Landscapes of the Imagination
Friday, October 21st at 7pm | Upper West Side
Featuring violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Audrey Vardanega as they explore the musical landscapes of pastorally-themed sonatas by Beethoven and Schumann, accompanied by thematicaly paired artworks from painter Katie Swatland.
Geneva Lewis
New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis has forged a reputation as a musician of consummate artistry whose performances speak from and to the heart. Lauded for “remarkable mastery of her instrument” (CVNC) and hailed as “clearly one to watch” (Musical America), Geneva is the recipient of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Additional accolades include Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize, being named a Performance Today Young Artist in Residence, and Musical America’s New Artist of the Month. Most recently, Geneva was named one of BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists.
Audrey Vardanega
Praised as a “[musically] eloquent” (San Francisco Classical Voice) player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength…that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” and a “bewitching musical presence” (The Piedmont Post), Audrey Vardanega has performed as a solo and collaborative pianist across Europe, China, and the United States. She has received instruction from notable artists including Leon Fleisher, Thomas Adés, Gidon Kremer, Robert Levin, Miriam Fried, and Jonathan Biss. She currently studies piano with Richard Goode. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Musaics of the Bay, a nonprofit chamber music series dedicated to music mentorship in the Bay Area. 2019 highlights include her participation in Argentina’s New Docta Music Festival in August 2019, her two-part Beethoven Piano Sonata Project at the Berkeley Maybeck Studios, and the launch of Musaics of the Bay, a concert series and mentorship initiative founded by Audrey in the Bay Area
Katie Swatland
The paintings of Katie Swatland are an intrinsic dance between reality and reverie. Drawing from her training as a painter whose lineage can be traced back to masters such as John Singer Sargeant, Antonio Mancini and Anders Zorn, she approaches the canvas as a means of discovery, carrying on in the spirit of the Romantic and Symbolist traditions of the past. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, she is a passionate advocate of cross-disciplinary undertakings, and it is the unbounded landscape of the Arts to which she is most drawn.