Internationally-acclaimed violinist and Sphinx Competition laureate Melissa White was recently appointed Professor of Music at UB. She performs the sweeping Violin Concerto No. 2 of Florence Price in a program also featuring two rarely performed works: Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven, and Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” symphony.

The BPO Coffee Concert Series is presented by Highmark.

Program

Leon Botstein, conductor
Melissa White, violin

REGER  Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven, Op. 86
PRICE  Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra
MENDELSSOHN  Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107, “Reformation”
I. Andante – Allegro con fuoco
II. Allegro vivace
III. Andante
IV. Chorale: Andante con moto – Allegro vivace

About Melissa White

American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences and critics around the world for her “warmly expressive and lyrical…glittering” playing (Chicago Classical Review) and for “making her violin sing elegantly” (Aspen Times). Ms. White’s rapid rise as a soloist has captured the attention of orchestras and audiences worldwide, many of whom already know her for her successes as a founding member of the Grammy-winning Harlem Quartet.

Ms. White is the 2023-2024 Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. She boasts a busy orchestral season, including debuts with the Charlotte, Valdosta, and West Virginia Symphony Orchestras, in addition to the BPO, and a return both as soloist and curator of the chamber music series with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Recent orchestral performances for Ms. White include features with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Richmond Symphony, Midland Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, and the Aspen, Brevard, and Heartland Festival Orchestras.

Following her solo recital debuts at Carnegie Hall and the Phillips Collection in the spring of 2023, Ms. White performs in recital together with pianist Pallavi Mahidhara this season at the Binghamton Philharmonic’s Phelps Mansion Museum Series, the Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society, and Purdue Convocations, among others. In the summer of 2023, she joined the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at London’s Wigmore Hall alongside Hilary Hahn, collaborated with the DUBHE Ensemble National Orchestra Institute + Festival, and will reunite with both ensembles for additional performances this season.

A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, she has performed with such leading U.S. ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. Internationally, she has appeared as a soloist with Poland’s Filharmonia Dolnośląska; with the Colombian Youth Orchestra in a tour of that country; with the Czech National Philharmonic; and as a recitalist in Baku, Azerbaijian, and Jelenia Góra, Poland. Additional credits include violin solo in the soundtrack to Jordan Peele’s 2019 psychological thriller, Us, and performances alongside several pop artists including Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys, and Lauryn Hill.

Ms. White is a founding member of the New York-based Harlem Quartet, where since 2006 her passion and artistry have contributed to performances that have been hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent” (Cincinnati Enquirer). Together with Harlem Quartet, she has worked with such classical music luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Ida Kavakian, Paul Katz, and Anthony McGill; appeared in many of the country’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center; and performed throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Harlem Quartet was named quartet-in-residence at Montclair State University in the fall of 2021; and has been the visiting quartet-in-residence at the Royal College of Music in London since 2016.

A passionate educator, Ms. White currently serves as Music Artist Faculty at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and as of fall 2022, she is Professor of Music at the University at Buffalo.

A Native of Michigan, she received her BMus from the Curtis Institute of Music and MMus from the New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried.

In addition to her musical career, Ms. White has enjoyed practicing various styles of yoga for more than a decade, and completed training in both Vinyasa and Ashtanga at Sampoorna Yoga School in Goa, India. She is the co-founder of Intermission, a groundbreaking program that unites body, mind, breath, and music-making through yoga and meditation, comprising sessions for students and retreats for professionals.

Melissa is represented worldwide by Dinin Arts Management & Consulting. She is incredibly grateful to be playing a c. 1780 Ferdinando Gagliano violin, currently on loan from Strumenti.

About Leon Botstein

A visionary conductor who has dedicated his career to the discovery of rare repertoire, Leon Botstein is Music Director and Principal Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, founder and Music Director of The Orchestra Now, Artistic Director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, and Conductor Laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as Music Director from 2003-2011. As the Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra and The Orchestra Now, he appears at Carnegie Hall more often than any other conductor of our time.

Leon Botstein has appeared at the Stars of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg as a guest conductor for three consecutive summers, leading the orchestra and chorus of the Mariinsky Theater in performances featuring rare masterpieces. Last summer it was a concert performance of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s opera The Dwarf (Der Zwerg). The year before, Maestro Botstein conducted the Russian premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. In 2017 he led the performance of Taneyev’s opera, Oresteia, and a concert of American symphonic music.

His recent appointment as Artistic Director of Campus Grafenegg in Austria, with the mandate to create and lead the prestigious Austrian festival’s own unique artistic programming, makes Leon Botstein one of the very few Americans in positions of artistic leadership with high-profile European musical institutions. In the inaugural 2018 season, his narrative-driven Grafenegg programs attracted star collaborators, including Thomas Hampson and Dennis Russell Davies.

Maestro Botstein’s unique approach to programming gives audiences all over the world opportunities to encounter neglected works, which he performs alongside standard repertoire masterpieces, creating rich musical context and often enhancing the experience with preconcert talks. Like-minded dynamic ensembles, seeking to broaden the musical horizons of their players and listeners, frequently invite Leon Botstein as a guest conductor. These include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Taipei Symphony, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, and the Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela.

Over 25,000 people tuned into the Facebook stream of Leon Botstein’s recent Sight & Sound performance with The Orchestra Now from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exploring the nexus between music and visual arts. Many of Maestro’s live performances with the American Symphony Orchestra are available online, where they have sold more than a quarter of a million downloads in total.

He has also recorded with the London Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra Hamburg, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. The recording of Popov’s first symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award. Leon Botstein is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books, including the volume, Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne (2013).

For his contributions to music, Maestro has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Harvard University’s Centennial Award, as well as the Cross of Honor, First Class from the government of Austria. Maestro’s recent distinctions also include the Bruckner Society’s Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor for his interpretations of Anton Bruckner’s music, as well as the Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society. In 2011 he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.

Leon Botstein combines his conducting career with his work as the President of Bard College, a position he has held since 1975. He also initiated the creation of the first liberal education department in Russia: the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. Petersburg State University.