January 31 – Beethoven 200: In Close Conversation – Phillips, Phillips, Rosen, O’Connor & Lee

Concert sponsored by Jeffrey N. Mehler, CFP^® LLC and Essex Meadows
Piano sponsored by Masonicare at Chester Village

Where and When:

VALLEY REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
256 Kelsey Hill Road, Deep River, CT
Click here to view in Google maps.

Sunday, January 31, 2027

Concert begins at 3:00 pm; outer doors open at 2:00 pm; auditorium doors open at 2:30 pm.

Accessible parking, entry and seating are available.

Concert Program:

Todd Phillips, violin
Daniel Phillips, viola
Marcy Rosen, cello
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute

with

Mihae Lee, piano

Beethoven 200: In Close Conversation

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Serenade for flute, violin and viola, No. 6, D Major, Op. 25
String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3
Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97 (Archduke)

Artist Biographies:

Todd Phillips, violin

Violinist Todd Phillips enjoys a varied career that harkens back to the traditions of previous generations of musicians who were in equal demand as soloist, chamber musician, orchestra leader/conductor, and teacher. Since making his solo debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony at the age of thirteen, he has appeared with many orchestras throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, including the Brandenburg Ensemble, the Jacksonville Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, Honolulu Symphony, Sejong Soloists, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1982 with the New York String Orchestra and conductor Alexander Schneider. Return engagements at Carnegie Hall soon followed, as well as solo performances in Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Boston Symphony Hall, and the Frankfurt Opera House.

He can be heard as soloist and chamber music artist on the Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, RCA Red Seal, Koch International, Delos, Arabesque, Bridge Records, Albany, Finlandia, NY Philomusica Records, and Marlboro Recording Society labels.

Mr. Phillips is a founding member of the highly acclaimed Orion String Quartet, along with his brother Daniel Phillips, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Timothy Eddy. The Orion String Quartet has the been the quartet-in-residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mannes College of Music, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Isaac Stern invited the quartet to take part in a special chamber music concert celebrating Carnegie Hall’s Centennial and also to participate as coaches at the prestigious Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop. The Quartet’s television appearances have included PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, three performances on ABC’s Good Morning America, and A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts.

Mr. Phillips’s other extensive chamber music activities have included performances at the Marlboro, Spoleto, Santa Fe, Aspen, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Chamber Music Northwest, and Lockenhaus festivals, the Great Mountains Music Festival (Korea), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the 92nd Street Y. He has collaborated with such renowned artists as Rudolf Serkin, Jaime Laredo, Pinchas Zukerman, Richard Stoltzman, Peter Serkin, Richard Goode, and Andras Schiff and has participated in eighteen tours with Musicians from Marlboro.

His experience as a member of the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has led to his being in great demand as a frequent leader of that group worldwide. This has prompted further invitations to lead/conduct the Brandenburg Ensemble, Haydn–Mozart Chamber Orchestra, the New World Symphony, Camerata Nordica of Sweden, the Tapiola Sinfonietta of Finland, Mannes Sinfonietta, and the festival chamber orchestras from Steamboat Springs, Colorado and Risor, Norway.

Todd Phillips also serves on the violin and chamber music faculties of the Mannes College of Music and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

Mr. Phillips began studying the violin at the age of four with his father, Eugene Phillips, a composer and former violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and later studied with Sally Thomas at the Juilliard School and with Sandor Vegh at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He also studied the piano with his mother, Natalie Phillips, a professor in piano at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Phillips lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, violinist Catherine Cho, and is the father of four children, Lia, Eliza, Jason, and Brandon.

Daniel Phillips, viola

Violinist/Violist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist and teacher. Born into a musical family, Mr. Phillips began violin studies at age four with his father Eugene Phillips, a composer and former violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He continued his professional training at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian and Sally Thomas, and has worked extensively with and served as teaching assistant to Sandor Vegh. As a winner of the prestigious Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1976, he performed acclaimed debut recitals in New York’s Alice Tully Hall and the 92nd Street “Y.” Mr. Phillips has performed as soloist with many of the country’s leading symphonies, and appears regularly at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Spoleto USA and the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England. He has toured and recorded in a string quartet (for SONY) with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma.

Daniel Phillips is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, which tours internationally. They have residencies at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Mannes College of Music. Available on CD are the Mendelssohn Octet with the Guarneri String Quartet as well as an all-Dvorak CD with pianist Peter Serkin. A quartet written for them by Wynton Marsalis, called “At the Octoroon Balls” is also available on SONY. The Chamber Music of Lincoln Center presented the Orion Quartet in a cycle of the complete Beethoven string quartets in six free concerts in May, 2000 each concert honoring a different children’s arts organization in New York City. They did Beethoven Cycles in Kansas City and Pittsburgh last season, and are doing the cycle this season at Indiana University in Bloomington and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In a year-long project, the quartet performed internationally in a unique collaboration with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Check out the quartet’s website, www.orionquartet.com, for a complete look at its accomplishments and busy touring schedule.

