Nicholas Mathew after wrapping up the first recording of the Lisette Project — Jean Bernard Cerin’s Haitian music exploration. Mathew plays on no fewer than six historic keyboard instruments on the recording.
Check out Nicholas Mathew's hilarious video on national anthems before the Paris olympics
Nicholas Mathew and Jean Bernard Cerin Record the Lisette Project, vol. 1
Since June 2024, Nicholas Mathew, Jean Bernard, Michele Kennedy, and others have been collaborating on the exciting first album of the Lisette Project, a selection of important music from the Haitian Revolution and subsequent Haitian diaspora. At the heart of the album is the journey of a song — from eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, through nineteenth-century Paris and Louisiana, back to twentieth-century Haiti. The sound world of the recording will be something thrillingly new: Mathew plays on no fewer than six historic keyboard instruments, and the singers are also joined by baroque guitar, modern guitar, and period strings. Watch this space!
Jean Bernard Cerin at the Lisette Project sessions.
Catch Nicholas Mathew appearing twice at this year's Berkeley Festival and Exhibition.
Displaying the Cal Music Department's world-beating collection of nineteenth-century pianos, Professor Nicholas Mathew presents two concerts at this year's international Berkeley Festival -- concerts that promote the extraordinary diversity of early music: a Lieder recital with the soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon featuring the songs of Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann side by side, and an exciting and innovative presentation with the baritone Jean Bernard Cerin, which traces vernacular song traditions from colonial Haiti through the creole musics of nineteenth-century America and back to the sound worlds of contemporary Haiti.
Michele Kennedy and Jean Bernard Cerin
Nicholas Mathew, upcoming appearances
June 3, 8pm, Hertz Hall, Berkeley: Chamber Music Collective faculty recital, with Sezi Seskir, Lucy Russell, and Kieran Campbell. The music of Mozart, Schubert, and Barthelémon.
June 4, 8pm, Hertz Hall, Berkeley: Chamber Music Collective faculty and student recital, with Sezi Seskir, Lucy Russell, and Kieran Campbell and guests. The music of Chopin, Beethoven, and Paradis.
June 5, 3pm, Hertz patio, Berkeley: Chamber Music Collective benefit concert. A celebration of the spirit of collaboration in music with Sezi Seskir, Lucy Russell, and Kieran Campbell and young musicians.
June 6, 7pm, Hertz Hall: Berkeley Festival and Exhibition. Dark Dreams — the Lieder of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Clara Schumann, with Lucy Fitz Gibbon.
June 10, 3pm, Magnes Museum: Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, Lisette—A Song’s Journey From Haiti and Back, with Jean Bernard Cerin.
August 22, time tba: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens: “Listening to Voices in the Specimens of Various Styles of Music.”
Sept 27, 6pm, Ira Raymond Room, University of Adelaide: Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, talk, “Music, Memory, Patrimony.”
Sept 30, time tba: Melbourne: four hands piano music of Mozart and Schubert with Anna Goldsworthy.
Nov 19, 7.30pm, location tba: Santa Cruz Baroque Festival & Distinguished Artists Concert Series: Beethoven piano sonatas on two contemporary fortepianos.
Professor Nicholas Mathew launches The Chamber Music Collective
Nicholas Mathew launches an exciting and experimental new musical enterprise this summer: the Chamber Music Collective. Other founding members include the Turkish virtuosa Sezi Seskir, the British violinist Lucy Russell, the Toronto-based cellist Kieran Campbell, and the American baritone and polymath Jean-Bernard Cerin.
The CMC is operating an investigative five-day course in period chamber music this June, based around the fabulous collection of instruments in Berkeley’s Nineteenth-Century Piano Collection.
The course will conclude with a wonderful weekend of public concerts featuring faculty and students, presenting chamber music both well known and hardly known at all — performed with a refreshing experimental ethos and sense of aesthetic daring.
Seskir and Campbell will also be performing on the main stage at this year’s Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, where Nicholas Mathew appears twice: in a recital of lieder by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Franz Schubert with the much-admired soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, and a captivating journey through the colonial and diasporic early musics of Haiti and America with the bartone Jean-Bernard Cerin.
Nicholas Mathew to perform in the complete Beethoven piano sonatas series at SFJazz: October 9 and 10
You can hear Nicholas Mathew in the wonderful complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle this October at SFJazz, along with the incomparable Mari Kodama, Stephen Kovacevich, and friends. Tickets can be purchased here.
