Caramoor Announces Eight Spring Livestreams

Caramoor Announces Eight Spring Livestreams: The New York Times called Caramoor’s spring calendar of classical, jazz and R&B livestreams from the Music Room “adventurous and excellent”. Five of the eight concerts will include artist Q&As, moderated by Caramoor’s Artistic Director Kathy Schuman, that offer the home audience an opportunity to ask questions

Highlights include Dashon Burton & David Fung, the Thalea String Quartet performing works by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jessie Montgomery, Tanya Tagaq, and a world premiere of a Caramoor commission from Paola Prestini; R&B star Son Little; and jazz diva Catherine Russell. Other programs in the series of livestreams from the Music Room include the Callisto Quartet completing its survey of the six Bartók String Quartets; the next-generation visionaries of the Junction Trio playing Beethoven and Shostakovich; the continuo band Ruckus with baroque flutist Emi Ferguson; and Caramoor’s own Schwab Vocal Rising Stars. 

Dashon Burton & David Fung (March 21)  An original member of the innovative Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, bass-baritone Dashon Burton is known for his “nobility and rich tone” (The New York Times). Showcasing his versatility, Burton’s recital with pianist David Fung combines Schumann’s complete Dichterliebe with works by John Dowland, Charles Brown, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Ernest Charles, and William Bolcom, and a set of spirituals. This one made the New York Times’ Top 10 Classical Livestreams for March.

The Schwab Vocal Rising Stars (April 1) kick off the spring season with music by Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Serge Gainsbourg, Joseph Canteloube, Michel Legrand and many others. This “Tour de France” program will feature soprano Nicoletta Berry, mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner, tenor Aaron Crouch, baritone Samuel Kidd, and pianist Gracie Francis, who have been selected by program Artistic Director Steven Blier for a weeklong residency at Caramoor.

Son Little (April 9) This Livestream, presented in collaboration with City Winery, brings R&B master and Grammy winner Son Little into your living room for an evening of classic soul, old-school R&B, and adventurous indie sensibilities. Lauded for his gritty instrumental virtuosity and raw, raspy vocals. NPR praised Son Little for his “impeccably crafted songs.” Son Little honed his sound for many years with bands like The Roots and RJD2. 

Thalea String Quartet (April 11) Formed in 2014 at the Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival in Courmayeur, Italy, the Thalea String Quartet has been celebrated for its “vibrant performance” and “sincere expressivity” (SF Classical Voice). After serving as Caramoor’s Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence during the 2019-20 season, the quartet returns to present a program of contemporary music, including Paola Prestini’s The Red Book, a Caramoor-commissioned world premiere. 

Ruckus with Emi Ferguson (baroque flute) (April 25) Ruckus’s core members form the Baroque equivalent of a rhythm section: guitars, keyboards, cello, bassoon and bass. This “continuo band” has earned widespread critical acclaim for a fresh, visceral approach to early music that aims to fuse its questing, creative spirit with the grit, groove and jangle of American Roots music, giving the ensemble a unique “rough-edged intensity” (New Yorker). Flutist Emi Ferguson, a frequent collaborator called “wonderful” by the New York Times and “irresistibly vital” by the Portland Press Herald, joins the ensemble for some of Bach’s most playful and transcendent works.  

Callisto Quartet (May 2) Lauded for its “intensity and bravado” and the “cohesion and intonation one might expect from an ensemble twice their age” (Third Coast Review), the Callisto Quartet was formed in 2016 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and has since garnered top prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition, as well as several others. For its second performance as Caramoor’s 2020–21 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence, the quartet completes its survey of Bartók’s six string quartets with Nos. 2, 3 and 5. 

Catherine Russell (May 8) Catherine Russell released her debut solo album in 2006 after touring and recording as a backup singer and multi-instrumentalist with David Bowie, Steely Dan, Cyndi Lauper, and Paul Simon. She won a Grammy Award in 2012 as a featured artist on the soundtrack album for the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, and her seventh album, Alone Together, was released in 2019 and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. NPR describes her as having “a voice that wails like a horn and whispers like a snake in the Garden of Eden.”

Junction Trio (May 23) This next-gen supergroup combines violinist Stefan Jackiw, a 2007 graduate of Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars program; pianist Conrad Tao, a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” (New York Times); and “electrifying” (New York Times) cellist Jay Campbell of the trail-blazing JACK Quartet. Their program juxtaposes a staple of the Romantic repertoire, Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio, with Shostakovich’s virtuosic and haunting Piano Trio in E minor, written during World War II just after the end of the two-and-a-half-year siege of Leningrad.