Hailed as "sumptuous and eloquent" by the
Boston Globe, pianist Sarah Bob is an active soloist and chamber
musician noted for her charismatic performances, colorful playing and diverse programming.
A strong advocate for new music and considered a "trailblazer when it
comes to championing the works of modern composers and combining art
media in the process..." (Northeast
Performer), she is also the founding director of
the New Gallery Concert Series, a series devoted to commissioning and
uniting new music and contemporary visual art with their
creators. She is an original member of many ensembles including
her piano/percussion group, Primary Duo, the 20th and 21st century focused Firebird Ensemble, and Radius
Ensemble, a fresh and creative chamber music collective that presents
both the traditional and cutting edge. Recognized
as a risk taker and cited for an "ideal combination of all-stops-out
abandon and sure-footed technical control" by 21st Century Music,
she
is a grant recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music and top
prizewinner of the International Gaudeamus Competition
2001. She is also the recipient of the St. Botolph Club
Foundation's 2005 Grant-in-Aid Award, an honor that recognizes the
quality of her work and artistic merit and received the first annual John Kleshinski Award in honor of
her daring, exciting and high quality New Gallery Concert Series
presentations. Sarah resides in Boston and
can be heard
playing the music of Lee Hyla on the
Tzadik label, Curtis K. Hughes on Cauchemar Records solo piano by Lior Navok on NLM Records, solo and chamber music by Elena Ruehr on Albany Records, and
collaborations
with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project on New World and Oxingale
Records. This May, Sarah will receive the Outstanding Alumni Awardfrom
the New England Conservatory of Music and continue with current
recording projects including the upcoming CD releases on the
BMOP/sound label of chamber music by Eric Moe and solo music by Lisa
Bielawa as well as music of Lee Hyla, Curtis K.
Hughes,
and Tamar Diesendruck with the Firebird Ensemble. For more
information, please go to www.sarahbob.net.
Sarah Bob originally hails from Teaneck, N.J., which, amazingly enough, is also the home of Sesame Street's "Bob" and the place where Sarah's childhood infatuation with sharing the BOB name with Bob McGrath began. After starting piano lessons in the 3rd grade, Sarah not only became known as a brilliant pianist, but also as a girl who runs exactly like the character "Laura Ingalls" from the beloved family show, Little House on the Prairie. Sarah, now living in Jamaica Plain, M.A., is in charge of putting new music concerts together with new visual art in Boston and calls the events the New Gallery Concert Series. She also plays with other musicians in groups called the Firebird Ensemble, Radius Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and, with her percussionist husband, Primary Duo. Sarah loves to play concerts, from Carnegie Hall in New York City to De Doelen in Holland, and also teaches piano privately, at the Community Music Center of Boston and the College of the Holy Cross. Eventually, Sarah did meet Bob McGrath (she has the picture to prove it!) and while dark chocolate, dogs and flowers are only three of Sarah's favorite things, you can learn more about her on her website: wwww.sarahbob.net.
Recognized as a risk taker and cited for an "ideal combination of all-stops-out abandon and sure-footed technical control" by 21st Century Music, Sarah is a grant recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music and top prizewinner of the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition 2001. She is also the recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation's 2005 Grant-in-Aid Award which recognizes the quality of her work and artistic merit and received the first annual John Kleshinski Award in honor of her daring, exciting and high quality New Gallery Concert Series presentations. On behalf of the New Gallery Concert Series, she has also consistently earned the Aaron Copland Fund for three years in a row along with the New England Foundation for the Arts/Meet the Composer and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund. Sarah can be heard playing the music of Lee Hyla on the Tzadik label, Curtis K. Hughes on Cauchemar Records, solo piano by Lior Navok on NLM Records, solo and chamber music by Elena Ruehr on Albany Records, Armand Qualliotine on Neptune Music Co., Claude Vivier with violinst Biliana Voutchkova on her CD entitled faces, Cordis on its debut album Here On Out by Richard Grimes, and collaborations with BMOP on New World and Oxingale Records. Sarah is also cited in Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music by Angela Myles Beeching, author and director of the New England Conservatory Services Center. Current recording projects include chamber music by Eric Moe and solo music by Lisa Bielawa both under the BMOP/sound label, and the music of Lee Hyla, Curtis K. Hughes, and Tamar Diesendruck with the Firebird Ensemble. Sarah continues collaborating on behalf of the New Gallery Concert Series with the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble and the Community Music Center of Boston in presenting the week long Young Composers Festival every January. On behalf of the Nashua Symphony Orchestra “Once Upon A Time” Solo and Chamber Music Series, Sarah has also organized and performed new music concerts for children and with the Sarasa Ensemble's outreach program performs for and works with incarcerated teens
