Month: June 2024

Emad Zolfaghari Wins Top Prize at 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition

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Congratulations to Curtis viola student and Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams Jr. Fellow Emad Zolfaghari, who has been named winner of the first prize and audience prize in the 17th Primrose International Viola Competition, presented by the Colburn School and the American Viola Society. Mr. Zolfaghari, who performed Bela Bartók’s Viola Concerto to rapturous applause during the final competition round, will receive $15,000, along with an invitation to perform at the 2026 American Viola Society Festival and an invitation to the semi-finals of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Violist Kinga Wojdalska won second prize, while Andy Park won third prize.

Winner of many prestigious awards—including first prize at the 2023 Irving M. Klein International String Competition, the François Schubert Grand Prize at the 2022 OMNI Music Competition, and first prize at the International Morningside Music Bridge Competition—Mr. Zolfaghari entered Curtis at age 16 and currently studies with distinguished violist Hsin-Yun Huang. Additional awards won by Mr. Zolfaghari include second prize at the 2022 Johansen International String Competition, third prize in the OSM String Competition, second prize at the 2021 Ronald Sachs International Music Competition, and first prize at the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra Competition.

Mr. Zolfaghari has appeared as a soloist with several major symphony orchestras including l’Orchestre Métropolitain under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Montreal Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic, Oakville Chamber Orchestra, and National Metropolitan Philharmonic. His previous mentors include Theresa Rudolph, Caroline Coade, and Shanda Lowery-Sachs.

Learn more about the competition HERE, and see the full list of winners and their prizes at the Violin Channel or the Strad. 

If you missed the final round concerto and awards ceremony, you can watch it here:

Portrait of Emad Zolfaghari by Nichole MCH Photography Photos. 2024 Primrose Competition Laureates Kinga Wojdalska, Emad Zolfaghari, and Andy Park; courtesy of the Primrose International Viola Competition Facebook page. Photo of Mr. Zolfaghari and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra by David DeBalko.

The Comet / Poppea Premiere: Reviews & Previews Roundup

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Curtis Opera Theatre will open its exciting 2024–25 series this November with the East Coast premiere of The Comet / Poppea, featuring MacArthur Award-winning composer George Lewis’ highly anticipated operatic setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s proto-Afrofuturist science fiction short story, The Comet (1920), juxtaposed with Claudio Monteverdi’s hot-blooded political thriller, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643).

This groundbreaking new production, directed and conceived by fellow MacArthur-winner Yuval Sharon, recently premiered at the Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to rave reviews.  Presented on a turntable divided in two halves, these worlds unfold simultaneously, with the stage’s rotation creating a visual and sonic spiral for audiences—inviting associations, dissociations, collisions, and confluences.

To learn more about Curtis Opera Theatre’s November 1–3 performances here in Philadelphia at the historic 23rd Street Armory, click HERE. 

Reviews of The Comet / Poppea from the premiere in Los Angeles presented by MOCA and The Industry:

  • The LA Times called the production “exceptional in every way.” They also said: “And what American opera needs most of all is “The Comet / Poppea.” It has huge ramifications for the wide world we now occupy, what with growing arsenals of potential Neros and nukes. Unlike other Industry productions, this one will have a necessary afterlife. Over the next two years, it will travel to New York, the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale University.”
  • The Wall Street Journal praised the “excellent” cast, noting that “Mr. Lewis’s vocal settings mesh surprisingly well with the Baroque style of Poppea. Both are constructed to maximize the intelligibility of the words and deal in emotional extremes, albeit in different musical languages.”
  • San Francisco Classical Voice applauded the “strong singing” throughout, saying that Lewis’s “taut” music inserted itself in “agile and fluid dialogue with Poppea, and the assembled players handled [his] gestural language with aplomb.”
  • Classical Voice North America noted that “If this counterintuitive smashing together of idioms aims to attract new audiences, there were signs that it was working, given the presence of more younger people in the sold-out opening-night audience than you normally see in conventional opera houses.”
  • Brooklyn-based art and culture magazine Hyperallergic commended the “richness of conceptual, visual, and sonic material” of the pairing and commended the production for its “burst of imagination and creativity.”
  • Stage and Cinema called the production “revolutionary” and “transformational,” through “glorious music and inventive staging.”

Read preview articles for The Comet / Poppea in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times,  OperaWire, Ebony Magazine, San Francisco Classical Voice, Hollywood Reporter, Broadway World, Cultural Attaché, Arts Beat LA, Airmail News,  Larchmont Buzz, and Bomb Magazine. 

The Comet / Poppea is produced by Anthony Roth Costanzo and Cath Brittan, The Industry, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Curtis Institute of Music, and Yale Schwarzman Center.

Photo credits: 1.) Nardus Williams and Anthony Roth Costanzo (L to R) in The Comet / Poppea (2024), performance documentation from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Image by Austin Richey, courtesy MOCA and The Industry. 2.) Davóne Tines in The Comet / Poppea (2024), performance documentation from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Image by Elon Schoenholz, courtesy MOCA and The Industry.  3.) Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Nardus Williams in The Comet / Poppea (2024), performance documentation from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (all images by Austin Richey, courtesy MOCA and The Industry)

Teng Li (’05) Named Principal Violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has announced the appointment of renowned violist and Curtis alumna Teng Li (Viola ’05) as principal viola, effective September 15, 2024. Ms. Li will hold the Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair and succeeds Charles Pikler, who served as principal viola from 1986 until 2017, and Li-Kuo Chang, who held the assistant principal viola chair from 1988 until 2023, and served as acting principal viola from 2017 until his retirement in 2023. Ms. Li won the international audition for principal viola in May 2023 and was offered the position in September 2023 by Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s music director emeritus for life. Since then, she performed with the CSO as guest principal viola in appearances at Carnegie Hall and the critically hailed January 2024 European tour.

Ms. Li is currently principal viola of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position she has held since 2018. Before that, she was principal viola for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 14 seasons. She has also appeared with other premier ensembles throughout the world, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, National Chamber Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra, and Esprit Orchestra.

A founding member of the Rosamunde String Quartet, Ms. Li has given performances and master classes through the U.S. and Canada with violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley and Shanshan Yao (’08) and cellist Nathan Vickery (’13). Originally from Nanjing, China, she is a graduate of the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Curtis, where she studied with late faculty members Michael Tree (’55), Joseph de Pasquale (’42), and Karen Tuttle (’48). A committed educator, Ms. Li has taught at the Colburn School, University of Toronto, Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and Montreal’s Conservatoire de Musique, and will join the faculty of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts in the 2024–25 academic year.

Visit Teng Li’s official website, and read the news at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s website HERE.

See Teng Li and the Rosamunde String Quartet at Curtis on March 13, 2025, at Field Concert Hall, as part of the 2024–25 Curtis Presents series. Learn more HERE.

Photo credits: Banner image and portrait of the artist (Bo Huang Photography). Photo of Ms. Li during a performance at Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Todd Rosenberg Photography). Photo of the Rosamunde String Quartet (Rob Davidson Photography).