Professor Nicholas Mathew: New Season Announcement
Let music’s Great Reemergence begin!
Nicholas Mathew will be announcing the new season’s concert dates before the end of July. Europe’s loss will be the America’s gain: all his British, German, and Austrian dates have been delayed to 2022-23, but several new appearances will be announced on the West Coast.
Maria Sanchez Vargas: New Season Announcement
The new season, taking in concert and operatic appearances in Copenhagen, New York, and Lisbon, will soon be announced for Maria Sanchez Vargas, the Forabelle Foundation Star Soprano of 2019. Watch this space!
Professor Nicholas Mathew: Music and Sound at the Edges of History
A special issue of Representations has just appeared, entitled “Music and Sound at the Edges of History,” edited by Professor Nicholas Mathew with his colleague Professor Martha Feldman from the University of Chicago.
Happy New Year from the artists at Lambert Arts!
It’s been a tough year for performing artists all over the world. But the generous and supportive group of creative people at LAA have, as always, come together (virtually) with song and poetry for our annual New Year’s Hotshots’ Hogmanay! In 2021 we can look forward to hearing Anastasia and Mikel sing in the new year in person once again. We’re fixing dates for the 2021-22 season right now. Warmest wishes to you all, and to all creative people out there.
Everyone is talking about Professor Nicholas Mathew's latest talk for the Valley of the Moon Music Festival
See Professor Nicholas Mathew’s extraordinary talk about Beethoven’s colossal Hammerklavier Sonata before a performance by Eric Zivian.
See Professor Nicholas Mathew's keynote conversation at Cornell University:
Nicholas Mathew was in conversation with Annette Richards to begin the series on Beethoven and Pianos at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards.
https://www.historicalkeyboards.org/2020/10/02/nicholas-mathew-and-paul-griffiths-in-conversation/’
Pianist and writer Nicholas Mathew: Everybody But Beethoven
At the world-renowned Berkeley Early Music Festival, Professor Nicholas Mathew and friends present Everybody But Beethoven.
https://berkeleyfestival.org/special-events/everybody-but-beethoven/
THe COVID-19 crisis means this event has had to be rescheduled. Please check back for updates!
Professor Nicholas Mathew on BBC Radio, Composer of the Week
Listen to Nicholas Mathew as he talks with Donald Mcleod on BBC Radio 3, composer of the week — about Beethoven’s music and the wartime social contexts in which it was composed.
Nicholas Mathew's Berkeley Podcast for Music featured on Berkeley Talks
Berkeley Talks features Episode 1 of BPM - the Berkeley Podast for Music.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/08/28/berkeley-talks-music-podcast-malvina-reynolds/
The Daly City “Little Boxes” satirized by Malvina Reynolds, which Nicholas Mathew and guests discuss in Episode 1 of BPM
Professor Nicholas Mathew launches BPM - The Berkeley Podcast for Music
Nicholas Mathew has launched BPM , an open-source podcast on all things Music from UC Berkeley Department of Music. Available on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts.
In Episode 1 Professor Mathew talks about the life, music, and activism of Bay Area icon (and Berkeleyan) Malvina Reynolds with her daughter Nancy Schimmel, and guests from Architecture, Comp Lit, and Music.
Find BPM on Twitter https://twitter.com/UCBmusicpod
Visit BPM at their webpage https://music.berkeley.edu/bpm/
Talk to Professor Nicholas Mathew at the Valley of the Moon Festival: Now Virtual!
The Valley of the Moon Festival in Sonoma has gone vitual for their fantastic Beethoven 2020 season.
https://valleyofthemoonmusicfestival.org/beethoven-festival-2020/
Nicholas Mathew at the Berkeley Early Music Festival
The Berkeley Early Music Festival Event next month, Everybody But Beethoven, hosted by Nicholas Mathew, is to be rescheduled.
https://berkeleyfestival.org/special-events/everybody-but-beethoven/
Pianist and writer Nicholas Mathew, in conversation with Ed Dusinberre and Erica Buurman
Watch Professor Nicholas Mathew discuss Beethoven and the hurdy gurdy with Professor Erica Buurman and Ed Dusinberre of the world famous Takacs Quartet.