A strong advocate for new music, Sarah has premiered works by both established and emerging composers such as Gunther Schuller and Lee Hyla to Curtis K. Hughes and Jonathan Bailey Holland. By special request, she has also performed for artists Kaija Saariaho (sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra/New England Conservatory), Franco Donatoni (through the New England Conservatory/Harvard Callithumpian Consort Series), Lee Hyla, John Harbison, Donald Martino, John Heiss, Michael Gandolfi, Jon Deak, Vanessa Lann, Louis Goldstein, Lukas Foss and Steffen Schleirmacher. Her special attention to music of today includes performances with the Dinosaur Annex, Callithumpian Consort, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Boston’s Microtonal Society: NotaRiotous, Maestro Robert Kapilow, Alea III, Lumen Contemporary Music Ensemble, Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, the Composers Out Front series sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra and, with the highest acclaim given by Pozzi Escot, composer of Piano Concerto, the Soria Chamber Players. Sarah has multiple times been the featured soloist with Boston Musica Viva on the Fleet Boston Celebrity Series and has also shared the concert stage with performers that include sopranos Lucy Shelton and Lisa Saffer, the Borromeo String Quartet, saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, and flutists Fenwick Smith and Bonita Boyd. Sarah also performs on the First Monday Concert Series, Composers' Series, Enchanted Circle, Contemporary Ensemble, Brandeis New Music, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano and Percussion, and is a consistent performer on BMOP's Club Cafe solo/chamber music series. Radio appearances include both live and numerous prerecorded performances on Boston's WGBH, Columbus, Ohio's WBCE ,VPRO-Dutch radio, Italy's Radio Gamma Gioiosa, Germany's Bayerischer Rundfunk and more including stations in Israel, New Zealand, Canada and Hungary.
Sarah graduated with honors from the University of Michigan School of Music and soon after received her masters from the New England Conservatory (NEC.) Her principal teachers include Steven Masi, Dr. Louis Nagel and Stephen Drury. She worked extensively with Patricia Zander as a member of the 1998-1999 NEC Honors Piano Trio, as well as with Malcolm Lowe, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Sarah, originally from Teaneck, New Jersey, has served as adjunct faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Music and is now on faculty at the Community Music Center of Boston, adjunct faculty at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and teaches privately throughout the Boston area. This May, Sarah will receive the Outstanding Alumni Award from the New England Conservatory of Music. For more information, please go to www.sarahbob.net.
"...[flutist Sarah]
Brady, clarinetist Rane Moore, and pianist Sarah Bob making brisk and
elegant work of [Ibert's] fluid lines and jazz-flecked harmonic world...
Instrumental lines are
frequently shrouded in a kind of sonic haze, punctured by forceful
outbursts from the keyboard; tonality is treated like a found object,
viewed with a sense of distance.The players Bob, [bassoonist
Carlos] Arias, and violist Stephanie Fong - rendered [Sophia
Gubaidulina's Quasi Hoquetus] with sensitivity and care."
Jeremy Eichler, Boston
Globe, March 2009
"The performances by Sarah Bob are excellent, full of character and color..."
Robert Cummings, www.classical.net CD review/September 2008
The Old Photo Box for solo piano by Lior Navok
"'New Gal' Sarah Bob Receives 1st John Kleshinski Memorial Prize"
by
Sarah Bob in Vibrations Vol. 32, No. 1 Winter 2008
"...joined by...pianist Sarah Bob for Francis Poulenc's 'Sextet,' ... the ensemble paid the respect of a robustly dramatic interpretation." Matthew Guerrieri, Boston Globe, November 2007
"Founded in 2000 by the pianist Sarah Bob, [the New Gallery Concert Series is] a refreshing series of modest scale but of vivid imagination...The...audience was thrilled, and, one imagines, so were the organizers of this worthy series." Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe, April 2007
"Sarah Bob is the Brad Pitt of new music."
