‘A Piano Named Sapphire’ Royce Hall Benefit Concert Performer Biographies

Margaret Batjer Violin Margaret Batjer has served as concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra since 1998. Throughout her successful career as soloist, chamber musician, teacher and concertmaster, she has established herself as a versatile and respected artist worldwide. Batjer made her first solo appearance at the age of 15 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has since returned to the CSO and soloed with a succession of major orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra and the St. Louis, Seattle and Dallas symphony orchestras. Batjer has performed with such European

ensembles as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Prague Chamber Orchestra and Berlin Symphony Orchestra. As an esteemed chamber musician, she appears regularly at the Marlboro Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Salzburg Festival, and Italy’s Naples and Cremona festivals. In 2008, she developed LACO’s acclaimed chamber music series, Westside Connections. Among her many other noteworthy recordings, Batjer has twice recorded Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins: for the Philips label with Salvatore Accardo and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and in 2003, paired as soloist with Hilary Hahn for Deutsche Grammophon with Jeffrey Kahane conducting Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Margaret Batjer is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Ivan Galamian and David Cerone. She joined the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music in 2005.

Reggie Bennett Vocalist Through his sensitive interpretation of song, baritone Reggie Bennett has developed a unique and refined artistry. This brilliant young musician has appeared before audiences in the United States and Europe, performing from an impressive repertoire of arias, art song, American Songbook and oratorio. Mr. Bennett has been seen in many opera productions, including Die Zauberflöte, Rigoletto,

Four Saints in Three Acts, Alice in Wonderland, Cendrillon and Howls for Saddam. Mr. Bennett currently performs as a concert artist and has enjoyed a successful 2012 concert season, performing both publicly and in private concerts. In 2011, he performed at NYC’s Central Park Summer Stage Concert Series in a Hal Willner's tribute to Shel Silverstein, where he received mention in The New York Times for his performance. His upcoming recordings include an highly anticipated release entitled “Art Rap” which fuses

hip hop and classical art song. This project comes after several years of writing and recording in collaboration with partners Steve Weisberg, Lee Curreri and James Lindsay to create a truly unique and inimitable musical sound. In addition to performing, he teaches music for the Greenburgh-Northcastle school district in Westchester, NY. Mr. Bennett holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from The Boston Conservatory and a Master of Music Education degree from New York University. Please visit him online at www.reggiebennett.com

Lana Chae Pianist In her third year as a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at UCLA, Lana Chae has participated in UCLA’s Music Partnership Program and the Gluck Outreach Program, performing and teaching in the greater Los Angeles area; and she regularly works as a Teaching Assistant in core courses for music major undergraduates at UCLA. Lana is currently working on a dissertation, funded by the Dissertation Year Fellowship, that traces the compositional origins of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Piano Sonata.

Lisa Hilton Pianist/Composer/Bandleader "A true original at the top of her game." - Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz One of the most distinctive and instantly recognizable composers and pianists in jazz today, Lisa Hilton has honed her evocative, individualistic and impressionistic “sound paintings” for over a decade as a leader. Like Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans, her imagistic compositions draw as deeply on

the classical tradition and the avant-garde as much as they look back to jazz greats like Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Hilton's approach is nuanced, and expressive, her compositional style thorough and painterly, her touch on the keyboard alternately tender, brooding, emotive, yet methodically cerebral. Over the course of her creative career, the "Lioness of Jazz" has played with many of this era's jazz luminaries, releasing a total of fourteen albums, (over 170 iTunes tracks).

Vijay Iyer Pianist Grammy-nominated composer-pianist Vijay Iyer was described by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by The New Yorker as one of "today's most important pianists… extravagantly gifted… brilliantly eclectic," and by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star.” He was voted the 2010 Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, and

named one of the “50 Most Influential Global Indians” by GQ India. Iyer has released sixteen albums as a leader, most recently Accelerando (2012), an intense, visceral follow-up to the multiple-award winning Historicity (2009), both featuring the Vijay Iyer Trio (Iyer, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums; Stephan Crump, bass). Historicity was a 2010 Grammy Nominee for Best Instrumental Jazz Album, and was named #1 Jazz Album of the Year in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit

