150th Birthday Celebration of the Music of Maurice Ravel and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Please join us in the Brubeck Room for a musical celebration of the 150th birthday anniversaries of two beloved composers, Maurice Ravel and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  The program features Alexis Walls, violinist, and Lynelle James, pianist, with a program including Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" and "Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Minor" as well as Coleridge-Taylor's "Valse Suite for Piano, "Three Fours."

Alexis Walls and Lynelle James began performing together while pre-college students at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music. Both coming from musical families, they have performed extensively around New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, where they can frequently be heard at Sevenars Concerts in the summers. 

Alexis Walls gained recognition for her violin artistry as a young child and now enjoys a varied career as music educator and performer. She began her professional studies at age 12 in the studio of Shirley Givens at the Juilliard pre-college, and in 1995 she made her solo debut with the Island Chamber Symphony. Winner of numerous prizes, she has performed as a concerto soloist at The Kennedy Center, and also performed widely with the Kende Trio, a string trio established with her two younger sisters. The ensemble has performed internationally, most notably for Pope John Paul II in Rome. Alexis completed her undergraduate degree at Princeton University where she received 1st prize in the university’s concerto competition, performed as soloist with the Princeton University Orchestra, and studied with the Brentano String Quartet. She also holds a masters from Peabody Conservatory and a degree in performing arts administration from New York University. She has since held various management positions at Lincoln Center and other performing arts organizations in Manhattan, including as director and conductor of the World Youth Alliance Chamber Orchestra in New York, an ensemble of pre-college students from Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music. She also founded the Metropolitan String Orchestra, and has led these exciting ensembles at prominent venues nationally and internationally, including at the United Nations. 

Lynelle James grew up in a family of professional pianists in New York City and started studying the piano with her grandmother, Rolande Young Schrade. An early performance at Lincoln Center led Bernard Holland of the New York Times to praise her for “real tenderness” and the “extroversion of a performer.” She has performed as soloist and chamber musician in major venues across the United States and internationally, and in reviewing her performance at Carnegie Weill Hall in 2023, the New York Concert Review calls her a ‘powerhouse of a pianist.’  Lynelle's debut solo piano CD, released on the Blue Griffin label in 2017, features the music of Beethoven, Scriabin, Schumann and Roslavets, and was chosen for the American Record Critics’ Choice List by Alan Becker, who praises her for ‘emotionally gut wrenching’ and ‘technically immaculate’ playing. Lynelle received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2012, studying under noted pianist Arthur Greene and presenting a dissertation on the little known Ukrainian composer, Nikolai Roslavets. Dedicated to music education, she taught at the University of Michigan for 5 years while pursuing her doctorate, has given master classes at colleges and universities around the US and has taught at the Allen-Stevenson and Spence schools in New York. 

Registration strongly suggested.