Kaufman Music Center Announces Artists-in-Residence

In the 2022/23 season, the Kaufman Music Center hosts Aaron Diehl, Voces8, and the Harlem Quartet as Artists-in-Residence

New York's Kaufman Music Center recently announced their season for the coming 2022/23 season. Aaron Diehl, Voces8, and the Harlem Quartet will be featured as this season's Artists-in-Residence, and will perform a range of innovative and thoughtful programs.

The Grammy-winning New York-based Harlem Quartet has a mission to advance diversity in classical music. Featured in the What Makes It Great? series at Merkin Hall, they performed in 2009 at The White House for President Obama and First Lady, Michelle Obama. The ensemble has performed with artists as Itzhak Perlman, Ida Kavafian, Carter Brey, Fred Sherry, Misha Dichter, Jeremy Denk, and Paquito D’Rivera. The quartet also collaborated with jazz masters Chick Corea and Gary Burton on the album Hot House, a 2013 multi-Grammy Award-winning release.

This season, Harlem Quartet will give a concert featuring works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Aldo López-Gavilán, and more. They’ll join Artist-in-Residence Aaron Diehl and violinst Mazz Swift in an Ecstatic Music event envisioned by violinist/composer Curtis Stewart. They will also work closely with Kaufman Music Center students in masterclasses and side-by-side performances with students in Merkin Hall.

Jazz composer and pianist Aaron Diehl has released three critically-acclaimed albums and has served as American Pianist Association’s 2011 Cole Porter fellow. A graduate of Juilliard School, Diehl was a finalist in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2002 Essentially Ellington competition. In addition to a European tour with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, he has performed at venues from Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Village Vanguard to the New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonie de Paris.

This season, Diehl will perform music by J.S. Bach and Rolland Hanna on Kaufman's Piano Dialogues series at Merkin Hall and team up with Curtis Stewart, Harlem Quartet and Mazz Swift for Ecstatic Music. He will also coach Kaufman Music Center jazz musicians and chamber ensembles, give masterclasses with students focused on careers in music and the performance practice of Black composers, and give a public masterclass on April 25.

British vocal ensemble VOCES8 performs an extensive repertoire both in its a cappella concerts and in collaborations with leading orchestras, conductors, and soloists. This season, VOCES8 will give three performances in Merkin Hall, including two Give Voice concerts and a Bridges series event with students from Kaufman Music Center and the John J. Cali School of Music. They will lead student workshops focused on composition and choral arranging and give classes on vocal production and career paths in music and music education.

Other highlights of the Kaufman Music Center's season include mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke presenting the New York premiere of her pandemic project how do I find you?, a series of seventeen commissioned works by composers under the age of 40.

Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy award-winning composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw returns to the Kaufman Music Center as part of the Bridges series. She will present a range of her older and more recent works and will be joined by student performers from pre-teen to college age.

"This season at Kaufman Music Center, you can hear the future of music everywhere – on stage, in our classrooms, and all over our community," said Kate Sheeran, Kaufman Music Center's Executive Director.

"You’ll find forward-thinking artists and visionary composer-performers envisioning what music can be, together with a new generation of performers who represent music’s brilliant future."