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One of the most prominent and accomplished American musicians before the
public today, violinist
Stephanie Chase is acclaimed from Boston to Beijing as “one of the violin greats of our era” (Byron Belt, Newhouse
Newspapers). Her “elegance, dexterity, rhythmic
vitality and great imagination” (Boston Globe) and “great sense of style, matchless technique and flawless
intonation” (BBC Music Magazine) have brought her solo appearances at
cultural capitols throughout the world guest artist of the world's most distinguished
orchestras that include the New York Philharmonic, London Symphony
Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony.
Hailed as a “first-rate artist”
by the New York Times, her performances—of a concerto repertoire
that encompasses the Baroque to the contemporary—are met with
rave reviews.
Among the conductors with whom she has collaborated are Zubin Mehta, Leonard
Slatkin, Herbert Blomsted, Frans Brüggen, Marin Alsop and Stanislaw
Skrowaczewski.
Recordings
by Ms. Chase have been awarded the highest possible ratings by Cambridge
University Press and BBC Music Magazine, featured by Classic CD as “Record of
the Month” and selected by Stereophile as a “Record to Die For.” A recipient of
the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ms. Chase is also a top prizewinner
of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
 Born in Illinois to
one of America's oldest and most illustrious families, Stephanie Chase made her first public appearance at the age of two. By
age six, she was nationally recognized as a child prodigy through appearances on
television and performances in the Chicago area. Her debut with the Chicago
Symphony followed her first prize win, at age eight, in the Chicago Symphony’s
Youth Competition. That same year she was featured performing a Mozart Concerto
on WGN’s “Artist’s Showcase,” in a program that was awarded the illustrious
George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting. Further
studies with Sally Thomas of the Juilliard School ensued and, following two
appearances at age thirteen on Sir David Frost’s television interview program,
Ms. Chase embarked on a major concert career, touring as a teenager
across the
United
States and Canada and appearing with orchestras that included the
Chicago, St. Louis, National and American Symphony Orchestras. Her Carnegie
Hall debut was at age eighteen, in which she appeared as soloist in the
retirement concert of the
eminent conductor-educator Leon Barzin.
Desiring to further her
interpretive skills, Ms. Chase chose to study with the legendary violinist
Arthur Grumiaux,
who remained her mentor until his death in 1986. During the 1980’s she studied
chamber music with at the renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont with many
of the 20th-century greatest musicians, including Rudolf Serkin, Felix Galimir, Misha Schneider, Rudolph Firkusny and Marcel Moyse.
Stephanie Chase’s triumphant, award-winning
performances at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow led to international fame and
concert tours of North America, Europe, Central and South American, the Middle
East, Asia and Australia. In 1986, she made an historic tour of the People’s
Republic of China as soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic on its first ever
trip to the PRC. The following year she added the prestigious Avery
Fisher Career Grant to her list of awards.
Although she excels in the
virtuoso’s repertoire, Stephanie Chase is an amazingly versatile musician who
performs a body of compositions encompassing the Baroque through the 21st
century. Her concerto repertoire of over fifty-five works features many
20th-century compositions, and her interest in musicology and performance
practice is reflected in her own original cadenzas for concerti by Beethoven,
Mozart, and Haydn. Her renowned recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with
Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band, was the first ever on original instruments and
is
declared “one of the twenty most outstanding performances in
the work's recorded history” (Beethoven: Violin Concerto;
Cambridge University Press) and honored with the highest possible
ratings by BBC Music Magazine.
Stephanie Chase's most recent
recordings include music for violin and piano by Rudolf Friml, released
in October 2007 on the Koch International Classics label (KIC-CD-7662). In
October 2008 she will record Family Portraits - a collection of violin music from
the libraries of her parents and grandfathers - for Koch International
Classics, in collaboration with famed pianist Warren Jones.
