Music for Peace: Big Bad Dawg!

Big Bad Dawg! reimagines a fun, 21st century musical evening hosted by Fanny Mendelssohn. This exuberant concert celebrates women and the return of Spring.

Naumberg Prize winners, the Lydian String Quartet; brilliant pianist Xiaopei Xu; and innovative violinists Julia Glenn and Amy Galuzzo join Artistic Director Carol Ou for this colorful program.

Because of 19th century social conventions, Fanny Mendelssohn’s works were relegated to private performances in her own home and were largely unknown until the 1990’s. An enormously gifted composer, Fanny’s virtuoso works rival any by her brother Felix.

Besides showcasing Fanny’s works, this concert will also spotlight the enchanting music of Chinese composer Chen Yi, the intriguing British-Jamaican rhythms of Eleanor Alberga’s quartet, and the fun, bluesy music of the Japanese-Welsh-American composer from Montana, Korine Fujiwara, whose cello version of Big Bad Dawg! will be premiered at this concert!

Fanny Mendelssohn: Spring Song and At the River
Chen Yi: Romance and Dance
Korine Fujiwara: Strange Marinara
Korine Fujiwara: Big Bad Dawg!
Eleanor Alberga: String Quartet no. 2
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in Eb

The concert will be held at Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, near Harvard Law School, at 7:30 pm.

Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund.  $25 for Mass. Peace Action members, $35 for non-members,  $10 for students and low incomes.

To reserve, write a check to “Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund” or “MAPA EF” and mail to 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or call 617-354-2169 with credit card number.  Or reserve your tickets online.

Donations to support our work for peace are welcome in any amount.  Supporters donate $250 or more to Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund; they receive two tickets with preferred seating in the first 3 rows to each concert and recognition in the programs. Sponsors donate $500 and receive four tickets; Benefactors donate $1,000 and receive eight tickets.  All contributions above $35 per concert are tax-deductible.

The audience is invited to join the musicians and Peace Action members at a reception after the concert.  The venue is wheelchair accessible via a ramp to the left of the church.

Lydian String Quartet

Performing with “a precision and involvement marking them as among the world’s best quartets” (Chicago Sun-Times), the Lydian String Quartet embraces the full range of the string quartet repertory with curiosity, virtuosity, and dedication to the highest artistic ideals of music making.

Since 1980, their interpretive mastery of standard and contemporary repertoire has resulted in prizes at international competitions in Canada, France, England, and in New York (Naumburg Award for Chamber Music), and concerts throughout the United States and abroad. Their recordings reflect their diverse and far-reaching repertoire, from works by Beethoven, Brahms, Ives, and Schubert to contemporary American composers including Harbison, Hyla, and Wyner.

The LSQ has performed extensively throughout the United States at venues such as Jordan Hall in Boston; the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln Center, Miller Theater, and Weill Recital Hall in New York City; the Pacific Rim Festival at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and the Slee Beethoven Series at the University at Buffalo. Abroad, the Quartet has made appearances in France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Armenia, and most recently in Taiwan.

The Lyds’ long-term residency at Brandeis allow them to collaborate with each other and colleagues around the world, partially through their yearly concert series at the Slosberg Music Center The Quartet hosts a biennial composition prize, and is on the faculty of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Xiaopei Xu

Hailed by The Boston Globe as “a world-class pianist” and the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “spellbinding and expressive”, Xiaopei Xu has been featured as a soloist on three continents, striving for creativity in her artistic expression. She made her Boston Symphony Hall debut in 2018, performing with Maestro Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops.

Xu has received international acclaim with top prizes at the New York International Piano Competition, Oberlin International Piano Competition, Tureck International Bach Competition, and the Washington D.C. International Young Artist Competition. Her recent performances have been presented by the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, Foundation for the Chinese Performing Arts, Lancaster International Piano Festival, and Ukraine Forward. Xu has also been invited regularly to give masterclasses and lectures in Nanjing, Beijing, Qingdao, and other cities in China.

In addition to her musical endeavors, Xu integrates her love for visual arts with music, creating multidisciplinary collaborations as a way to enhance the artistic experience. A painter herself, she has been commissioned for several installations and collaborative projects. Xu created a combined art and concert experience at the Germany Society of Pennsylvania, as well as an exhibition of her artwork in “The Seven Deadly Sins,” an interdisciplinary concert at the New England Conservatory. Collections of her drawings have been published by the Clara Haskil Competition’s Jeune Critique.

