DUO Stephanie & Saar official site

Pianists Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia collaborate as DUO Stephanie and Saar in dazzling performances filled with visceral excitement, elegance and artistic vision.

Recent performances include their Lincoln Center debut with Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; collaboration with Philadelphia’s Orchestra 2001 in a complete performance of Frank Zappa’s The Yellow Shark and Symphony Space’s Wall to Wall Bernstein, a marathon celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th anniversary.

The duo’s 2017 recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue has garnered tremendous praise; Stephanie and Saar toured The Art of Fugue extensively with stops in Portland, Sacramento, Phoenix, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, among others. Their recording of György Kurtág’s four hand transcription of Bach’s Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God’s Time is the Very Best of Times) was featured on the soundtrack of the documentary film Red Trees. Beethoven Dialogues, their 2014 album featuring Beethoven Quartets Op. 18 Nos. 1, 4 and 6 in rarely heard four hand arrangements, was chosen as Album of the Week on New York Public Radio WQXR.

Stephanie and Saar are the artistic directors of Makrokosmos Project, a contemporary music festival in Portland, Oregon featuring American music and Oregon-based musicians. Highlights of the 2015 inaugural festival include standing-room performances of George Crumb’s complete Makrokosmos I & II and Celestial Mechanics. Oregon Arts Watch frankly states “It was one of 2015’s peak Oregon musical moments.” Makrokosmos Project has since presented the entirety of Crumb’s Makrokosmos I-IV and premiered works by Gerald Levinson, Branic Howard and Gregory Hutter.

Other peak performance include collaborations with New World Symphony’s Percussion Consort; multiple projects with Miami’s Dranoff Two Piano Foundation including the world premiere of Fantasia de Très Mundos by Cuban-American jazz pianist Martin Bejerano; Sarajevo Chamber Music Festival; Washington DC’s Smithsonian Museum of American Art and sold-out performances at New York City’s (le) poisson rouge.

While pursuing graduate studies at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Stephanie and Saar were inspired by Leon Fleisher to explore the Beethoven string quartets in a duo piano setting. The duo, who are married to each other, reside in New York City. Outdoor enthusiasts, they recently completed the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier.

Daniel Lippel official site

Guitarist Daniel Lippel, called an “exciting soloist” (New York Times), “precise and sensitive” (Boston Globe), and a “modern guitar polymath” (Guitar Review) enjoys a diverse career that ranges through solo and chamber music performances, innovative commissioning and recording projects, and performances in diverse contexts. He has premiered more than fifty new solo and chamber works, recording several on the independent label he owns and directs, New Focus Recordings. Lippel has been the guitarist for the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2005, and new music quartet Flexible Music since 2003. As a chamber musician, Lippel has performed at the Macau Music Festival (China), Teatro Amazonas (Manaus, Brasil), Sibelius Academy (Finland), Acht Brücken Festival (Cologne, Germany), and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, and has been a guest with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New York New Music Ensemble, New York City Opera, Either/Or Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, counter(induction, Red Light New Music, and the Monadnock, Lakes Area, Alpenglow, Cooperstown, and Manchester Music Festivals. In addition to New Focus, he has recorded for several labels including Kairos, Tzadik, Bridge, Albany, Centaur, Starkland, Temporary Residence, and Fat Cat. Recent recital highlights include the Sinus Ton Festival (Germany), Lawrence University, University of Texas at San Antonio, Tangents Guitar Series at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. Lippel has worked with many eminent composers including Mario Davidovsky, Magnus Lindberg, Ursula Mamlok, and Nils Vigeland, and also collaborated on new works with several of contemporary music’s most active younger composers, including Dai Fujikura, Du Yun, Ken Ueno, Nico Muhly, and Reiko Fueting. Lippel has given masterclasses and lecture presentations at Curtis Institute of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin, Peabody Conservatory of Music, among many others. He received his DMA from the Manhattan School of Music, under the guidance of David Starobin, studying previously with Jason Vieaux, John Holmquist, Stephen Aron, David Leisner, and Nicholas Goluses.