Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara and Cayenne Music Foundation present a summer evening of jazz featuring pianist Richard Sears and his trio. Richard Sears, a highly inventive pianist with a bold and lyrical approach to improvisation, performs with bassist Martin Nevin and drummer Kevin Yokota at the Yellow House on Friday August 17, 2012, at 7 PM.
Richard Sear's Trio
with Martin Nevin, bass, and Kevin Yokota, drums
to perform at the Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara, August 17, 2012
Whether leading performances of his own music or in more traditional jazz contexts, Richard Sears has performed from New York to Peru, and recorded with a diverse array of artists including Joshua Redman, Dave Binney, Robben Ford, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Azar Lawrence. In August of 2012, Richard will be recording his new trio record featuring bassist Martin Nevin and drummer Kevin Yokota.
Join us for a summer evening with exquisite jazz at the Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara.
Richard Sear's Trio
with Martin Nevin, bass, and Kevin Yokota, drums
to perform at the Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara, August 17, 2012
Concert Details:
Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara
Summer Jazz Evenings: Richard Sears Trio
Date: Aug. 17, 2012
Time: 7 PM
A tasting of French and Californian music with flavors from Baroque to Contemporary. Master of the keyboard, Yevgeniy
Milyavskiy one of the best pianists of his generation in California, brings us works by Couperin, Rameau,
Debussy, Eglin, and da Silva.
Concert Details:
Title: Paris Judgement From the Piano, with Yevgeniy Milyavskiy
Date: Saturday, April 28th, 2012
Time: 7 PM
Venue: The Yellow House (see address in e-ticket)
Tickets: https://yellowhouseconcerts.ticketleap.com/
Yevgeniy Milyavskiy
Born in Mozyr, Belarus, Yevgeniy Milyavskiy began studying piano with
his parents at the age of 3. At Age 6, he began formal studies with the
Director of the Lycee for Gifted Children, Vladimir Kuzmenko, in the
capital of Belarus- Minsk. His debuted with the Belarus Chamber
Orchesrta at age 8 in Minsk. After immigrating to the United States in
1994, Yevgeniy studied under a full scholarship at the Southern
California Conservatory of Music, with Grant Horrocks. In 1998, he began
his studies with the world renowned concert pianist, Professor Daniel
Pollack, continuing to receive a B.M. and M.M. in Piano Performance in
his studio, at the USC Thornton School of Music. Yevgeniy is a winner of
numerous awards and competitions, including the 2002 Spotlight Awards
at the Los Angeles Music Center, the 2003 NFAA competition in Miami, the
2005 Southern Missouri International Piano Competition, The 2007 Los
Angeles International Franz Liszt Competition, and the 2008 Jose Iturbi
international Piano Competition. He has received numerous prizes from
the Leni Fe Bland Foundation Competition in Santa Barbara, the Young
Musicians Foundation, Los Angeles, and the YAPMF Music Festival, Palos
Verdes. Yevgeniy is a Liberace Scholar, and a recipient of the ASCAP
Lieber & Stoller Award. He has performed in numerous solo, chamber,
and orchestra performances nationally and overseas, including Maestro
Boris Brott with the New West Symphony, in London at Covent Garden, at
the Franz Liszt Museum and Conservatory in Budapest, Hungary, in
Germany, Israel, and Belarus. Yevgeniy was a fellow to numerous music
festivals, including the Chamber Symposium in Lausanne, Switzerland,
where he performed on Radio Suisse Romande, the International Chopin
Piano Symposium- Los Angeles, the Aspen Summer Music Festival, AIMS in
Graz piano/vocal festival in Austria, and the 2006 Tanglewood Music
Center Festival. In 2008, Yevgeniy performed at the Spoleto Music
Festival. Yevgeniy is in high demand as a solo and collaborative
artist- with recent performances of the world premiere of Eric Zeisl's
Biblical Ballet Jacob and Rachel, and Wladyslaw Szpilman's Concertino
with Maestra Noreen Green and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony at the
Ford Amphitheatre, televised on LA TV Channel 36. Yevgeniy has recently
won the Grand Prix at the 2011 ISAM Music Festival and Competition in
Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany and will return in 2012 for a tour of concerts
in the region.
The Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara presents the first concert of 2012 with the Duo Amantis, featuring celebrated virtuosos Michael Kudirka (guitar) and Tara Schwab (flute), whose performances have been described by the LA Times as "fascinating, captivating, and haunting". The concert takes place on Sunday Jan. 22 at 4pm.
The concert program presented by the Duo Amantis takes the listener on a time travel through three hundred years of dances and folk-tunes as written by French, German, Hungarian, Brazilian and Portuguese composers, dating from 1722 to the XXI century. The Duo Amantis will perform works by Villa-Lobos, bossa-novas from Antonio Carlos Jobim, Romanian and gipsy dances as depicted by Bela Bartok and a collection of dance music and folk-tunes from J.S. Bach to Maurice Ravel to Patricio da Silva.
With performances described by the Los Angeles Times as "fascinating... captivating... [and] haunting," Michael Kudirka is gaining international recognition as one of the most exciting members of the next generation of classical guitarists. Numerous competition first prizes include the American String Teachers Association, the University of Southern California Concerto Competition, and the Portland International Guitar Competition. He has toured extensively in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Germany, and Japan, and has performed at such notable venues as the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, the Conservatorio de los Rosas in Morelia, Mexico, the Darmstadt Ferienkurs für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany, and the Ono Guitar School in Osaka, Japan. An active chamber musician, Michael Kudirka has appeared with several chamber ensembles including Music of Changes, Ensemble Green, the Formalist String Quartet, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the Cantori Domino Orchestra and Chorus, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the USC Symphony Orchestra, and PARTCH.
Michael Kudirka studied guitar with William Kanengiser at the University of Southern California, Miroslav Tadic at CalArts, and both composition and improvisation with Dusan Bogdanovic at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has performed in masterclasses for many of the world's most brilliant guitarists including Sergio and Odair Assad, Roberto Aussel, Paul Galbraith, Pepe Romero, and David Russel.
A major activist for the creation of new music, Michael Kudirka has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for the guitar including Song of Ashes by Naomi Sekiya, “May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way…” by Jeffrey Holmes, 13 Ways of Looking at 12 Strings by Bryan Johanson, and 5 Intermezzi by Veronika Krausas to name just a few. An active arranger, Michael has transcribed and performed Jean-Philippe Rameau's Pieces de Clavecin (1724) for guitar duo and is currently working on György Ligeti's Musica Ricercata for guitar duo as well as publishing a polymetrically notated version of Francesco da Milano's Libro Terzo of 1562. He recently received a grant from the American Composer’s Forum to record the guitar works of Jeffrey Holmes.
Tara Schwab, flute
A communicative and exciting soloist, ensemble player, scholar, and teacher, Tara Schwab offers uniquely expressive performances and interpretations of historical and contemporary works for flute. Lauded as “a true technician of the flute,” her playing represents the highest level of virtuosity and refinement, while her focus in performance continues to explore and expand the boundaries of current musical thought and composition. Tara is actively involved in commissioning, editing, arranging, performing, and recording new works for flute, in particular for her premier ensemble Duo Amantis with guitarist Michael Kudirka. Tara’s primary teachers include Molly Barth, Jim Walker, and Brooks de Wetter-Smith, and she has performed in notable venues throughout the United States including REDCAT, Capitol Records, and Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, the Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and as a soloist with the UNC Symphony Orchestra in Chapel Hill, NC. Tara has been featured on the Global Village with John Schneider, which airs on 90.7FM in Los Angeles, and broadcasts world-wide at KPFK.org. Tara continues to travel, perform, and teach throughout the US, Mexico, and Europe, and Duo Amantis looks forward to the completion of its first full-length recording this winter.
Tara holds a DMA in flute performance with a supporting area in Ethnomusicology from the University of Oregon, where she was awarded the Graduate Teaching Fellowship from 2008-2011. Pursuing the doctoral degree allowed Tara Schwab to synthesize her passion for performance with her interests in musicology, literature, music theory, and oral traditions. Her final research document focuses on the re-contextualization and re-interpretation of historical music using the metaphor and fundaments of rhetoric in light of the musical and aesthetic traditions of the time. Learning to play Baroque and Classical flutes has accompanied Tara’s research, and she enjoys the ability to perform music on both modern and historical instruments.
