David Starobin is the dedicatee of more than 350 new works which he has performed throughout the world, collaborating with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic; the National, Houston, San Francisco, Saint Louis, and BBC symphony orchestras; the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; the Danish Radio Orchestra; the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; and the Emerson and Guarneri quartets.
Mr. Starobin began his guitar studies at age seven with the guitarist Manuel Gayol, later graduating from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Aaron Shearer. While a student at Peabody, Mr. Starobin worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and was a frequent participant in the Marlboro Music Festival.
Among David Starobin’s honors are a Harvard University Fromm Grant for his commitment to the music of our time; Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant; ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award, and Peabody Conservatory’s Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2011 Starobin became the youngest guitarist to be inducted into the Guitar Foundation of America’s Hall of Fame. In 1981 David Starobin founded Bridge Records, Inc. His work for Bridge as performer, producer, and executive producer has earned three Grammy awards and thirty-six Grammy nominations, including “Classical Producer of the Year” (2015).
Between 1993 and 2004, David Starobin was the chairman of the guitar department at the Manhattan School of Music. In addition to teaching at MSM, Mr. Starobin holds the “Fondation Charidu Chair in Guitar Studies” at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he co-founded Curtis’s guitar program in 2011.
The Danish cellist Toke Møldrup, 37, received Queen Ingrid’s Honorary Award for his achievements on the Danish music scene in 2014. In the 20 years of his career so far, he has performed both across Europe and in the United States, South America, Japan and the Middle East at venues such as the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein and the Berlin Konzerthaus. A frequent guest at Danish music societies, Møldrup has performed as a soloist with Danish and international symphony orchestras under conductors such as Aldo Ceccato, Sanntu Rouvali, Lan Shui and Joshua Weilerstein, and at festivals such as Bergen International Festival, Lincoln International Chamber Music Festival, Monte-Carlo Spring Arts Festival and Oberstdorf Music Summer. With a keen interest in developing the repertoire of the cello he has premiered many works by contemporary composers, among them the European premiere of John Williams' cello concerto, Geoffrey Gordon's cello concerto and Christian Winther Christensen's concerto for cello and accordion. In 2017, he released the 6 suites for cello by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Toke Møldrup is principal cellist of the Copenhagen Philharmonic and since 2005 a teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music where he previously studied with his mentors, professors Morten Zeuthen and Tim Frederiksen.
A graduate of the Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe, with professor Martin Ostertag, he has studied privately and at master classes with capacities such as Valter Despálj, Hans Jensen, Ralph Kirschbaum and Yo-Yo Ma. Another important influence on his musical development is The Alban Berg Quartet with whom he learned from as a part of the Paizo Quartet, winner of the Grand Prize at The Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2003. He plays a David Tecchler cello (Rome, 1697) courtesy of the Augustinus Foundation.
Fred Lerdahl studied at Lawrence University, Princeton, and Tanglewood. He has taught at UC/Berkeley, Harvard, and Michigan, and since 1991 he has been Fritz Reiner Professor of Music at Columbia University.
Commissions have come from the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Spoleto Festival, National Endowment for the Arts, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, Chamber Music America, and others. Among the organizations that have performed his works are the New York Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, eighth blackbird, Speculum Musicae, Collage, Argento, Talea, the Peabody Trio, the Juilliard Quartet, the Pro Arte Quartet, the Daedalus Quartet, Ensemble XXI, Lontano, and the Venice Biennale.
He has been in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival, IRCAM, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the American Academy in Rome, the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Etchings Festival, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Lerdahl’s music has been commercially recorded on several labels and Bridge Records has established “The Music of Fred Lerdahl” portrait series.
His seminal book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, co-authored with linguist Ray Jackendoff, is a founding document for the growing field of the cognitive science of music. His subsequent book, Tonal Pitch Space, won the 2003 distinguished book award from the Society for Music Theory and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor award. A third book (in progress), Composition and Cognition, based on his 2011 Bloch Lectures at UC/Berkeley, will bring together his dual activity as composer and theorist.
In 2010 Lerdahl was honored with membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Three of his works composed since 2000—Time after Time for chamber ensemble, the Third String Quartet, and Arches for cello and chamber orchestra—have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in music.