Boston Chamber Music Society
Marcus A. Thompson, Artistic Director
The Boston Chamber Music Society, BCMS, is an ensemble of superb musicians who come together in different combinations to prepare and perform chamber music. Since its founding in 1982, BCMS has built a reputation for impassioned performances, ripened over time by the long personal and professional histories of its member musicians. BCMS invites guest artists, chosen for their particular affinity for the works they will play, to join its members, expanding the artistic possibilities to virtually all works in the chamber music repertoire.
BCMS’s mission is to provide the public with exceptional performances of chamber music repertoire from the Baroque era to the present day while fostering understanding and appreciation of the art form, making it more accessible to all.
BCMS presents the longest-running chamber music series and is distinguished for its enduring performance standards in Boston’s musically fertile region. In addition to its monthly concerts at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, BCMS has performed in multiple neighborhood venues in the greater Boston area, toured nationally and internationally, and issued critically acclaimed recordings under its own label.
Beyond the concert stage, BCMS musicians offer open rehearsals and masterclasses to students from educational institutions at various levels, and coach participants of all ages in the annual chamber music workshop to deepen their enthusiasm for the genre. Its hybrid fellowship program in cooperation with the New England Conservatory’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship department engages young musicians to serve as interns in the office to learn the basic inner workings of running an ensemble or concert series and to perform with the ensemble in concerts and community events. The BCMS Teaching Artist Program at the Somerville High School provides the SHS String Orchestra students weekly coaching as well as free access to its concerts.
Marcus Thompson has performed in chamber music series and recitals throughout the world. As a chamber musician, he has been a frequent guest of festivals and series in Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Edmonton, Montreal, Santa Fe, Seattle, Sitka, Spoleto, Okinawa, and Rio de Janeiro. He appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall, on tour, and in a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast, and as a guest of the Cleveland, Emerson, Jupiter, Miami, Orion, Shanghai, and Vermeer String Quartets. Mr. Thompson has been a member musician of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 1984. In 2009 he was appointed its second artistic director. As a recitalist, he has performed in series throughout the Americas, including Carnegie Recital Hall and The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The National Gallery and Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Jordan Hall and Gardner Museum in Boston, and Teatro Nacional in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Thompson has appeared as viola and viola d’amore soloist with many of this country’s leading symphony orchestras, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mr. Thompson recorded the Bartók Concerto with the Slovenian Radio Orchestra, and works of Serly, Jongen, and Françaix with the Czech National Symphony. In 2012 Mr. Thompson appeared as soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic premiering Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto which was commissioned for him in 1992. In 2018 he performed as soloist in works by Vivaldi, Morton Feldman, Elena Ruehr and Vaughan Williams at MIT in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of his Boston recital debut. In 2019 Mr. Thompson performed the John Harbison Viola Concerto with BMOP under Gil Rose and a Vivaldi Viola d’Amore Concerto at the Aston Magna Festival in Great Barrington, MA, and gave the Boston premiere of Harbison’s Sonata for Viola and Piano on the BCMS Series. Born and raised in the South Bronx, Mr. Thompson holds a doctorate in viola performance from The Juilliard School. He has been a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory for more than three decades, and professor of music at MIT for more than four decades. In June 2015 he was appointed to MIT’s highest faculty honor, becoming one of its thirteen Institute Professors.
Avery Fisher career grant recipient Jennifer Frautschi has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo Opera House. Selected by Carnegie Hall for its Distinctive Debuts series, she made her New York recital debut in Weill Hall; and as part of the European Concert Hall Organization’s Rising Stars series, debuted at ten of Europe’s most celebrated concert venues. As a chamber artist she has performed with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and appeared atthe Lake Champlain, La Musica (Sarasota), Moab, Newport, Ojai, Salt Bay, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Spoleto USA Chamber Music Festivals; Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla Summerfest, Music@Menlo, and at the Library of Congress. Internationally, she has performed at Chanel’s Pygmalion Series in Tokyo, the Cartagena International Music Festival in Columbia, the Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds and Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy, St. Barth’s Music Festival in the French West Indies, and toured England with musicians from Prussia Cove. Her discography includes the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and two Grammy-nominated recordings of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra and the Schoenberg Third String Quartet. Her most recent releases are with pianist John Blacklow: the first devoted to the three sonatas of Robert Schumann; the second, American Duos, an exploration of recent additions to the violin and piano repertoire by contemporary American composers. Other recent releases include a recording of Romantic horn trios with hornist Eric Ruske and pianist Stephen Prutsman, and the Stravinsky Duo Concertante with pianist Jeremy Denk. Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi was a student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School. She also attended Harvard, NEC, and Juilliard, where she studied with Robert Mann. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz” on generous loan from a private American foundation. She currently teaches violin in the graduate program at Stony Brook University. She has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.
