The Geneva Music Festival (GMF) this year welcomes acclaimed chamber musician and Juilliard faculty member, Laurie Smukler. She will join other esteemed GMF artists for the final concerts of the season on June 17 and 18, in Geneva and Skaneateles, respectively. Smukler will play alongside Geoffrey Herd, Hannah Collins, Eliot Heaton, Colin Brookes, Max Geissler, and Clara Lyon to present“Russian Masters,”a richly-varied Russian program featuring works of Borodin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. (Artist bios are all available online at www.genevamusicfestival.com.)
Smukler has been a mentor to many of the festival artists in the past. “I have taught or coached every one of the other artists on these concerts and it’s a great honor to have been asked to join them for the GenevaMusic Festival,” says Smukler. “It’s really a special collaboration.”
She has, in turn, invited the group of performers to bring the “Russian Masters” concert to the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and School in Blue Hill, Maine, on the following weekend. Smukler is a long time teacher and performer there and also interim director.
“One of the amazing things about teaching is that I get to meet, work with and have an impact on students’ lives. At the same time, they have an impact on mine,” says Smukler. “I always look at my students as younger potential colleagues. With this group of professionals, that’s certainly come to fruition.”
Smukler is an active soloist and recitalist who has established a reputation as one of the finest chamber musicians in the country. Growing up in Cleveland, she began her studies at the Cleveland Institute ofMusic with pedagogue Margaret Randall. She started performing early, winning local competitions and playing as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 14. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Juilliard School and was the founding first violinist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. She has a particular interest in contemporary music and has premiered works by Ned Rorem, Morton Subotnik, Richard Wernick, Shulamit Ran, and Bruce Adolphe, among other composers. She plays a Guarneri violin made in Cremona in 1738.
She has performed and toured with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, as well as with two school-affiliated string quartets. With her husband, violist Ira Weller, she has directed and performed in the Collection in Concert series at the Morgan Library. She frequently collaborates with esteemed colleagues in varied chamber ensembles. In addition to Juilliard, Smukler also is a member of the faculties of Manhattan School of Music and the Conservatory of Music at Bard College, and previously Mannes College and Purchase College Conservatory of Music. She has presented master classes at conservatories and music schools across the country and has been an invited guest at many summer festivals.
She is excited about working with the other six musicians and blending their sounds to create their own interpretation of the composers’ work. “Our job is to inhabit that music and put it out there in performance. If we do it really well, the audience always knows and feels it,” explains Smukler. “That’s what’s special about music. There’s something very recognizable and universal in the emotions composers are working with. Even if you don’t know the piece, you recognize and have a personal reaction to the emotional content.”
“Russian Masters” will be held on Friday, June 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts (327 Pulteney St., Geneva, N.Y.), and Saturday, June 18 at 7:30 p.m., in the First Presbyterian Church (97 East Genesee St., Skaneateles, N.Y.).
Tickets for adult admission to all evening concerts and an after concert reception are $20. Children 18 and younger are welcome at all concerts at no charge. All venues are wheelchair accessible and air conditioned. For more information, including performers’ biographies, complete schedule, concert details, and locations, visit the Festival website at genevamusicfestival.com.
The Geneva Music Festival is made possible, in part, by public funds from NYSCA’s Decentralization Program, administered locally by Finger Lakes Community Arts Grants (FLCAG), the Rochester Area Community Foundation, The John Ben Snow and Wyckoff Family Foundations and the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester through support from the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
