Events

MID-DAY MUSIC @ COLUMBIA

Wednesday, October 18, 2017
1-2pm | Garden Room 2 | Faculty House | 64 Morningside Dr.

 Come join us in the Garden Room at Faculty House, where Students and Music Associates from Columbia University's Music Performance Program will be showcased in an afternoon recital series.

 PROGRAM

Chopin: Introduction and Polonaise brilliant in C major, Op. 3

Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19
I. Lento – Allegro moderato
II. Allegro scherzando
III. Andante
IV. Allegro mosso

David Popper: Elfentanz, Op. 39

BIOGRAPHY

Nineteen-year-old Elena Ariza is a cellist from Cupertino, California and currently attends Columbia University as part of its exchange program with the Juilliard School. In 2015, Elena performed as a soloist at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and in the same year, was featured on NPR’s From the Top. She is an alumna of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College as well as the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, for which she served as Principal Cellist for two years. 

Elena has won numerous solo and concerto competitions such as the Music Teachers National Association’s California State Competition, Pacific Musical Society Annual Competition, Mondavi Young Artists Competition, and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and Symphony Parnassus concerto competitions, among others. She has played in masterclasses led by David Finckel, Ronald Leonard, Colin Carr, Robert deMaine, and Bonnie Hampton, and she has attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute, and the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival and School.

As a chamber musician, she has participated in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Chamber Music Program since 2008 and most recently played in the Cambiata String Quartet, which competed in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in 2016. She also played in the AYE Piano Trio as part of the Young Chamber Musicians program, led by Susan Bates.

In 2011, Elena helped raise more than $12,000 through three charity concerts that she and her friends organized in the San Francisco Bay Area, in order to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Since then, she has performed in several concerts to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Japanese Red Cross, Global Giving, and the Transparent Fish Fund. In her free time, she enjoys computer programming and paper crafting.

Misha Galant is a sophomore in the Columbia University and Juilliard School Exchange in New York City. He began piano lessons at the age of six and continued for 12 years with his mother, Olya Katsman. Currently, he studies with Matti Raekallio at the Juilliard School. Misha’s musical heritage includes three generations of pianists, including his great-grandmother who was a student of Maria Yudina along with Vladimir Horowitz, and his great-grandfather who studied with Heinrich Neuhaus in Kiev, Ukraine.

His accomplishments include first prizes in the Marylin Mindell Piano Competition, the Ross Mckee Piano Competition, the Pacific Musical Society competition, the San Jose International Piano Competition, and the Henry & Carol Zeiter piano competition at UOP, along with numerous other local competitions. He was the state winner in the 2010 MTAC concerto competition and again in 2015, when he was inducted into the selective Young Artist Guild. Misha has performed with several orchestras, including the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Peninsula Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Livermore-Amador Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Santa Rosa Youth Orchestra. In November 2015, he performed the complete Third Concerto of Rachmaninoff with the California Youth Symphony and joined that orchestra on a tour of Austria and Italy in the following summer.

In June 2010, at the age of 12, he gave his first full solo recital in Mountain View and has been performing regularly since then. As a member of the Young Artist Guild, he is in great demand as a recitalist around California.

In the summer of 2015, he was a prizewinner in the first Van Cliburn Junior competition in Fort Worth, Texas, garnering the Best Classical Sonata Performance and Audience prizes. He also won Third and Audience prizes at the Eastman Young Artists International Competition for which he was offered a four-year full tuition scholarship to the Eastman School of Music.

Misha transferred high schools in his junior year, but continued to serve as an accompanist for both of his schools’ choirs. He was also a member of the Music Students’ Service League, an outreach program that gives benefit concerts in retirement communities. In his spare time, Misha enjoys playing chamber music, swimming, reading, hiking, eating, and performing to raise funds for various volunteer organizations.

Misha is indebted to Sharon Mann and Yoshikazu Nagai of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for their invaluable and inspirational coaching.

All events are sponsored by Columbia University's Music Performance Program and are free and open to the public.

 Mid-Day Music @ Columbia offers live music to a general audience, following the tradition established by Aaron Warner and Isidor Isaac Rabi, great lovers of music whose memories live on at Faculty House.