Martin Chalifour & Friends (Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival)

Due to an isolated facilities incident in the Schoenberg Music Building, we were unable to host or livestream the concert in Lani Hall. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

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Program

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet Op. 50 No. 6 in D Major (1787)

I. Allegro
II. Poco Adagio
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Finale: Allegro con spirito

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 27 (1878)

I. Un poco andante – Allegro molto ed agitato
II. Romanze: Andantino
III. Intermezzo: Allegro molto marcato – Più vivo e scherzando
IV. Finale: Lento – Presto al saltarello

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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.

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Martin Chalifour & Friends
Martin Chalifour, violin
Ambroise Aubrun, violin
Kate Hamilton, viola
Cécilia Tsan, cello

Martin Chalifour
Martin Chalifour has been Principal Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1995. He graduated with honors from the Montreal Conservatory at the age of 18 and then moved to the United States to continue studies at the famed Curtis Institute of Music.

Chalifour received a Certificate of Honor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and is also a laureate of the prestigious Montreal International Competition. Apart from his LA Phil duties, he has maintained an active solo career, playing a diverse repertoire of more than 60 concertos. Chalifour has appeared as soloist with conductors Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Neville Marriner, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Outside the U.S., he has played solos with the Auckland Philharmonia, the Montreal Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Malaysian Philharmonic, among others.

Chalifour began his orchestral career with the late Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, playing as Associate Concertmaster for six years. Subsequently, for five years he occupied the same position in the Cleveland Orchestra, where he also served as Acting Concertmaster under Christoph von Dohnányi. While in Cleveland, Chalifour taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a founding member of the Cleveland Orchestra Piano Trio.

Chalifour is a frequent guest at summer music festivals, including the Mainly Mozart Festival and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival.

Maintaining close ties with his native country, he has returned there often to teach and perform as soloist with various Canadian orchestras, most recently in Vancouver and in Hamilton.

Martin Chalifour has recorded solo and chamber music for the Telarc, Northstar, and Yarlung labels. He teaches at Caltech and at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

Ambroise Aubrun
Hailed as a “marvelous violinist” (France Musique) with “sensitive tone” (Pizzicato Magazine) and “tremendous ease, suppleness and beauty of sound” (Nice-Matin), violinist Ambroise Aubrun has performed extensively in Europe and North America. His albums for the Editions Hortus and Navona Records have embraced a wide range of repertoire from Bach to Tanguy (b. 1968) and received praise of the highest caliber (5 stars Pizzicato Journal, “coup de coeur” France Musique, and a nomination for the 2021 International Classical Music Awards).

Aubrun’s performances and albums have been broadcast on CBS, WFMT, France Musique, Klara Radio (Belgium), KPFK, WTUL New-Orleans and K-USC Los Angeles.

He has served as guest concertmaster of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, and is a regular guest of the Los Angeles Philharmonic violin sections.

Aubrun studied at the Paris National Superior Conservatory, UCLA and the Colburn Conservatory of Music. He is the winner of the Charles Oulmont Prize of the Fondation de France and laureate of the Langart Foundation in Switzerland.

Currently Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Aubrun has served on the faculty of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara as well as several academies, and is regularly invited to give masterclasses around the world. He is the artistic director of the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival at UCLA.

Aubrun plays a Matteo Goffriller violin, on loan from the Langart Foundation.

Kate Hamilton
Kate Hamilton, violist, enjoys an international career as Associate Professor of Viola at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and as the Co-Director of the International Chamber Music Festival in Joao Pessoa, Brazil. Recent engagements include guest artist on the Unbound Chamber Music Series (Mammoth, CA), chamber music performances with Frank Huang (New York Philharmonic concertmaster), and guest artist on the Music Maestri Series, Milano Conservatorio (Italy). A special honor in June 2022 was to perform viola quintets in Leipzig with members of the Berlin Philharmonic on the Kunitz & Justiz Courthouse Chamber Series. Since 2019, Kate has received repeated invitations to substitute in the viola section of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany) under Sir Simon Rattle, amongst others. As a viola soloist, she has appeared at the Qintai Concert Hall with the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra (China), the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, Central Oregon Symphony, and the Chamber Orchestra of San Jose (Costa Rica). Her playing has been described by Minnesota Public Radio as “a sound like liquid gold.”

A sought-after educator, she teaches a large class of violists at the University of Nevada and has given masterclasses at numerous music schools worldwide, including the Sydney Conservatory, Wuhan Conservatory, Milan Conservatory, New Zealand School of Music, University of Georgia, and the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University. Her students have continued studies at the Curtis Institute and Juilliard School of Music, and hold symphony, chamber, and academic positions around the world.

Kate has won positions in the San Diego (CA) and Guiyang Symphony Orchestra (China) as well as invited guest principal of the Bodø Chamber Orchestra in Norway.

Previous faculty positions include Artist-in-Residence at the University of Missouri-Columbia and violist of the Esterhazy String Quartet, Associate Professor of Viola at Illinois State. and visiting viola faculty at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand.

With her violin duo partner, Ambroise Aubrun, they are known as “Duo Novae” and they have enjoyed performances at the Sibelius Festival (Italy), the Nice Conservatoire (France) , and throughout the USA. In 2023, they will be on tour in New Zealand and Australia, as well as recording duos of York Bowen for the Centaur label.

Cécilia Tsan
“Uncompromising musical character and a towering technique… In the breadth of her virtuosity and the charisma of her musical personality, Tsan made this work her own.” (Daniel Cariaga/LA Times/Haydn D Major Cello Concerto)

Born in France, Cécilia Tsan began playing the cello with the same teacher as her childhood friend Yo-Yo Ma. A Philosophy and Chinese major, she also graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris under André Navarra. She is a prizewinner at the Barcelona, Florence and Paris International competitions. She toured throughout the world as a soloist and as a chamber musician with Rudolf Firkusny, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Michel Dalberto, Pascal Rogé, Simone Pedroni, Pierre Amoyal, Augustin Dumay, and Martin Chalifour.

She is the Principal Cellist for the Long Beach Symphony and the L.A. Master Chorale. She also recorded hundreds of movie soundtracks with John Williams, James Newton-Howard, James Horner, Randy Newman, Danny Elfman, and Alexandre Desplat, among others.

Since 2017, Cécilia is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory music series: “Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome.”

In April 2019, she was the French narrator in Stravinsky’s “Perséphone” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Peter Sellars at Disney Hall.

Cécilia has also served as Principal Cello for the Pasadena Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the New West Symphony, the Santa Barbara Symphony, the Academy Awards, the Emmys, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and America’s Got Talent.

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.