Resident Artists

The Alexander String Quartet (Zakarias Grafilo and Fred Lifsitz,violins; Paul Yarbrough, viola; Sandy Wilson, cello), in joint residence with San Francisco Performances and San Francisco State since 1989, helped create the popular school series, The Story of the String Quartet. The curriculum was written by San Francisco Performances for non-music students. Rather than experience an isolated one-time performance, these students are introduced over time to music as a powerful voice for cultural expression.

The Alexander String Quartet captured international attention in 1985 as the first American Quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition, receiving both the jury’s highest award and the Audience Prize. Debut concerts in New York City and London, followed by rave reviews, established the Quartet as one of chamber music's most compelling ensembles.

Since 1989, they have directed the chamber music studies program at San Francisco State University. They also teach at Baruch College of the City University of New York, St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. In May of 1995, Allegheny College awarded Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees to the members of the Quartet in recognition of their unique contribution to the arts. The Alexander’s annual calendar of concerts continues to include performances at major halls throughout North America and Europe. When they are not on tour, the members of the Quartet live in San Francisco with their families. The Alexander Quartet has recorded the complete Beethoven quartet cycle for BMG's Arte Nova Classics. They have also made recordings of Brahms and Mozart clarinet quintets and Schumann and Dvorák string quartets. Other recent recordings include sur pointe, a CD of contemporary compositions produced by Foghorn Records.

• Saturday Morning Series
• Story of the String Quartet

Robert Greenberg, historian/lecturer, received his Ph.D. in music composition, With Distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in composition and Richard Felciano in analysis.

Greenberg’s compositions for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles have received numerous honors, including commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress and San Francisco Performances. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and The Netherlands.

In May 1993, Greenberg taped a forty-eight lecture course entitled “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” for the Teaching Company/SuperStar Teachers Program. The course was named by Inc. Magazine (1996) as one of “The Nine Leadership Classics You've Never Read,” and lead to the development of ten further courses, among them “The Symphonies of Beethoven”, “How to Listen to and Understand Opera”, and “The Chamber Music of Mozart”, totaling over 500 lectures.

Greenberg has performed, taught and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently a faculty member of the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, and he has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University at Hayward, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where for ten years he was host and lecturer for the Symphony’s nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia Festival, and the Chautauqua Institute. In addition, Greenberg is a sought after lecturer for businesses and business schools, and has recently spoken for such diverse organizations as S.C. Johnson, Deutsches Bank, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School Publishing, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Greenberg has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the University of California Alumni Magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Diablo Magazine.

In February, 2003, The Bangor Daily News (Maine) called Greenberg “the Elvis of music history and appreciation”, an appraisal that has given more pleasure than any other.

• Saturday Morning Series
• Philip Glass Lecture

The Hungarian born Katona Twins, Peter and Zoltán, have given recitals throughout the world including performances at the Carnegie Hall in New York; the Purcell Room of the Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall in London; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; the Suntory Hall in Tokyo; the Forbidden City in Beijing; the Alte Oper in Frankfurt and the Philharmonie in Cologne.

The twins have won numerous prizes, both individually and together. In 2004 they were awarded, with the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni prize, the first guitarist in the trust's history. In 1998 they won the Concert Artists Guild Competition held in New York thereby securing management throughout the USA; tours soon followed as did their Carnegie Hall debut. In 1997 they were winners at the Young Concert Artist Trust auditions in London and that brought with it London based worldwide management; in the same year they successfully auditioned for the Park Lane contemporary music group. Earlier in their careers the twins won the S.T. Johnson Foundation prize in 1995 and The Laura Ashley prize in 1996. In 1993 they won first prize at the most prestigious guitar duo competition in Montelimar, France. In the same year Peter & Zoltán won first prize at the international guitar duo competition held in Bubenreuth, Germany and were awarded the Cultural Prize of the City of Kassel, Germany.

The wide repertoire of the duo spans from Scarlatti to Piazzolla’s tango music. Their programmes also include concertos for two guitars and orchestra by Rodrigo, Vivaldi, Piazzolla and Tedesco. Michael Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and several other contemporary composers have written for and dedicated works to the Katona Twins.

From the age of ten the twins have studied both individually and as a guitar duo in Budapest, Frankfurt and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. During their studies they benefited from classes with Julian Bream and John Williams.

The Katona Twins have been invited on numerous occasions to record for the BBC and other international television and radio stations. Their CD releases include music by Scarlatti and Handel; Rodrigo; Albéniz and pieces by Piazzolla, Granados, de Falla and Mozart.

