CCM Season Opener: Mozart, Ravel, & Brahms

Concord Chamber Music opens its season with three masterpieces: Mozart’s dramatic G Minor Piano Quartet, Ravel’s dazzling Duo for Violin and Cello, and Brahms’s powerful C Minor Piano Quartet. Artistic directors Daniel Chong and Jessica Bodner are joined by cellist Karen Ouzounian, a singular voice in classical music, and pianist Katherine Chi, renowned for her elegant and deeply committed artistry.

Join us for a pre-concert stage talk at 2:15 pm.

Program:

MOZART: Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478

RAVEL: Sonata for Violin and Cello

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BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60 

GRAMMY Award-winning violinist Daniel Chong is one of the most exciting and versatile musicians of his generation and is known for his gripping interpretations and sincerity of expression. Since 2002, as the founding first violinist of the Parker Quartet, he has garnered wide recognition for his performances in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Musikverein, and Wigmore Hall. Additionally, recent solo engagements include appearances at National Sawdust in New York City, Seoul Arts Center, and Jordan Hall in Boston. Daniel has received several awards and prizes such as the Cleveland Quartet Award and top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition. In the recording realm, he can be heard on the ECM Records, Zig-Zag Territoires, Naxos, and Nimbus Records labels.

Daniel has performed at major music festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Denver Chamber Music Festival, Chamberfest Cleveland, Spoleto USA, Mostly Mozart, Bridgehampton, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the Perigord Noir Music Festival, and is a past member of Ensemble DITTO. In addition to the core repertoire, Daniel is a strong advocate for new music. Some of the composers he has worked closely with are György Kurtág, Augusta Read Thomas, Helmut Lachenmann, and Chaya Czernowin.

Daniel currently serves as Professor of the Practice at Harvard University. In 2025, alongside Jessica Bodner, Daniel was appointed as Co-Artistic Director of the Concord Chamber Music Society.

Jessica Bodner, described by the New York Times as a "soulful soloist", is known for her inexhaustible search for vivid music-making and exploration of sound. Jessica is the violist of the GRAMMY Award-winning Parker Quartet and has appeared at venues around the world both with the Quartet and as an individual such as at Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Library of Congress, Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Musikverein, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Seoul Arts Center, and has appeared at festivals including Edinburgh International Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Chamberfest Cleveland, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn, Perigord Noir, Monte Carlo Spring Arts Festival, San Miguel de Allende, Istanbul’s Cemal Recit Rey, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hitzacker, and Heidelberg String Quartet Festival. As a member of the Parker Quartet, she has recorded for ECM Records, Zig-Zag Territoires, Nimbus, and Naxos.

Jessica has held visiting teaching positions at New England Conservatory and Longy School of Music, been on faculty at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Yellow Barn Festival, and is currently a faculty member of Harvard University's Department of Music as Professor of the Practice in conjunction with the Parker Quartet's appointment as Blodgett Quartet-in-Residence. Outside of music, Jessica enjoys running, practicing yoga, and hiking with her husband, violinist Daniel Chong, and their son, Cole.

Sought after for her “radiant” (The New York Times) performances full of “tremendous heart, bringing joy and a captivating sound to the stage” (The Strad), Karen Ouzounian is a GRAMMY-nominated cellist and composer who creates music from a deeply personal place. An omnivorous musical spirit who “powerfully shatters pigeonholes with her artistic partners” (Ravinia Magazine), she has premiered numerous works and collaborated with some of the most singular musicians of our time, including Yo-Yo Ma, Rhiannon Giddens, and Augustin Hadelich. 

Ouzounian has appeared as a soloist in venues including the Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie, Kölner Philharmonie, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and Carnegie Hall, as well as at leading festivals such as Marlboro, Ojai, Caramoor, and Ravinia, championing a remarkable breadth of music with fierce commitment and emotional power. As a composer, recent commissions include works for the Aeolus Quartet, Silkroad Ensemble, Salt Bay Chamberfest, and the Cello Teaching Repertoire Consortium.

