Tickets
General Ticket: $25
The Church is thrilled to welcome back collaborating partner Reflections in Music for an inspiring evening meant to honor music’s enduring power to affirm the human spirit. Led by artistic director Bruce Wolosoff, Reflections in Music presents Unsilenced Voices—a program of chamber music by composers who created works of courage and humanity in the face of oppression. The program features music by Shostakovich, Poulenc, Kabalevsky, Bartók, and Tigran Mansurian, alongside the world premiere of a new work by Wolosoff. Wolosoff is joined by the esteemed musicians Narek Arutyunian (clarinet), Deborah Buck (violin), and Raman Ramakrishnan (cello).
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Reflections is a 501(c)3 nonprofit which hopes to bring the appreciation of classical music to new audiences and to spark new ways of thinking about and engaging with the classical music experience to those who are already music lovers. For more information visit reflectionsinmusic.org.
NAREK ARUTYUNIAN
Clarinet
Photo by Keith Saunders
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Clarinetist Narek Arutyunian is an artist who ”reaches passionate depths with seemingly effortless technical prowess and beguiling sensitivity” (The Washington Post). As a soloist, his performances include Copland’s Clarinet Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall; Artie Shaw’s Concerto for Clarinet with the Boston Pops; Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 with Oregon’s Newport Symphony, and others with the Rockford Symphony Orchestra in Illinois and New York’s St. Thomas Orchestra. Appearances also include those with Prague Radio Symphony, the Kaliningrad Philharmonic, the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded Weber’s Concertino for Clarinet with the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra.
As first-prize winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Narek was presented at debut recitals at Merkin Hall in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He has also performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York; Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; and for the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, Lied Center of Kansas, Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota, Fla., Weis Center for the Performing Arts, and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. In recent seasons he has performed as soloist with the Riverside Symphony at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and the Bard Festival Orchestra at Fisher Center, and in recital at the Harvard Club, Ithaca College, and Evergreen Museum and Library in Baltimore. This season, Narek will perform as soloist with the Edmonton Symphony in Canada and in recital at Brownville Concert Series in Nebraska.
Narek has performed extensively in Australia, Asia, and Europe, including at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Palazzo del Principe in Genoa. He has appeared at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Juilliard’s ChamberFest, the New York Festival of Song, Bard Music Festival, Bridgehampton Music Festival, Krzyżowa-Music festival in Poland, and Germany’s Usedomer Musikfestival. He has also performed as both a clarinetist and klezmer soloist for the Fiddler on the Roof in a Yiddish off-Broadway production. In addition, Narek recently performed and spoke at the State House in Boston for the 104th Anniversary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
Narek was born in Armenia, and his family moved to Moscow when he was three. As a teenager, he won first prizes in the International Young Musicians Competition in Prague and the Musical Youth of the Planet Competition in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory as a student of Evgeny Petrov, received a bachelor’s degree from the Juilliard School, where he worked with Charles Neidich, and then earned a master’s degree with Neidich at the Manhattan School of Music on a Leon Russianoff Memorial Scholarship.
DEBORAH BUCK
Violin
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Praised by The Strad for her "surpassing degree of imagination and vibrant sound," violinist Deborah Buck has cultivated a diverse musical career as a chamber musician, concertmaster, pedagogue, soloist, recording artist, and artistic director. During her 17 years with the celebrated Lark Quartet, she recorded works by many of America's preeminent composers on the Endeavor, Koch, Arabesque, Avie, and Bridge labels. Notable composers have written works specifically for her, including John Harbison’s DeBut for solo violin, Bruce Adolphe's Fantasia on Beethoven's Spring Sonata, Bruce Wolosoff's The Night Ferry, and Curtis Stewart's September.
Deborah served as concertmaster of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (2008-2013) and currently holds this position with Orchestra Lumos. Her recent recital collaborations include performances with pianists Orli Shaham and Orion Weiss at BargeMusic (NYC) and Gather NYC (Museum of Art and Design). She also performs annually at the Telluride Chamber Music Festival (CO).