Marcy Rosen, cello

Marcy Rosen has established herself as one of the most important and respected artists of our day. Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her “one of the intimate art’s abiding treasures.” She has performed in recital and with orchestra throughout Canada, England, France, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and all fifty of the United States. She made her concerto debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eighteen and has since appeared with such noted orchestras as the Dallas Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the Caramoor Festival Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, the Jupiter Symphony and Concordia Chamber Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall, and the Tokyo Symphony at the famed Orchard Hall in Tokyo. In recital she has appeared in New York at such acclaimed venues as Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street “Y” and Merkin Concert Hall; in Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks, the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery, where for many years she hosted a series entitled “Marcy Rosen and Friends.” In recent seasons she has given Master Classes and appeared on stage in Beijing and Shanghai, China, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea and in Cartagena, Colombia.

A consummate soloist, Ms. Rosen’s superb musicianship is enhanced by her many chamber music activities. She has collaborated with the world’s finest musicians including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff, Peter Serkin, Mitsuko Uchida, Isaac Stern, Robert Mann, Sandor Vegh, Kim Kashkashian, Jessye Norman, Lucy Shelton, Charles Neidich and the Juilliard, Emerson, and Orion Quartets. She is a founding member of the ensemble La Fenice, a group comprised of Oboe, Piano and String Trio, as well as a founding member of the world renowned Mendelssohn String Quartet. With the Mendelssohn String Quartet she was Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and for nine years served as Blodgett-Artist-in Residence at Harvard University. The Quartet which disbanded in January of 2010, toured annually throughout the United States, Canada and Europe for 31 years.

She performs regularly at festivals both here and abroad, including the Caramoor, Santa Fe, Ravinia, Saratoga and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals, the Seattle International Music Festival, the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest in Austria and the International Musicians Seminar in England. Since 1986 she has been Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival in Maryland and as a long time participant at the Marlboro Music Festival she has taken part in twenty-one of their “Musicians from Marlboro” tours and performed in concerts celebrating the 40th and 50th and 60th Anniversaries of the Festival.

The recipient of many awards and prizes, Marcy Rosen twice won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, in 1981 with the Mendelssohn String Quartet and again in 1986, as a soloist. She was further honored by YCA with the Walker Fund Prize and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award. She is also the winner of the Washington International Competition for Strings and was the first recipient of the Mischa Schneider Memorial Award from the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation.

Marcy Rosen was born in Phoenix, Arizona and her teachers have included Gordon Epperson, Orlando Cole, Marcus Adeney, Felix Galimir, Karen Tuttle and Sandor Vegh. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. Ms. Rosen is currently Professor of Cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the Faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. She has also served on the faculties of the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory and the University of Delaware.

Her performances can be heard on recordings from the BIS, Bridge. Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, CBS Masterworks, Musical Heritage Society, Phillips, Nonesuch, Pro Arte, and Koch labels among others.

Tara Helen O’Connor, flute

Tara Helen O’Connor, who Art Mag has said “so embodies perfection on the flute that you’ll forget she is human,” is an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, and a recipient of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. A Wm. S. Haynes artist, she is a season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

O’Connor is professor of flute at the Yale School of Music where she is the coordinator of winds and brass and is the Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival and Essex Winter Series. A champion of contemporary music, Tara has premiered hundreds of works and has appeared on numerous recordings and film and television soundtracks including Barbie, Respect, The Joker, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Only Murders in the Building and Schmigadoon! to name only a few.

Regular festival appearances include the Bravo! Vail festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music@Menlo, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto Festival USA, the Banff Centre, Rockport Music, Bay Chamber Concerts, Manchester Music Festival, the Great Mountains Music Festival, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, and Music From Angel Fire. 

Tara has appeared on A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts and PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Bridge Records.

Mihae Lee, piano

Praised by The Boston Globe as “simply dazzling,” Artistic Director and pianist Mihae Lee has been captivating audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia in solo recitals and chamber music concerts with her poetic lyricism and scintillating virtuosity. She has performed in such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Jordan Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Academia Nationale de Santa Cecilia in Rome, Warsaw National Philharmonic Hall, and Taipei National Hall. An active chamber musician, Mihae is a founding member of the Triton Horn Trio with violinist Ani Kavafian and French hornist William Purvis and was an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society for three decades. Her recordings of Brahms, Shostakovich, Bartok, and Stravinsky with the members of BCMS were critically acclaimed by High Fidelity, CD Review, and Fanfare magazines, the reviews calling her sound “as warm as Rubinstein, yet virile as Toscanini.”

Mihae has appeared frequently at numerous international chamber music festivals including Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Groningen, Festicamara (Colombia), Great Woods, Seattle, OK Mozart, Mainly Mozart, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Rockport, Sebago-Long Lake, Bard, Norfolk, Mostly Music, Music Mountain, Monadnock, and Chestnut Hill Concerts. In addition to many years of performing regularly at Bargemusic in New York, she has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae; has collaborated with the Tokyo, Muir, Cassatt, and Manhattan string quartets; and has premiered and recorded works by such composers as Gunther Schuller, Ned Rorem, Paul Lansky, Henri Lazarof, Michael Daugherty, and Ezra Laderman. Mihae is often heard over the airwaves on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and on WNYC and WQXR in New York City, WGBH in Boston, and other stations around the country.

A native of Korea, Mihae is a graduate of The Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory studying with Martin Canin and Russell Sherman. She has released recordings on the Bridge, Etcetera, EDI, Northeastern, and BCMS labels. Since 2016 she serves as Music Director of the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival in Maine, since 2010 she was Artistic Director of Essex Winter Series until 2025, and as of 2024, she is the Artistic Director of Chestnut Hill Concerts, which offers a series of August performances locally at The Kate in Old Saybrook, CT.