Music for Peace: Postcards from Paris

Internationally acclaimed pianist Meng-Chieh Liu and Silkroad Ensemble violist Nicholas Cords join violinist Amy Galluzzo and music director, Carol Ou, in this steamy showcase of romantic and impressionist music from France.

To celebrate musical sibling composers Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Carol’s brother Sam Ou, one of Boston’s most exuberant and popular cellists, will also perform!

Lili Boulanger: D’un Matin de Printemps
Nadia Boulanger: 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano
Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello
Fauré: Piano Quartet in c minor

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.

Carol Ou, Cello

The Music for Peace Concert Series’  new artistic director Carol Ou is known for her “fiery, marvelous” and “meltingly melodic outpourings.” (Boston Globe) As a concert cellist, Carol enjoys a dynamic career as a chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and teacher.

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 across 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. Afterwards, her decades-long music and life partnership with legendary violinist James Buswell led to countless duo recitals, concerti appearances, and chamber music 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 string quartets by Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, and Ravel, along with unjustly neglected composers Taneyev, Bazzini, and Florence Price. Enchanted by ancient music from Persia, Turkey, and American folk traditions, Carol’s collaborations include performances with masters of the Persian santoor, Chinese Pipa, and the American banjo. Her discography includes music by contemporary Iranian and Turkish composers Reza Vali and Erberk Eryilmaz, and American composers Korine Fujiwara and Jeff Midkiff. Her recent recording with the quartet “Music for Mandolin and String Quartet” won the Global Music Gold Medal Award.

Outside of performing, Carol is a passionate teacher who has nurtured hundreds of inquisitive musicians from Boston and around the world. In demand as a cello and chamber music teacher, she has taught at NYU, directed chamber music at the Heifetz International Music Institute, and served as director of strings, chamber music, and orchestra at Gordon College. Currently, she is on the faculty at New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory and Continuing Education School 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.

Meng-Chieh Liu, piano

A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Meng-Chieh Liu first made headlines in 1993 as a 21-year-old student at The Curtis Institute of Music when he substituted at last minute’s notice for André Watts at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The concert earned high acclaim from critics and audience alike, and was followed by a number of widely praised performances, including a recital at the Kennedy Center and a concert on the Philadelphia All-Star Series. Already an accomplished artist at the time, Mr. Liu had made his New York orchestral debut two years earlier.

Following Mr. Liu’s triumph in Philadelphia, an appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra was immediately scheduled, but it was not to be. The stellar beginning of his career was abruptly halted by a rare and debilitating illness that affected his connective tissues. Hospitalized and almost immobile for a year, doctors believed his chances for survival were slim and, should he survive, playing the piano would be “absolutely impossible.”

With arduous determination and relentless physical therapy, Mr. Liu has been restored to full health and is now once again performing on the concert stage. Since then, he has performed throughout the world in recitals and as a soloist with orchestras under conductors Christoph Eschenbach, Gustavo Dudamel and Alan Gilbert. In 2002, Liu received the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award. A sought-after musician and strong advocate of chamber music, Liu performs in music festivals across the globe and has worked with renowned  musicians Shmuel Ashkenasi, David Soyer, Bernard Greenhouse, James Buswell, Wendy Warner, Kim Kashkashian, Donald Weilerstein as well as the Borromeo and St. Lawrence Quartets. Liu also collaborates with artists in varied disciplines, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Dance Project, among other dance companies.  His concerts have been heard over the airwaves around the world, and a biography on his life was broadcast on Taiwanese National Television.

Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Meng-Chieh Liu began his piano studies early, and at age thirteen was accepted by The Curtis Institute of Music to study with Jorge Bolet, Claude Frank, Gary Graffman and Eleanor Sokoloff, and received first prizes in the Stravinsky, Asia Pacific and Mieczyslaw Munz piano competitions. His reputation as a teacher/mentor has brought him across the globe in summer festivals, masterclasses, and lecture recitals. Since 1993, Liu served on the piano and chamber music faculties at The Curtis Institute of Music, and since 2013 added the New England Conservatory to his itinerary. He is in high demand as a mentor, sought out by young pianists the world over.

Liu is known for his versatility, performing music from Scarlatti and Bach to Szymanowski, Messiaen and composers of our times, including Zhou Tian and David Ludwig. In recent years, he embarked on several immersive projects, performing the complete piano music by Johannes Brahms and complete piano sonatas by Franz Schubert.

Nicholas Cords, viola

For more than two decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a unique constellation of projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate, with a signature passion for the cross-section between the long tradition of classical music and the wide range of music being created today.

Nicholas served for more than twenty years as violist and later as a Co-Artistic Director of Silkroad, a musical collective founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 with the belief that cross-cultural collaboration leads to a more hopeful world. This mission was poignantly explored by the recent Oscar-nominated documentary by Morgan Neville, The Music Of Strangers, which makes a case for why culture matters in today’s world. Serving from 2017-2020 as a Co-Artistic Director, Nicholas was previously Silkroad’s Programming Chair. Nicholas appears on all of the Silkroad Ensemble’s albums including Sing Me Home (Sony Music), which received a 2017 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

Another key aspect of Nicholas’ musical life is as founding member of Brooklyn Rider, an intrepid group which NPR credits with “recreating the 300-year-old form of the string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” Highly committed to collaborative ventures, the group has worked with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, ballerina Wendy Whelan, Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Mexican singer Magos Herrera, and banjoist Béla Fleck, to name a few. Their most recent recording Healing Modes was lauded by the New York Times and received a 2021 Grammy Nomination.

His acclaimed 2020 solo recording Touch Harmonious (In a Circle Records) is a reflection on the arc of tradition spanning form the baroque to today, featuring multiple premieres. A dedicated teacher, Nicholas currently serves on the viola and chamber music faculty of New England Conservatory, where he also teaches courses in creative project building and the recorded history and legacy of string playing.

Amy Galluzzo, violin

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 the release of several recordings with the quartet on the MSR Classics label, Amy’s Carnegie Hall debut with the Carpe Diem String Quartet, appearances with A Far Cry, and collaborations with artists such as John Ferrillo, oboe, Shem Guibbory, violin, Maxine Neuman, cello, and Carol Ou, cello.  Amy teaches at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education in Boston and has taught workshops and masterclasses at Florida State University, Palm Beach University, University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Sam Ou

Praised for his “impassioned performance” (Boston Globe) and playing “with remarkable ease and clarity, while maintaining a graceful—if vociferous—line that fit well into the narrative” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), cellist Sam Ou enjoys an active musical life in the Greater Boston area.  A recipient of the Rosemary Scales Prize for best cello concerto performance at the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, Mr. Ou has performed at several prestigious summer venues including Tanglewood, Sarasota, Musicorda, Santa Fe, and La Jolla music festivals.  He gave the world premiere performance of Larry Bell’s Cello Concerto entitled The Triumph of Lightness with the Boston Civic Symphony at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall (NEC).

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ou has collaborated and performed with the Borromeo String Quartet, James Buswell, Lucy Chapman, Hung-Kuan Chen, Pi-Hsien Chen, James Dunham, Thomas Hill, Patricia McCarty, Paul Neubauer, Heiichiro Ohyama, Lois Shapiro, Marcus Thompson, and Yehudi Wyner.  As one-half of the Formosa Duo, he performs regularly with pianist Chi-Chen Wu.

A faculty member at NEC’s Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education, Mr. Ou coaches chamber music and maintains a private teaching studio.