Spotlight on Violin: North Shore Chamber Music Festival Begins June 4
A particularly violin-centric North Shore Chamber Music Festival (NSCMF) begins next Wednesday in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, and I'm looking forward to coming back to the Midwest to attend the three-concert series! (It's June 4, 6, and 7 at The Village Church in Northbrook. Click here for more information - if you go to it please come say hello to me!)
The brainchild of international violin soloist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Angela Yoffe (a married pair) - the festival is known not just for top-notch music-making, but also for the collegiality of its performers, who - thanks to the spirit of community fostered by Gluzman and Yoffe - give off that "one big happy family" vibe. This year they celebrate their 15th anniversary.
Violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Angela Yoffe, founders of the North Shore Chamber Music Festival.
Gluzman and Yoffe always perform in the Festival, and this year they are joined by violinist/violist Julian Rhee, violinist Hina Khuong-Huu, violist Atar Arad, cellists Ani Aznavoorian and James Baik, double bassist Kurt Muroki, pianist William Wolfram, clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg and a guest appearance by the entire Ariel Quartet, which is currently the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music.
Some of those violin-centric works I'm talking about include the Franck Sonata and Vivaldi's Four Seasons - just to get started.
Rhee will open the concert with the great turn-of-the-20th-century violinist Eugène Ysaÿe's "Poème élégiaque." Rhee has been associated with the NSCMF since he was a teenager and has continued to accumulate plaudits: first prize in the 2020 Elmar Oliveira competition, a Silver Medal in the 2022 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, fifth prize at the 2024 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition and a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant - among others!
Violinist Julian Rhee.
After Rhee's performance, Gluzman will follow with Cesar Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano, a work written for Ysaÿe on the occasion of his wedding. As Gluzman said, the Franck Sonata is "all about love," and it has become a much-beloved work among violinists. (Back in the day, violinists affectionately called it the "Frank Sinatra"!) The evening will end with Gluzman and Rhee joined by Khuong-Huu, Aznavoorian, Muroki and Wolfram for Mikhail Glinka's "Grand Sextet."
I'm also excited to once again witness the very-young violinists from the nearby Betty Haag Academy, who will perform a pre-show concert on Friday June 6. They wowed me last year with their high level, boisterous playlist and skillful performance- not to mention that their uniformly perfect bow arms inspired me as a teacher! (See this article from last year.)
Friday brings more artists into the mix: the violist Atar Arad, Distinguished Professor at Indiana University's Jacobs School, and the Ariel Quartet. I have been wanting to see Atar Arad in person ever since writing about his Partita Party project, where Arad asked four of his friends and former students to join him in completing an all-new viola partita in the same form as J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin. Someone with ideas like this has to be a wonderful person!
Violist Atar Arad.
For the NSCMF's Friday June 6 concert Arad will perform several pieces with clarinetist Shterenberg, including his own composition "Avivim," as well as Robert Schumann's "Fairy Tales," Op. 132.
On the same program, the Ariel Quartet will play Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet Op. 80, No. 6 in A minor. Members of the Ariel Quartet spoke eloquently with Violinist.com back in 2023, when they were performing on the holocaust-era "Violins of Hope" instruments (see this article) The dramatic quartet they will play by Mendelssohn was his swan song, written just after his sister Fanny's death and just two months before his own.
The Ariel Quartet.
The Grand Finale concert on Saturday June 7 will put a special spotlight on the talented young artists who are grant recipients of NSCMF's special Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund, a fund that Gluzman and Yoffe created 10 years ago in the name of their beloved mentor, to award educational scholarships to talented college and pre-college musicians from around the world.
Violinists Hina Khuong-Huu and Vadim Gluzman; and cellist James Baik.Performing in this concert are violinist Julian Rhee who received a Fomin scholarship in 2020; violinist Hina Khuong-Huu who received on in 2023, and cellist James Baik who received on in 2025, sponsored by Northbrook's CARNEED, Inc..
Cellist Baik will join Gluzman for Vivaldi's Concerto for Violin and Cello in B flat major, followed by a shared performance of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" by Rhee and Khuong-Huu. And there will be some fun at the end: the whole NSCMF Ensemble will join together for a version of "La Folia Variations" written by violinist Michi Wiancko, ending with a set of "Happy Birthday Variations" by Peter Heidrich - in celebration of several of the musicians' milestone birthdays: Atar Arad (turning 80) and William Wolfram (turning 70).
A number of the musicians who will perform this year were also there for the very first NSCMF in 2011 - founders Gluzman and Yoffe, as well as Arad, Aznavoorian, Wolfram and Shterenberg.
"After 15 years of taking part in the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, I feel that my colleagues and the audience became my chamber music family," said Atar Arad. And as Gluzman said, "Let's get together, and share music!"
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EDITOR'S NOTE:
Unfortunately I had to cancel my trip to Chicago and will not be there in person, this is very disappointing! But I will be watching the livestream, and so can you! Watch the livestream here!
You might also like
- North Shore Chamber Music Festival 2024 Day 1: A Triumvirate of Talent
- Review: Highlights from North Shore Chamber Music Festival, Days 2 and 3
- Betty Haag and a New Generation of Violinists - NSCMF 2024
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Replies
It is indeed tempting, Diana. You have wonderful summer music in the US. Here in southern Europe it has suddenly become so hot that we fear our violins 'opening up' in quite the wrong way!
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May 30, 2025 at 09:20 PM · Laurie, I am so tempted to hop on a plane and meet you there! It sounds wonderful! I'm thrilled to say Gluzman will perform in Knoxville next year, so I will definitely get to hear him then.