SPECIAL GIVING TUESDAY EVENT

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 7pm – Saint Matthew’s Lutheran Church

Spohr Double String Quartet in E Flat Major, Side by Side with CMC TWO musicians
Mozart String Quartet No. 16 in E Flat Major, K428 
Schumann String Quartet in A Major, op. 41 no. 3 

Join us for a very special event as we introduce you to a newly formed string quartet made up of some exceptional musicians who are at the very beginning of their professional solo careers.

This performances is presented free of charge, but donations are encouraged in celebration of GivingTuesday.

Geneva Lewis
Maria Ioudenitch
Emma Wernig
Gabriel Martins
New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis has forged a reputation as a musician of consummate artistry whose performances speak from and to the heart. Lauded for “remarkable mastery of her instrument” (CVNC) and hailed as “clearly one to watch” (Musical America), Geneva is the recipient of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Additional accolades include Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize, being named a Performance Today Young Artist in Residence, and Musical America’s New Artist of the Month. Most recently, Geneva was named one of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists.
Since her solo debut at age 11 with the Pasadena POPS, Geneva has gone on to perform with orchestras including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Pensacola Symphony and Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and with conductors including Nicholas McGegan, Edwin Outwater, Michael Feinstein, Sameer Patel, Peter Rubardt, and Dirk Meyer. The 2022-23 season includes performances with the Auckland Philharmonia, North Carolina Symphony, Augusta Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Austin Symphony and Arkansas Symphony. In recital, recent and upcoming highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall, Tippet Rise, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Washington Performing Arts, Merkin Hall, and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts.
Deeply passionate about collaboration, Geneva has had the pleasure of performing with such prominent musicians as Jonathan Biss, Glenn Dicterow, Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Gidon Kremer, Marcy Rosen, Sir András Schiff, and Mitsuko Uchida, among others. She is also a founding member of the Callisto Trio, Artist-in-Residence at the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles. Callisto received the Bronze Medal at the Fischoff Competition as the youngest group to ever compete in the senior division finals. They were recently invited on the Masters on Tour series of the International Holland Music Sessions and performed at the celebrated Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
An advocate of community engagement and music education, Geneva was selected for the New England Conservatory’s Community Performances and Partnerships Program’s Ensemble Fellowship, through which her string quartet created interactive educational programs for audiences throughout Boston. Her quartet was also chosen for the Virginia Arts Festival Residency, during which they performed and presented masterclasses in elementary, middle, and high schools.
​Geneva received her Artist Diploma and Bachelor of Music as the recipient of the Charlotte F. Rabb Presidential Scholarship at the New England Conservatory, studying with Miriam Fried. Prior to that, she studied with Aimée Kreston at the Colburn School of Performing Arts. She is currently studying at Kronberg Academy with Professor Mihaela Martin. Past summers have taken her to the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia Steans Institute, Perlman Music Program’s Chamber Workshop, International Holland Music Sessions, Taos School of Music and the Heifetz International Music Institute.​
Geneva is currently performing on a composite violin by G.B. Guadagnini, c. 1766, generously on loan from a Charitable Trust. 
Born in Russia, violinist Maria Ioudenitch immigrated with her musical family to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Kansas City. In 2021,  she received first prizes in the Ysaÿe International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Competition. She also received numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work, the Henle Urtext Prize, and a recording deal with Warner Classics.
Recognized for her innovative programmes, her first album on Warner – Songbird with pianist Kenny Broberg, released on 24 March 2023 – spans from Franz Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to Nikolai Medtner, Richard Strauss and Nadia Boulanger. In upcoming concerts, she performs the Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Barber concertos as well as Haydn’s G-Major and Mozart’s D-Major concertos, while this season’s recital programmes include works by George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Dolores White and Fazil Say, alongside standard violin repertoire.
