Mendelssohn, Smetana & Kattenburg Slated for Cooperstown Festival's 2016 Season Finale

Fall is here but the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival is presenting one more concert.

The Festival's 18th season finale features award-winning artists performing piano trios by Mendelssohn and Smetana, and Dick Kattenburg's Gershwin-esque quartet for flute, violin, cello and piano.

The concert will be held in the Otesaga Hotel's ballroom, 60 Lake Street, Cooperstown. Artistic Director Linda Chesis will perform with violinist Ayano Ninomiya, who performed at the Festival's August Bach concert, cellist Clancy Newman, and pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine.

Ayano Ninomiya has been praised for her "deeply communicative and engrossing" (The New York Times) recital at Carnegie Hall, and has performed worldwide. A winner at the Walter Naumburg International Competition, Tibor Varga International Competition, and Astral Artists National Auditions, Ms. Ninomiya recently gave a TEDx talk on "Living Music." She was first violinist of the Ying Quartet, with whom she recorded three albums. She is on faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music. She is also a watercolor artist and passionate Aikidoka.

Albany native Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the Walter W. Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has performed as soloist throughout the U.S., as well as in Europe, Asia, and Australia, and he has been a member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center and Musicians from Marlboro. He is currently a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. As a composer, he has been featured on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Double Exposure" series and the Chicago Chamber Musicians' "Freshly Scored" series, and has received numerous commissions. His piano trio, Juxt-Opposition, is available on Bridge Records.

Alexandre Moutoutzkine has toured throughout Europe and North and South America, as well as in China and Japan. International Piano magazine hailed his recital in London's Wigmore Hall as "grandly organic" and "technically dazzling." His performance of the Chopin E?tudes in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory was recorded live and released on the Classical Music Archives label in Russia. Mr. Moutouzkine claimed top prizes at the Walter W. Naumburg, New Orleans, Cleveland, Montreal, and Arthur Rubinstein international competitions, among others, and was a winner of Astral Artists' 2009 National Auditions. The Philadelphia Inquirer said of his Philadelphia recital debut under Astral's auspices that his is "a career that will matter."

Linda Chesis is founder and artistic director of the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival. She is a member of the flute faculty and chair of the Woodwind Department at the Manhattan School of Music. She has been hailed by critics on three continents as one of the most exciting and dynamic flutists of her generation. The top prize winner at the Paris and Barcelona International competitions, and at the National Flute Association Competition, Ms. Chesis has performed with orchestras and in solo recitals throughout the US, France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Korea. Her recordings can be heard on the EMI, Nonesuch and Music Masters labels.

The program is:

Bed?ich Smetana Piano Trio in G minor

Dick Kattenburg Quartet for flute, violin, cello, and piano (1940-43)

Felix Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D minor

Tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for students. Purchase online, cooperstownmusicfest.org; by phone through Brown Paper Tickets, 800/838-3006, or at the door.

Flutist Linda Chesis started the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival with three events in 1999, and since then the Festival has offered the region more than 100 concerts, from classical to contemporary, jazz to bluegrass, cabaret to kids' concerts. The Festival has featured: Midori, Hank Jones, the Tokyo String Quartet, the American String Quartet, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Kurt Elling, Tim Fain, Bill Charlap, Hilary Kole, Simone Dinnerstein, Mark O'Connor, and many more.

The Cooperstown Summer Music Festival is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.