Rising Stars series, this year featuring six concerts in the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012, bringing the brightest stars of the next generation of professional classical musiciansto Ravinia. All concerts take place in the festival's most intimate performance space, the indoor 450-seat Bennett Gordon Hall, which continues to showcase successful recitals and chamber music concerts during the summer. This season's series features pianist Giles Vonsattel (Oct. 1, 2011); violinist Bella Hristova (Oct. 15, 2011); the Linden String Quartet (Nov. 5, 2011); pianist Daria Rabotkina (Nov. 19, 2011); Musicians from Ravinia's Steans Music Institute (April 7, 2012); and vocal ensemble Calmus (April 28, 2012).
Ravinia is dedicated to developing the full potential of emerging artists, beginningwith their performances on the Rising Stars series and, ultimately for some, their Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut on the pavilion stage during the festival's summer season. Designed to provide gifted young musicians with the opportunity to refine their performing skills, the Rising Stars series encourages audiences to experience and support a lineup of the best and brightest candidates for future stardom while presenting artists with the chance to perform before discerning audiences in an intimate setting. Rising Stars concerts have introduced Ravinia audiences to such current stars as violinists Pamela Frank, Gil Shaham and Maxim Vengerov; pianists Lang Lang, Jonathan Biss and Joyce Yang; cellists Zuill Bailey and Claudio Bohórquez; and clarinetist Anthony McGill.
In addition to their Rising Stars performances, the artists will also perform in free concerts for students involved in Ravinia's REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs throughout the Chicago area. These performing opportunities give students a chance to make an intimate connection not only to the young artist, but also to classical music. Ravinia's education programs make music accessible to thousands of children K-12 in Chicago and the north suburbs, teaming working musicians with teachers to put music back into the public schools.
The Joseph M. Fabbioli Rising Stars Concert features 2008 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner pianist Giles Vonsattel, who began touring after winning the top prize of the prestigious 2002 Naumburg International Piano Competition. He made his AlIce Tully Hall debut that same year and has since performed at Zürich's Tonhalle, Warsaw's Chopin Festival and Tokyo's Opera City Hall. He has performed in the U.S. with the Utah, Santa Fe, Nashville and Grand Rapids symphonies as well as with the Boston Pops Orchestra. During a 2006-09 three-year appointment, Vonsattel was a member of Lincoln Center's prestigious Chamber Music Society Two, with whom he performed extensively both in New York and on tour.
Violinist Bella Hristova is first-prize winner of the 2008-09 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and made her debut in the Young Concert Artists Series during the 2009-10 season at Carnegie Hall's Merkin Concert Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. At the auditions she was also awarded the Helen Armstrong Violin Fellowship, the Miriam Brody Aronson Award, the Ruth Laredo Memorial Award, the Candlelight Concert Society Concert Prize and the Lied Center of Kansas Concert Prize. Hristova has performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Cartagena Festival Internacional de Musica and in recital at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston as well as appearing as a guest artist with the New York String Orchestra conducted by Jaime Laredo. She has also been featured on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion on NPR.
Currently the Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music, the Linden String Quartet is the gold medalist and grand prize-winner of the 2009 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, winner of the 2010 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, and comprises laureates of the 9th Borciani International String Quartet Competition. Other awards include first prize at the Sixth Hugo Kauder International Competition and the Coleman-Barstow prize at the 2009 Coleman National Chamber Ensemble Competition.
