Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

UW Mead Witter School of Music Guest Artist Series. $15.

media release:

Anna Presler, violin

Leighton Fong, cello

Allegra Chapman, piano

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Program

Romanze with Faux Variations          Melinda Wagner

Lickety Split      Carlos Simon

Deux Morceaux      Lili Boulanger

Piano Trio II         Olly Wilson

Dervish      Errollyn Wallen

Imaginary Pancake      Gabriella Smith

Violinists in My Life      Laura Schwendinger

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Violinist Anna Presler teaches at the School of Music at California State University, Sacramento and is a longtime member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. She was the artistic director of Left Coast for fifteen years and a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra for two decades, and has been a fellow at the Banff Art Center, the International Music Seminar at Cornwall, and the Tanglewood Music Center––where her chamber music coaches included Eugene Lehner, Gil Kalish and Julius Levine. She studied at Yale University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and North Carolina School of the Arts. Her violin teachers were Elaine Richey, Sidney Harth, Syoko Aki, and Ian Swensen.

Leighton Fong, longtime member of LCCE, is Principal Cellist of the California Symphony. He plays regularly with Eco Ensemble and Empyrean Ensemble, and was a member of the SF Contemporary Players. Leighton studied at the SF Conservatory, the New England Conservatory, the Bern Conservatory in Switzerland, and the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has taught at UC Berkeley since 1997.

Pianist Allegra Chapman is an omnivorous soloist, chamber musician, and curator with a wide-ranging repertoire of music from Bach to Ligeti and a passion for connecting audiences with historically overlooked and living composers. Her performances have been described as “fervid but impeccably controlled” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “brilliant” by the San Francisco Classical Voice. A graduate of The Juilliard School and Bard Conservatory of Music, she is currently a member of Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Chordless duo with soprano Sara LeMesh. Allegra will be featured on a forthcoming album for Albany Records of works by composer Richard Aldag.