A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music. Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was a featured artist on Other Minds 17. In 2014, Frances-Mairie Uitti and the Boston Modern Orchestra premiered his concerto for two-bow cello and orchestra, and Guerilla Opera premiered a run of his chamber opera, Gallo, to critical acclaim. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

American soprano specializing in early and contemporary music, lifelong advocate of the arts.  www.michele-kennedy.com.

Current obsessions: Bach, Bartok, Janacek

Lauded for “nonstop virtuoso skills” (Times Herald-Record, New York) and "evocative, educational, and refreshing" concerts (Newport Daily News, Rhode Island), the Asylum Quartet’s repertoire spans traditional, contemporary and globally-minded works.

The four saxophonists met in 2011 as graduate students at the The Hartt School in West Hartford, Connecticut, and adopted their name from Asylum Hill, the storied Hartford neighborhood. In the mid-nineteenth century, this area was an important commercial, political, and cultural capital where literary figures such as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe made their home. Today, the quartet pays tribute to the cultural vitality of Asylum Hill through efforts to engage and captivate diverse audiences and contribute to the vibrancy of its home city. The Asylum Quartet is Ensemble-in-Residence at Hartford’s Christ Church Cathedral, bringing a second season of free community concerts in downtown Hartford through 2016. In partnership with Hartford Performs, the quartet provides educational music programming to students in Hartford and beyond.

Recent highlights include a showcase performance at the 2015 Chamber Music America Conference in New York City, a six-day residency with the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, as well as a full season of concerts, workshops, and masterclasses in southeastern Connecticut public schools as 2014-2015 Musical Masterworks Resident Ensemble. The quartet has performed at the Boston Athaeneum, the Newport Music Festival, the Traverse City Film Festival, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and has been a featured guest on WNPR's Where We Live, WWUH's The 20th Century Limited, WNMC's Morning Jazz, and WCRI's Festival Series. Asylum received the Grand Prize in the 2014 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston, Massachusetts, becoming the first saxophone quartet to receive this honor.

The quartet has collaborated closely with a number of diverse composers including Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin, Erberk Eryilmaz, Polina Nazaykinskaya, Alan Thomas, Rob Curto and Ryan Jesperson. Additionally, the quartet launched its first Call for Scores Competition in 2014 as part of its efforts to curate new works from fresh, compelling voices.

New England nonprofits interested in booking the Asylum Quartet may be eligible for support through the New England States Touring (NEST) program of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA). More information on NEST grants is available here.

The Asylum Quartet endorses Elite Woodwind Services. Joseph Abad and Max Schwimmer perform on Forestone Reeds.

This an easy way to get quick access to recent (& not-so-recent) works of mine. Contact me with any queries. REQUEST: Should you wish to play my work, I ask you include it on a program that reflect the values of belonging, and make an honest effort to be fully inclusive. Thank you.

(pronounced Road-HEE or Rhoad-DAH)

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