Music for Food: New Beginnings | Kim Kashkashian, Viola, and Marc-André Hamelin, Piano

Artist(s)

Kim Kashkashian

Kim Kashkashian made history when she won the coveted Grammy Award — the first ever given to a violist — for her ECM recording of Ligeti and Kurtág solo viola works. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Academy of Music.

Hailed as “an artist who combines a probing, restless intellect with enormous beauty of tone,” Kim Kashkashian has forged a unique path as a performing and recording artist. Ms. Kashkashian has appeared as soloist with the orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, Amsterdam, New York, and Cleveland in collaboration with Eschenbach, Mehta, Welser-Moest, Kocsis, Dennis Russel Davies, Blomstedt, and Holliger. She is a member of Trio Tre Voce, and the long-standing duo partner of pianist Robert Levin, performing in the great halls of Vienna, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, Athens, London, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

Ms. Kashkashian worked closely with György Kurtág, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, and Arvo Pärt and commissioned compositions from Eötvös, Ken Ueno, Betty Olivero, Thomas Larcher, Lera Auerbach, Tigran Mansurian, and Toshio Hosokawa.

Her more than 25 solo albums on ECM label have garnered a Grammy, a Cannes Classical Award, the Edison Prize, and the Opus Klassik Prize.

Ms. Kashkashian is the Founder of “Music for Food,” a musician-led hunger relief initiative that offers a model for all musicians who wish to act as artist-citizens in their home communities. Music for Food has created more than one and a half million meals for people in need. To learn more, please go to musicforfood.net or kimkashkashian.com.

Marc-André Hamelin

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin, a “performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), is acclaimed worldwide for his rare combination of profound musicianship and dazzling technique. He is celebrated both for his interpretations of the core repertoire and for his fearless exploration of lesser-known works from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. He regularly performs around the globe with the leading orchestras and conductors of our time, and gives recitals at major concert venues and festivals worldwide.

Hamelin’s 2025–2026 season spans North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, with a dynamic mix of orchestral, recital, and chamber music engagements. He opens the season with a tour of Australia and Asia, featuring concerto and recital appearances with the Sydney Symphony under Sir Donald Runnicles, concerto engagements with the Wuxi, Ningbo, and Shenzhen symphonies, and solo recitals in Adelaide, Xiamen, and Shenzhen.

In North America, Hamelin appears with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the San Diego Symphony with Thomas Guggeis, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, on tour. Recital highlights include Chicago Symphony Presents, San Francisco Symphony, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Keyboard Concerts in Fresno, and Soka Performing Arts Center. In duo with Maria João Pires, he is presented by The Cleveland Orchestra, the Gilmore Piano Festival, and the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center.

European appearances include Rhapsody in Blue with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and Vladimir Jurowski, the Marx Piano Concerto with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich and Fabien Gabel, and performances with the Bremer Philharmoniker, Wigmore Hall, the Schubertiade, MDR Wartburg, and the Chipping Campden Festival. Additional recitals take place in Italy, the Netherlands, and Berlin, along with an extensive duo tour with Maria João Pires to the Philharmonie de Paris, the Barbican, The Hague, Martigny, Toulouse, and Berlin.

Chamber music highlights include the Chausson Concert with Augustin Hadelich and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Franck Piano Quintet with the Juilliard String Quartet for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. With Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, Hamelin tours to Koerner Hall in Toronto, Salle Bourgie in Montréal, Club musical de Québec, and the Isabel Bader Centre in Kingston.

An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, Hamelin has released more than 90 albums to date, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In October 2025, Hyperion releases Found Objects / Sound Objects, a recording of contemporary works. Recent acclaimed recordings include Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106, and Sonata in C major, Op. 2 No. 3, as well as the Dvořák and Florence Price quintets with the Takács Quartet.

Also a noted composer, Hamelin has written more than 30 works. Many, including his Études and Toccata on “L’homme armé”—commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—are published by Edition Peters. He performed the Toccata in 2023 on NPR’s Tiny Desk alongside works by C.P.E. Bach and William Bolcom. His most recent composition, Mazurka, was commissioned by the Library of Congress to celebrate 100 years of concerts and premiered in April 2024. Featuring nine original pieces, Hamelin’s 2024 album New Piano Works is a survey of some of his own recent works, exhibiting his formidable skill as a composer-pianist whose music imaginatively and virtuosically taps into his musical forebears. “His previous offerings of his own music were rich, but his latest self-portrait album is on another level,” wrote The New York Times. It was Hamelin’s first album of all original compositions since Études (2010).

Hamelin is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association and over 20 of its quarterly awards. Other honors include eight Juno Awards, 12 Grammy nominations, the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize from Northwestern University, and the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award from the Ontario Arts Foundation. Hamelin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Born in Montreal, Hamelin lives in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer and host at Classical WCRB.

Geneva Lewis, violin
Marcy Rosen, cello
Petra Berényi, cimbalom

Guest Artists
Violists: Carol Rodland, Sebastian Krunnies, Beth Guterman Chu, Dmitri Murrath, Wenting Kang, Sheila Browne, Stephen Wyrczynski, and Yu-Chen Lu