In the 2026-27 season, Ouzounian appears in recital in New York, Hamburg, Chicago, Toronto, and Los Angeles, and makes her Boston Symphony Orchestra solo debut at the 2026 Tanglewood Festival as soloist in Kayhan Kalhor’s double concerto Venus in the Mirror. Ouzounian’s current artistic focus includes a trio of projects created with her husband, composer and animator Lembit Beecher. Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian) is an immersive and intimate 65-minute show in which the voices of Karen’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music of her family’s ancestral home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, the music of Charles Aznavour and Marin Marais, and recent works by Beecher, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Ouzounian. Dear Mountains, a 42-minute work commissioned by Cantori NewYork and co-composed with Beecher for chorus, solo cello, oud, and percussion, juxtaposes stories told and retold in Karen’s family with scenes of music-making across the Armenian diaspora over the last 100 years, as seen through archival recordings and writings. Third in the series is Tell Me Again, a concerto for cello and orchestra which received its world premiere with conductor Eric Jacobsen and the Orlando Philharmonic, and its West Coast premiere with conductor Cristian Măcelaru at the 2024 Cabrillo Festival.

Dedicated to the art of chamber music, Ouzounian performs as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, and was the founding cellist of the Aizuri Quartet for 11 years, earning a GRAMMY® nomination and major chamber music prizes on three continents, and serving as the String Quartet-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a member of The Knights, she gave the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Shorthand for solo cello and strings, which she recorded for Avie Records and toured as soloist with the ensemble throughout Germany, Denmark, and the U.S. to critical acclaim.

Ouzounian holds Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from The Juilliard School and a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. Born to Lebanese-Armenian parents in Toronto, she resides in New York City with her husband, Lembit Beecher. Learn more at www.karenouzounian.com.

Katherine Chi, firmly established as one of Canada’s most sought-after pianists, has performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim. As noted by the New York Times, “Ms. Chi display[s] a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique.” While hailed for her interpretations of Mozart, she is also acclaimed for performances of major romantic and twentieth century concertos. The Globe and Maildescribed Chi’s performance as “… the most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years.” With her energy, character, and spunk, Chi has been described as a “shining star” (Lake Superior News) known to “bring the house down” (The Chronicle Journal), performing concerto repertoire ranging from Bach to Bartók to Liszt to Schoenberg.

Recent engagement highlights include performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Symphony Nova Scotia, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C Minor with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; in recitals at the Freer Gallery of Art, with Canada’s Chamber Music Kelowna, Honens International Piano Foundation, Maple Ridge Music Society; and a duo recital with Ingrid Fliter in a return to the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. An upcoming recording featuring works of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff will be released on the Honens label.

Sought after as a concerto soloist of musical and technical distinction, Katherine Chi is noted for the breadth of her repertoire. When she recreated Stockhausen’s landmark work, Mantra, for two pianos and electronics, the Boston Globe wrote, “When the superb pianists Katherine Chi and Aleksandar Madzar took on the challenge at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, it was a welcome opportunity: courtside seats at the creation. Chi and Madzar were ensconced among percussion, microphones, and MIDI controllers … the form unfolding like a venerable suite even as it pushes the modernist envelope.”

Katherine Chi has recently appeared with the Vancouver Symphony, the Library of Congress, and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. She has previously performed with the Alabama, Calgary, Colorado, Columbus, Edmonton, Grand Rapids, Kitchener-Waterloo, Nova Scotia, Philadelphia, Quebec, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria symphony orchestras; CBC Radio Orchestra; Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra; I Musici de Montreal; Manitoba Chamber Orchestra; the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen; and Toronto Sinfonia. Her festival appearances include Aldeburgh, Banff, Canada’s Festival of the Sound, Launadière, Domaine Forget, Marlboro, Osnabrück Kammermusik, Germany’s Ruhr, Santander Summer Music, and Festival Vancouver.

Katherine Chi made debut recital at the age of nine and a year later was accepted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She continued studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received her master’s degree, a graduate degree, an artist diploma and doctorate. In her studies abroad, she spent two years at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. After becoming a prizewinner at the 1998 Busoni International Piano Competition, Ms. Chi was named a Laureate of the Honens International Piano Competition in 2000, and was the first woman and first Canadian to win this award.

Concord Chamber Music (CCM) seeks to enhance the cultural life of the greater Boston area by presenting affordable concerts of the highest caliber, and through community and educational outreach.

Performances have featured renowned ensembles and artists such as the Juilliard, Borromeo, Muir, Pacifica, Takács, Parker, and Jerusalem Quartets; the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Hermitage Piano Trios; Triple Helix; violinists Gil Shaham and Glenn Dicterow; and pianists Yefim Bronfman, Marc-André Hamelin, Menahem Pressler, Jonathan Biss, and Peter Serkin. Concerts also regularly feature members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and acclaimed chamber musicians.

With the 2026-2027 season, CCM begins its 27th year of extraordinary musical experiences.