Contributing to the ecosystem on a broader spectrum: CMNW’s Protégé Project
Now in its fifteenth year, the program nurtures performers and composers already in the midst of their professional careers.
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch August 20125
Isabelle Ai Durrenberger at CMNW 2025. Photo by Tom Emerson.
Handpicked by Chamber Music Northwest’s co-artistic directors Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, summer-festival protégés have positions that are coveted and celebrated in the music world. CMNW’s 15-year protégé program has helped to launch a number of up-and-coming musicians into real-world fame, present-day friendships – and maybe, fortune.
CMNW’s Chien was a CMNW protégé in 2012 under David Shifrin’s artistic leadership, and she exceeded the hopes and expectations of a protégé. When she was chosen, she was already an accomplished musician with professional experience and the promise of attaining classical-music leadership, though technically she already had reached that milestone: She was directing the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo.
Chien was more than a model protégé pick. She was a pianist-on-the-rise who had a prestigious position in the chamber music world. She went on to design a musical trajectory where she could make a difference. The protégé position, if only partially responsible, lifted and polished her profile.
Partially for these reasons, she and Kim choose protégés who “are a bit more established than before,” she said this summer. “Some have already won international competitions, and all are ‘concertizing.’ When Zlatomir (Fung) came in 2022 he had already won the Tchaikovsky (cello competition), the Viano Quartet had already won Banff (string quartet competition).”
Chien continues, “Besides being exceptional musicians, we are also looking for young artists who are interested in learning how to contribute to the ecosystem on a broader spectrum.“
Alistair Coleman – a composer protégé in 2023 whose Ghost Art Canticles for String Quartet and Bass debuted this season at CMNW – and this season’s protégé Isabelle Ai Durrenberger “certainly possess those qualities,” Chien added. “They are always eager to learn, contribute and jump in at any given moment. They make themselves loveable and indispensable.”
Former composer protégé rising up, up
In 2023, Kian Ravaei, at the CMNW festival again this summer to premiere another work, was chosen as a protégé composer. “It was the first time I ever had the privilege of being a composer-in-residence,” he said by email this summer. Chien and Kim “caught wind of my music through word of mouth, which makes me extremely lucky.”
He was 24 and had just finished undergraduate school when the summer’s protégé position changed his life and his composing. The position immersed him in the world of chamber music, its makers and its performers.
“Witnessing musicians of this calibre radically changed my approach to composition. When composers of Paganini’s time heard him play violin,” Ravaei said this summer, “it expanded their definition of what violin-writing is possible. Likewise, my expressive palette broadened after hearing other chamber artists, including my fellow protégés.”
This summer, he heard the world premiere of his border-pushing iPod Variations for Flute, Violin and Electronics performed by flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and violinist Alexi Kenney (read about that performance here). In November, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, pianist Chien and clarinetist Anthony McGill will perform a new arrangement of his Iranian-influenced Gulistan for a CMNW concert, a piece he premiered in 2023 during his protégé position at the festival.
The list of post-protégé accomplishments runs long for Ravaei, now 26. Protégés are usually in their 20s or 30s, at the tip of their fast blossoming careers and showing desire and drive to lead the chamber world in the future.
Today Ravaei is a Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School. He was asked to be composer-in-residence at the Sunkiss’d Mozart Summerfest in Monterey, and will serve as composer-in-residence at the inaugural Tenby International Music Festival and at the Wyoming International Chamber Music Festival. Later this summer, musicians in the decade-old Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, which extends for three August weekends in Oregon wine country, will showcase movements of two of his works Aug. 9 and 10 at Sokol Blosser Winery.
Privileged, not coddled
If you think protégés are shielded from the slings and arrows of the professional world during their CMNW stints, think again, despite the obvious meaning of the word “protégé.”
This summer, each of the protégés had to step in and step up during his or her festival tenure. The festival is five weeks long, from June 28 through July 27, not including the Young Artists Institute residency earlier in June. Protégés usually stick around for about three weeks, sometimes more.
Opus13, a Norwegian-Swedish protégé quartet in 2024 who has won two major awards this year, including first place in both the 11th Bordeaux International Quartet Competition and the 16th Wigmore Hall competition, lost its violist Albin Uusijarvi to a Frisbee accident, where he broke his collarbone during the early part of the festival. Another protégé, Isabelle Ai Durrenberger, filled in, though Aiden Kane, a former protégé with Viano Quartet, substituted in a couple of concerts. Opus13’s first violinist Sonoko Miriam Welde conveyed this summer that she liked making music with both substitute violists even if the group’s musicians missed “our Albin.” If short of their regular violist, the group’s members were happy to expand the breadth of their “chamber music friends.” (Check out Oregon ArtsWatch Alice Hardesty’s story on this lively talented group, Opus13.)