Also renowned as a
chamber musician, Ms. Chase is a co-founder and Artistic Director
of the Music of the Spheres Society, which presents chamber music
concerts and lectures that explore the links between music, philosophy
and the sciences. As a former artist member of the Boston Chamber Music
Society, she toured internationally with the group and is featured on
several recordings made by the Society, in a variety of repertoire.
Ms. Chase is
additionally
applauded through her concert performances in the dual roles of violin
soloist and conductor. Concerts she has conducted with the Jupiter
Symphony, The Chamber Orchestra of the Spheres, and the Symphony By
The Sea (MA) have been extremely well received, and she has led
performances from the solo violin position with orchestras
throughout the United States and Mexico.
 Her
music arrangements have been performed to rave reviews in venues that
include Carnegie Hall. A Fantasy about Carmen, a work she created for
string orchestra (inspired by Sarasate’s virtuoso Carmen
Fantasy for violin and orchestra), was premiered in 2005 in Zankel
Hall (Carnegie Hall) in a performance by the orchestra of the Perlman
Music Program conducted by Itzhak Perlman.
Ms Chase's Spanish Suite, an
arrangement for string orchestra of additional music by Sarasate, was
premiered in 2006 by The American String Project in Seattle and received
enthusiastic reviews from the audience, critics, and performing
musicians alike. This live-concert recording is now commercially
available on the MSR label. Her arrangement for string orchestra of
Paganini's 24th Caprice, entitled "A Capricious CHASE," will
premiere in Seattle in May 2008. In addition to Paganini's music,
Ms. Chase has inserted the musical spelling of her own name
(C-H-A-S-E) into the work, in the tradition of J. S. Bach.
During the 2007-2008
season, Stephanie Chase programmed and led a "Music and Imagination" course at the Philoctetes Center in New York, an institution that was founded for the
study of imagination. Her programs have included "The Rhythmic Brain"
(with music therapist Eric Barnhill, founder of "Cognitive Eurythmics"),
"Five Centuries of Violin Making" with Stewart Pollens, and "Reaching
Consensus in the Emerson String Quartet" with violinist Philip Setzer.
These programs were streamed live internationally through the Center's
website and are available for viewing on YouTube.
Stephanie Chase is lineally descended (tenth generation)
from Aquila Chase, who arrived from England about 1639 and settled first
in Hampton, NH and then Newbury, MA. The founder of one of New England's
most important family lineages, Aquila's other descendents include
jurists, founders of colleges, bishops, senators and a Supreme Court
judge.
Ms. Chase counts among
her ancestors Salmon Portland Chase, who served as governor of Ohio,
Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln and, later, as Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court. Among his accomplishments were creating a
national banking system with paper (flat) currency, and he was
instrumental in having the phrase "In God We Trust" placed on American
currency. Chase was a noted supporter of women's rights, the abolition
of slavery, and prison reform, and it is in his honor that the Chase
National Bank (later Chase Manhattan Bank) was named. As Chief Justice,
Salmon Chase presided over the impeachment trial of President Andrew
Johnson in 1868.
Other ancestral relatives
include Philander Chase, who was the first Bishop of Ohio and
Illinois; among his accomplishments were work was as a
missionary to the Indian populations of Oneida County, NY and as
an emancipator of slaves in New Orleans. A rather
distant relative is Willard Chase (b. 1798), who was a neighbor
to Joseph Smith, founder and leader of the Latter Day Saints; it
was on Chase's property that, in the early 1820's, Smith
discovered a "seer" stone that led him to the "Gold Book," i.e.,
the foundation for the Book of Mormon.
Stephanie Chases current hobbies include
studying the "music of the spheres" and Stradivari violins, and
researching her genealogy. She resides in New York
City with her husband,
Stewart Pollens,
who is the founder and director of Violin Advisor, LLC. From 1976-2006, Mr. Pollens was the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
is an award-winning author
of books on Stradivari’s instrument-building techniques, a history and analysis
of the early pianoforte, and the French bowmaker Francois Xavier Tourte.
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excerpt from Ravel's "Tzigane"
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