Xu holds her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Boston University, Master’s degree from Yale University and Bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. Her principal teachers include Hung-Kuan Chen, Xun Pan, Meng-Chieh Liu, and Boaz Sharon. She has also worked with influential musicians such as Claude Frank, Richard Goode, and Paul Badura-Skoda.

Julia Glenn

Boston native Julia Glenn has been hailed as “remarkable,” “gripping,” and “a brilliant soloist” by the New York Times and performs internationally on modern and baroque violins. She joins the Lydian Quartet from the Tianjin Juilliard School, where she served as violin faculty and was a member of the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble.

Ms. Glenn has appeared on stages including Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Sanders Theatre, Jordan Hall, Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, and Shanghai Concert Hall. In January of 2016 she gave the world premiere of Milton Babbitt’s violin concerto to critical acclaim; her article on the work was recently published in Contemporary Music Review.

With a deep interest in exploring and sharing the music and culture of China, Julia enjoys drawing on her backgrounds in phonology and Chinese language to open up new avenues in perception and performance. Her doctoral dissertation was titled “Hearing in Tone: A Phonetic Approach to the Analysis and Performance of Chinese Contemporary Music.” As the recipient of Juilliard’s 2019 John Erksine Faculty Prize, she is currently working with Chen Yi on a video project to commission and film dance choreography for Chen’s Memory. This summer she will also record a solo album of new and recent music by Chinese and Chinese-speaking composers.

Ms. Glenn is a graduate of Juilliard’s doctoral program, where she worked with Joseph Lin, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Cynthia Roberts. She obtained her master’s from New England Conservatory with James Buswell, and her bachelor’s in linguistics magna cum laude from Harvard University.

Amy Galluzzo

Praised for her “nuanced Mozartian phrasing” and her “delicacy and, when needed, force” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Amy Galluzzo enjoys an active career as both a chamber musician and soloist. For many years, Amy was a member of the Carpe Diem String Quartet, touring around the United States and internationally, performing a wide range of repertoire.

Recent highlights include Amy’s 2017 Carnegie Hall debut with Carpe Diem String Quartet and the release of the CD “Longing,” on the MSR label.  Amy’s other CDs with the quartet include: The Art of Calligraphy (Albany Records), Volumes 4 and 5 of the complete String Quartets of Sergei Taneyev (Naxos Records), and Music for Mandolin and String Quartet by Jeff Midkiff. A finalist in the Naftzger Competition and recipient of the Jules C. Reiner Prize for violin, Amy has been heard in recital and concert across Europe and America.

Amy Galluzzo began her violin studies in Great Britain and received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music with Honors, and a Graduate Diploma from the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she studied with Marylou Speaker Churchill and James Buswell. She is currently a candidate for the degree of PhD from the Steinhardt School, New York University.

Amy teaches through the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and Continuing Education department.  She has given masterclasses and workshops at numerous music programs for students of all ages and has taught at the Chamber Music Conference of the East since 2015.

A dynamic soloist, chamber musician, and award-winning recording artist, Music for Peace artistic director, Carol Ou is known for her “fiery, marvelous” and “meltingly melodic outpourings.” (Boston Globe) 

Carol Ou 

Born in Taiwan, Carol was immersed solely in the sounds of western classical music until the age of 14 when she met Taiwanese composer, Hsiao Tyzen. Hsiao invited her to tour with him across the US and Singapore, playing European cello masterworks alongside Taiwanese folk music. This exposure to the sounds of her homeland led to a lifelong fascination with languages and folk traditions around the world. 

Recognized as an extraordinary artist by the Chi-Mei Arts Foundation in Taiwan, Carol inaugurated and popularized their record label with her concerto recordings of Elgar, Haydn, and Tchaikovsky while a student at Yale. Later, her decades-long partnership with legendary violinist James Buswell led to countless performances across five continents. Their recording of “Walter Piston’s Chamber Music” won Chamber Music America’s Best Chamber Music CD Award. 

In 2022, Carol founded Trio L’Eveque with close friends Amy Galluzzo and Jean Huang. Prior to this group, she was a member of the Carpe Diem String Quartet. Her extensive touring repertoire encompassed the greatest masterworks by western classical composers along with music influenced by folk traditions from Persia, Turkey, China and the Americas.

Outside of performing, Carol is a passionate teacher who is in demand as a cello and chamber music teacher. She serves on the faculty at New England Conservatory of Music, NYU, and the Cremona International Music Academy and Festival in Italy.

In her free time, Carol enjoys catching sights of bird migration with her son and cheering her daughter on in ultimate frisbee tournaments.