OXFORD CONCERT SERIES DEBUTS NEW
COMMISSION IN ONLINE CONCERT
MEMPHIS SYMPHONY PIANIST AND UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI PROFESSOR ADRIENNE PARK CURATES SPRING CONCERT MARRYING POETRY, ART, MUSIC, AND NOSTALGIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OXFORD, Mississippi (May 10, 2021)—New York City based classical music composer Stephanie Ann Boyd has just announced her 2021 Spring Season; a bingeable, Netflix-style feast of concerts streaming online, filled with solo, chamber, ballet, and orchestral programming that spans the gamut from fun to profound, with offerings by student and professional ensembles alike, including Oxford’s own Sonic Explorations concert series.
This spring season includes productions from institutions and artists including the New World Symphony and violinist Brendon Elliott, Carnegie Hill Concerts, Pianoforte Chicago, Boston’s Juventas New Music Ensemble, Winnipeg Youth Orchestras and Winnipeg Sistema under the baton of Naomi Woo, Keith Dyrda, and Andrea Bell, Rogue New Music with pianist Jennifer Reason, pianist Robbie Padilla, Jonathan Howard Katz, and Casper College Orchestra under the baton of Jennifer Cowell. Commission premieres include a colorful ballet by NYC’s XAOC Contemporary Ballet and choreographer Eryn Renee Young, a pandemic-inspired work for pianist Daniel Colalillo, a pop song celebrating motherhood for cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson with genre-defying Shouthouse, a work for Megan Healy in honor of famed and forgotten violinist Maud Powell, a nostalgia-inspired work for Mississippi pianist Adrienne Park, a solo cello work for Astral Artist’s Tommy Mesa, and a set of floral works for Pennsylvania pianist Holly Roadfeldt.
Sonic Explorations concert Remembrance: The Music of American Melodist Stephanie Ann Boyd was curated by pianist Adrienne Park and features the premiere Lily of the Valley, a work that Park commissioned as part of a new set of piano preludes by Boyd entitled Flower Catalog. Artwork by Boston-based designer Sasha Parfenova, and poetry by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Jessica Lynn Suchon have been paired with the music. “Stephanie infuses her compositions with beautifully descriptive words that guide the performer”, Park said. “ As an interpreter, I have the freedom to let my imagination wander with each passage as I play. She has captured the wondrous fragility and strength of the flower and the story of the grandparents so well...I am honored to be a part of the Flower Catalog and look forward to many performances in the future!”
Other pieces on this concert include an early work of Boyd, Fantasia Olora, written for cello and piano at age 17, and Imogen, a three movement work for flute and piano. University of Mississippi faculty members cellist Christine Kralik and flutist Nave Graham join Park on these works. “Adrienne has taken such care with the developing and curating of this concert”, Boyd remarked, “the performances are powerful and tender at the same time, and the poetry and art that Adrienne has included alongside each work makes every moment that much more magical”
Sonic Explorations Presents Remembrance: Music of American Melodist Stephanie Ann Boyd can be enjoyed now for free at stephanieannboyd.com/s2021, accompanied by artist biographies, program notes, and other behind-the-scenes information.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nave Graham, Flute
Dr. Nave Graham is the Instructor of Flute at the University of Mississippi. She leads a fulfilling career as an educator, solo and orchestral performer, and chamber musician. Dr. Graham has been awarded first prize in numerous national competitions including the Flute Society of Greater Philadelphia Young Artist Competition, the Flute Society of Kentucky Young Artist Competition, and the Central Ohio Flute Association Young Artist Competition. She has also been a prizewinner in the Byron Hester Solo Flute Competition hosted by the Houston Flute Club, the South Carolina Flute Society Young Artist Competition, and the National Flute Association Masterclass Performers Competition.
As an advocate of contemporary music, She has received fellowships with various festivals dedicated to new music including the Toronto Creative Music Lab, New Music on the Point, and the Bang on A Can Summer Music Festival hosted by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Dr. Graham is also a founding member of contemporary chamber music sextet, All of the Above. The ensemble has held residencies at Xavier University as well as the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Cortona, Italy. All of the Above made their Carnegie Hall debut in 2017 and returned in October 2018. The ensemble released their first album on Ablaze Records in 2020, streamable on all platforms. For more information on All of the Above, please visit www.aotaensemble.org.
Dr. Graham has also performed with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra Augusta, National Music Festival Orchestra, and the National Repertory Orchestra. She previously held the position of Adjunct Instructor of Flute at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has served as adjunct flute faculty at the CCM Preparatory Department and is a teaching fellow at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in the summers. With a cognate in Ethnomusicology, she has conducted intensive research on Buddhist philosophy and psychology as it relates to music performance anxiety. She has presented lectures at the College Music Society Conference, the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Flute Society Festival, and Northern Kentucky University.
Nave Graham holds Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where she studied with Randolph Bowman. She also holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of South Carolina where she studied with Jennifer Parker-Harley.
