curated by Antonio Lysy

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Tickets starting at $50

Song, dance, and rhythms of the Andes, Pampas, and the sounds of Buenos Aires street cafés highlight the rich and distinctive music of Argentina. Stay afterwards for tango lessons on the plaza!

Award-winning cellist and longtime BroadStage collaborator Antonio Lysy launches this new and engaging chamber music series, serving as musical alchemist to bring together distinguished artists and audiences. Performances will include post-show chats with artists over food and drink to deepen and enrich musical friendships.

 

Tango Lessons on the Plaza
After the concert, learn Argentine Tango from masters and TV series consultants Miriam Larici and Leonardo Barrionuevo! All are welcome to this 45 minute introduction to the fundamentals of Argentine Tango. This fun class is perfect for dancers of any skill level and will take place on the BroadStage plaza.

Program

Antonio Lysy, cello
Jessica Rivera, soprano
Bryan Pezzone, piano
Miriam Larici & Leonardo Barrionuevo, tango dancers

Carlos Guastavino (1912–2000)Canciones Argentinas
Encantamiento, Pampamapa, La rosa y el sauce, Bonita rama de sauce
Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) Milonga del Angel (arr. José Bragato) for cello and piano
Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) Lúa Descolorida for soprano and piano
Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) Le Grand Tango for cello and piano
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)Cinco Canciones Populares Argentinas, Op. 10 for soprano and piano
Carlos Gardel (1890–1935)Tango: Por Una Cabeza for soprano, piano, and cello (arr. Pablo Hopenhayn)

Antonio Lysy, an artist of international stature and a dedicated pedagogue, has performed as a soloist in major concert halls worldwide. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras of London, Camerata Academica of Salzburg, Zurich Tonhalle, the Zagreb Soloists, Orchestra di Padova e il Veneto, Israel Sinfonietta, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Les Violions du Roi, and several other orchestras around the world. He has collaborated with distinguished conductors including Yuri Temirkanov, Charles Dutoit, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Sandor Vegh, and Kees Bakels, and continues to perform regularly both as a solo, and chamber music artist. 

Lysy enjoys exploring the versatility of the cello’s voice, from Baroque to electric, and is committed to projects which enrich his diverse interests in music:

The touring show he co-produced and directed, Te Amo, Argentina, premiered at BroadStage— a personal journey through the heart and soul of Argentina’s fascinating culture, featuring solo cello and chamber works, dance, film, and spoken word, met with widespread acclaim. Te Amo, Argentina is based on Lysy’s Latin Grammy award-winning CD on the Yarlung Records label - Antonio Lysy at the Broad - Music From Argentina, featuring the works of Piazzolla, Golijov, Ginastera, Bragato, and Schifrin. A review on Musicangle.com declares it “among the most beautiful recordings of cello and piano you are likely ever to hear”, and Absolute Sound recognized it as one of the 40 best recordings of all time.

Other highlights of his work include a multi-faceted recital, broadcast on live radio, celebrating Bach and the cello through performances on baroque, acoustic, and electric cellos at the Los Angeles County Museum of the Arts ; He produced and presented a multimedia concert with pianist and actor Jean Marchand, showcasing the history of his Carlo Tononi cello on its the 300th birthday; Most recently he performed and recorded the cycle of Bach Suites for solo cello, on a mid-summer’s evening, within the acoustically resonant T.E.U.C.L.A. sculpture by Richard Serra. This endeavor was born from an invitation three seasons ago to perform the same cycle at BroadStage. The sold-out performance included an ornamentation of the stage with stunning projections, inviting the audience to a new “delight of spirit” through the art of digital photography. Following that success he was asked to return to the Broad Stage for a performance of the cycle of Beethoven sonatas, with the pianist Tom Beghin. Beghin played on two fortepianos from Beethoven's time, for a journey through Beethoven's life, covering all three of the composer's major creative periods.

Antonio Lysy has recorded extensively for CBC Radio, BBC Radio, Classic FM, and other European radio networks. His live recording of solo cello repertoire by Bach, Berio, Henze, and Walton, released on the Pelléas label, is "...some of the most beautiful Bach ever heard" (La Presse, Montréal). In addition, he has recorded for the Claves, Dinemec Classics, and Fonè labels. In January 2012, he recorded and premiered the reworked Eric Zeisl cello concerto with the UCLA Philharmonia directed by Neal Stulberg. This cd, highly praised by Donald Rosenberg on Gramophone is also available on the Yarlung Records label.

