×

Kayo Iwama

American pianist Kayo Iwama has concertized extensively with singers such as Stephanie Blythe, Kendra Colton, William Hite, Rufus Müller, Christòpheren Nomura, Lucy Shelton and Dawn Upshaw throughout North America, Europe and Japan, and has performed in many prestigous venues including the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, The DiMenna Center, Merkin Hall, The Morgan Library, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Yamaha Hall and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The Washington Post has called her a pianist “with unusual skill and sensitivty to the music and the singer” and the Boston Globe has praised her “virtuoso accompaniment…super-saturated with gorgeous colors”.  

Miss Iwama is the associate director of the innovative Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she works alongside Stephanie Blythe, the Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano and recently appointed artistic director of the program. Miss Iwama has been with the program since its inception in 2006, working in tandem with the founding artistic director, the acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw.  Other collaborations with Dawn Upshaw include master classes and a recital at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program at the Aldeburgh Music Festival, and appearances at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Virginia, the University of Wyoming, Edward Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.  Ms. Iwama has been a faculty member of Songfest, and for over two decades taught at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she also served as the coordinator of the Vocal Studies Program.  There she worked with some of today’s most promising young singers and collaborative pianists, and assisted Maestros James Levine, Seiji Ozawa and Robert Spano in major operatic and concert productions. In addition her teaching has also taken her to some of the foremost universities of the United States and Asia to give master classes and performance/demonstrations. A former resident of the Boston, Massachusetts area, she was a frequent performer on WGBH radio, and performed with such groups as the Florestan Recital Project, the Handel and Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music.  In addition she was the founder, music director and pianist of the critically acclaimed Cantata Singers Chamber Series, creating programs devoted to rarely-heard works of art song and vocal chamber music.  She was formerly on the faculties of the Hartt School of Music, Boston Conservatory and the New England Conservatory of Music.  

Miss Iwama earned a bachelor of music degree at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and her master of music at Stony Brook University where she studied with Gilbert Kalish.  She also attended the Salzburg Music Festival, the Banff Music Center, the Music Academy of the West and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she worked with such artists as Margo Garrett, Martin Isepp, Graham Johnson, Martin Katz and Erik Werba.  She has served previously on the music staffs of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Miss Iwama can be heard on CD on the Well-Tempered label, with baritone Christópheren Nomura in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, two ISMM discs devoted to French mélodies and the songs of Schumann with tenor Ingul Ivan Oak, and on the The Reckless Heart with soprano Kendra Colton, a collection of 20th century American and British song.  She will also be heard on a newly released CD with Miss Colton in the vocal music of John Harbison, honoring the composer’s 80th birthday

×

Eric Cha-Beach

A member of the ensemble Sō Percussion (called "brilliant" and "consistently impressive" by the New York Times) since 2007, Eric has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, The Walker Center and dozens of other venues in the United States. In that time, Sō Percussion has toured Russia, Australia, Colombia and throughout Europe. They have performed on The Late Show with Steven Colbert, at the TED Conference and Bonnaroo Festival, and with Radiolab Live. Eric has had the opportunity to work closely with Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Dan Trueman, Fred Frith, Suzanne Farrin, Glenn Kotche, Paul Lansky, Donnacha Dennehy, Vijay Iyer, Dawn Upshaw, Shara Nova, Matmos, The National, Dan Deacon, Buke and Gase, Dave Douglas, Angelica Negron, and many others.  And he has performed on eighteen of So Percussion’s albums.

As a composer, he has written works for JACK Quartet, Modern Medieval, Buke and Gase, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, Sirius String Quartet, and This Is How We Fly. Eric's pieces written for Sō Percussion are featured in ‘A Gun Show’ (BAM Next Wave 2016); ‘From Out a Darker Sea’ (Forma Arts UK commission 2016); 'Where (we) Live'; (BAM Next Wave 2012); 'Five Songs, Dances, and Meditations'; written to accompany Martin Kersels 'Five Songs' (Whitney Biennial 2010); 'Imaginary City' (BAM Next Wave 2009); and 'Music for Trains' - a site-specific performance on the train and at train stations in Brattleboro and Bellows Falls, VT (2008).  With Jason Treuting and Josh Quillen, he co-composed music for Shen Wei Dance's 'Undivided/Divided' (Park Avenue Armory 2011), the 2wice 'Fifth Wall' app for iPad with dancer Jonah Bokaer, and the sound installation 'On/Off' as part of Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche New York 2011.  He has composed the music for the dance film 'Parts Don't Work' (2011) by choreographer KT Niehoff and Lingo Dance, and the transition music for the internet radio station Q2 (2010 and 2013).  His compositions have also been featured in the 'Bell by Bell' parade as part of Make Music Winter in 2011 and 2012.  And his electronic music has been featured during the 2012 Look and Listen Festival and on the album 'Amid the Noise Remixes' (2011).

Outside of Sō Percussion, Eric has premiered new works from Lukas Ligeti, Caroline Shaw, Frank Nuyts and Jacob Cooper. Upcoming solo commissions are in development with Andrea Mazzariello and Dan Trueman. And he has performed and collaborated with pianist Peter Serkin, rock band The National, electronic artist Nicolas Jaar, composer Tristan Perich, the St. Louis Symphony Chamber Ensemble with David Robertson, bass player Evan Lipson, composer Daniel Wohl and many others.

Together with the other members of Sō Percussion, Eric serves as Edward T. Cone Performer-in-Residence at the Princeton University Music Department. He is also Co-Director of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University, an annual intensive course for college-aged percussionists started in 2009. And he is co-director of the percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Studying with Robert van Sice, Eric received his Bachelor of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma at the Peabody Conservatory, where he won the Yale Gordon Concerto Competition, and his Master of Music at the Yale School of Music. He also received a Fulbright fellowship and pursued additional study with Bernhard Wulff in Freiburg, Germany.