In the recent months, Maria Ioudenitch has made her debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (at Berlin’s Philharmonie), MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker and returned to her home-town Kansas City Symphony. Other recent engagements have taken her to the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra and Utah Symphony, while her growing list of conductors includes names like Andrey Boreyko, Alpesh Chauhan, Kevin John Edusei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Ruth Reinhardt and Hugh Wolff. She is also an active chamber musician and has taken part in multiple chamber music tours with Ravinia Steans Music Institute and Marlboro Music Festival. An upcoming Marlboro tour will take place in November 2023.
Maria began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three and continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She fulfilled both her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried.
In the past year, Maria has been mentored by Sonia Simmenauer as part of Simmenauer’s new initiative, zukunfts.music. Maria is currently in the Professional Studies programme at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff.
Born in 1999, German/Austrian violist Emma Wernig grew up in Los Angeles, California. A prizewinner in many competitions, Emma received the ‘Barbirolli Prize’ at the 2019 Tertis International Viola Competition. As a result of winning the 2017 Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition, she released her debut album of rare Austrian Viola works on the Champs Hill label alongside pianist Albert Cano-Smit in July, 2021 to great critical acclaim. As a recipient of the Wilo Foundation Förderpreis of the Mozart Gesellschaft Dortmund in 2020, she remains a scholarship holder and continues to be featured as a soloist in their 23/24 season.
She has appeared at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Grachtenfestival in the Netherlands, Verbier Festival, Kronberg’s Chamber Music Connects the World, France’s Festival de Musique de Wissembourg, Krzyzowa Music, the Gezeitenkonzerte in Ostfriesland, and the Vevey Spring Classic Festival in Switzerland, among others.
Emma’s greatest passion lies in chamber music, having collaborated with artists such as Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Lynn Harrell, Daniel Müller Schott, Steven Isserlis, Christian Tetzlaff, Nils Mönkemeyer, Viviane Hagner, among others.
Emma Wernig earned her Bachelors degree from the Colburn Conservatory where she studied with Paul Coletti and her Masters with Ettore Causa at the Yale School of Music where she received the Lucy Grosvenor Memorial Prize upon graduating. She recently completed an additional Masters Degree with Tabea Zimmermann at the Musikhochschule Hanns Eisler and resides in Berlin, Germany.
Emma plays on a viola made by Jason Viseltear in 2019 .
Cellist Gabriel Martins (b. 1998) has established himself as one of the world’s most compelling young musicians. His artistry has already been recognized through an extensive list of accolades including the Concert Artists Guild/Young Classical Artists Trust Grand Prize, the Sphinx Competition Gold Medal, the David Popper International Cello Competition Gold Medal, the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians Silver Medal, the Schadt String Competition Gold Medal, the Orford Music Award, and the Prague Spring Czech Music Fund Prize. These successes have led to a number of high-profile debuts including Carnegie, Merkin, and Wigmore Halls, 92nd Street Y, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Maison Symphonique in Montréal, and the Arkansas, Houston, Indianapolis, Memphis, New Russian State, Omaha, Pacific, Phoenix and São Paulo Symphony Orchestras. In 2022, The Strad Magazine declared his New York City recital debut to be “flawlessly played…a deeply moving experience”, and Classic FM named him one of their “30 under 30” Rising Stars.
Lauded for his “rich, warm” and “mesmerizing” sound, Martins carries a concerto repertoire spanning every major work. In recital, his performances of the Bach Cello Suites have garnered particular recognition. Martins’ playing has been broadcast on NPR, WQXR, KUSC, WFMT, and more. His festival appearances include Aspen, Bard, Brevard, Chamberfest Cleveland, Four Seasons, La Jolla, Ravinia, and Yellow Barn.
Born of American and Brazilian heritage, Martins grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. He began playing the cello when he was five, studying with Susan Moses at the Indiana University String Academy. He went on to receive his B.M. as a Presidential Scholar at the USC Thornton School of Music with Ralph Kirshbaum. In his freshman year at USC, he won the school’s concerto competition as well as its Bach competition. He received his M.M. at the New England Conservatory of Music with Laurence Lesser. Martins now resides in South Carolina with his partner, violinist Geneva Lewis. In addition to performing, he also composes, arranges, and teaches. He plays a composite Francesco Ruggieri cello made in Cremona, c. 1690 and a François Nicolas Voirin bow made in Paris, c. 1880.