Helena Baillie, violin; Anita Balázs cello; Erika Switzer, piano
Rachmaninov, Trio Elegiac No. 1; Cashel Day-Lewis, Foxglove Elegy; Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio, Op. 50
London-born Helena Baillie was hailed by The Strad magazine for her ”brilliance and poignance,” and stands apart for a rare ease on both violin and viola. American Record Guide praised her ‘gorgeous singing tone’ in an album that ‘from the opening flourish will be a special recital.’ She enjoys a multifaceted career as a performer and violin and viola faculty member at the Bard College Music Program.
A prizewinner in international competitions including Munich ARD, Banff and Tertis, Helena has performed throughout Europe and the United States, with broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and Performance Today for American Public Radio. She has collaborated in chamber music with Pinchas Zukerman, Midori, the Tokyo String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio. Her love of chamber music has taken her to the La Jolla Summerfest, Tucson Winter Chamber Festival, and the Kronberg Academy Festival in Frankfurt, among others.
Helena was honored by a Bard Fellowship from 2010-2015. While a fellow, her projects included Bach Among Us at Bard’s renowned Fisher Center, which Helena produced and performed in collaboration with dancers of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In an unconventional staging that reconsiders the traditional divisions between artist and audience, Helena invited audience members to share the stage with performers, creating an intimate and immersive concert experience.
In her continued commitment to outreach and education, Helena has traveled across the globe to engage new audiences under the auspices of Midori’s Music Sharing Foundation. She performs regularly at prisons and appears for New-York based Music Kitchen, a program that brings top musicians together to share the inspirational, therapeutic and uplifting power of music with
disenfranchised New Yorkers.
Helena graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied violin with Arnold Steinhardt and viola with Roberto Diaz. Isaac Stern, Felix Galimir, and Leon Fleisher guided Helena in chamber music. At Yale University, Helena studied violin with Peter Oundjian, and she spent a year in Berlin studying with the eminent violist Wilfried Strehle. Helena plays a 2012 violin made by Collin Gallahue in association with the studio of Brooklyn-based luthier Sam Zygmuntowicz. Her viola is a 2009 Sam Zygmuntowicz.
Hungarian cellist Anita Balázs was born into a musical family, and started her music studies at the age of 5. From early childhood, she has been giving concerts in Europe, taking part in international festivals and masterclasses in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Croatia, France and Switzerland with professors such as Heidi Litschauer, László Fenyő, Philippe Muller and Wolfgang Boettcher. At the age of 17 she was admitted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music of Budapest, Hungary in the class of Laszlo Mezo(Bartok Quartet) where she obtained both her Bachelor’s and first MASTER’s degree. From fall 2012, she also studied under Prof. Philippe Muller in France, attending two schools at the same time in Hungary and France. She holds an Artist’s Diploma from Montclair State University where she studied with Nicholas Tzavaras (Shanghai Quartet) as well as a Master of Musical Arts degree from Yale School of Music where she studied with legendary cellist and teacher Aldot Parisot, as well as Ole Akahoshi, Ani Kavafian, Peter Frankl, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Paul Watkins (Emerson String Quartet)- to whom she served as graduate assistant. Laureate of several international competitions such as the Antonio Janigro International Cello Competition in Porec, Croatia or the Alfredo e Vanda Marcosig International Competition in Italy, she has also been awarded 1st prize as well as the Grand Prix of the Jury at the Janos Starker Competition in Hungary and 1st prize at the International Cello Competition in Liezen, Austria.
She has performed before audiences all around Europe and the United States and has been invited to play as soloist with famous Hungarian and European orchestras and conductors such as Andras Ligeti, Izaki Masahiro and Kenneth Lam from the age of 12. She also performed in world-famous venues such as the Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Opera, Philharmonie de Paris, or the Palace of the Arts of Budapest, Jazz at Lincoln Center. Throughout her career, she has played with renowned artists such as Rodion Zamuruev, Julian Gargiulo, David Chan, Zoltan Kocsis, Ole Akahoshi, Leon Botstein or Peter Oundjian and Tracy Bonham. She is invited every year to participate in the “Les Pianos Folies du Touquet” piano festival in Le Touquet, France as soloist and chamber musician among world- famous pianists such as Boris Berezovsky, Nikolai Lugansky, Benjamin Grosvenor or Andrei Korobeinikov. Two time scholar of the Hungary Initiatives Foundation’s Graduate Scholarship (2017,2018) awarded to talented Hungarian individuals who have achieved outstanding results in their field of study. She served as cello and chamber music tutor at Montclair State University’s Extension Division and she is also member at the Albany Symphony Orchestra.
Erika Switzer is an accomplished pianist who collaborates regularly in major concert settings around the world, including at New York’s Weill Hall (Carnegie), Geffen Hall, Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, at the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC). Her performances have been called “precise and lucid” by the New York Times, and Renaud Machart of Le Monde described her as “one of the best collaborative pianists I have ever heard; her sound is deep, her interpretation intelligent, refined, and captivating.”
From 2000-2007, Switzer performed and studied in Germany, an experience that profoundly inspired and shaped her work. During that time, she appeared at Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and in the Munich Winners & Masters series and won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions.
Switzer has long been a leader in envisioning and promoting the future of art song performance. In 2009, in collaboration with soprano Martha Guth, she founded the organization Sparks & Wiry Cries, which curates opportunities for song creators and performers, commissions new works, presents the songSLAM festival in New York City, and publishes The Art Song Magazine. She is also devoted to new music, and has recently premiered new compositions in the 5 Boroughs Music Festival Songbook II; at the Brooklyn Art Song Society; and at Vancouver’s Music on Main.
Switzer collaborates with a range of top singers and instrumentalists. A frequent collaborator is baritone Tyler Duncan, and as a duo, Switzer and Duncan have performed in major concert halls and music festivals around the world. She is also an active teacher, serving on the music faculty at Bard College and the Vocal Arts Program of the Bard Conservatory of Music. Switzer holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School, and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.