Name: Jeffrey and Gabriel Kahane Duo
Start: 2025-01-25T19:30:00
Location: Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall

As the Northwestern Bienen School of Music unveils its remarkable 2024-25 season, music enthusiasts are treated to an eclectic symphony of performances that promise to captivate and inspire. With a series of recitals and chamber music events, audiences will experience the brilliance of world-renowned artists like Louis Lortie, the Dover Quartet, and the Miró Quartet, alongside exciting collaborations such as Third Coast Percussion with Jessie Montgomery. This season at Northwestern University’s Evanston, IL campus stands as a testament to the power and diversity of classical music, offering a vibrant tapestry of sound that transcends boundaries and celebrates artistic excellence.

A Symphony of Strings and Keys: Northwestern Bienen School's 2024-25 Musical Extravaganza

Jeffrey Kahane

Northwestern Bienen School of Music

Beginning his professional career as a fixture of the opera stage at Germany’s Theater Augsburg, Bienen alumnus Alexander York made his Bavarian State Opera debut in 2018 in Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug (The Broken Jug) as the Bedienter. From 2018 to 2021 he was a member of the opera studio of the Opéra national de Paris, and in 2023 he joined the soloist ensemble of Austria’s Linz State Theatre. Highlights of his 2025-26 season there include appearances as Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier, Ping in Turandot, Sepulchrave in Irmin Schmidt’s Gormenghast, and Adam in Mike Svoboda’s Adam and Eve. York is the recipient of a 2016 Fulbright Research Grant as well as a 2020 City of Gordes Prize and the Best Young Baritone or Bass Prize at the International Competition of Art Song in Gordes, France. He returns to the Bienen School for a Liederabend recital including music of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and John Duke.

Alexander York, baritone

Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall

A member of the critically acclaimed PRISM Quartet, Taimur Sullivan has performed throughout the world, from the stages of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Knitting Factory to engagements in Russia, China, Europe, and Latin America. He has given the premieres of more than 300 works by composers including Julia Wolfe, Augusta Read Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, Tania León, John Harbison, Jennifer Higdon, and Steve Mackey. His recent work with PRISM has led to crossover collaborations with such artists as Ravi Coltrane, Miguel Zenón, Joe Lovano, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Sō Percussion. This recital features Sullivan’s world premiere arrangement of Jessie Montgomery’s Peace; Bienen alumna Marilyn Shrude’s Nature’s Bard, inspired by the imagery of poet Emily Dickinson, Reza Vali’s Hajiani, accompanied by recordings of the Persian bagpipe ney anban, and music by Andrew List and Franz Liszt.

Taimur Sullivan, saxophone

One of the most distinctive artists and polymaths of his generation, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of a composer and writer. The first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, Hough is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, the Royal Philharmonic Instrumentalist Award, and first prize at the Naumburg Competition. In 2014, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Hough has performed with most of the major European, Asian, and American orchestras and regularly plays recitals in major halls, concert series, and festivals around the world. His catalogue of over sixty albums has garnered prizes such as the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, several Grammy nominations, and eight Gramophone awards, including the “Gold Disc” Award, which named his complete Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past thirty years. As a composer, Hough has written commissions for institutions such as the Cliburn, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Wigmore Hall. Hough holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at Manchester’s Royal Northern College and is a faculty member at the Juilliard School.

Stephen Hough, piano

2026 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of legendary trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis. His Birth of the Cool recording sessions on the Capitol Records label were instrumental in the development of cool jazz, and on the Prestige Records label he recorded some of the earliest hard bop music. Over the course of his career he performed and recorded with jazz giants including Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock, and he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Jazz Small Ensembles

The Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra welcomes soprano Marie Engle for Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine, a stirring one-act opera depicting one woman’s final phone call with her ex-lover in a struggle of unrequited love. Concluding the evening is Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 (“Italian”), a collection of impressions from his ten-month trip to Italy inspired by sunny blue skies, lively saltarello dances, religious solemnity, and timeless art and architecture.

Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra

Northwestern University

The Northwestern University Jazz Orchestra pays tribute to Miles Davis during the centennial anniversary of his birth with the music from his 1957 Columbia Records release Miles Ahead. The album featured Davis on flugelhorn as the only soloist, and it was his first collaboration with arranger Gil Evans following the Birth of the Cool sessions. Miles Ahead was met with critical praise and became recognized as one of the most successful examples of the Third Stream movement, drawing emotional sophistication from its fusion of modern jazz and classical influences.

Northwestern University Jazz Orchestra

From Joseph Wilcox Jenkins’s spirited American Overture to Frank Ticheli’s expressive Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble, this program invites listeners into a vibrant musical mosaic. Chicago-based composer Stacy Garrop offers a fresh reimagining of her work Radiant Glow in a world premiere performance. The evening culminates in Paul Hindemith’s monumental Symphony in B-flat, composed after his emigration to the United States. Together, these works reflect the evolving landscape of American music, shaped by reflections on artistic identity and reinvention.

Symphonic Wind Ensemble

The ensemble performs Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater, as well as music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque period works for chorus and continuo.

Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble

The ensemble celebrates the friendship and artistic connection between avant-garde greats Yoko Ono and John Cage in this program featuring Ono’s 6 Pieces for Orchestra, Matt Marks’s arrangement of The Beatles’ and Ono’s “Revolution 9,” and Cage’s legendary Song Books.

Contemporary Music Ensemble

The Symphonic Band’s first program of the winter quarter opens with Leonard Bernstein’s raucous tribute to his friend Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich. Zhou Tian’s Nocturne uses musical material from his first string quartet, the last piece he wrote before leaving his native China. The first half of the concert concludes with James Curnow’s Symphonic Variants, featuring Concerto Competition winner Oliver Stark, and the second half is devoted to David Del Tredici’s monumental symphony for band, In Wartime.

Symphonic Band

University Chorale marks Valentine’s Day with a program that delves into the many facets of human connection: passion, tenderness, joy, and longing. Featuring works by Eric Whitacre, Gabriel Jackson, Evelin Seppar, Matthew Recio, and others, the concert offers a rich tapestry of voices that reflect the beauty and complexity of love in all its forms.

University Chorale

Praised by Third Coast Review for their “astonishing and virtuosic” playing and “magnificent melding of talent,” the two-time Grammy-nominated Dover Quartet is among the world’s most in-demand chamber ensembles. The quartet’s numerous awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. The group’s 2024-25 season included collaborative performances with preeminent artists including pianists Michelle Cann, Marc-André Hamelin, and Haochen Zhang, as well as premiere performances of works by Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate (‘90), a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a leading composer of American Indian classical music.

Dover Quartet

Pianist, conductor, and scholar Jeffrey Kahane is in the fifth decade of an expansive and versatile career which has included concertos with the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphonies, recitals with Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell, and collaborations with the Emerson, Miró, Dover, Attacca, and Calidore String Quartets. Grand Prize winner of the 1983 Arthur Rubinstein International Competition, Jeffrey Kahane performs with his son Gabriel Kahane, a musician and storyteller whose work increasingly exists at the intersection of art and social practice. As a composer, Gabriel Kahane has been commissioned by many of America’s leading arts institutions, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Public Theater, which in 2012 presented his musical February House. A frequent collaborator across a range of musical communities, Kahane has worked with an array of artists including Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Phoebe Bridgers, Caroline Shaw, and Chris Thile.

Jeffrey and Gabriel Kahane Duo

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