Yarlung Records and Antonio partnered soon after in a unique recording of South American-connected compositions and arrangements. Titled South America, the nine compositions honor Astor Piazzolla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Gardel, Antonio's violinist father Alberto Lysy (with whom he recorded the Kodaly Duo in 2001), and Argentine bandoneon master Coco Trivisonno. Several works are recorded with ingenuous multi- tracking which, thanks to all-analog Sonorus Holographic Imaging technology, Antonio plays all the parts! For both Villa-Lobos' arrangement of Bach's Prelude and Casals' Les Rois Mages, Mr. Lysy created a virtual cello orchestra of 16–28 cellos playing 4–7 parts.

Antonio’s love and commitment to chamber music is demonstrated by his musical directorship and founding in 1989, of the annual Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany, Italy (www.itslafoce.org). Distinguished artists from around the globe take part in this idyllic summer retreat, which is crowned by performances in medieval fortresses, palazzi, and churches in the Southern Tuscan region. The series celebrated its 30th anniversary in the summer of 2018. Antonio invited his friend and colleague, the greatly admired italian pianist, Alessio Bax, to collaborate closely with him and act as Artistic Director for an undetermined term.

In 2003 Antonio accepted the position of Professor of Cello at University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to moving to the United States, he held a professorship at McGill University in Montréal. He was also, for a number of years, visiting professor at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland. Mr. Lysy appears regularly on prominent online platforms in ‘cello chats’, blogs and interviews, and shares his passion for teaching at international festivals in the summer such as the Heifetz International Music Institute in Virginia, NUME in Cortona, Italy, and the Toronto Summer Music Festival in Canada.

Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Grammy Award-winning soprano Jessica Rivera is one of the most creatively inspired vocal artists performing before the public today. The intelligence, dimension and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on great international concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations with many of today’s most celebrated composers, including John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jonathan Leshnoff, Nico Muhly, and Paola Prestini, and has brought her together with such esteemed conductors as Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Markus Stenz, Bernard Haitink, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

During the 2022-2023 season, Ms. Rivera returns to the Nashville Symphony to perform and record Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem, a piece she premiered with the Houston Symphony in May 2017. She sings Handel’s Messiah with the Atlanta Symphony led by Norman Mackenzie and returns to the Fort Worth Symphony for Hadyn’s The Creation under Robert Spano. She is presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall, Society of the Four Arts, and Wolftrap in Voices of the Americas, a program featuring works by Ginastera, Chávez, and León alongside pianist Michael Stephen Brown and cellist Nicholas Canellakis. She sings De Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares at the Tercer Festival Urtext in Mexico City with pianist Mark Carver and participates in The Argentina Project with Antonio Lysy at BroadStage in Santa Monica, CA. 

A champion of new music, Ms. Rivera recently gave the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s The Right of Your Senses, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and performed by the National Children’s Chorus and the American Youth Symphony conducted by Carlos Izcaray at Walt Disney Concert Hall. A major voice in the rich culture of Latin American music and composers, Ms. Rivera recently performed in Antonio Lysy’s beloved Te Amo Argentina with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and partnered with pianist Mark Carver for a recital titled Homage to Victoria de los Angeles at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, FL. During the 2021-2022 season, Ms. Rivera and guitarist Sharon Isbin embarked on a multi-city US tour with a program of Spanish art songs, a project the duo debuted during the 2019 Aspen Music Festival. Her performance of John Harbison’s Requiem with the Nashville Symphony and Chorus under Giancarlo Guerrero was recorded and released on the Naxos label in October 2018. 

Ms. Rivera treasures her decade-long collaboration with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She was featured as a soloist on Spano’s final concert as ASO Music Director, singing Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. Other recent highlights with Spano and the ASO include Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and Jonathan Leshnoff’s Zohar with the ASO and Chorus at Carnegie Hall. Additionally, she joined Spano for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Fort Worth Symphony and for Christopher Theofanidis’s Creation/Creator in Atlanta and at the Kennedy Center’s 2017 SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras. Here she also sang Robert Spano’s Hölderlin Lieder, a song cycle written specifically for her and recorded on the ASO Media label.

