Sasha Cooke, Daniel Hope, Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller, Emil Miland
Biography Sasha Cooke, Daniel Hope, Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller, Emil Miland
Sasha Cooke
Two-time Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has been called a “luminous standout” (New York Times) and “equal parts poise, radiance and elegant directness” (Opera News). She is sought after by the world’s leading orchestras, opera companies, and chamber music ensembles for her versatile repertoire. A devoted interpreter of new music, she has premiered works by composers Mark Adamo, Mason Bates, William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, Pierre Jalbert, Laura Kaminsky, Lowell Liebermann, Nico Muhly, John Musto, Marc Neikrug, Kevin Puts, Augusta Read Thomas and Joby Talbot. Ms. Cooke has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with over 70 symphony orchestras worldwide frequently in the works of Mahler under leading conductors including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Edo de Waart, Trevor Pinnock, Harry Bicket, Michael Tilson Thomas, Riccardo Muti and Sir Mark Elder.
During the 2020-21 season Ms. Cooke returns to the San Francisco Opera for Poul Ruders' A Handmaid's Tale and performs the world premiere of Joby Talbot's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at Dallas Opera. On the concert stage, she reunites with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest for Das Lied von der Erde at The Royal Concertgebouw, sings Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with the Minnesota Orchestra, performs Rilke Songs with composer and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and returns to the Houston Symphony for Beethoven. Alongside soprano Susanna Phillips, she makes recital debuts in Baltimore, Portland and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
As a dedicated recitalist, Ms. Cooke was presented by Young Concert Artists in her widely acclaimed New York and Washington debuts at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and the Kennedy Center. She has also appeared in recital at Alice Tully Hall, The Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center and the 92nd St Y. Her recordings can be found on the Hyperion, BIS, Chandos, Naxos, Bridge Records, Yarlung, GPR Records and Sono Luminus labels. Most recently she appears on five recordings including L'enfance du Christ with Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony on Chandos, Bates' The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs on Pentatone which won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS, Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony and Sasha Cooke LIVE a collection of her performances from the Music@Menlo chamber music festival released on their label.
A graduate of Rice University and The Juilliard School, Sasha Cooke also attended the Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, the Wolf Trap Foundation, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and Seattle Opera and Central City Opera’s Young Artist Training Programs. Ms. Cooke has given masterclasses throughout the United States and Canada. She lives near Houston, TX with daughters Evelyn and Julia and husband baritone Kelly Markgraf.
Daniel Hope
The violinist Daniel Hope has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for 30 years and is celebrated for his musical versatility as well as his dedication to humanitarian causes. Winner of the 2015 European Cultural Prize for Music, whose previous recipients include Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Hope appears as soloist with the world’s major orchestras and conductors, also directing many ensembles from the violin. Since the start of the 2016/17 season Hope is Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra – and from the 2018/19 Season also Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco.
In 2019 he became Artistic Director of the Frauenkirche Cathedral in Dresden, and from 2020 he is the President of the Beethovenhaus Bonn, an honorary position following in the footsteps of Kurt Masur and Joseph Joachim.
Daniel Hope was raised in London at Highgate School and the Royal Academy of Music, studying the violin with Zakhar Bron, Itzhak Rashkovsky and Felix Andrievsky. The youngest ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio with whom he performed over 400 times during its final six seasons, today Daniel Hope appears at all the world’s greatest halls and festivals: from Carnegie Hall to the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, from Salzburg to Schleswig-Holstein and from Aspen to the BBC Proms and Tanglewood. He has worked with conductors including Kurt Masur, Valery Gergiev and Christian Thielemann, and with the world’s greatest symphony orchestras including Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Paris, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Devoted to contemporary music, Hope has commissioned over thirty works, enjoying close contact with composers such as Alfred Schnittke, Toru Takemitsu, Harrison Birtwistle, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtág, Peter Maxwell-Davies and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Daniel Hope is one of the world’s most prolific classical recording artists, with over 25 albums to his name. His recordings have won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award, the Prix Caecilia, the ECHO-Klassik Award and numerous Grammy nominations. His album of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Octet with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe was named one of the best of the year by the New York Times. His recording of Alban Berg’s Concerto was voted Grammophone Magazine’s “top choice of all available recordings”. His recording of Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed, which reached No. 1 in over 22 countries is, with 250,000 copies sold, one of the most successful classical recordings of recent times. Hope has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007.
In 2017 the documentary film “Daniel Hope – The Sound of Life” was screened in European cinemas as well as in Movie Theatres in Australia and North America.
Daniel Hope has penned four bestselling books published in Germany by the Rowohlt publishing company. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and has written scripts for collaborative performances with the actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Mia Farrow. In Germany he presents a weekly radio show for the WDR3 Channel and curates, since the 2016/17 season his own salon “Hope@9pm”, a music and talk event with guests from culture and politics at the Konzerthaus Berlin.
Daniel Hope plays the 1742 “ex-Lipínski” Guarneri del Gesù, placed generously at his disposal by an anonymous family from Germany.
He holds both Irish and German citizenship and resides with his family in Berlin.
