Violist Jessica Thompson is a passionate chamber musician who performs regularly throughout the United States and abroad as a member of the Daedalus Quartet. The quartet, Grand Prize winner of the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition and resident quartet at Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two from 2005-07, is currently in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. As a member of Daedalus, Ms Thompson has premiered works by such composers as Fred Lerdahl, Joan Tower, Richard Wernick, and Vivian Fung. Ms. Thompson has also toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed at numerous festivals, including the Portland Chamber Music Festival, the Halcyon Music Festival (Portsmouth, NH), the Newport Music Festival, and the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. She performs often as a member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra.
Ms. Thompson has appeared as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra and in recital in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC. She currently teaches at Princeton and Columbia Universities. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Karen Tuttle.
Noted for “an extraordinary range of colour” (Montreal Gazette),and “poetic brilliance” (Toronto Star), Canadian pianist Francine Kay has performed extensively in North America, Europe and Asia, acclaimed for her beauty of sound and for the intensity and depth of her interpretations.
Since making her debut at the Carnegie Recital Hall as winner of the Pro Piano Competition, Francine Kay has been a regular guest at festivals internationally, such as Music Mountain, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the 60th Chopin Festival in Marienbad, Czech Republic and the Zodiac Academy and Festival in France. She has been soloist with orchestras such as the Toronto Symphony, the Princeton Symphony, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra London, Symphony Nova Scotia, and the West Side Chamber Orchestra (NYC) under conductors Georg Tintner, Mark Laycock, Nurhan Arman, Agnes Grossman, Kevin Mallon, Michael Pratt, Jonathan Yates, and Simon Streatfeild.
Ms. Kay’s recordings have received international acclaim; her Debussy recording was nominated for a JUNO award and chosen as Disc of the Month by the German publication, Fono Forum. Francine’s performances have been broadcast on NPR, the BBC, WFMT, Radio France, and the CBC.
Ms. Kay is on the piano faculty at Princeton University.
Her newest recording, Things Lived and Dreamt will be released on the Analekta label in the fall of 2022.
This a Duo Recital, featuring two performers, Jessica Thompson, viola and Francine Kay, piano
Program to include works by William Grant Still, Shulamit Ran, Josef Suk, Dvorak and a newly composed work by American composer Nansi Carroll.
https://www.daedalusquartet.com