Season Overview
Cherry Street Music, the resident music program at Newton’s Allen Center, has announced the first five concerts of their 2024-25 season. Artistic Director Allison Eldredge has planned an intimate cross-cultural performance series featuring classical, jazz, folk, and more.
December 15th at 3:00 pm, Classical with a Twist: I’ve Got Rhythm
Past Events:
Monday, September 30th at 7:00 pm, Oded Tzúr
Sunday, October 6th at 3:00 pm, Classical with a Twist: Champions for Change
October 26th at 7:30 pm, 440- The Gypsy Jazz Quartet Toe-Tapping Snappy Hot Jazz
November 17th at 3:00 pm, Classical with a Twist: West Newton Pops
Allison Eldredge is the newest Allen Center Artist-in-Residence and Founder of Cherry Street Music.
Cherry Street Music is a music program with a simple mission: to create a space to meet new people, develop friendships, and find togetherness, passion and hope through evenings of music. Our "classical with a twist" concerts are less formal with conversation between artists, special guests, and audience members. Attendees will also have an opportunity to experience the visionary educational history and beauty of the 1840 Nathaniel Allen Homestead, now The Allen Center, as our artistic home!
Meet The Artists
Classical with a Twist: "I've Got Rhythm"
Allison-Yoshie Eldredge, Artistic Director, Cello
Cellist Allison Eldredge, a recipient of the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant and Musical America’s “Young Artist of the Year”, has enjoyed performing nationally and internationally, from London to Moscow to China to Berlin. She has been called “a cellist afraid of nothing” (Chicago Times) with “virtuosity wholly at the service of the music” (American Fanfare – American Record Guide). She gained international attention when Daniel Barenboim invited her to give the first performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto, which he conducted years after the death of his wife, the celebrated cellist Jacqueline Du Pre.
Allison has appeared as cello soloist with 30 major American orchestras and innumerable major international orchestras. She has been invited by the premiere Music Directors of the world from Scotland to Italy to Canada to the Netherlands and the United States receiving critical acclaim such that “She belongs to “the crème de la crème” of cello talents” (Het Noord Hollands Dagblad Amsterdam).
Allison has loved teaching the next generation for the past 30 years. She has taught cellists at New England Conservatory since 2000 and at Harvard University from 2008-2011. Allison also maintains a private teaching studio in Massachusetts and Connecticut. She has given masterclasses at numerous universities and schools and has visited more than 100 schools in support of music education in communities with greater needs. She teaches chamber music at Young Talent Chamber Music, a two-week Pro-Am intensive summer camp in Connecticut, where she has been Artistic Director since 2014.
Her cello teachers have included Harvey Shapiro, Yo-Yo Ma, Eleonore Schoenfeld, Joan Lunde, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ardyth Alton and Channing Robbins. Allison studied at the Pre-College and College of The Juilliard School.
Instagram @allison.eldredge.1740
Facebook @allisoneldredgecellist
https://allisoneldredge.com/
Max Levinson, Piano
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 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.
Renowned as a chamber musician, Levinson 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 on Faculty at Boston Conservatory - Berklee and the New England Conservatory. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Levinson began studying piano, cello, composition and conducting at an early age. He graduated from Harvard University 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 top graduate student. He has been a Boston Chamber Music Society member artist since 2016.
Cathy Basrak, Viola
A native of the Chicago area, Cathy Basrak earned her bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2000. At the start of the 2000-2001 season, she became the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s assistant principal viola and principal viola of the Boston Pops Orchestra. As a soloist with the Boston Pops, she gave the premiere of John Williams’s Concerto for Viola with the composer conducting in spring 2009. Composed especially for her, the piece includes a duet passage for Basrak and her husband, BSO timpanist Timothy Genis. She has also performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago, Detroit, and Bavarian Radio symphony orchestras, among others. As a chamber musician, she has performed regularly with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and in chamber music concerts with her BSO colleagues. Basrak has participated in the Marlboro, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Norfolk Chamber Music festivals, and has performed with the Brandenburg Ensemble and Boston’s Metamorphosen Ensemble. Basrak’s teachers included Joseph de Pasquale, BSO principal viola from 1947 to 1964, and Michael Tree of the Guarneri String Quartet. Among many other recognitions, she was a grand prize winner in the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors National Concerto Competition. Basrak previously taught at Boston Conservatory, Boston University, and New England Conservatory, and she has worked with the child-focused charity organization Cradles to Crayons. She and her husband have three daughters.
Alexander Velinzon, Violin
A native of St. Petersburg, violinist Alexander Velinzon joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in January 2000. He became assistant concertmaster in 2005 and was promoted to associate concertmaster in 2015 and to first associate concertmaster in 2024. Since then, he has played as concertmaster under the direction of Andris Nelsons, Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and other leading conductors. In addition, he has been invited to play as concertmaster with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, WDR Symphony Orchestra, and NDR Radio Philharmonic among others. An avid chamber musician, Velinzon has been heard in Europe, Japan, and the United States. He made his critically acclaimed debut in London's Wigmore Hall with Soloists of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2010. Velinzon has appeared with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players including their several European tours and performed with the Seattle Chamber Music Society. He has been a member of the LiveARTS String Quartet since 2009.
Velinzon began playing the violin at the age of 6 and graduated from the Leningrad School for Gifted Children. After coming to the United States, he continued his studies at the Manhattan School of Music and received bachelor's and master's degrees from the Juilliard School, working under the guidance of the renowned pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. He made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as a winner of the Artist International Young Artists Auditions. A prizewinner in the Heida Hermann International Competition in the United States and finalist of the Tibor Varga International Competition in Switzerland, he has performed as soloist with the National Symphony of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and in Venezuela. He made his New York soloist debut with the Jupiter Symphony playing Paganini’s Concerto No. 1 and served as soloist and concertmaster for the Paul Taylor Dance Company at New York's City Center. Velinzon's other solo engagements in the United States have included appearances with the Seattle Symphony, Cascade Symphony Orchestra, Rondo Chamber Orchestra, Absolute Ensemble, Chappaqua Symphony, and Metamorphoses Orchestra. He is on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College and the Tanglewood Music Center.
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