Her degrees in flute performance from the California Institute of the Arts (MFA) and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (BM) evidence her life-long dual emphasis on knowledge and creativity. During her time at CalArts, Tara focused on adventurous concert programming, interdisciplinary collaboration, early music, and improvisation in different styles. Her interest in Latin-American language, music, and culture led her to learn Charanga and Latin Jazz, allowing her the opportunity to study with Nestor Torres and Fay Roberts, two experts in the field, and to perform in jazz projects and festivals in Los Angeles, and Huatulco, Mexico.
Duo Amantis
Duo Amantis
Tara Schwab & Michael Kudirka
Duo Amantis was formed at the California Institute of the Arts. As specialists in contemporary music, they have developed a repertoire consisting of major works of the 20th and 21st centuries and original transcriptions of music from the traditional canon. They have also worked personally with living composers to create new compositions for flute and guitar. As a multi-faceted ensemble, the Duo Amantis also specializes in music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, performed on period instruments.Notable soloists in their own right, Tara and Michael have performed individually at such venues as the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), the Palace of Fine Arts (San Francisco), Capitol Records (Los Angeles), Paramount Studios (Los Angeles), the Hult Center (Oregon), the International Jazz Festival (Huatulco, Mexico), the Conservatorio de los Rosas (Mexico), the Darmstadt Ferienkurs für Neue Musik (Germany), the Ono Guitar School (Japan), as well as the REDCAT theater (Los Angeles), the Norwalk Library, the Braille Institute of Los Angeles, the Sandler Pacific Palisades Chamber Music Series, and Beall Hall at the University of Oregon as a duo.Tara and Michael are active and versatile chamber musicians, and perform frequently as guest artists with a variety of ensembles including the Formalist Quartet, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Cantori Domino, the UO Opera, the PARTCH ensemble, the Eugene Symphony, the Corvalis Symphony, Beta Collide, the Taumbu International Ensemble, and the USC Opera.
Yellow House Concerts in Santa Barbara presents a concert with one of the most celebrated Hollywood jazz pianists of all times. LA Jazz Legend, Mike Lang, performs Saturday November 19, 2011 at 7 PM in a rare solo concert in Santa Barbara. Mr. Mike Lang is a three-time winner of the coveted “MVP” Grammy Award and recipient of numerous Gold Records.
Mr. Lang is conversant with every possible music idiom and form, including jazz, classical, pop and R&B. This versatility enabled Mr. Lang to build an unparalleled career performing for an encyclopedic body of artists including Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Barbra Streisand, Diana Krall, John Lennon, Arturo Sandoval, Josh Groban, Vince Gill, In Sync, Milt Jackson, Lee Konitz and Frank Zappa.
To date, Mr. Lang has recorded more than 2,000 scores, working with virtually every major film composer including John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Hans Zimmer, with numerous screen credits for solo appearances. He also premiered jazz piano concerti written especially for him by Byron Olson and Brad Dechter.
Mr. Lang has composed songs for jazz notables including Stan Getz, Herb Alpert and Dave Grusin as well as recording a jazz CD entitled, “Days of Wine and Roses: The Classic Songs of Henry Mancini.”
A new book by Thomas Steinbeck, a Santa Barbara author, is now available in print. Browse Thomas Steinbeck's Silver Lotus on Amazon.
The Silver Lotus is a multilayered work of historical fiction vast in setting and characterization, following the courtship and marriage associated with Captain Hammond, a contributing American shipping merchant, together with Lady Yee, the beautiful and brilliant daughter of a wealthy businessman in Canton, China and taiwan. The couple's s tumultuous journey by ship for the Pacific Rim in the 1880s brings them to the Northern California coast and the first settlements of Chinese in America. Altough Steinbeck writes about the Chinese and Chinese culture with such accuracy, it's interesting to discover that he has never visited China himself. Steinbeck, whose second novel, This Silver Lotus, is published by Counterpoint Press in November of 2011, is in addition the author of the short story collection Down to a Soundless Sea (Ballantine, 2002) and In the Shadow of the Cypress (produced by Gallery, 2010), his first novel.
