Sunday, May 12, 2024
3:00 PM EST

Cellist Allison Eldredge, a recipient of the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant and Musical America’s “Young Artist of the Year”, has played widely nationally and internationally, from London to Moscow to China and Berlin. She has been called “a cellist afraid of nothing” (Chicago Times) with “virtuosity wholly at the service of the music” (American Fanfare). She gained national attention when Daniel Barenboim invited her to give the first performance of the Elgar concerto which he conducted years after the death of his wife, the celebrated cellist Jacqueline Du Pre.

Internationally, Ms. Eldredge has played with 30 major and innumerable other orchestras including the Montreal Symphony, Moscow Virtuosi, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Warsaw Philharmonic, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and in Asia, Ms. Eldredge has appeared with the China National Symphony, Yomiuri Symphony, Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic and Tokyo Philharmonic.

Ms. Eldredge has been invited by the premiere Music Directors of the world including Zubin Mehta, Andre Previn, Krzyzstof Penderecki, Japan Van Sweden, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Charles Dutoit, Vladimir Spivakov, Evgeni Svetlanov, Hans Vonk, Sergiu Commissiona, Joseph Silverstein, Keith Lockhart, JoAnn Falletta, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, Eiji Oue, Mark Elder, Jorge Mester and Otto-Werner Mueller among many others. In recital, she has toured the world, receiving critical acclaim in London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and other cities.

As a teacher, Ms. Eldredge has taught the next generation for the past 25 years. She has been teaching cello and chamber music of all levels from beginners to competition winners at New England Conservatory since 2000. She has taught at Harvard University from 2008-11. Her students have been accepted at every major University and Every Ivy League school as well as the top conservatories in the nation and internationally including the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Peabody Institute of Music at John Hopkins University, Eastman, Mannes, Manhattan School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Royal College of Music (U. K. ), Royal Academy of Music (U.K.), Royal Northern College of Music (U.K.), Boston Conservatory at Berklee and many others. Ms. Eldredge has given masterclasses at Universities and Schools across the country and has visited more than 100 schools in support of music education in communities with greater needs.

Ms. Eldredge teaches chamber music at Young Talent Chamber Music, a 2-week Pro-Am intensive camp in Connecticut, which she Co-Founded in 2014. She has taught cello and chamber music at summer music festivals over the past 30 years. As a chamber musician, Ms. Eldredge has shared the stage with renowned Artists such as Andre Previn, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Marc ‘O Connor, Jaap Van Sweden, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin, Chee-Yun, Max Levinson, Yekwon Sunwoo and many others. She was a member of the Boston Trio from 2001-2011. She has been a guest artist of Bay Chamber Music Festival, the San Juan Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia, Casals, Caramoor, Santa Fe, Rockport Chamber, Borromeo, Salt Bay, Waterloo, Colmar Festival (France), Davos Festival (Switzerland), Dvorak Festival in Prague, Gyeonggi Spring and Seoul Arts Festival in South Korea and others.

Exceptional distinctions include a critically-acclaimed sold-out debut as soloist at Carnegie Hall with the Warsaw Sinfonia and legendary Polish Composer Krzysztof Penderecki at the baton, a command performance at the White House and a special performance in tribute to cellist Pablo Casals at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico.

Last season, Ms. Eldredge performed “Tales of Hemingway”, a concerto for cello and orchestra composed in 2015 by the American composer Michael Daugherty, inspired by the writings of American writer Ernest Hemingway with the Portland-Columbia Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic and the North Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and Music Director, Steven Byess.

A champion of living composers, Ms. Eldredge has toured North America, Europe and Israel with composer Krzysztof Penderecki performing his Viola Concerto transcribed for cello and orchestra. In 2013, she performed his Concerto Grosso No. 1 for 3 Cellos as first cellist with the composer at the podium in Poland. In New York in 2008, she performed in an acclaimed concert celebrating American composer Paul Schoenfield’s works with the composer present. She has personally collaborated with composers Leon Kirchner, Shigeaki Saegusa, Lukas Foss, Marc O’ Connor, Andy Vores and performed the works of many other living composers including Joan Tower, Bright Sheng, George Crumb and Ellen Taaffe Zwillich.

Ms. Eldredge’s radio and television credits include appearances on New York’s WQXR, Boston’s WGBH, VPR, NPR, Japan’s NHK-National Television and Radio, ABC’s Good Morning America, PBS with Florence Hendersen and a documentary in which she appeared with Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma for Japanese television.

A passionate leader of music education, in 2011, Ms. Eldredge Founded the Foulger International Music Festival, a 4-week summer music camp in New Jersey promoting performance and career development for young musicians supported by the Sid and Mary Foulger Family Foundation. She also served as Artistic Director of the Killington Music Festival in Vermont from 2004-2011.

Ms. Eldredge maintains a private teaching studio in Massachusetts and Connecticut. She studied at the Juilliard School and the Pre-College Juilliard School. Her teachers were Harvey Shapiro, Eleanore Schoenfeld and Yo Yo Ma. Additional teachers have included Felix Galimir, Ardyth Alton, Joan Lunde and Mstislav Rostropovich.

Educated at the Juilliard School; cello studies with Harvey Shapiro, Eleonore Schoenfeld, Ardyth Alton, Channing Robbins; chamber music with Felix Galimir and Lewis Kaplan; soloist with major orchestras throughout the world, including New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Moscow Virtuosi, Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields; Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the Warsaw Sinfonia; winner, Avery Fisher Career Grant; cellist in the Boston Trio; chamber music performances with Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, Yo-Yo Ma, Andre Previn; masterclasses given at USC, Boston University, Brigham Young University, University of Kansas.

Japanese-American conductor Ken Yanagisawa is the Assistant Conductor of the Boston Civic Symphony and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University under the guidance of James Burton. He will be making his Japanese debut as a guest conductor for a production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Kansai Nikikai and the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra at the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Japan in February 2023, and most recently served as assistant conductor for the BU Opera Institute productions of Ned Rorem’s Our Town and Mozart’s Così fan tutte as well as for the BU Symphony Orchestra & Symphonic Chorus performance of Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem at Boston Symphony Hall.

Previously, Ken completed a research residency at the Kyoto City University of Arts and received a Master of Music and Professional Studies Certificate in Orchestral Conducting from the Manhattan School of Music. While a student at MSM, he was selected to participate in the Manhattan School of Music / Leonard Slatkin Conductors Project and was subsequently invited to work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as a Conducting Fellow in March 2020. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Yale University where he received the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award and the Stanton Wheeler Award, and prior to Yale he attended the New England Conservatory as an Undergraduate Diploma candidate for Oboe Performance under the tutelage of John Ferrillo.