organization, his mission is to empower each individual to give permission to be their most impactful, creative, and alive self. More information can be found at https://williamfed.com
An active hiker, fly-fisherman, and burger connoisseur, William has two sons, Max and Olli who share his love of curiosity, discovery, innovation and chocolate. William performs on a violin by Peter and Wendy Moes, and bows by Charles Espey and Ole Kanestrom.
John Largess, viola
Violist John Largess began his studies in Boston at age 12 in the public schools, studying with Michael Zaretsky of the Boston Symphony, and later as a student of Michael Tree at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In 1995, he graduated from Yale University to join the Colorado String Quartet as interim violist with whom he toured the United States and Canada teaching and concertizing. The following year he was appointed principal violist of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, a position he held until joining the Miró Quartet in 1997. Also an active speaker and writer about all things chamber‐musical, in 2004 Mr. Largess was invited to give a week‐long audience lecture series as a part of the Eighth International String Quartet Competition at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada; he repeated this series in 2007 and again in 2010.
With his training in Greek and Latin Literature and his Bachelor’s degree in Archeology from Yale University, as well as studies at the Hebrew University in Israel, he has participated in excavations in Greece, Israel, and Jordan. John loves to cook gourmet cuisine, particularly French pastry and fine desserts; luckily, he also enjoys exercising. John is a trained yoga instructor, having studied Vinyasa Power Yoga with Baron Baptiste. He also practices Kundalini, Bikram, and Astanga styles, and teaches yoga at 24 Hour Fitness and the Bodhi Yoga studio in Austin, Texas where he lives. When not standing on his head, he enjoys making his Tibetan Singing Bowl sing.
John serves as Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of String Chamber Music at the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music.
Joshua Gindele, cello
Cellist Joshua Gindele, a founding member of the Miró Quartet, began his cello studies at the age of 3 playing a viola his teacher had fitted with an endpin. As cellist for the Miró, Josh has taken first prizes at several national and international competitions including the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. In 2005, the Miró Quartet became the first ensemble ever to be awarded the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant.
He has shared the stage with some of the classical worlds most renowned artists including Yo-Yo Ma, The New York Philharmonic, Pinchas Zuckerman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Andre Watts and Menahem Pressler. He continues to perform across four continents and on some of the world’s most prestigious concert stages.
In 2006 Joshua co‐founded www.classicallounge.com. This is an online networking site where you can meet musicians, both professional and amateur, discover new talent or get discovered, share music, post and get concert information, share opinions, post classified ads and much more. The site was sold to www.classicalconnection.com in August of 2009.
Deeply committed to music education, the Miró is currently the Faculty String Quartet-in-Residence at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.
An active gym rat and tennis player, Josh and his wife, Rebecca Gindele, have a son and daughter, George and Nora.
