Salastina Music Society’s Happy Hour No. 57 features the Wiancko-Greensteins: cellist and composer Paul Wiancko and his wife violist Ayane Kozasa, and Paul’s sister Michi Wiancko, violinist and composer, and Michi’s husband composer Judd Greenstein.
They will be joining Happy Hour from 6 to 7 p.m Tuesday, May 18, live on Zoom, for a family reunion unlike any you’ve ever attended.
Wiancko has led an exceptionally multifaceted musical life as a composer and cellist. As a performer, he has collaborated with Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Nico Muhly, and members of the Guarneri, Takács, JACK, Parker, Orion, and Juilliard quartets. Chosen as one of Kronos Quartet’s “50 for the Future”, Paul Wiancko’s own music has been described as “dazzling”, “compelling,” and “vital pieces that avoid the predictable.” His 25-minute quartet LIFT is featured on the Aizuri Quartet’s Grammy-nominated album Blueprinting, one of NPR’s top 10 classical albums of 2018.
Ayane Kozasa, Paul’s wife, used to be a violinist and has had more years under her belt as a violinist than a violist. She started playing the violin at 4, and considers it her passion, her focus, and the path she was destined to walk. She took undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and was later accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music and the Kronberg Academy as a violist, studying with Misha Amory, Roberto Diaz, and Nobuko Imai. In 2012, she commissioned Paul Wiancko’s viola/cello duo “American Haiku,” the first piece she ever commissioned, and now it is performed and recorded worldwide.
Michi Wiancko is a composer, arranger and violinist whose work has been performed by ensembles, bands and orchestras around the world. She has collaborated with artists from across a wide musical spectrum and performed with some of the great musical artists of our time. She also composes music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi. Her first opera, “Murasaki’s Moon,” premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May of 2019. She is a 2018 recipient of an Opera America Commissioning Grant.
Judd Greenstein is a composer of structurally complex, viscerally engaging works for varied instrumentation. In addition to his work as a composer, Greenstein is active as a promoter of new music in New York and around the world. He is the co-director of New Amsterdam Records, an artists’ service organization that supports post-genre musicians in developing their most personal new projects. He has degrees from Williams College, the Yale School of Music, and Princeton University, and has received Fellowships from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, and the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab.
Salastina Music Society holds Happy Hour every Tuesday, bringing you live musical performance, spirited conversation, and interaction with musicians and fellow music lovers.
To receive a link to the virtual event, visit https://salastina-org.zoom.us/
For more information, call (323) 332-6874 or visit www.salastina.org/concerts.