Santa Barbara CA. April 30, 2011 - Yellow House Concerts is proud to announce his return to live music promotion with The Yellow House Concerts. The first concert in this eclectic new series is Bryan Pezzone, LA’s consummate crossover pianist, on Friday May 20th, 7pm. Bryan Pezzone, who has been called one of the most versatile pianists in the world, blends his passion for improvisation with his passion for the excitement of a live performance.
Bryan Pezzone,
LA's Consummate Cross-over Pianist
Friday May 20th, 7pm, 2011
@ the Yellow House Concerts
Bryan Pezzone is the consummate cross-over pianist of his generation. He excels in classical, contemporary, jazz, and experimental genres and is well known for his versatility and virtuosity as a recording and performing artist, improviser and composer. He performs with many major symphony orchestra associations, tours widely with the jazz group Free Flight, and is known in the Los Angeles area as a primary free-lance pianist for film and television soundtrack recording, contemporary music premieres, and chamber music. Bryan is the pianist on most all of the cartoons released by Warner Brothers and Disney, he was the principal pianist with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from its inception in 1991 through 1999, and received a rare on-screen credit for his performance on the soundtrack of "The Game" starring Michael Douglas. His workshops on his comprehensive approach to improvisation are frequently requested and he is a consulting editor for the well-known publication "Piano and Keyboard." As a soloist, Bryan has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Pasadena Pops, Santa Monica Symphony, Santa Clarita Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, United States International University Orchestra, U.C. Irvine Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Philharmonic and the Pacific Symphony. Bryan has also been invited to perform solo keyboard concerts that blend traditional concert repertoire, improvisations and original works using the Yamaha Midi Grand by Willamette University for it's Distinguished Artist Series, the University of Miami, Rice University and in many Southern California appearances including the California Institute of the Arts where he created the multi-focused keyboard program and served on the piano faculty from 1987 to 1999. Bryan is responsible for most of Yamaha's Disklavier Piano Series with solo titles as disparate as "The Best of Elton John", "Cinema Love Songs", and "Debussy Piano Works". Since beginning his career in Los Angeles in 1987, Bryan has worked with many of the premiere contemporary music conductors; Pierre Boulez, Oliver Knussen, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kent Nagano and John Williams. He is featured in collaborations on a vast number of professionally released recordings, and has been involved with nearly every major festival, series, and performing arts organization, including: Regular appearances on Sundays at Four (broadcast live on KUSC FM 91.5), Monday Evening Concerts, the Green Umbrella Series with both the Cal Arts New Century Players and the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, the Ojai Festival, Joeffrey Ballet - soloist in Stravinsky's "Les Noces", Southwest Chamber Music Series and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Bryan received his Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music in 1984 where he was awarded the Performers Certificate and won the concerto competition. He was invited to the Tanglewood Music Center two successive summers as a full scholarship fellow in 1983 and 1984 where he received the C.D. Jackson Master Award. He attended the Banff Centre during its winter term on scholarship from 1984-1985 as an alternative to graduate studies in order to have the necessary time to freely blend various aesthetics and diverse performance traditions into a unique approach. This passion remains the focus of his work and continues to evolve in Bryan's own concerts called "Freedom Series" an eclectic blend of Bryan's compositions and improvisations mixed with personal musings on life and inspiration. Bryan's unique approach is a hybrid genre that is meant to both affect his audience emotionally through music as well as provide a gateway for more inspired living and attention to imagination long after the music has ended. Bryan's recordings include the chamber works of John Briggs, "Settings" by Mel Powell, works of John Harbison and John Cage, oboe soloist Allan Vogel (Delos), trombonist William Booth and many more vocalists and instrumentalists. Bryan's own CDs include "Flying on Water" produced by Steve Wight and featuring M.B. Gordy on drums and Bart Samolis on bass, "Towards" produced by Prescriptive Music, "Intimate Themes and Interludes", and "Piano Prayers "blending jazz and classical styles with Bryan's own improvisations.
About The Yellow House Concerts: The Yellow House is a private artist residence atop a hill in the Santa Barbara area. Uniquely designed, the residence offers acoustically excellent concert areas inside and on the private patio. Both provide the listener with a comfortable, intimate setting for hearing some of the world’s finest musicians.
The Yellow House Concerts 2011 Series opens May 20th with the finest crossover pianist alive today, Bryan Pezzone.
Additional information and tickets are available at: http://yellowhouseconcerts.ticketleap.com/
