St. Cecilia Music Center Announces Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Series and Spectacular Jazz Series Concerts for the upcoming 2022-2023 Season

NOTE: The 2022 – 2023 Acoustic Café Folk Series will be announced in July 2022.

Artists in SCMC’s Spectacular Jazz Series will include the Rodriguez/Martinez Cuban piano, vocal, percussion duo opening the series on October 13, 2022, the seven-member all-female super group Artemis will continue the series on February 16, 2023 and the Emmet Cohen Trio will perform live on the stage on March 9, 2023. SCMC audiences have come to know and love Emmet Cohen through his weekly-streaming “Live From Emmet’s Place” Monday night concerts which SCMC has been co-hosting since May of 2020.  

SCMC and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will continue its 11-year partnership this coming season. The esteemed Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will perform three concerts titled: Beethoven to Beach on November 17, 2022, Magical Schubert on January 19, 2023 and Delight and Drama on March 23, 2023.

November 17, 2022 - “Beethoven to Beach”  

Despite being restricted in her musical career by her husband and parents, Amy Beach became the first wholly successful American woman composer and concert pianist. A grand, sweeping work in the Romantic style, her quintet easily stands beside the great works in the genre by Schumann, Brahms, and Dvořák. As preludes to the Beach, fanciful works by Beethoven and Schumann lead to the intense sonic and rhythmic world of Erwin Schulhoff, whose bracing duo for violin and cello rivals those by his contemporaries Ravel and Kodály. This concert features Gilles VonSattel, piano; Francisco Fullana, violin; Ida Kavafian, violin; Matthew Lipman, viola; and CMS Co-Artistic Director David Finckel, cello.

January 19, 2023 - “Magical Schubert”

Bridging the Classical and Romantic music eras, the prolific Franz Schubert gave the world an astonishing wealth of compositions during his very short 31 years of life. In this program, CMS celebrates Schubert’s magical genius, barely recognized during his lifetime, with three of his most significant chamber music works: the lighthearted fantasy for Violin and Piano in C major, his splendid Piano trio in B-flat major, No. 1, Op. 99, and his greatest piano duet, the Fantasie in F minor, a tragically beautiful farewell written during the final months of his life. The CMS musicians featured in this program include Gloria Chien, piano; Allesio Bax, piano; Benjamin Beilman, violin; and David Requiro, cello.

March 23, 2023 - “Delight and Drama”

Four-hand piano pieces bring musicians as close as they can get to the ultimate in collegial music-making. The piano trio, with just one additional musician, generates all the excitement and passion of an entire orchestra. Romantics Brahms and Arensky mine the full range of these two genres to bring listeners an evening that begins with the wonder of childhood and ends with Brahms at the height of his dramatic powers. The CMS musicians appearing in this program include CMS Co-Artist Director Wu Han, piano Wu Qian, piano Bella Hristova, violin; and Dmitri Atapine, cello.

October 13, 2022 – Cuban Duo Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedrito Martinez

SCMC’s first jazz concert features the charismatic pianist, Alfredo Rodriguez and percussionist, drummer and singer Pedrito Martinez. Painted in the broadest of strokes, the stories of Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedrito Martinez may seem similar: both started life in Havana, discovered their gifts and passions for music and headed to the States, where they melded the music of their homeland with a wide variety of influences, each in his own deeply personal way. 

Rodriguez was born into a musical family, his father a popular singer and TV host. A child prodigy, he studied classical piano at the prestigious Conservatorio Amadeo Roldán and Instituto Superior de Arte while playing popular music in his father’s orchestra by night. While performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006 he was discovered by his future mentor and producer, the legendary Quincy Jones. 

Martinez, on the other hand, honed his craft on the streets of Havana, learning the deeply-rooted percussion and vocal style of Afro-Cuban folkloric and religious music. Pedrito has performed or recorded with Wynton Marsalis, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Angelique Kidjo, Chucho Valdés, and James Taylor. He has been leader of his own quartet since 2005 with a Grammy®-nominated album released in 2013 on Motéma Music.  

As a result of their differences, Rodriguez and Martinez share a natural chemistry that makes for a galvanizing musical experience when they come together.

February 16, 2023 – Artemis

ARTEMIS is an all-female jazz super-group comprised of pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, and drummer Allison Miller. The group is distinctive not only for bringing together six singular artists, each renowned for their own remarkable solo career, but for its multi-generational and globe-spanning line-up with members hailing from the US, Canada, Israel and Japan.

March 9, 2023 - The Emmet Cohen Trio

Emmet Cohen will be live and in-person at SCMC to the delight of the fan base he has developed through SCMC co-hosting his Monday night “Live From Emmet’s Place” streaming concerts. 

“Thirty years old and one of the finest piano players to emerge in decades,(Emmet Cohen) the Miami-born and Montclair, New Jersey-raised musician is not just the poster man for contemporary jazz, breathing 2020s finesse onto early twentieth century swing, he is a supremely gifted and impassioned artist of the highest order.”  - Zachary Weg, All About Jazz