Max Levinson has performed as soloist with the St. Louis, Detroit, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oregon, Indianapolis, Colorado, New World, San Antonio, Louisville, and Utah Symphonies, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and in recital at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Zürich’s Tonhalle, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Jordan Hall in Boston, and throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. Mr. Levinson’s international career was launched when he won first prize at the 1997 Dublin International Piano Competition. He is also a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Award. Artistic director of the San Juan Chamber Music Festival in Ouray, Colorado and former co-artistic director of the Janus 21 Concert Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mr. Levinson is an active chamber musician. He has performed with the Tokyo, Vermeer, Mendelssohn, and Borromeo Quartets, and appears at major music festivals including Santa Fe, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Bravo/ Vail, La Jolla, Seattle and Cartagena. His recordings have earned wide acclaim, including his most recent recording with violinist Stefan Jackiw of the three Brahms sonatas (Sony). Mr. Levinson is chair of the piano department at the Boston Conservatory and also a faculty member at the New England Conservatory. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Levinson began studying piano at age five. As a child he also studied cello, composition and conducting. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English Literature, and later completed his graduate studies with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music, receiving an Artist Diploma and the Gunther Schuller Medal, an award given to the school’s topgraduate student. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.
Peggy Pearson is a winner of the Pope Foundation Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Music. She gave her New York debut with soprano Dawn Upshaw in 1995, a program featuring the premiere of John Harbison’s Chorale Cantata which was written specifically for them. She has performed solo, chamber and orchestral music throughout the U.S. and abroad. A member of the Bach Aria Group, Ms. Pearson is also solo oboist with the Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, an organization that has performed the complete cycle of sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach. She is featured on the recording of Bach cantatas by Emmanuel Music with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Ms. Pearson is the director emerita of, and oboist with the Winsor Music Chamber Series. She is also a founding member of La Fenice. Ms. Pearson has toured internationally and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as principal oboist, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Musicians from Marlboro. She was principal oboist of the Boston Philharmonic from 2010 to 2015. Ms. Pearson has been an active exponent of contemporary music. She was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute in contemporary music, and has premiered numerous works, many of which were written specifically for her. She is featured on a recording of John Harbison’s music entitled First Light, with Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. As director of Winsor Music, Inc., Ms. Pearson organized the Winsor Music Consortium, a project to commission works for oboe, and has commissioned and premiered 30 works on her chamber music series. She was a founding member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, winner of the 1981 Naumburg Award, which collaborated with the Guild of Composers. Ms. Pearson has been on the faculties at Boston Conservatory, MIT (Emerson Scholars Program), Songfest, The Tanglewood Music Center (Bach Institute), the Conservatory of Music (University of Cincinnati), Wellesley College, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and the Longy School of Music. She has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.
Raman Ramakrishnan was a founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, winners of the grand prize at the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. During his eleven years with the quartet, he performed coast-to-coast in the United States and Canada, in Japan, Hong Kong and Panama, and across Europe. The quartet has been in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. In 2011, he formed the Horszowski Trio with violinist Jesse Mills and pianist Rieko Aizawa. He has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and has performed chamber music at Caramoor, at Bargemusic, with the Boston Chamber Music Society, and at the Aspen, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Ramakrishnan was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, NewYork. His father is a molecular biologist and his mother is the children’s book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz and André Emelianoff. Mr. Ramakrishnan is on the faculty at Bard College, and has served on the faculties of the Taconic and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals and at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, violist Melissa Reardon, and their young son. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837. He has been a BCMS member since 2013.
