Constella presents:
Double Deal: String + Jazz Quartets
Featuring Ted Nash, saxophone

Saturday, October 29, 2011 | 8pm and 10pm
The Blue Wisp Jazz Club | Cincinnati, OH
This world premiere event at Cincinnati’s renowned Blue Wisp Jazz Club features Grammy-nominated jazz composer and arranger Ted Nash in collaboration with Cincinnati jazz and classical musicians. A world premiere composition for string and jazz double quartets will be performed, commissioned to commemorate Constella’s inaugural season. In order to best accommodate our patrons, there will be two seatings – 8pm and 10pm.

Jazz Quartet MusiciansRusty Burge, vibraphone
Dan Karlsberg, piano
Jim Leslie, drums
Michael Sharfe, acoustic bass

String Quartet Musicians

Tatiana Berman, violin

Suzanna Barnes, violin

Yael Senamaud-Cohen, viola

Susan Marshall-Petersen, cello

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Ted Nash has an important association with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. A recent commission by the JLCO, “Portrait in Seven Shades,” was recorded by the Orchestra and released in February 2010. This recording marks the first-ever JLCO release devoted to original music by a band member other than Wyton Marsalis, and has been credited by Ted Panken in Downbeat Magazine as marking a new direction for the Orchestra. Nash has been cited as “rising star” on saxophone for several years in the Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and his CDs have often appeared in top ten CD lists by New York Times, Village Voice, Boston Globe, The New Yorker and Jazz Times Magazine. For more information about Nash, please visit http://www.tednash.com/.

Tickets for this concert will be sold exclusively through the Constella Festival.

Tickets: $15 (General Admission) and $10 (Student Rush 1 Hour Prior with Valid ID)

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Classical Revolution:Cincinnati - Constella Festival Edition
Where: Back Room of the Northside Tavern. 

When: Sunday October 23, 2011 @ 8pm

4163 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223

Classical Revolution is proud and excited to perform this special event in conjunction with the Constella Festival! Featuring: The Elysium Saxophone Quartet, The Ohio River Brass Quintet, the Revolution Quintet, Tatiana Berman and more!

Constella presents:
Piazzolla, Prokofiev and Pointe Shoes

Saturday, October 15, 2011 | 6:00pm
Mickey Jarson Kaplan Performance Studio @ Cincinnati Ballet Center| Cincinnati, OH

Chamber music meets the ballet for Piazzolla, Prokofiev and Pointe Shoes. In this program Constella Festival presents two new world premiere works by a creative team of choreographers: Heather Britt, James Cunningham, Andrew Hubbard, Stephen Jacobsen and Missy Lay Zimmer (photos above). Featuring dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet and Exhale Dance Tribe and concert:nova musicians together on stage, the program will include a new choreography set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39. A beautiful duet of dancers will perform to Richard Rodgers’ and Lorenz Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” The program will conclude with another new choreography set to the music of “Histoire du Tango” by Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla, which outlines the history of tango in four musical movements from different time periods. Musicians include Boris Astafiev (double bass), Tatiana Berman (violin), Richard Goering (guitar), Jonathan Gunn (clarinet), Timothy Lees (violin), Dwight Parry (oboe) and  Joanne Wojtowicz (viola).

concert:nova is an exploratory chamber ensemble that performs traditional and contemporary classical music, presenting world class chamber music in diverse and unusual venues using interdisciplinary collaboration to illuminate the music. Partnerships with dancers, actors and visual artists bring a unique dimension to performances, illustrating each musical work in a modern and powerful way.

For more information about concert:nova, please visit http://concertnova.com/.
For more information about the Cincinnati Ballet, please visit http://www.cballet.org/.

Tickets: $30 (General Admission) and $10 (Student Rush 1 Hour Prior with Valid ID)

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Constella Festival presents huge variety of artists

5:20 AM, Oct. 9, 2011  |  

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Violinist Hilary Hahn

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Janelle Gelfand

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Constella Festival events

Thursday - Classic Gems and Contemporary Miniatures featuring Hilary Hahn, violin, and Valentina Lisitsa, piano, 7:30 p.m., Memorial Hall.

