KahaneSwensenBrey Trio Plays Segerstrom Center Tonight

The KahaneSwensenBrey Trio, comprised of Jeffrey Kahane, piano; Joseph Swensen, violin; and Carter Brey, cello, perform an evening of celebrated chamber music at Segerstrom Center for the Arts on December 12 at Samueli Theater. The evening's program includes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Trio in G Major, K.496; Paul Schoenfield's "Café Music;" Robert Schumann's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63 and Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor. "Coming together again for the first time in 25 years, this program's varied palette of styles and characters is ideal for highlighting our strengths as musicians and the joy we take in interacting," says Kahane.

KahaneSwensenBrey Trio formed in spring 2012, when the three virtuosi musicians reunited following a 25-year hiatus. The brilliant ensemble captures the synergy of three world-class artists who last performed together at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy during the 1980s. Soon after those flourishing performances, each member of the trio went on to pursue highly successful careers as soloists and chamber musicians in addition to holding important leadership roles in the orchestra world.

Tickets for KahaneSwensenBrey Trio start at $29 and are available online at SCFTA.org, at the Box Office at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa or by calling (714) 556-2787. The TTY number is (714) 556-2746. A free Preview Talk with musicologist and author Herbert Glass will take place at 7:15 p.m. in Samueli Theater.

Equally at home at the keyboard and on the podium, Jeffrey Kahane has established an international reputation as a versatile artist, recognized for his mastery of a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to Gershwin, Golijov, and John Adams. Since making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1983, he has given recitals in many of the nation's most important music centers including New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta; has appeared as concerto soloist with leading orchestras and summer festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe; and has collaborated with such artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Thomas Quasthoff, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Emerson and Takács Quartets. Kahane made his conducting debut with the Oregon Bach Festival in 1988, and has since appeared on the podiums of both the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields and the Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, and New World Symphonies, among others. For the past 16 seasons, he has served as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He concluded his tenure as music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in 2010 and was music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony for 10 seasons.

Before launching his conducting career in the mid-1990s, Joseph Swensen had established a major career as a violin soloist, appearing frequently with the world's major orchestras and conductors. As a chamber musician he collaborated regularly for over a decade with pianist Jeffrey Kahane and cellist Carter Brey at the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds where the three first met in 1985. Swensen is currently conductor emeritus of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and founder/artistic director of Habitat4Music, a non-profit organization based in Vermont, USA. In addition to serving as principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1996 to 2005, he has held conducting posts at the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Malmö Opera, Lahti Symphony and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and has guest conducted widely in Europe, the U.S., Japan, and Australia. Swensen frequently directs orchestras from the violin, and more recently with the Orchestra de Chambre de Paris he led the first "Paris Play-Direct Academy," a week-long course he founded for soloists and aspiring conductors. Swensen has made numerous recordings as a solo violinist including the Brahms, Prokofiev 2, Beethoven and Sibelius concertos, as well as an admired series of CDs conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for the Linn Records label. Swensen's new, highly acclaimed CD of Brahms' Sinfonia in B (Swensen's orchestration of the rarely performed 1854 version of the Trio Op. 8), along with his other orchestrations of works by Robert and Clara Schumann, has been recently released on Signum Classics. Swensen is visiting professor of music (violin) at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Cellist Carter Brey, who holds the Fan Fax and Leslie R. Samuels Chair at the New York Philharmonic, first gained international attention in 1981 as a prizewinner in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition. His awards include the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize, the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Michaels Award from Young Concert Artists. He was the first musician to win the Arts Council of America's Performing Arts Prize. Brey was appointed principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic in 1996. As an orchestral soloist, he has appeared numerous times with the Philharmonic and in guest engagements with many other leading orchestras in the U.S. Equally distinguished in the chamber music realm, Brey has performed regularly with the Tokyo and Emerson Quartets, the Philharmonic Ensembles Program, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds and the Santa Fe and La Jolla Chamber Music Festivals, among others. He has presented duo recitals with pianist Christopher O'Riley, and their disc of compositions from South America and Mexico titled The Latin American Album was released by Helicon Records. A CD of the complete works of Chopin for cello and piano, recorded in collaboration with Garrick Ohlsson, was released by Arabesque in the fall of 2002 to great acclaim. Brey is an alumnus of Peabody Institute and is currently on the faculty of the Curtis Institute.

To learn more about Segerstrom Center's Chamber Music Series, visit: www.scfta.org/chamber.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts is unique as both an acclaimed arts institution and as a multi- disciplinary cultural campus. It is committed to supporting artistic excellence on all of its stages, offering unsurpassed experiences, and engaging the entire community in new and exciting ways through the unique power of live performance and a diverse array of inspiring programs.

Previously called the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Center traces its roots back to the late 1960s when a dedicated group of community leaders decided Orange County should have its own world-class performing arts venue.

As Orange County's largest non-profit arts organization, Segerstrom Center for the Arts owns and operates the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall and intimate 250-seat Founders Hall, which opened in 1986, and the 2,000-seat Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, which opened in 2006 and also houses the 500-seat Samueli Theater, the Lawrence and Kristina Dodge Education Center's studio performance space and Boeing Education Lab. A spacious arts plaza anchors Segerstrom Center for the Arts and is home to numerous free performances throughout the year as part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts' ongoing Free for All series.

The Center presents a broad range of programming each season for audiences of all ages from throughout Orange County and beyond, including international ballet and dance, national tours of top Broadway shows, intimate performances of jazz and cabaret, contemporary artists, classical music performed by renowned chamber orchestras and ensembles, family-friendly programming, free performances open to the public from outdoor movie screenings to dancing on the plaza and many other special events. It offers many education programs designed to inspire young people through the arts. These programs reach hundreds of thousands of students of all ages with vital arts-in-education programs, enhancing their studies and enriching their lives well into the future.

In addition to the presenting and producing institution Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the 14-acre campus also embraces the facilities of two independent acclaimed organizations: Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory and a site designated as the future home of the Orange County Museum of Art.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts is also proud to serve as the artistic home to three of the region's major performing arts organizations: Pacific Symphony, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the Pacific Chorale, who contribute greatly to the artistic life of the region with annual seasons at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

KahaneSwensenBreyTrio Segerstrom Center for the Arts - Samueli Theater tonight, December 12, 2013 at 8 p.m. Free Preview Talk with Herbert Glass will take place at 7:15 p.m. in Samueli Theater, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Program:

Mozart: Piano Trio in G Major, K.496
Schoenfield: Café Music
Schumann: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63
Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor

Start at $29; tickets go on sale October 20 at The Box Office, 600 Town Center Drive Costa Mesa, Calif., open 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. daily, or at SCFTA.org, or by calling (714) 556-2787.