ensemble132, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival

Program

Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960)
Serenade for String Trio, op. 10

I. Marcia: Allegro
II. Romanza: Adagio non troppo
III. Scherzo: Vivace
IV. Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
V. Rondo (Finale): Allegro vivace

Zoltán Kodaly (1882–1967)
Intermezzo for String Trio

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707)
Trio Sonata, op. 2, no.1

IV. Grave

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Trio Sonata BWV 1039

IV. Presto

Jean Cras (1879–1932)
String Trio

I. Premier mouvement
II. Lento
III. Animé
IV. Très animé

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The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival is being held this summer in Lani Hall, a 133-seat auditorium located in the Schoenberg Music Building on the UCLA campus. All concerts are free of charge, and no reservations are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Lot 2 is the closest campus parking lot; click here for full details on UCLA visitor parking, including campus parking maps and rates.

This year’s Festival will be livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel. Please subscribe to our channel to be notified when the concerts go live.

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ensemble132
Maria Ioudenitch, violin
Zhanbo Zheng, viola
Zachary Mowitz, cello

Maria Ioudenitch
American-Russian violinist Maria Ioudenitch captured the attention of music lovers worldwide when she received first prizes in three international violin competitions – the Ysaÿe, Tibor Varga, and Joseph Joachim – in 2021, as well as numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work and the Henle Urtext Prize. In 2023, she won the Opus Klassik award in the category “Chamber Music Recording of the Year” for her debut album, Songbird, on Warner Classics.

The innovative programming of the young violinist is reflected in the track list on Songbird. With her piano partner Kenny Broberg, she spans an arc from Franz Schubert and Fanny Mendelssohn to Nikolai Medtner and Amy Beach. In upcoming concerts, she performs the violin concertos of Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, and Barber, Bach’s A-minor violin concerto, and Vivaldi’s “Il Grosso Mogul,” while her recital program this season focuses on French music, including Ravel, Boulanger, and Poulenc.

Highlights of Maria’s 2023–24 season include concerts with Camerata Bern, where she opened the season with a play-direct program, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Dresden Philharmonic, the latter including a six-city tour of the UK. Furthermore, she made her debut at the Vienna Musikverein in October 2023, where she performed with Elena Bashkirova, among others. She was also featured on the Marlboro Music Festival’s US tour, having attended the festival under the artistic direction of Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss for the third time. In September, she participated in the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival directed by Elena Bashkirova, and in February, she returned to Carnegie Hall for a chamber music concert presented by the Kronberg Academy.

Recent engagements have taken her to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, and the Munich Symphony Orchestra, as well as NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and the Kansas City and Utah Symphonies. She works with conductors such as Andrey Boreyko, Holly Hyun Choe, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Robin Ticciati, Jan Willem de Vriend, and Hugh Wolff.

Maria grew up in Kansas City and began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three. She continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music and completed her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried. Last year, she was mentored by Sonia Simmenauer as part of her new initiative, zukunfts.music. Currently, she is in the Professional Studies program at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff. She is also a member of the emerging US-based chamber music collective, ensemble132.

Zhanbo Zheng
Known for his “beautiful tone and control, tremendous energy, and thoughtful musicality” (Violinist), violist Zhanbo Zheng was the first Chinese musician to win the Primrose International Viola Competition. He has also taken top prizes in other major competitions, including the Irving M. Klein International String Competition and the Washington International Competition for Strings. He was also a recipient of the Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation.

An avid chamber musician, Zheng has collaborated with distinguished artists, such as Jonathan Biss, Anthony McGill, Pamela Frank, Gary Hoffman, and others. He has been invited to perform at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society as a guest artist, and his music festival appearances include Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Verbier Festival Academy, Caramoor Evnin Rising Stars, and ChamberFest Cleveland. Zheng has performed in leading venues such as Carnegie Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and Kaufman Music Center.

