Calendar of Cultural Events

Please verify dates and times with The Kosciuszko Foundation Director of Cultural Affairs
Tom Pniewski -- (212) 734-2130 ext. 214

Sunday, May 23
Igor Lovchinsky, Chopin Competition Laureate Featured Soloist with Connecticut Virtuosi at Kosciuszko Foundation.
Chamber Music Series

Igor Lovchinsky, Laureate of the 2003 Chopin Piano Competition and a first-year student at The Juilliard School, is soloist in Chopin's Concerto No. 1 in E minor with the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra on Sunday, May 23 at 3 Pm at the Kosciuszko Foundation (15 East 65th Street, between Fifth and Madison). Polish conductor Adrian Mackiewicz leads the concert, which will include Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor and Sketches in the Sand, a new work by Connecticut composer Michael Gatonska. Tickets are $30 ($25 for KF members) and include a reception with the artists. Reservations are strongly recommended, and can be made by calling the Foundation Office at (212) 734-2130.

At only 19 years of age, Igor Lovchinsky has already won numerous prizes at the national and international levels. He was born in Kazan, Russia in 1984 and began his studies at the Kazan Special Music School for Gifted Children. After immigrating to the United States, he commenced studying with Nina Polonsky. Lovchinsky has also participated in master classes with some of the world's greatest pianists including Emanuel Ax, Anton Kuerti, Jon Kimura Parker, Sergei Babayan, and Jerome Lowenthal. Each summer, Lovchinsky travels to the Music Academy of the West in California where he studies with world-renowned pianists, plays chamber music, and performs as a soloist. As Chopin Competition Laureate, he was invited to perform in Chicago, Springfield (MA) and at the Chopin Memorial in Warsaw.

Michael Gatonska studied composition with Krzystof Penderecki,  Marek Stachowski, and Zbigniew Bujarski at the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland. He also studied with Elias Tanenbaum at the Manhattan School of Music.  He has received two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards,  two Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute awards, the Chicago Symphony First Hearing Award, the Lake Winnepesaukee Chamber Music Festival Prize, and the Dimitri Mitropoulis International Composition Competition Prize.  Gatonska has most recently received commissions  from SONYC (the String Orchestra of New York City) and the 2003 Music At The Anthology Festival, the electric cellist Jeffrey Krieger (2003), and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (2003).  This year he received a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and earlier received two post-graduate research grants from the Kosciuszko Foundation for music composition studies in Poland. He is also a MacDowell Colony Fellow.

Program Note:

Sketches in the Sand for Chamber Ensemble, 2004.
This work is based on a series of constructive "frames".  Whatever their contents may be (linear, harmonic, etc.), they continually appear in new formations, in order to create a constant refreshment and stratification of sound forms from beginning to end.  In trying to create a seamless musical web, new musical materials will appear with older fragments or frames, generating various transformations, juxtapositions, and orchestral colorings.  The composition pushes toward diverse levels of relationships, rather than a single or fixed point of view.  This composition was made possible in part by a 2004 Composer Assistance Grant from the American Music Center.
 

The Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra is a professional orchestra from the Greater Hartford/New Britain area dedicated to presenting both traditional and contemporary classical chamber works. The orchestra was established in 1997 under the auspices of the Polish American Foundation. Special attention is given  to music from Eastern Europe.

Adrian Mackiewicz, violinist and conductor, is  founder and artistic director of the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of the Poznan Music Academy, he hold holds a Master of Music and Artist Diploma degrees from Yale University, where he studied in the class of  Eric Friedman.  Currently Mr. Mackiewicz is a faculty member at the Tunxis College, and the Thames Valley Music School at  Connecticut College.

All events take place at the Foundation House, unless otherwise noted. Programs subject to change. Click here for directions.

Kosciuszko Foundation programs are supported by the Mary F. Koons Charitable Trust, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the Tadeusz Solowij Literary Fund, and the KF Cultural Fund.