Daniel Felsenfeld, Composer, Author and Music Critic, June 2005
"I first became acquainted with Sarah Bob's remarkable combination of intelligence, musicianship and fearlessness at one of her live performances of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano. Her performance was stunning, not only technically flawless, but possessed of a character that was uniquely her own and one that I found refreshing and exciting. After this performance, I became very interested in Sarah's New Gallery Concert Series. This series pairs visual artists with composers and presents both in live concerts. It's a great idea: the audience spends 90 minutes with a collection of visual works that they might otherwise only glance at while listening to first rate performances of cutting edge music. The concerts are great, and Sarah uses her musical expertise to program eclectic, thought provoking concerts with committed first class perfromers.
This is a young woman and a series to watch..."
Elena Ruehr, Composer in Residence, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, October 2004
"Pianist Sarah Bob is a traiblazer when it comes to championing the works of modern composers and combining art media in the process...
Fratres [by Arvo Pärt] is marked by nuances; it requiers thorough musical understanding and delicacy on the part of both instrumentalists. Bob and [Piotr] Buczek are more than capable of the talent and depth required to perform the piece convincingly...
...the performance [of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time]...was truly stunning...There are two keys to a successful performance of Messiaen's work: a comprehension of the music on an emotional level and the ability of the members of the quartet to communicate with eachother in executing the piece. Bob, Buczek, [Michael] Norsworthy and [Benjamin] Schwartz do this with apparent ease. Sounds seem to come from nowhere and fade to nothing, which can be attributed to the musicians' shared understanding of Messiaen and his compositional tendencies...This afternoon's rendering of the work was triumphant and peaceful in its own right, and its performers must be commended for that." Katie DeBonville, Northeast Performer, April 2003
"...Ms. Bob pounding the keys
vigorously, often with her forearm...[had] great moments of interaction
between the keyboard and the taped and electronically altered
percussion sounds."
Allan Kozinn, New York Times, January 31, 2003
"...fiery pianist Sarah Bob..." Stephen Beaudoin, South End News, October 17, 2002
"Pianist (and [New
Gallery] concert series director) Sarah Bob's top-flight performance
was an ideal combination of all-stops-out abandon and sure-footed
technical control..." David Cleary, 21ST CENTURY MUSIC, February
2002
"Leaning into the music and
slamming her forearm on the piano, she created the sounds of a city
street. Bob showed no reserve in expressing the feelings of
aggression and alertness the piece demanded."
Lynne Feibelmann,
South End News, January 31, 2002
"Pianist Sarah Bob and
percussionist Aaron Trant gave [Avoidance Tactics #1 for Piano and
Percussion by Curtis K. Hughes] a fire-breathing presentation."
David Cleary, 21ST CENTURY MUSIC, October 2001
"Starting a New Groove," Interview in the South End News, May 2001 ( Click to enlarge )
"Competition with Attitude!" by Sarah Bob in Vibrations Vol. 25, No. 2 Spring 2001 ( Full article )
"Franz Schubert's great B-flat
Major Piano Trio [included] Sarah Bob's sumptuous and eloquent piano."
Ellen Pfeifer, Boston Globe, January
31, 2001 ( Full
article )
"The Third-Prize winner, Sarah
Bob, was very convincing in Stockhausen's Klavierstuck V, both in her
intelligent analysis as well as in the vivid form and expression she
gave the piece in performance."
Ernst Vermeulen, NRC Handelsblad
(Holland), March 5, 2001
"Margo McGowan (clarinet),
Biliana Voutchkova (violin) and Sarah Bob (piano) brought [Bartok's Contrasts
for Violin, Clarinet and Piano] off with brilliance."
Liane Curtis, Bay Windows, November
23, 2000 ( Full
article )
"...first class Sarah Bob, [is]
poised in the Schuller [and plays at a very] high level..."
Richard Dyer, Boston Globe, March
10, 2000
"Pianist Sarah Bob [is full of]
colorful playing and chamber musicianship."
La Cote (Switzerland), July
1993
"Violinist Biliana Voutchkova
and pianist Sarah Bob gave [Insult to
Injury, written for them by Curtis K. Hughes] a terrific,
hard-hitting presentation."
New Music Connoisseur, Vol.
12, No. 3 - Fall 2004 ( Full
article )
*Connotes
Composer Supervision
UPDATED SELECTED LIST COMING SOON...