Friday - Queen City Connections featuring Liang Wang, New York Philharmonic principal oboist, with musicians Tatiana Berman, Nathaniel Chaitkin, Jasmine Choi, Dwight Parry, Anna Reider, Yael Senamaud-Cohen and Matthew Zory, 6:30 p.m., Fifth Third Bank Theater, the Aronoff Center.

Saturday - Piazzolla, Prokofiev and Pointe Shoes featuring concert:nova musicians and dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet, 6 p.m. (note time change), Mickey Jarson Kaplan Performance Studio, Cincinnati Ballet Center.

Next Sunday - Russian Romantic Piano featuring Alexander Toradze and Friends, piano, 7:30 p.m., Patricia Corbett Theater in the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education, home of the Cincinnati School for Creative & Performing Arts.

Oct. 18 - Chamber Music Cincinnati presents: St. Lawrence String Quartet, 8 p.m., Robert J. Werner Recital Hall, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. The program includes quartets by Mozart's Quartet in D Minor, K. 421, Erich Korngold's Quartet No. 3 and John Adams' Quartet No. 2, which he wrote for them in 2008.

Oct. 21 - Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players presents Russian Rhapsody, 7:30 p.m., Mayerson Theater at the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education.

Oct. 22 - Cincinnati's Vocal Arts Ensemble presents American Icons at 100. Works celebrate the centennials of composers Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti. 5 p.m., Memorial Hall.

Oct. 23 - Linton Chamber Music presents Menahem Pressler and Friends. Legendary pianist Pressler will be joined by violinist Alexander Kerr, former concertmaster of the CSO and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, violist Paul Neubauer, member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and former CSO principal cellist Eric Kim in best-loved piano quartets by Mozart, Turina and Dvorak. 4 p.m., First Unitarian Church, Avondale.

Oct. 23 - Classical Revolution. A national movement featuring professional musicians and conservatory students who perform contemporary and classic works in bars and cafés. 8 p.m., Northside Tavern.

Oct. 28 - Catacoustic Consort presents Michael Maniaci. Opera superstar Maniaci, a countertenor, joins the early music ensemble led by Annalisa Pappano in Baroque arias of love and passion by Handel, Purcell and Bach. 7:30 p.m., Church of the Advent, Walnut Hills.

Oct. 29 - Double Deal: String + Jazz Quartets featuring Ted Nash, saxophone, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., The Blue Wisp Jazz Club, Downtown.

Oct. 30 - Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra presents an evening with Philippe Quint. 2 p.m., Mayerson Theater, Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education.

Nov. 8 - An Evening with Joshua, featuring Joshua Bell, violin, and Sam Haywood, piano, 7:30 p.m., Memorial Hall.

Tickets: Prices vary for each event. To buy:www.constellafestival.org; 513-621-2787; or at the box office, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Downtown.

An adventurous new festival, which aims to highlight the breadth and depth of the arts in our region, launches this week. The Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts will present 13 unique performances between Thursday and Nov. 8 in what founder Tatiana Berman, 31, of Hyde Park, hopes will be a "mini-Spoleto Festival."

The collaborative events will merge music, visual art, film and dance in settings throughout the region, from venues such as Memorial Hall to the Blue Wisp Jazz Club.

"I think it's very exciting that there is such a huge variety of artists involved - it really is the breadth and depth of Cincinnati art - and includes dance, choral, solo and ensemble literature," said Donald Nally, music director of the Vocal Arts Ensemble.

"Just the existence of the festival gives Cincinnati an opportunity to experience in a concentrated week what is there all season long and can be heard and seen from coffee shops to churches to Music Hall. We're thrilled to be in such good company."

The festival is anchored by classical superstars such as violinists Joshua Bell and Hilary Hahn, pianist Alexander Toradze, New York Philharmonic principal oboist Liang Wang and jazz saxophonist Ted Nash. The festival has also folded in established Cincinnati organizations, such as the Vocal Arts Ensemble, Chamber Music Cincinnati, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, concert:nova, Cincinnati Ballet, Linton Chamber Music and Catacoustic Consort.

