California's Music In May Announces 16th Annual Series, Returning May 27-28

Since its inaugural season in 2008, Music in May (MiM) has featured a rotating roster of internationally renowned musicians and its 16th season is no exception.

2023 Guest artists will include the Principal Violist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Milan Milisavljević, violinists Jennifer Choi and Rebecca Jackson-Picht, pianist Elizabeth Schumann, and hornist, David Byrd-Marrow. Performances will take place at Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Both programs will feature strings, piano, and horn in varied configurations of solos, duos, trios, quartets and quintets.

On Saturday May 27 at 7:30pm, Mozart's Horn Quintet in E Flat Major, K. 407, an American Haiku by Paul Wiancko, Dies Irae by Kenji Bunch, Brahms Horn Trio, Op. 40, and a WORLD PREMIERE of Emily Suite for solo piano by Polina Nazaykinskaya. On Sunday, May 28 at 2:00pm, Three Meditations for Solo Horn by David Byrd Marrow performed by the composer himself, Songs for Horn in F, and Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still, Middleground String Quartet by Shelley Washington, and Dvorak's glorious Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81.

For program details and ticket information visit https://www.musicinmay.org/programs.

In addition to the main stage concerts, MiM focuses on enriching the lives of underserved youth, principally through free programs at schools, juvenile halls, and Harmony Youth Choir. The 30+ youth programs this season will culminate as MiM festival musicians join students of El Sistema Santa Cruz and Harmony Youth Choir in a 1-hour collaborative concert. Free admission on Thursday, May 25 at 5:30pm at T.S. MacQuiddy Elementary School; 330 Martinelli St. Watsonville, CA.

Hailed as "stunning and assured" by the New York Times, Atlanta native David Byrd-Marrow is the Solo Hornist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as a member of The Knights. Working with a uniquely wide range of performers, he has premiered works by Matthias Pintscher, Arthur Kampela, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Du Yun, Marcos Balter, Wang Lu, Kate Soper, Miguel Zenón, and Chick Corea. Byrd-Marrow has performed at festivals including the Ojai Music Festival, Spoleto Music Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, La Jolla Summerfest and as faculty at the Festival Napa Valley. Formerly a member of Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect, he has also made appearances with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Metropolitan Opera, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Byrd-Marrow received his Bachelor of Music degree from Juilliard and Master of Music from Stony Brook University. He is the Assistant Professor of Horn at the Lamont School of Music, of The University of Denver.

Cellist Horacio Contreras has gained esteem through activities as a performer, pedagogue and researcher. He is a founding member of the Reverón Piano Trio, and a faculty member of the University of North Texas and the Music Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Meluk Kultur Management and Halac Artists alongside his colleagues of the Reverón Piano Trio. Horacio has collaborated in performances as a concert cellist, recitalist, and chamber musician with prestigious artists, festivals, and institutions in the US, Latin America and Europe. Recent performances took him to the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston, IL, and venues in Latin America. Horacio's pedagogic materials have been published by Carl Fischer. His students have won awards in international and national competitions, made solo recordings, and have performed as soloists internationally. His former students have been appointed to positions in schools of music and orchestras in Europe and Latin America. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Strings of Latin America, an initiative that partners with the Sphinx Organization to foster diversity in the field of western art music. He holds degrees from the Conservatoire National de Région de Perpignan, France, the Escola de Musica de Barcelona, Spain, the University of Michigan.

Taiwanese-American violist Jessica Chang is the founder and director of Chamber Music by the Bay, which annually brings concerts to pre K-12 schools, libraries, and communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Festival appearances include Festival Mozaic, Bard Music West, the Perlman Workshop, Aspen, Verbier, Tanglewood, Taos, Prussia Cove, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Music from Angel Fire, Savannah Music Festival, and performances on NPR's Performance Today, WYNC, WHYY, and WQXR Public Radio. She has also served as violist of the Afiara Quartet, with whom she served as Quartet-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and visiting faculty at The Banff Centre. Jessica holds degrees from Yale, The Juilliard School, and the Curtis Institute of Music, and performs frequently with ensembles throughout Northern California including Ensemble San Francisco, Chamber Music Silicon Valley, and the Ives Collective. She also leads a dual career in information security and is an industry-recognized speaker and global presenter on building and scaling security culture.

