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Mead Witter School of Music Guest Artist Series

Duo Cortona
Rachel Calloway, mezzo-soprano
Ari Streisfeld, violin

With a world premiere or Laura Schwendinger’s A Cat’s Cradle and other Catly Musings

Duo Cortona is a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to the creation of works for its unique instrumentation: mezzo-soprano and violin. This ensemble explores new sounds and possibilities for its intimate, expressive, and vital combination. Duo Cortona works to establish a new and thus far unexplored repertoire, pursuing the endless possibilities of this union. They create opportunities for both established and emerging composers through commissions, competitions, educational workshops, university residencies, and major concert performances. Duo Cortona was founded at the Cortona Sessions for New Music by husband and wife team Ari Streisfeld and Rachel Calloway.

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Program

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Rachel Calloway brings versatility and compelling insight to stages worldwide. Her work has been praised by the New York Times for “penetrating clarity” and “considerable depth of expression” and by Opera News for her “adept musicianship and dramatic flair.”

This season’s highlights include Janacek’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared at the University of Binghamton, The Castleton Festival, and the University of South Carolina, the music of John Zorn at the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), a world premiere by Robert Xavier Rodriguez with the Amernet Quartet, The Messiah with the Charleston Symphony and the Aiken Symphony, new works with the vocal ensemble Ekmeles in Chicago, Duo Cortona in residence at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and concerts of Jewish art music with Shir Ami in Charleston and Columbia, SC.

She has appeared in concert with the Orlando Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Series, the New York Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony, Ojai Festival, San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, BAM Next Wave Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Cal Performances, and Lincoln Center Festival. Ms. Calloway made her European operatic debut as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Opéra de Reims, Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jovet (Paris) and Opéra de Lille. She has performed with Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, Opera Philadelphia, Tulsa Opera, Central City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, The PROTOTYPE Festival, and the Glimmerglass Festival.

Ms. Calloway serves on the faculty of the University of South Carolina as Assistant Professor of Voice and Director of Spark: Music Leadership at Carolina. She joined the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy) in 2014 and Summer Performing Arts with Juilliard (Switzerland) in 2016. Ms. Calloway holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM) and Manhattan School of Music (MM) and can be heard on Albany Records, Tzadik Records, BCMF Records, and Toccata Classics.

Violinist Ari Streisfeld has garnered critical acclaim worldwide for his performances of diverse repertoire and has established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. Praised for his “dazzling performance” by the New York Times and “scintillating playing” by New York Classical Review, Mr. Streisfeld is a founding member of the world renowned JACK Quartet. Recent season highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall (London), La Salle Pleyel (Paris), Teatro Colon (Argentina), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Carriage Works (Sydney, Australia), Venice Biennale (Italy), Carnegie Hall, The Library of Congress, The Morgan Library (New York), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), and the Salzburg Festival (Austria). He has collaborated with many of today’s most prominent composers including John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, and Salvatore Sciarrino.

Together with his wife, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, Mr. Streisfeld formed Duo Cortona, a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to the creation of new works for the unique instrumentation of mezzo-soprano and violin. Recent and upcoming performances include the Resonant Bodies Festival, SONiC Festival, The Stone (NY), Contemporary Undercurrents of Song Project (Princeton, NJ), New Music on the Point (VT), and The Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He is also a member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the performance and preservation of Jewish art music. Mr. Streisfeld frequently collaborates with some of today’s leading ensembles, including Ensemble Signal, Worldless Music Orchestra, Weekend of Chamber Music, and the Cortona Collective.

Hailed as “imaginative” by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Streisfeld’s arrangements of madrigals and motets for string quartet by Machaut and Gesualdo have been performed to acclaim both at home and abroad. A recipient of the Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Mr. Streisfeld most recently premiered his Machaut arrangements for voice and violin at The Stone (New York).

A passionate and committed music educator, Mr. Streisfeld serves on the faculty of New York’s Special Music School, Face the Music, New Music on the Point and the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He will join the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin Pedagogy this fall.

Mr. Streisfeld attended the Eastman School of Music (Bachelor of Music), Northwestern University (Master of Music), and Boston University (Doctor of Musical Arts). He has recorded for Mode, Albany, Carrier, Innova, Canteloupe, and New World Records.