NAVO celebrates its 10th season with artist-in-residence Maria Ioudenitch who presents a chamber music program in collaboration with NAVO musicians Véronique Mathieu, Michael Mermagen, Hsiang-Hsin Ching, and Christine Grossman. The program will showcase masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, and Jamaican Eleanor Alberga.

String Quintet in C major, Op. 29
Ludwig van Beethoven

String Quartet No. 2 (1994)
Eleanor Alberga

***** Intermission *****

String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111 “Prater”
Johannes Brahms

Born in Russia, violinist Maria Ioudenitch immigrated with her musical family to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Kansas City. In 2021,  she received first prizes in the Ysaÿe International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Competition. She also received numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work, the Henle Urtext Prize, and a recording deal with Warner Classics.

Recognized for her innovative programmes, her first album on Warner – Songbird with pianist Kenny Broberg, released on 24 March 2023 – spans from Franz Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to Nikolai Medtner, Richard Strauss and Nadia Boulanger. In upcoming concerts, she performs the Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Barber concertos as well as Haydn’s G-Major and Mozart’s D-Major concertos, while this season’s recital programmes include works by George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Dolores White and Fazil Say, alongside standard violin repertoire.

In the recent months, Maria Ioudenitch has made her debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (at Berlin’s Philharmonie), MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker and returned to her home-town Kansas City Symphony. Other recent engagements have taken her to the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra and Utah Symphony, while her growing list of conductors includes names like Andrey Boreyko, Alpesh Chauhan, Kevin John Edusei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Ruth Reinhardt and Hugh Wolff. She is also an active chamber musician and has taken part in multiple chamber music tours with Ravinia Steans Music Institute and Marlboro Music Festival. An upcoming Marlboro tour will take place in November 2023.

Maria began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three and continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She fulfilled both her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried.

In the past year, Maria has been mentored by Sonia Simmenauer as part of Simmenauer’s new initiative, zukunfts.music. Maria is currently in the Professional Studies programme at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff.

Hsiang-Hsin Ching, a Taiwanese violist and Audio Engineering Society Gold Award-winning recording engineer, was recently appointed as violist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. A First Prize winner of the 2024 Mary Graham Lesley Concerto Competition and a Third Prize winner of the 2024 Yale Gordon Competition, she also earned recognition as a quarter-finalist in the prestigious Primrose International Viola Competition in 2024. Hsiang-Hsin’s performances have taken place in numerous venues across Europe, Asia, and the United States, including cities such as Taipei, Changhua, Kaohsiung, Tokyo, Berlin, Hamburg, Lübeck, Plön, New York City, and Philadelphia.

Christine Grossman received both her Bachelors and Masters degrees in viola performance from the Juilliard School where she studied with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang. Before moving to Kansas City, Ms. Grossman previously held positions with the Pacific Symphony, Delaware Symphony, and was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, FL. Ms. Grossman served as the Principal Violist with the Kansas City Symphony from 2008 until 2019. She enjoyed several solo appearances with the orchestra, including Berlioz’ Harold in Italy, an arrangement of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody featuring solo viola as Freddie Mercury, and most recently, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante.

Described as a violinist with 'chops to burn, and rock solid musicianship' (The Whole Note, Toronto), Canadian violinist Véronique Mathieu enjoys an exciting career as a soloist, chamber musician, and music educator. An avid contemporary music performer, she has worked with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Heinz Holliger, and Krzysztof Penderecki. She holds the David L. Kaplan Chair in Music at the University of Saskatchewan where she serves as an Associate Professor of Violin. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the non-profit arts organization NAVO, and the curator of the Amati Concert Series in Saskatoon.

Cellist Michael Mermagen (M.M. The Juilliard School, B.M. The Peabody Conservatory of Music) is Professor of Cello at UMKC Conservatory, and Head of Strings. He was formerly Associate Professor of Cello and Chamber Music and Head of the Instrumental Division at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America. As an artist-faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Michael has held the prestigious position of principal cellist of the Aspen Chamber Symphony for more than 25 seasons. 

NAVO is grateful for the generous support of Mdivani Corporate Immigration Law Firm. For more information about NAVO and its 10th anniversary season, visit www.navoarts.com.