As a soloist, Zheng has performed with orchestras such as the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, China Broadcasting Performing Arts Orchestra, and EOS Repertoire Orchestra of CCOM. In 2014, sent by the Ministry of Culture, he was selected for an exchange activity between China and Germany, hosted by China Education Association for International Exchange. He has also participated in the recording project “My Concert Hall — The Classical Music Appreciation,” which was proposed by Li Lanqing, the former Premier of the State Council of China.

Zheng earned his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Kim Kashkashian, Miriam Fried, and Dominique Eade. He was a recipient of NEC’s prestigious Presidential Scholarship and graduated with top Academic Honors. Currently, he is pursuing his Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School under the mentorship of Paul Neubauer.

Zachary Mowitz
A native of Princeton, New Jersey, cellist Zachary Mowitz made his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2018 as winner of the Greenfield Competition. An artist who wears many hats, Zachary is Artistic Director of ensemble132 and Nodality Music, Associated Artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, and co-founded Trio St. Bernard – the 2018 Gold Prize winner of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Symphony, and has played as Guest Principal Cello with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and Princeton Symphony Orchestra. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, he appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival and in Fall of 2024, he will join the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Zachary graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2018, where he studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley and served as principal cello of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. He subsequently studied at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Gary Hoffman in Belgium, and at the Royal College of Music with Richard Lester.

Having played with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Lin, Tara Helen O’Connor, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Robert McDonald, Zachary has an intense passion for chamber music. In 2019 he co-founded ensemble132, a chamber music collective that presents innovative programs of their own exciting, original transcriptions of classical masterworks, paired with staples of the traditional chamber music repertoire. Zachary has appeared throughout the United States, visiting halls such as the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall and Perelman Theater, Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall. He has also toured extensively in Europe playing in venues such as the Salzburg Mozarteum, both halls of the Berlin Konzerthaus, Krzysztof Penderecki European Center for Music, Vienna Konzerthaus, Helsinki Music Centre, and London’s Cadogan Hall.

As a young musician he performed as soloist with orchestras throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also appeared on Heifetz on Tour and the radio show From the Top, and has had performances broadcast by PBS and Philadelphia’s WHYY. In 2017, he was the subject of a feature story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Invested in expanding the impact of classical music, Zachary has dedicated considerable time and energy to community engagement programs, including: organizing a benefit concert for immigrant families in partnership with the ACLU and the Shut Down Berks Campaign, featuring musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Daedalus Quartet, and Curtis Institute; performing for Music For Food; extensive touring to schools throughout New Mexico with Music From Angel Fire; an education residency at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware; and song-writing workshops at Philadelphia’s Project HOME. In 2022-23, he was a Community Artist Fellow at the Curtis Institute, where he led a climate justice education program in the Philadelphia school district and served people living with dementia in partnership with Penn Memory.

A fervent advocate for new music and innovative programming, Zachary has premiered an array of new works by prominent and young composers alike, including the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s string quintet “A Shattered Vessel” at Music from Angel Fire in 2019. He has presented two newly commissioned works for solo cello by Nick DiBerardino and Zachary’s own father, Ira Mowitz, in a series of interactive lecture-recitals named Suite Talk. Nick and Zach have since captured the best of this program in a video series with Guarneri Hall and launched the Nodality Music, a nonprofit that cultivates direct links between artists, audiences, and broader culture with narrative-driven musical experiences.

Zachary was awarded First Prize in the 2020 World Bach Competition and is the cellist of Philadelphia’s Gamut Bach Ensemble. He is based in New York and co-teaches a class on social entrepreneurship and climate justice at the Curtis Institute. In his spare time, Zachary enjoys exploring the endless world of podcasts and tossing a frisbee.

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About The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival

Ambroise Aubrun, D.M.A., Artistic Director

The festival was founded in 1988 by Professor Henry J. Bruman (1913–2005), who sought to introduce new audiences to chamber music at informal concerts on the UCLA campus. The festival is made possible by the Henry J. Bruman Trust, Professors Wendell E. Jeffrey and Bernice M. Wenzel, by a gift in memory of Raymond E. Johnson, and with the support of the UCLA Center for 17th-& 18th-Century Studies.

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Photos courtesy of the artists.