Programs will merge traditional concerts with other arts. For instance, an evening of Russian piano music with renowned virtuoso Alexander Toradze and five of his students, next Sunday in the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education at the School for Creative & Performing Arts, will include an exhibition of art from 5th Street Gallery, Downtown. Performers from Toradze's studio include Nikita Abrosimov, this year's gold medalist of Cincinnati's World Piano Competition, and Sangwon Kim, who won the event last year.

The festival's repertoire will range from traditional to cutting-edge. Saturday's concert, "Piazzolla, Prokofiev and Pointe Shoes," with members of Cincinnati Ballet and the adventurous classical ensemble concert:nova will include the world premieres of two works choreographed by Heather Britt, James Cunningham, Andrew Hubbard, Stephen Jacobsen and Missy Lay Zimmer.

And the Oct. 29 program at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club will include a new work for string and jazz double quartet by jazz composer Ted Nash, commissioned by the Constella Festival.

The idea, said Berman, a classical violinist, is to showcase the range of arts that the Cincinnati region has to offer. And Berman is already thinking ahead to expand the festival with more organizations and top-flight artists, as well as with educational programs.

"I hope that audiences will come away from the festival events energized and inspired by the creativity and the spirit of collaboration from artists of the highest caliber," she said.

Friday, October 14, 2011 | 6:30pm Fifth Third Bank Theater @ The Aronoff Center for the Arts | Cincinnati, OH

Taking place at the intimate black box Fifth Third Bank Theater at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, Queen City Connections will feature a candlelit chamber music performance by New York Philharmonic principal oboist Liang Wang and several of Cincinnati’s finest musicians including Tatiana Berman, Nathaniel Chaitkin, Jasmine Choi, Dwight Parry, Anna Reider, Yael Senamaud-Cohen and Matthew Zory.

Wang may be familiar to local audiences as he was previously principal oboist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2005-2006. The program will feature selections from Albinoni, Beach, Mozart and Arnold. A post-concert reception will be held immediately following the show at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery. Additional information about Liang Wang can be found at www.liangoboe.com.

Tickets for this concert will be sold exclusively through the Constella Festival.

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Express Cincinnati, October 2011

An article about Constella Festival
Express Cincinnati

Soapboxmedia.com October 4, 2011

Development News

New festival draws international attention

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 04, 2011

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ARTS + CULTURE, CINCINNATI,CITY BUILDING, DIVERSITY,REGIONALISM 

DOWNTOWN 

Violinist Tatiana Berman loves a good challenge. When the Russian-born transplant saw how little the world knew about Cincinnati’s arts community, she looked for ways to raise her adopted town’s international profile.

She reached out to personal friends and artists she knows and soon the Constella Music Festival was born. Constella brings traditional chamber music, dance and visual art to the heart of the city, downtown. Guest artists, many from Cincinnati, have already achieved international acclaim. For Berman, planning multi-faceted performances that mix and match genres makes the interdisciplinary celebration unique.

“I’ve always enjoyed experiencing many forms of music and art,” Berman says. “They are simply different languages to express feelings and ideas.”

Ballet will be performed while chamber music plays; jazz will be paired with classical piano; romantic Russian piano will accompany visual art displays. One concert will take place in a candle-lit theater.

Constella, with events, spanning three and a half weeks and a variety of venues, allows for a wide range of guest players and audience members to participate. Violinists Joshua Bell and Hilary Hanh, saxophone player, Ted Nash and pianist Alexander Toradze are just a few of the many performers.

Berman founded the event last year and held special events leading up to the first performance, slated for Oct. 13.  Berman hopes for plenty of community support to keep  the inaugural festival in the spotlight. So far, response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Every idea needs time to be accepted, but already, so many have shown their support,” Berman says. “I think there is an appreciation that Constella is bringing national and international visibility and talent to Cincinnati.”

By Evan Wallis

http://www.soapboxmedia.com/devnews/021011constella.aspx