Recent orchestral highlights include Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos in her debut with the Minnesota Orchestra led by María Guinand, Gabriela Lena Frank’s La Centinela y la Paloma with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra led by Federico Cortese, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Jerry Hou at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Mozart’s Requiem with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Teddy Abrams, Handel’s Messiah with the Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Colombia’s Orquestra Filarmónica de Bogotá led by Juan Felipe Molano, the Mozart Requiem with the San Diego Symphony under the baton of Markus Stenz and with Roberto Abbado leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Brahms Requiem with the Kansas City Symphony, the Mozart orchestration of Handel’s Messiah with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra with Alexander Shelley, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Five Images After Sappho and Poulenc’s Gloria with the Colorado Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Grand Rapids Symphony, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Karina Canellakis and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’s Orchesterlieder with Johannes Stert and the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa in Lisbon, and Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others. She joined in the celebrations of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial at the Celebrity Series of Boston’s What Makes It Great with Rob Kapilow and performed the role of Eileen in Bernstein’s Wonderful Town for her debutwith the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot.

Ms. Rivera has worked closely with John Adams throughout her career, and received international praise for the world premiere of A Flowering Tree, singing the role of Kumudha in a production directed by Peter Sellars at Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival. Under Adams’s baton, she has sung the role with the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. She has also performed Kumudha in her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon and the Cincinnati Opera led by Joana Carneiro. Ms. Rivera made her European operatic debut as Kitty Oppenheimer in Sellars’s acclaimed production of Adams’s Doctor Atomic with the Netherlands Opera, a role that also served for her debuts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Finnish National Opera and Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Spain. She joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera for its new production of Doctor Atomic under the direction of Alan Gilbert. Ms. Rivera has also performed Nixon Tapes with the Pittsburgh Symphony under John Adams’s direction, as well as his composition El Niño with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson, San Francisco Symphony under John Adams, and at the Edinburgh International Festival with James Conlon and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Rivera made her critically acclaimed Santa Fe Opera debut in the summer of 2005 as Nuria in the world premiere of the revised edition of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. She reprised the role for the 2007 Grammy Award-winning Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano, and bowed in the Peter Sellars staging at Lincoln Center and Opera Boston, as well as in performances at the Barbican Centre, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Cincinnati Opera, and the Ojai, Ravinia, and New Zealand International Arts Festivals. Performances of Margarita Xirgu in Ainadamar took place in the summer of 2007 at the Colorado Music Festival under the baton of Michael Christie and she reprised the part recently for the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Committed to the art of recital, Ms. Rivera has appeared in concert halls in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas and Santa Fe. She was deeply honored to receive a commission from Carnegie Hall for the World Premiere of Nico Muhly’s song cycle entitled The Adulteress, for her Weill Hall recital performance.

As a recording artist, Ms. Rivera’s extensive discography includes releases on the Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Naxos, Telarc, Urtext, VIA Records, Opus Arte, CSO Resound, and ASO Media labels. Her third release for Urtext, an Homage to Victoria de los Angeles, is due for release in 2022.

Ms. Rivera serves on the vocal faculty at Miami University in Oxford, OH. For additional information about Ms. Rivera, please visit http://www.jessicarivera.com.

Bryan Pezzone is the consummate crossover pianist of his generation. He has excelled in classical, contemporary, jazz, and experimental genres and is known for both his versatility and virtuosity as a performing artist, improviser and composer. He has performed with many major symphony orchestra associations, has toured widely with the jazz group Free Flight, and is known in the Los Angeles area as one of the primary free-lance pianists for film and television soundtrack recording, contemporary music premieres, and chamber music accompanying As a soloist, Bryan has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Pasadena Pops, Santa Monica Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra, United States International University Orchestra, U.C. Irvine Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Philharmonic and the Pacific Symphony. He has also been invited to perform solo keyboard concerts that blend traditional concert repertoire, improvisations and original works using the Yamaha Midi Grand by Willamette University for it's Distinguished Artist Series, the University of Miami, Rice University and in many Southern California appearances including the California Institute of the Arts where he was on the piano faculty from 1987- 2000 and has created their multi-focused keyboard program.

