Phoebe Carrai & Beiliang Zhu
Biography Phoebe Carrai & Beiliang Zhu
Phoebe Carrai
a native Bostonian, started playing the cello at the age of 10. She fell in love with the Baroque cello and the Early Music Movement whilst a student of Lawrence Lesser at The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where she earned both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. In 1979, Ms. Carrai won a Beebe Foundation Grant to undertake post Graduate studies in Historical Performance Practice with Nicolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
In 1983, Ms. Carrai joined the chamber music ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln and worked exclusively with them for the next ten years, touring and teaching in The United States, Scandinavia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. At that time she taught at the Hilversum Conservatory in Holland.
Now living in the United States again, Phoebe Carrai appears both in chamber music and as an international soloist and performs with The Arcadian Academy and The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (Nicholas McGegan); Ensemble Arion (Claire Guillment), Les Musiciens de Louvre (Marc Minkowski) and The Handel and Haydn Society (Grant Llewellyn). She is a member of the faculties of the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany and The Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Ms. Carrai is also a founding member and co-director of the International Baroque Institute at Longy.
Phoebe Carrai performs on an anonymous Italian cello from c. 1690 and has recorded for Aetma, Avie, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Decca and BMG.
Beiliang Zhu
won the 1st prize and the Audience Award at the XVIII International Bach Competition in Leipzig 2012 (Violoncello/Baroque Violoncello) as the first string player to have received this honor on a baroque instrument. She received her Master of Music from the Juilliard School in Historical Performance with Phoebe Carrai (Baroque cello) and Sarah Cunningham (Viola da Gamba), Bachelor of Music Degree and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Beiliang is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in Violoncello, under the guidance of Steven Doane, and a Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music.
Hailed by the New York Times as “particularly exciting”, and by the New Yorker as bringing “telling nuances” and being “elegant and sensual, stylishly wild”, Beiliang has given solo recitals at the Bach Festival Leipzig, Boston Early Music Festival, the Seoul Bach Festival, the Helicon Foundation, among others; has performed with internationally acclaimed artists and ensembles, such as William Christie, Masaaki Suzuki, Monica Huggett, Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, Alexander Weimann, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Early Music Vancouver Orchestra, the Juilliard Baroque, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Trinity Wall Street Orchestra, Musica Angelica, among many others. As Beiliang seeks artistry in a wide range of repertoire and different roles as a modern cellist, baroque cellist, and violist da gamba, she has won a section cellist position of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra during undergraduate, has held the principal cellist position of Mercury Houston, and has won awards including the Arthur Foote Prize given by the Harvard Musical Association, 2nd prize in the Holland America Music Society International Competition, the Eastman Cello Concerto Competition, and the 2010 Henry I. Goldberg Young Artist Prize at the American Bach Soloists Academy. Fascinated by studies of cultures, Beiliang believes firmly in the communicative qualities of musical performances therefore invites the listeners to converse with her through various means. More information can be found on www.beiliangzhu.com if so desired.