• Guitar Trek
• Salons at the Rex

As a Korean-born composer who was educated in Korea and the United States, “Jacqueline” Jeeyoung Kim’s music harmonizes the unique cultural aspects from Eastern and Western traditions.

Ms. Kim is currently a composer-in-residence for San Francisco Performances, and held the same position with Chanticleer in 2003-2004. Most recently, she was commissioned by the Silk Road Ensemble which is led by Yo-Yo Ma; Tryst, a trio for cello, oboe, and kayagum (Korean zither) was performed by Mr. Ma and the Ensemble in the United States and Europe, and published by G. Schirmer in 2003. In 2001-2002, she was awarded a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University, where she composed and researched Asian music and philosophy.

Ms. Kim has won awards and recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (Bunting Fellowship), ASCAP, International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM), National Association of Composers, USA (NACUSA), Meet the Composer, SCI/ASCAP, Britten-on the Bay competition, Dale Warland Singers New Music Competition, American Music Center, Seattle Creative Orchestra Commissioning Competition, Jerome Foundation, Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Aspen Music Festival, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

In addition, she has received numerous commissions and her music has been performed by many chamber orchestras and ensembles in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Seattle Symphony, Su-Won Philharmonic Orchestra in Korea, Seattle Creative Orchestra, Yale Concert Band, Oberlin Winter Orchestra, Dale Warland Singers, Su-Won Civic Choir, De ereprijs in the Netherlands, Ethos Percussion Group, the ISCM International Summer Course for Young Composers in Poland, AUROS Group for New Music, 4 Plus Percussion Group in Korea, the American Composers Forum, and Wu Man.

Ms. Kim studied composition at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, receiving a Bachelor of Music. She received her Master of Music degree at Indiana University, and in May 2001, Ms. Kim received the Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale University.

• Composers Forum

Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Jessica Rivera is established as one of the most creatively inspired vocal artists before the public today. The intelligence, dimension, and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on the great international concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations with many of today’s most celebrated composers including John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, and Nico Muhly, and has brought her together in collaboration with such esteemed conductors as Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Ms. Rivera was heralded in the world premiere of John Adams’s newest opera, A Flowering Tree, singing the role of Kumudha, in a production directed by Peter Sellars as part of the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna. Since then, she has performed A Flowering Tree for her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker with Sir Simon Rattle and, under the composer’s baton, with the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center, and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. The London performances were recorded and are now commercially available on the Nonesuch Records label.

The artist made her European operatic debut as Kitty Oppenheimer in Peter Sellars’s acclaimed production of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic with the Netherlands Opera, a role that also served for her debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and she joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera in a past season for its new production of Doctor Atomic under the direction of Alan Gilbert. She gave concert performances of Doctor Atomic with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and her portrayal of Kitty Oppenheimer was captured in Amsterdam and is commercially available on DVD on the BBC/Opus Arte label.

• Performance Poetry

Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer is one of today's most acclaimed and respected young American jazz artists. He received the Musician of the Year award in the 2010 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards, the 2010 Echo Award (the "German Grammy") for best international ensemble with his trio, and the Downbeat Critics Poll for #1 rising star small ensemble of the year. His latest recordings on the ACT label include Solo, released in August 2010, and his trio album Historicity, which was named the #1 jazz album of 2009 by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, the annual Village Voice jazz critics poll, and the Downbeat International Critics Poll. In the past decade, Iyer has won the Downbeat Poll in multiple categories, the JJA Jazz Award for Up & Coming Musician of the Year, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions.

Iyer has also composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical music. He has performed and recorded with Steve Coleman, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mike Ladd, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Amina Claudine Myers, Butch Morris, Oliver Lake, dead prez, Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, Imani Uzuri, Craig Taborn, and DJ Spooky, among others. 

A polymath whose work has spanned the sciences, arts, and humanities, Iyer holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Yale College, and a Masters in Physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from the University of California at Berkeley. He teaches at Manhattan School of Music, New York University, The New School, and School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, JazzTimes, Wire, The Guardian, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation, Sound Unbound, Arcana IV, and The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010.

• Regina Carter, jazz violin (1997–2001)
• Manuel Barrueco, classical guitar (1997–2001)
• Stephen Petronio, contemporary dance (1997–2001)
• Stefon Harris, vibraphone/jazz percussion (2001–2005)
• Christòpheren Nomura, baritone (2001–2005)
• Antigoni Goni, guitar (2002–2007)
• Luciana Souza , jazz vocalist (2005–2010)