“Saving the festival”
Durrenberger, 26, received a call from CMNW’s Kim shortly before she left for Portland in which Kim, her former graduate-school violin teacher at New England Conservatory, broke the news. “Guess what?” Kim said, more or less, as she recounted at her recital, sparkling silver heels peeking out from under an elegant full-length concert dress. “You’re going to be playing some viola.”
The violin is her first instrument, and she hadn’t practiced any of the viola pieces.
But play them she did a few days later. Six of them. She stepped in and performed in a number of concerts for the injured Opus13 violist. Among the works were the Mustonen Nonneto II and Mendelssohn’s 33-minute String Octet in E-Flat Major. Op 20 played July 17 and 19 with Opus13, former protégés Viano Quartet, former protégés bassist Nina Bernat and violinist Benjamin Beilman, both back for another year at CMNW. Celebrated German violinist Carolin Widmann added her sophisticated playing to the Nonetto II group.
If she dug in on last-minute practice, Durrenberger was up to the task of playing viola music on the fly. “Sometimes the best things are unplanned,” she said in her characteristic upbeat manner through an email reflecting on her festival experience this season.
She even used paper instead of a footpad to turn pages on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and the first movement of Dvorak’s “E Flat Quartet” when she joined cellist Paul Watkins, violinist Kim and violist Jonathan Vinocour to give a casual performance at an informal chamber party. All four used paper music – a rare thing these days – and Kim noted that he associates the smell of sheet music with music-making. Maybe those days are long gone. Most young musicians, and some older ones, use a foot pedal and an iPad (or other tablet) to move through pieces rather than turning pages by hand.
In the festival’s Finale Concert July 27 at Kaul Auditorium, she played solo violin in Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s 2021 17-minute Miasma and made the piece come alive. After that concert’s intermission, she joined in W.A. Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493 with former protégés cellist Zlatomir Fung and pianist Chien. Protégés, present or past, are everywhere at CMNW.
As CMNW’s Kim said before Durrenberger’s July 22 recital at PSU’s Recital Hall, the show would not have gone on “without Isabelle. She saved the festival.”
Yutong Sun, who accompanied Durrenberger on piano for her recital, received similar praise from Kim after the concert. He traveled from China after getting a visa on the spur of the moment this June, arrived in Portland and performed an hour’s recital on July 8. Chien knew him from running the Institute for Concert Artists at New England Conservatory, where he attended graduate school. Pianist Ryota Yamazaki, who participated in the van Cliburn piano competition earlier June and late May, had bowed out, and Yutong said yes, of course he would replace him though he had just finished a stint in Belgium. Yutong Sun played in a number of concerts, and according to Durrenberger, had fun performing in her recital.
“Playing with Yutong was a true joy,” Durrenberger said after the recital. “He came into rehearsals with such an open mind and generosity of spirit, so it made it feel easy to connect musically. We laughed a lot in rehearsals. Lots of self-deprecating jokes.”
If they joked around a bit, they were mostly diligent.
“Yutong and I spent most of our dress rehearsal dialing in the upper dynamics and making sure there was enough range and variety.”
Of all the pieces he played throughout the festival – and he performed in seven concerts – Durrenberger’s recital was the most challenging, he said. He played unknown pieces along with her violin for more than an hour, but he said it “was worth it.”
Yutong Sun left early July 24 for Hangzhou, China where he is an Artist-in-Residence at Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, after the New at Night “Living Echoes” concert the evening before at The Old Church. He played Carlos Simon’s fast-paced 2015 Lickety Split with British cellist Paul Watkins, a onetime member of the world-renowned and now defunct Emerson Quartet. Watkins, who almost always looks as if he’s having a grand time playing his cello, complimented the modest 29-year-old Yutong on learning the complex jazzy piece very quickly.
The keyboard artist proved himself a lickety-split learner, talented pianist and remarkable sightreader. “At least I didn’t have to worry about memorizing everything!” Yutong said gamely after the concert.
For him, performing with others was fulfilling, and relatively new; he usually plays the piano in a practice room alone, he said in an email. Playing with others was “rare and refreshing. With chamber music, it’s magical. You learn your part on your own, then step into rehearsal and suddenly everything comes together. It’s like building a LEGO set – each person brings a piece, and together we create something whole.”
Protégés might be privileged but they’re not coddled. They work hard and practice and rehearse long hours, though keyboardist/composer Kit Armstrong, who was not a protégé but played in a number of CMNW concerts during the first weeks of the festival season, said he doesn’t practice. See my OAW story.
Aside from putting in the time and effort, it helps to know more and more people in addition to more and more scores as a musical career takes off.
“The classical music field is a people’s field,” Durrenberger said, “and building community with other artists is invaluable. The joyous musical family that Soovin and Gloria have been cultivating here at CMNW is made up of some of the most genuinely talented and kind people I have ever been around. It is a very rare and happy combination. I am constantly inspired by everyone here whether it’s listening to them play or making music beside them.”