Metro Times, National Public Radio, PopMatters.com, the Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll, and the Downbeat International Critics Poll. The trio won the 2010 Echo Award (the "German Grammy") for best international ensemble and the Downbeat Critics Poll for rising star small ensemble of the year. Iyer’s many other honors include the Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Greenfield Prize and most recently the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, as well as numerous composer commissions. Iyer’s many collaborators include his generation’s fellow forward-thinkers Rudresh Mahanthappa, Rez Abbasi, Craig Taborn, Ambrose Akinmusire, Liberty Ellman, Steve Lehman and Tyshawn Sorey; elder avant-garde pioneers such as Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, George Lewis, and Amina Claudine Myers; new-music experimenters Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, and John Zorn; hip-hop innovators Dead Prez, Das Racist, DJ Spooky, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium; South Asian percussionist-producers Karsh Kale, Suphala, and Talvin Singh; filmmakers Haile Gerima and Bill Morrison; choreographer Karole Armitage; and poets Mike Ladd, Amiri Baraka, Charles Simic, and Robert Pinsky. His concert works have been performed by the Ethel, JACK, and Brentano String Quartets, the Silk Road Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Hermès Ensemble, and Imani Winds. A polymath whose career has spanned the sciences, the humanities and the arts, Iyer received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the cognitive science of music from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Wire, Music Perception, JazzTimes, and The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010. He was recently appointed Director of the Banff Centre's International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, a program founded in 1974 by Oscar Peterson.

David O Music Theatre Artist/Pianist David O is a Los Angeles-based music-theatre artist. Some of his most notable work includes the choral composition “A Map of Los Angeles” (premiered by the LA Master Chorale) and “Fanfare for Grand Park” (commemorate the opening of the new park in Downtown LA). David is well-known as a composer and musical director in the LA theatre scene, where he has received numerous LA Drama Critics’ Circle, LA Weekly, and Ovation Awards for his work.

Joanne Pearce Martin Pianist Keyboardist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Joanne Pearce Martin has made numerous solo appearances on piano, harpsichord and the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ, appearing with such conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. She is also a frequent soloist with the LA Phil during the summer Hollywood Bowl seasons. Described by the Los Angeles Times as playing with “unusual fervor and fluency” and “stirring virtuosity,” she has been guest soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles and San Diego chamber orchestras, and

England’s Huddersfield Philharmonic, among many others. In great demand as a collaborative artist, she has performed with such artists as Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, James Galway, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and performed multiple-piano works with Emmanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Hélène Grimaud and Jeffrey Kahane. She has appeared at summer music festivals and concert series spanning four continents, including

those in Aspen, New York’s 92nd St. Y, Carnegie Recital Hall, Lincoln Center Library, Kennedy Center, Costa Rica, Australia, Taiwan, Edinburgh, Cologne and Nice. Southern California audiences have followed her performances of new music and “standards” with the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella and Chamber Music Series, Camerata Pacifica, Pacific Serenades, Dilijan, South Bay Chamber Music Society, Ojai, Mainly Mozart and San Louis Obispo Mozart festivals. She and her husband Gavin Martin continue to concertize as a 2-piano team on both US coasts. She has appeared on all the major US television networks and recorded for Centaur, Summit and Albany records, as well as the Yamaha Disklavier piano. Her acclaimed solo CD, entitled Joanne Pearce Martin, Barefoot, was recently released on Yarlung Records. She has been the subject of a half-hour feature on The Learning Channel and her newest and musical adventure is playing the Theremin. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Martin is also an instrument-rated airplane pilot and master-rated skydiver.

Steve Weisberg Pianist Steve Weisberg is a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. After living in NYC for 15 years, he moved to Los Angeles in 2002. He has led his own 13-piece orchestra on and off since 1988, and has recently added strings to make it a 17- piece outfit. His commercial recording debut was on Hal Willner’s “Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill’ on A&M in 1986. He has maintained a long-standing relationship as arranger and musical director on many Willner productions both in the studio and in live performance including events at Royce Hall.

He is currently producing a release for “operapper” Reggie Bennett, a classically trained baritone who is also a skilled rapper, merging those two genres. His resume includes working with Marianne Faithfull, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne, Michael McDonald, Beth Orton, David Byrne, Howard Tate and many more. He also has multiple credits for music in feature films and documentaries. For additional information visit his Wikipedia page.