Recordings include many of the releases on the Cold Blue Label, You Are and Daniel Variations-Steve Reich, chamber works of John Briggs, "Settings" by Mel Powell, works of John Harbison and John Cage as well as with oboe soloists Allan Vogel (Delos), trombonist William Booth and others. Bryan has produced CDs of his own music which blends jazz and classical styles – including "Flying on Water" produced by Steve Wight and featuring M.B. Gordy on drums and Bart Samolis on bass as well as solo piano CD’s featuring his more introspective music.

In addition, Bryan has been the principal pianist with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from its inception in 1991 through 1999, has received on-screen credit for his performance on the soundtrack of "The Game" (with Michael Douglas), The Bucket List, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, Flipped, City By the Sea and has been the pianist on virtually all of the cartoons released by Warner Brothers and Disney (Animaniacs,Pinky and the Brain,Goof Troop, Bonkers) from 1990-2002.

He is responsible for much of Yamaha's Disklavier Piano Series with solo titles as disparate as "The Best of Elton John," "Cinema Love Songs," and "Debussy Piano Works" along with literally dozens of others.

In addition to his Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music in 1984 where he was awarded the Performers Certificate and won the concerto competition, he was invited to the Tanglewood Music Center two successive summers as a full scholarship fellow in 1983 and 1984 where he received the C.D. Jackson Master Award. He attended the Banff Centre during its winter term on scholarship from 1984 - 1985 as an alternative to graduate studies in order to have the necessary time to freely blend various aesthetics and diverse performance traditions into a unique approach. This passion remains the focus of his work and continues to evolve in Bryan's own concerts called "Freedom Series" an eclectic blend of Bryan's compositions and improvisations mixed with personal musings on life and inspiration. Bryan's unique approach is a hybrid genre that is meant to both affect his audience emotionally through music as well as provide a gateway for more inspired living and attention to imagination long after the music has ended.

Bryan Pezzone has been a freelance performing and recording artist in the Los Angeles area since 1987. He is known as a versatile performer who is comfortable in classical, contemporary and improvisational styles. He performs with composers and musicians as diverse as Pierre Boulez, John Williams, and John Adams, and records on countless film and television soundtracks. He is the pianist in the group Free Flight; a crossover classical/jazz quartet. These concerts feature many of his own compositions. In addition, Bryan has initiated a performing series that he calls “FREEDOM SERIES” which involves improvisations and verbal musings on life. He has been principal pianist in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from its inception in 1991-1999 as well as the former chair and founder of the Multi-focused keyboard department at the California Institute of the arts from 1987-2000. He abandoned both those positions in order of discovering new paths and is passionate about continuously redefining himself and his role as an artist, musician, and person in today’s complex and eclectic culture. 

Miriam Larici and Leonardo Barrionuevo are well-known for their work as celebrity choreographers on both FOX's and the BBC's "So You Think You Can Dance." Both Larici and Barrionuevo are from Argentina, trained in ballet, jazz, stage, and social Argentine Tango.

They also worked on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" as tango choreographers, were featured as Guest Performers on NBC's "America's got Talent," appeared on Univison's "Latin Grammy Awards," and have starred in a series of commercials for Chase Bank. In addition, the pair co-starred on an episode of ABC's "The Catch", and representing Argentina, they won the Championship on NBC's "Superstars of Dance."

Larici is famous as the iconic image of the Broadway-London hit "Forever Tango." She has also performed on several Broadway musicals, among them "42nd Street,” "Me & My Girl," "Mambo Kings," and others.

Barrionuevo was the featured specialist on the Broadway-London hit "Forever Tango." He has also appeared at the most prestigious tango houses in Buenos Aires, as both performer and choreographer for their spectacular shows.

Together they have an international reputation as instructors, performers and choreographers of Argentine Tango, and are now sharing their mastery, passion and magic through their choreography, performances, acting roles, their own Tango productions, and master classes and special workshops. Larici and Barrionuevo are considered at the moment as one of the top Tango couples of the world.

Presented with support from Los Angeles Philanthropic Committee for the Arts, in memory of Audre Slater

 

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