Award winning violinist Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo, chamber music, and the art of improvisation. Hailed by The New York Times as an "excellent violinist," "soulful, compelling," Jennifer has performed worldwide in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the RAI National Radio in Rome, Hong Kong National Radio, and the Mozartsalle in Vienna, since giving her debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in 2000. As a soloist, she has performed with groups including the Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, SONYC, and Either Or Ensemble. A prominent chamber musician, Jennifer won Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and First prize at the Coleman Chamber Music Competition and has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ravinia Festival, Ravenscroft, and numerous other chamber music series. A regular on the new music scene, she has given dozens of premieres by composer-improvisers like John Zorn, Susie Ibarra, Annie Gosfield, and Ches Smith. Through these collaborations, Jennifer has found a unique connection between classical and modern repertoire as a source for unparalleled expression in performances. She can be heard playing on the 1718 "Firebird" Stradivarius generously bestowed to her by Finrebel. www.jenniferchoi.com

Violinist Rebecca Jackson-Picht's foundational belief is that music possesses power to heal and unite. This has propelled her career and professional outreach around the globe, having performed in marginalized communities across the U.S., Ukraine, Romania, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nepal, Costa Rica and Lebanon. While maintaining a regular performance schedule with groups like the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, she contemporaneously produces projects that build community through music outside the concert hall. Music in May, for which she serves as Artistic Director, is Jackson-Picht's largest project to date. Now in its 16th season, Music in May continues its dedication to engaging incarcerated youth. In 2013, she co-founded Sound Impact and Ensemble San Francisco, organizations with missions tied to many of her personal core values. In 2018, Rebecca received a KSBW Jefferson Award in recognition of her volunteerism and public service. The following year, she and her father co-authored the biography of her mentor David Arben, a Holocaust survivor and former associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Internationally renowned violist Milan Milisavljević is Principal Viola with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His solo album Sonata-Song, published by Delos Music, has been reviewed by the Strad magazine as "most recommendable" and "tonally alluring," with the recording of Aram Khatchaturian's Sonata-Song for Solo Viola hailed as "definitive." He has won prizes at competitions such as ARD, Lionel Tertis and Aspen Lower Strings and has performed at Marlboro, Mainly Mozart, Classical Tahoe, Agassiz, and Aspen music festivals. Milan has appeared throughout the world, as soloist with orchestras such as the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic, Aspen Sinfonia, New York Classical Players, Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río and many others. His teachers include James Dunham, Nobuko Imai and Atar Arad. In addition to his activities as a performer, Milan is increasingly in demand as an educator and conductor. He is on the faculty at the Mannes School of Music, as well as the Manhattan School of Music and NYU, and has given masterclasses all over the world, including at the Juilliard School, the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, and many others. He is a Larsen Strings Artist.

Pianist Elizabeth Schumann has a diverse career portfolio of performances, projects, and recordings. The Washington Post noted her playing as "deft, relentless, and devastatingly good-the sort of performance you experience not so much with your ears as your solar plexus." Elizabeth has performed solo recitals at the Kennedy Center, Ravinia's "Rising Stars" Series, Vienna's Bösendorfer Saal, Australia's Huntington

Festival, Toronto's Koerner Hall, and on National Public Radio's "Performance Today." The first place winner of the Bösendorfer International Piano Competition and Pacific International Piano Competition, she has been awarded over 25 prizes in other major competitions, including the Cleveland, Hilton Head and Montreal International Piano Competitions. Elizabeth was honored with the prestigious Gilmore Young Artists Award and was highlighted in the PBS television documentary on the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. Carrying on the pedagogical tradition of her teacher, Sergei Babayan, Elizabeth is a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University, and has been on faculty at Itzhak Perlman's Perlman Music Program, Summer and Winter Performing Arts at Juilliard, and the Crowden Chamber Workshop. She is the director of the Schumann Studio, a classical recording space in San Francisco.

For more on all our musicians and composers: https://www.musicinmay.org/2023-artists.

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