As Co-Executive Director of Kinhaven in Weston, VT, she curates the summer chamber music series. Deborah studied with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki at Juilliard as a Starling Foundation and Martin Kaltman Foundation scholar. She earned her Master of Music Degree from the University of Southern California under Robert Lipsett, where she received the prestigious Jascha Heifetz Violin Scholarship.
RAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN
Cello
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Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan enjoys performing chamber music, old and new, around the world. For two decades, as a founding member of the Horszowski Trio and the Daedalus Quartet, he toured extensively through North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and recorded for Bridge Records and Avie Records, including the complete piano trios of Robert Schumann and the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl. Mr. Ramakrishnan is currently an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and is on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music
Mr. Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and has performed at Caramoor, at Bargemusic, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Aspen, Bard, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Kingston, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart, Portland, Skaneateles, and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. He has served on the faculties of the Kneisel Hall, Norfolk, and Taconic Chamber Music Festivals, as well as in the Music Performance Program of Columbia University.Mr. Ramakrishnan was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. His father is a molecular biologist, and his mother is the children's book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz, and André Emelianoff. He lives in New York City with his wife, the violist Melissa Reardon, and their son. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837.
BRUCE WOLOSOFF
Piano
Photo by Tom Kochie
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Bruce Wolosoff is "a formidable pianist and composer" (Gramophone) known internationally for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences. He often composes in response to visual art and collaborates with leading artists across various disciplines. His music is regularly heard on classical radio stations worldwide.
Bruce's newest album Blue Mantra, released on Avie Records on October 11th, features music for the clarinet performed by Narek Arutyunian, including Matisse Fantasies, Blues for the New Millennium, and Blue Mantra, inspired by a painting by the composer’s wife Margaret Garrett. Matisse Fantasies and Blue Mantra received their world premiere performances at The Church.
Following the Avie Records release of Rising Sun Variations—a large-scale set of solo piano variations on House of the Rising Sun—All Music Guide wrote that "Wolosoff revives in spectacular fashion the Romantic tradition of the pianist-composer." He recently performed the work to great acclaim in Bilbao, Spain.
His 2023 solo piano album Memento continues to receive global airplay, while his 2022 Avie release Paradise Found: Cello Music of Bruce Wolosoff, with cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio, reached #6 on the Billboard Classical Chart. Their earlier collaboration on his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra also became a Billboard Top 10 album and was hailed by Fanfare as "an instant masterpiece."
Wolosoff's discography includes Songs Without Words (18 divertimenti for string quartet) on Naxos American Classics and a celebrated recording of Busoni's piano music on the Music & Arts label. Of the latter, Hannah Busoni wrote: "All those who love Busoni's work owe it to themselves to hear Bruce Wolosoff's compelling and beautiful interpretations. They are exemplary."
A frequent collaborator with the late choreographer Ann Reinking, Wolosoff composed The White City, which toured nationally to critical acclaim and was named "Best Dance of 2011" by the Chicago Sun-Times, and A Light in the Dark, an Emmy-nominated ballet inspired by Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan. At the time of Reinking's passing, the two were developing a ballet based on the life of John Keats.
Born in New York City in 1955, Wolosoff played in jam bands as a teenager while pursuing studies in classical piano. He earned degrees from Bard College and the New England Conservatory, studying with German Diez (a student of Claudio Arrau), as well as Evelyne Crochet, Richard Goode, Jorge Bolet, and jazz pianists Charlie Banacos and Jaki Byard. After an active performing career in his twenties, he stepped away from the concert stage at age 30 to focus on composition, returning to performance in 2011 with a recital of his own music, released as Many Worlds.
Since 2020, Wolosoff has served as artistic director of Reflections in Music, curating and performing in a series of programs that explore new ways of thinking about and engaging with the classical music experience.