music street

Program Notes

When Igor Yuzefovich, Concertmaster of the BBC Symphony, asked me to write an encore for an upcoming performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Singapore Symphony, I asked him whether he preferred a fast or a slow encore. "Fast, fast!" he said. "Hold on", I replied. "I have it on good authority that your wife is about to have your first child, so you're getting a lullaby. A nice, schmaltzy, haunting lullaby." And he agreed and so it was written. Sophie was just two weeks old at the premiere, but she slept through the run-through at the dress rehearsal, so this lullaby has been successfully road-tested. Sophie and her lullaby were well-received by the public and the press, and she's since grown into one of the most beautifully wide-eyed and expressive children I've ever known.

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About the ArtistS

LI-MEI LIANG

Praised for her “first rate and thoroughly engaging” playing, Taiwanese violinist Li-Mei Liang’s recent performance was described as a “powerhouse” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). An active performer, Liang has appeared in renowned concert halls worldwide, including those in Belgium, China, Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea. She performs and tours with the renowned East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) regularly, and has served as the associate concertmaster of the Orchestra of Indian Hill in Littleton, Massachusetts since 2013. She is also a core member of New York Classical Players (NYCP).

In addition to her performance schedule, Liang is also a committed educator in both music theory and violin practice. She is a full-time music theory faculty member at the New England Conservatory, as well as a violin instructor at its Preparatory School. She also teaches private violin lessons in the Arlington Public Schools while maintaining her own private studio in the Boston area. In previous years, she has served as a Lecturer in Violin and Chamber Music at the University of California, Irvine, and a chamber music teacher for the Quad Chamber Music Program at Harvard University. 

Liang graduated from the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University prior to completing her undergraduate and graduate studies at the New England Conservatory. She received her Doctorate of Musical Arts in violin performance, with a minor in music theory, at the same institution, writing an analytical thesis on Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin. Her mentors include Donald Weilerstein, Nicholas Kitchen, Efstratios Minakakis and Cheng-Tu Su.

ALAN TODA-AMBARAS, CELLO

Active as both a soloist and a chamber musician, cellist Alan Toda-Ambaras has performed with renowned artists such as Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Sandeep Das and other members of the Silk Road Ensemble, the Borromeo Quartet, the Parker Quartet, the Boston Trio, and he has appeared twice as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony. 

He has been featured on French television, in several European documentaries and was named the recipient of the Prize for Most Promising Contestant at the 2005 Rostropovich International Cello Competition in Paris. Alan has also been heard on NPR's From The Top program, New York's WKCR Classical station, and Boston’s Neighborhood News Network.  

Alan is an avid explorer of new music, and is the dedicatee and premiere performer of Trevor Bača's "Huitzil" for solo cello and Stephanie Ann Boyd's Tekton cello concerto, amongst other pieces.  He performed the latter with Boston’s Eureka Ensemble in May 2017.    

His performances have gained enthusiastic reviews. In Paris, he “touched the public and the jury” (musique.france2.fr).  The Washington Post noted that Alan “has the poise of a seasoned performer” and “showed off his strengths convincingly in the demanding repertoire.” And another critic declared that Alan’s playing “proved remarkable by any standard. . . . Toda-Ambaras is worth seeking out and hearing.”

Alan is passionate about engaging with communities through performances and discussions about the arts and humanities in modern society. During the 2018-19 season, Alan was the cellist in Midori's Music Sharing quartet program, through which they conducted cultural exchange and social service performances at assisted living centers and schools throughout Vietnam and Japan.  He is also the director and primary coach for the Quad Chamber Players, a program he established during his three-year term as Music Scholar-in-Residence for Harvard's Cabot House.  As a non-resident tutor in the Quad, Alan continues directing the program in collaboration with Professor Merry Peckham of the New England Conservatory.

Alan has participated in master classes and taken lessons with many of the world’s foremost artists, including Benjamin Zander, Luis Claret, Philippe Muller, Ralph Kirshbaum, Gary Hoffman, David Geringas (at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, in Siena, Italy), Jens Peter Maintz, Frans Helmerson, Anner Bylsma (all three at the Kronberg Academy in Germany), Janos Starker, and Joel Krosnick.  At Harvard, he enjoyed studying the evolving significance of human gesture and physicality in modern and postmodern painting.  Alan has a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser.  

Recent appearances include performances in Tokyo's Ohji Hall and Zojoji Temple; Osaka's Phoenix Hall; the National Music Academy in Vietnam; the Massachusetts State House, the Taos Music Festival, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Harvard University's Paine Hall, and the New England Conservatory.  

DIANE KATZENBERG BRAUN, PIANO

Music Street founder Diane Katzenberg Braun grew up in Baltimore, Maryland where she graduated from the Peabody Preparatory program and studied with teachers from the Peabody Conservatory and Goucher College. At the age of 16 she was invited by Argentinian violinist and Yehudi Menuhin protégée Alberto Lysy to study chamber music in Italy for the summer. She is a graduate of Oberlin College where she majored in Sociology, having spent one year in the Oberlin Conservatory. Ms. Braun also did post graduate work in music theory and history at Brandeis University. After 25 years of teaching piano privately and at the Groton School and Indian Hill Arts, she returned to school in 1999 graduating with honors from the New England Conservatory, earning a Master of Music degree in Collaborative Piano. Her piano teachers there were Irma Vallecillo and Kayo Iwama. Working with numerous singers and instrumentalists, she performed in masterclasses for Warren Jones, Pierre Vallet, Dianne Richardson, Bruce Yeh, Paul Katz, James Buswell, Ben Zander, Karl Paulnak amongst many others. Past teachers have included Renaldo Reyes, Emil Danenberg, Victor Rosenbaum and the Apple Hill Chamber Players.

Ms. Braun was the long time assistant to renowned mezzo soprano D’Anna Fortunato in her studio at the New England Conservatory, coaching and accompanying students in their performances. Collaborating with talented young players at the Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, at the New England Conservatory, with Project Step in Boston, with Lowell House Opera singers, with Harvard University instrumentalists, she has partnered with a large assortment of instrumentalists. Ms. Braun has premiered works of composers Curtis Hughes, Howard Frazin, Thomas Oboe Lee and Stephanie Ann Boyd. She is a current staff collaborative pianist at the New England Conservatory, performing a wide range of repertoire from winds to brass to strings, as well as accompanying in voice studios.

As the founder and Artistic Director of Music Street Ms. Braun aims to share the joy and innovation of unique musical programs as a means of connecting to audiences in the many venues where they perform. She especially values annual visits to the homeless shelter Rosie’s Place in Boston and the two Spaulding Rehab Hospitals. Music Street has an enthusiastic audience for their lively narrated concert series at the West Tisbury Library on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. All Music Street musicians are award winning graduates of Boston's New England Conservatory and have national and international performing careers.

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About the Composer

Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, NYCB soloist Peter Walker, and XAOC Contemporary Ballet’s Eryn Renee Young. Eero, a ballet commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York, was written for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP), and “wide ranging, imaginative” (Portland Press Herald). 

Boyd is the 2021/2022 Peoria Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence, a position culminating in an entire concert of her works, including her violin concerto Sybil, her cantata Sheltering Voices, and a new work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Deborah Rutter, Michelle DeYoung, and Sirena Huang as soloists. The 2021/2022 season also includes the premiere of Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Christopher Dragon; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. 

Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Roosevelt University Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, the JVL Festival Orchestra, the Texas State University Symphony, the Cremona International Academy Orchestra, the UW La Crosse Symphony, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, and the El Paso Youth Symphony. Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors such as Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald.

stephanieannboyd.com