New York-based Harlem Quartet, long distinguished for its residency activities at a range of performing organizations and educational institutions, begins a new affiliation this fall as Quartet in Residence at Montclair State University in northeastern New Jersey.

“Bach’s Long Shadow,” a new solo album featuring violinist Francisco Fullana in works from J.S. Bach to Eugène Ysaÿe, was released by Orchid Classics on May 28. Fullana’s specially curated program includes Bach’s E Major Partita, Isaac Albeniz’s Asturias, the Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega, Ysaÿe’s Sonata for Two Violins (with special guest Stella Chen), and Fritz Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo.

Sciolino Artist Management has announced that the Rolston String Quartet will collaborate with renowned clarinetist David Shifrin in the 2022-23 concert season, performing in multiple U.S. venues in October 2022.

Noctuelles, a new solo album from pianist-composer Michael Brown featuring two gems of the 20th century piano repertoire, was released January 22 by the British label First Hand Records.

Violinist Melissa White makes her solo debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this winter in a pair of concerts led by Music Director Louis Langrée. On a program titled “Traveling with Mozart,” she will perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216, dubbed “Strasburg” because of the theme in its opening Allegro movement. The concerts, which also include Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”) and Symphony No. 38 (“Prague”), will take place in Cincinnati’s Music Hall at 7:30 pm on Saturday, March 13 and 2 pm on Sunday, March 14.

Michigan’s Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra will present the long-awaited world premiere of Michael Brown’s Concerto for Piano and Strings on April 30, 2021, with Music Director Julian Kuerti conducting and Brown at the keyboard. Brown’s concerto—inspired by Beethoven and composed in 2020, a year rife with celebrations surrounding the 250th anniversary of that composer’s birth—was co-commissioned by the Kalamazoo-based Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. The initial performances were originally scheduled to take place during the Beethoven year with the Gilmore Festival Orchestra under Kuerti and in Wroclaw, Poland, under NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra Music Director Joseph Swensen. Both had to be cancelled as concert life came to a temporary halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Brown composed the concerto while in residence at Copland House in Peekskill, NY. The three-movement work, he says, “seeks to integrate my own musical language with that of Beethoven, by weaving musical fragments of his various works into my own harmonic landscape. Specific Beethoven references include long pedal markings blurring harmonies and sonorities, as in the Largo of the Third Piano Concerto; extended use of trills; and the interweaving of small motivic fragments throughout the work. I have often dreamed of being a fly on the wall observing Beethoven playing his own creations, and I hope this may pay homage to him from the perspective of my being both a composer and a pianist.”

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra’s April 30 performance will take place at 7 pm EST and is being streamed on the orchestra’s website, where it will be available for viewing through May 30.

In advance of the spring release of “Bach’s Long Shadow,” his second solo album on the Orchid Classics label, Francisco Fullana will release an Extended Play recording featuring a historically informed performance of J.S. Bach’s famous Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin. An expert in period performance practice, Fullana is playing the work using gut strings and Baroque tuning. The EP is being recorded in January 2021 and will be available the following month. The “Bach’s Long Shadow” album,

For the 2021-22 season and beyond, Harlem Quartet will once again be sharing the stage with famed Cuban pianist/composer Aldo López-Gavilán, rekindling the joyously energetic concert experience that these five musicians brought to such cities as Seattle, Phoenix, Calgary, Washington, Houston, Denver, Tucson, Rockport (MA), and Chautauqua (NY) in the years between 2015 and 2018.