Having recently played his critically acclaimed Grant Park Music Festival debut last month, cellist Gabriel Cabezas (www.gabrielcabezas.com) has been selected to appear, together with pianist Amy Yang, on Chicago’s esteemed Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, held at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Wednesday, September 3 at 12:15pm. Mr. Cabezas will perform Sibelius’ Four pieces, op 78, and Brahms’ E minor sonata. The Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington. For more information on this venue, visit www.chicagoculturalcenter.org.

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Complete Program:
Four Pieces, Op. 78 by Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957)
I. Impromptu
II. Romance in F Major
III. Religioso
IV. Rigaudon Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38 by Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Allegretto quasi Minuetto
III. Allegro

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“An intense player who connects to music naturally, without artifice, and brings a singing line to the cello” (The Oregonian), Gabriel Cabezas is one of America’s most sought after young musicians. Combining a superb technique, intellectual curiosity and a pioneering musical spirit, Cabezas is at home in front of an orchestra, performing with a singer-songwriter or sharing the stage with a dance troupe. What drives him is the delight of artistic collaboration, the need for genuine communication with audiences and the search for new musical experiences.

In 2014/15 Cabezas maintains ongoing partnerships with close colleagues and friends. He travels far and wide with the genre-bending musicians of New York’s yMusic; joins the consummate chamber musicians of the Marlboro Festival for Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No.2; tours an arrangement of Bach’s immortal “Goldberg” Variations to Japan with violist Nobuko Imai; appears in a staged version of Gabriel Kahane’s The Ambassador as part of BAM’s 2014 Next Wave Festival; and plays in Chicago alongside bassist Edgar Meyer in Meyer’s trio score for a production by the San Francisco-based LINES Ballet. Cabezas has appeared as soloist with America’s finest orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh and Nashville. In 2014/15 he performs Tchaikovsky’s virtuoso “Rococo” Variations with the Amarillo Symphony (Texas), and Shostakovich’s blistering Cello Concerto No.1 with the Decatur Symphony (Illinois).

Born and raised in Chicago, Cabezas preserves a close relationship with the City of Big Shoulders. In 2014 he makes his debut with Chicago’s Grant Park Festival Orchestra, in Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, and performs on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, a series inspired by the revered pianist’s free concerts in World War II London. Cabezas also has strong family ties to Costa Rica; his great uncle founded the country’s National Conservatory and is the only Costa Rican musician to have performed at Carnegie Hall in the 20th Century. Cabezas returns often to play with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica and work with students at the Programa Nacional de Educación Musical, a program similar to Venezuela’s El Sistema.

Cabezas studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Carter Brey, and is a recipient of the Career Grant by the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation. He is a winner of the 2014 Astral Artists National Auditions, and joins this presenting and promotional organization’s roster of America’s finest young soloists and chamber musicians. A committed advocate for community engagement and education programs across the country, he is involved with Midori’s Partners in Performance, the Sphinx Organization and Chicago’s Citizen Musician movement. Cabezas was the first place Laureate at the Sphinx competition twice — in the Junior Division (2006); and in the Senior Division (2012).

The Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, produced by the International Music Foundation (www.imfchicago.org) have been presented under the magnificent Tiffany stained-glass dome in the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall every Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. since 1977, are broadcast live over WFMT Radio (98.7FM) locally, and are streamed globally over www.wfmt.com. The concerts are an important showcase for local, national, and international emerging classical artists, and follow in the tradition of Dame Myra Hess, one of the most eminent pianists of the 20th century, who started a daily concert series in London’s National Gallery that ran for 6 years during World War II.