Christine Kralik, Cello
Dr. Christine Renée Kralik is the Cello Instructor at the University of Mississippi where she teaches applied Low Strings and Music Appreciation courses. Previously she was the adjunct cello instructor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. Dr. Kralik is a thriving young professional cellist who received her Doctorate of Musical Arts with an emphasis in cello performance from Texas Tech University in May of 2018. She holds a Masters in Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Utah, where she was also named as the Outstanding Senior. She studied cello performance with Jeffrey Lastrapes at Texas Tech University, Cleveland Orchestra cellist Richard Weiss at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Utah Symphony cellist Pegsoon Whang at the University of Utah.
Dr. Kralik is the principal cellist of the North Mississippi Symphony and the LakeRidge Chamber Orchestra in West Texas. She was previously a member of the Lubbock, Amarillo, and Midland-Odessa Symphonies. Along with her active orchestral career, she has performed in numerous recitals with faculty and students all over the country, participated in premiere recording sessions, performed as a TMEA soloist, a cello soloist with ballet productions, string quartet outreach concerts, and many other collaborative performances.
Along with holding a busy performance schedule, Dr. Kralik finds great joy in teaching. She enjoys working with the cello and bass students of the University of Mississippi, as well as cello students in the surrounding area and from all over the world.
In the summer of 2018, Dr. Kralik joined the faculty at the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, where she works closely with students in cello master-classes and sectionals. Dr. Kralik enjoys performing in the exciting faculty chamber music series throughout the duration of the Governor’s School, performing works as various as the spectacular Brahms piano quartets, Shostakovich piano trio no.2, to Bartok string quartets, and Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht. Dr. Kralik also returned to teach cello for a third summer at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. Dr. Kralik performs on a German Wilhelm Hammig cello dated 1907 and an unnamed French cello bow thought to be from the Pierre Simon School circa 1880.
Adrienne Park, piano
Adrienne Park has a wide breadth of experience performing as a collaborative pianist in chamber music settings and as a pianist within symphonic settings. For six years at The Banff Centre’s Music and Sound program, she was the faculty collaborative pianist for the fall and winter residencies, with the central mission of helping resident artists realize their artistic endeavors. She has performed in recital with many renowned artists, including violinists Joshua Bell and Andrew Dawes, cellists Shauna Rolston and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, bassist Edgar Meyer, flutists Paul Edmund Davies, Timothy Hutchins and Tara Helen O’Connor, bassoonist Frank Morelli, saxophonist Nikita Zimin, horn player Frøydis Ree Wekre, percussion group NEXUS, soprano Mary Wilson, and tenor Telly Leung. For fifteen years, Adrienne has performed regularly with the Memphis Chamber Music Society.
Adrienne is Principal Piano, Celeste and Keyboards with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Moody, a position she has held since 2004. In addition to their symphonic series, the MSO performs annually with Ballet Memphis, New Ballet Ensemble and Opera Memphis. She also performs with IRIS Orchestra, directed by Michael Stern, whose roster includes musicians from some of the country’s best orchestras, universities and chamber groups. As part of the IRIS chamber music series at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, she will soon perform a recital with violinist Nancy Zhou, winner of the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition.
As a proponent of contemporary music, Adrienne has performed many world premieres. With Kokoro Dance, she premiered Sunyata, Truths of the Blood, Dance of the Dead, Encounters with the Goddess, Sade—Part II, and Embryonic Cavatina. With Joe Ink Dance, she performed in a contemporary jazz ensemble led by composer John Korsrud to premiere Swing Theory and Seven. She co-founded the trio SqueezPlay with accordionist Douglas Schmidt and percussionist David Carlisle with cellist Shauna Rolston as guest. The group recorded a CD of original works entitled rubber horn with producer Mark S. Willsher, performing the works at the Winnipeg New Music Festival. Adrienne will soon premiere one of twelve preludes for solo piano from Flower Catalog by American melodist Stephanie Ann Boyd of ICEBERG New Music.
As a faculty member at the University of Mississippi, Adrienne has been a collaborative pianist since 2001. In 2013, she launched Sonic Explorations, a chamber music series that highlights the talents of music faculty and professional musicians in the region. She recently redesigned the curriculum for Keyboard Fundamentals, a required course for music majors. In addition to teaching applied piano at the University, she has an active private piano studio in Oxford, Mississippi.
Adrienne studied with Abbey Simon and Ruth Tomfohrde at the University of Houston and with Robert Silverman at the University of British Columbia.
More about Adrienne on her website here.
STEPHANIE ANN BOYD, 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. Her music has been praised as “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’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.
The 2020/2021 season includes commissions from the Wyoming Symphony, Astral Artists with cellist Tommy Mesa, violinist Megan Healy, pianists Lara Downes, Lise de la Salle, Marta Aznavoorian, Lucille Chung, Susie Maddocks, Adrienne Park, Diane Kaztenburg Braun and Music Street, Sarah Bob and the New Gallery Concert Series, Holly Roadfeldt, Marianne Parker, Eunbi Kim, the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. This season also includes performances by the Lincoln Trio, Juventas New Music, Jennifer Reason, Lisa Pegher, Shouthouse, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, including concerts at the Kaufman Center, the Boston New Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music, Pianoforte in Chicago, live on Chicago’s WFMT radio station, and elsewhere.
Stephanie holds degrees from Roosevelt University and New England Conservatory, and she was one of the last violin students of renowned pedagogue John Kendall.