Return to the Frederick Collection Homepage

Historical Piano Concerts Series
About the Musicians

The Smith Chamber Ensemble


Joel Pitchon, violin

Monica Jakuc, piano

Kivie Cahn-Lipman, 'cello

Liz Chang, violin
Ann Garlid, viola

The Smith Chamber Ensemble is composed of members of the Smith College performance faculty. Depending upon the repertoire to be performed, the ensemble can feature various combinations of voice, piano, and strings, allowing for great versatility in programming. In addition to regular concerts, members of the ensemble are available for discussions, demonstrations and collaborative presentations.

The ensemble has performed at the Historical Piano Concerts last spring, and has also made appearances throughout New England and the East Coast.

]

Joel Pitchon, violinist, is an Associate Professor of violin and chamber music at Smith College. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Pitchon studied with Oscar Shumsky and Joseph Fuchs. Mr. Pitchon is currently a member of the Forster String Trio and the Smith Chamber Ensemble. He has been the concertmaster of numerous orchestras, including the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona (Spain), the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony, and the EOS Chamber Orchestra (NY). For his performance of Stravinsky's L'histoire du Soldat with the EOS Orchestra, the New York Times wrote  "…superb playing by Joel Pitchon…" Mr. Pitchon has been a featured artist for the arts program "Cadencia" on TV3 Catalunya and profiled in STRAD magazine. He has performed in many concerts in the U.S. and abroad with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared in numerous radio and television broadcasts including WGBH, WYNC and PBS television. Mr. Pitchon has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Vox Cum Laude, CBS Masterworks, and the Musical Heritage Society. He has recently made two recordings of sonatas and solo works by Porter, Piston, Amy Beach and Clifton J. Noble for Gasparo Records.

Mr. Pitchon’s violin was made by Andreus Guarnerius in 1686 in Cremona, Italy. His bow was made by Eugene Sartory circa 1920 in Paris, France.

~
Monica Jakuc (pronounced Ya-kutch) is the Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music at Smith College, where she has taught since 1969. She has toured as solo and chamber music player on three continents, and is an active member of the Smith Chamber Ensemble. Ms. Jakuc also delivers lecture-recitals on women composers and has been a featured artist at International Association of Women in Music concerts in London and Washington, D.C.

Ms. Jakuc has performed on early pianos since 1986. An organizer and performer at the international HaydnFest 1990, co-sponsored by Smith and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, she has appeared in six previous concerts on the Historical Piano Concerts series. A frequent guest performer with Arcadia Players, Pioneer Valley’s premier early music ensemble, she often features her 6 1/2 –octave Paul McNulty Graf replica in Schubert concerts.

Ms. Jakuc's discography includes fortepiano sonatas by Marianne von Martinez, Marianna von Auenbrugger, and Joseph Haydn on Titanic Records, and Francesca LeBrun's complete Opus 1 Sonatas for fortepiano and violin, with Dana Maiben, on Dorian Discovery. Her newest CD, “Fantasies for Fortepiano,” features works by Mozart, Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata.  It is available at cdbaby.com.

~
Cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman holds degrees from Oberlin and Juilliard and is a Doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  As a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Kivie has played more than 500 solo and small ensemble world premieres, and recent performances include Vincent Calianno's concerto Fuel for electric cello and orchestra, and Kaija Saariaho's chamber concerto Amers.  He has performed in Weill, Merkin and Alice Tully Halls, Symphony Space, Columbia University's Miller Theater, on WQXR in New York and WFMT in Chicago, and recorded for Bridge, NAXOS and Focus Records.  Summer festivals include the Lucerne Festival Academy (Switzerland), Spoleto Festival (Italy), and the Aspen Music Festival.  Kivie plays on a 2003 William Whedbee cello with a bow by John Norwood Lee, and he additionally performs on piccolo cello, baroque cello, and viola da gamba.  He is a Lecturer in Music at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College.
~
Elizabeth Chang, violinist, has given solo recitals throughout the United States as well as in Europe and South America and has appeared as soloist with orchestras both in the US and in Europe. She has been a guest artist and master teacher at the São Paulo International Chamber Music Festival in Brazil, and has collaborated as chamber musician with many of today’s most prominent artists, including Bernard Greenhouse, Paul Neubauer, Anne-Marie McDermott, Aaron Rosand, and Robert White.

Ms. Chang studied at the Juilliard School in the Pre-College Division; at Harvard University; and in Bern, Switzerland. Her teachers were Louise Behrend, Joseph Fuchs, Max Rostal, Leon Kirchner and Luise Vosgerchian. Ms. Chang received the Presidential Scholar in the Arts Award and the Beebe Fellowship for Study Abroad from New England Conservatory.

Ms. Chang enjoys a busy performing and teaching career in New York and Massachusetts. She plays regularly with the Orchestra of St. Luke's and has performed, recorded, and toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra both in this country and abroad. She has appeared as a guest with the Perspectives Ensemble, Ensemble Sospeso, Sequitir, and many other groups in New York City as well as with the Walden Chamber Players and the Smith Chamber Players in Massachusetts.  Ms. Chang is Artistic Director and founding member of the Lighthouse Chamber Players, a chamber music festival on Cape Cod. She has been an Artist Faculty member at New York University and co-founded an intensive chamber music workshop at NYU in the summer of 2002. She has been on the violin and viola faculties at the Mason Gross School of the Arts in Rutgers University and is currently on the violin and viola faculties of the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School as well as on the violin faculty of The School for Strings in New York, where she launched an intensive chamber music workshop in the summer of 2003. In 2005 she was appointed to the position of Visiting Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In the summer of 2007 she will participate in Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival and the Interharmony Music Festival.  This is her first appearance on the Historical Piano Concerts Series.

~

Annie Garlid, violist, from Cos Cob, Connecticut, graduated from Smith College in 2006 with a major in English and minor in Spanish. Before coming to Smith she studied with Mark Kushnir and Peggy Klinger at Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, New York.  Since 2002 she has studied with Ronald Gorevic at Smith and participated in chamber music, orchestra, and other musical collaborations at Smith, Umass Amherst, and Hampshire colleges. In 2003 she won the Wallfisch Scholarship, in 2004 the Smith Concerto Competition and in 2006 the Wallfisch Award for performance. During summers she has attended Kinhaven Music School, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Music at Port Milford, and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. Next year Ms. Garlid plans to attend Juilliard to study with Misha Amory and Heidi Castleman.  This is her first appearance on the Historical Piano Concerts Series.