Cellist Gary Hoffman
The Eureka Chamber Music Series presents Gary Hoffman, one of the outstanding cellists of our time, performing two distinctive programs during his first-ever visit to Humboldt County. Combining instrumental mastery, great beauty of sound, and a poetic sensibility, Hoffman will play a Mainstage Concert featuring works by Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin, and Felix Mendelssohn on Saturday, October 26th at 7:30 p.m. at Calvary Lutheran Church in Eureka. On Sunday, October 27th at 3:00 p.m. at The Lutheran Church of Arcata, Hoffman will play selections from his extensive repertoire of music for solo cello, as well as discuss his life as an artist and answer questions from the audience during this Concert and Conversation program.
Mainstage Concert tickets are $40 general and $10 for students. Concert and Conversation tickets are $20 general and $5 for students. Purchasing tickets in advance is recommended for this popular concert series, and there are no added fees or service charges when ordering tickets online. Please visit eurekachambermusic.org and follow the "purchase tickets" link. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door. Season Tickets are also available for a limited time.
Gary Hoffman made his debut at the Wigmore Hall in London at the age of fifteen, quickly followed by his debut in New York. At the age of twenty-two he became the youngest faculty appointee in the history of the Indiana University School of Music. After winning the Premier Grand Prix of the Rostropovich International Competition in Paris in 1986, the first North American to ever do so, he embarked on an international career, appearing with the world’s most noted orchestras, in major recital and chamber music series and at prestigious festivals.
Born into a family of professional musicians in Vancouver, British Columbia, Hoffman studied with Karl Fruh in Chicago prior to studying with János Starker, the great Hungarian-American cellist who held the title of Distinguished Professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. In a 1999 interview with Tim Janof from the Internet Cello Society, Hoffman described Starker's teaching:
"There are some teachers who are thought of as only talking about music, and there are other teachers who are thought of as only discussing technique. Starker doesn't fit either of these descriptions, since he integrates both in his teaching.
It is very important to him, though, that his students understand the principles of good cello playing, so there is a heavy accent on the technical side. He firmly believes that musical ideas can't truly come through until you have freed yourself of technical limitations, so he considers it of the utmost importance that you can actually play the cello. As he likes to say, 'One of the twenty things you need to be able to do in order to be a successful cellist is to play the cello well.'"
A frequent soloist with the world’s most noted orchestras, Hoffman has appeared with the Chicago, London, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Baltimore and National Symphony orchestras as well as the English, Moscow and Los Angeles chamber orchestras, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Netherlands and Rotterdam Philharmonics, the Cleveland Orchestra for the Blossom Festival and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Hoffman has collaborated with such celebrated conductors as André Previn, Charles Dutoit, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Andrew Davis, Herbert Blomstedt, Kent Nagano, Jesús López-Cobos and James Levine. He performs in major recital and chamber music series throughout the world, as well as at such prestigious festivals as those in Ravinia, Marlboro, Aspen, Bath, Evian, Helsinki, Verbier, Mostly Mozart, Schleswig-Holstein and Stresa, the Festival International de Colmar and the Festival de Toulon. He is a frequent guest of string quartets including the Emerson, Tokyo, Borromeo, Brentano and Ysaÿe.
Incorporated in 2019 as a non-profit after decades of private funding, the Eureka Chamber Music Series serves to enrich the cultural landscape of the north coast by bringing world-class musicians to Humboldt County and by ensuring that the mission of ECMS is community supported and sustainable. Public concerts presented in Eureka and Arcata, as well as county-wide educational outreach programs, are funded through the generosity of local businesses, individuals, and foundations, as well as by subscription and individual ticket sales.
Additional information is available at eurekachambermusic.org.
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