Camerata Musica 
Sat., January 27, 2018
January 27th, 2018 8:00 pm at Battelle Auditorium
Clancy Newman, cello
Natalie Zhu, piano
Program
Beethoven: Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute, Wo O 46, "Bei Mannern, welche Liebe fuhlen" (1801)
Schumann: Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op. 102 I: Mit Humor
Newman: Pop-Unpopped: Inspired by the Billboard Charts
I: Meghan Trainor: All About That Bass
II: Fetty Wap: Trap Queen
III: Mark Ronson: Uptown Funk
INTERMISSION
Prokoviev: Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 119
Newman: From Method to Madness (2008)
About the Artists
Cellist Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has had the unusual career of a performer/composer. From Albany, NY, he began playing cello at the age of six, and at twelve he received his first significant public recognition when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against contestants twice his age. In the years that followed, he won numerous other competitions, including the Juilliard School Cello Competition, the National Federation of Music Clubs competition, and the Astral Artists National Auditions.
He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. He can often be heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” and has been featured on A&E’s “Breakfast With the Arts”. A sought after chamber musician, he is a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and a former member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center. He has also toured as a member of “Musicians from Marlboro”.
He developed an interest in composition at an early age, writing his first piece at seven, a piece for solo cello. Since then, he has greatly expanded the cello repertoire: he premiered his Four Pieces for Solo Cello at the Violoncello Society in New York, his Sonata for Cello and Piano in New York's Weill Hall, and his Four Seasons for cello and string orchestra with Symphony in C in Philadelphia. He has also written numerous chamber music works, including two string quartets, a clarinet trio, and a piano quintet. He has been a featured composer on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Double Exposure” series and the Chicago Chamber Musicians’ “Freshly Scored” series, and has received commissions from Astral Artists, the Barnett Foundation, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, and the Silo Collective, among others. His piano trio, Juxt-Opposition, is available on Bridge Records.
Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia. His teachers have included David Gibson, Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.
The recipient of a 2006 Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2003 Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, pianist Natalie Zhu is a winner of Astral Artistic Services' 1998 National Auditions. The Philadelphia Inquirer heralded Astral’s presentation of Ms. Zhu in recital as a display of "emotional and pianistic pyrotechnics"; selections from the recital were later broadcast on National Public Radio’s "Performance Today." Natalie Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles, and by fifteen was enrolled at the Curtis Institute, where she received the Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman. She received a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Claude Frank.