Grand Finale with Martin Chalifour, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival

Program Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Sonata in C Major, op. 2, no. 6, RV. 1 (for violin and continuo) Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Piano Quintet in F Minor, op. 34 The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival is being held this summer in Lani Hall, a 133-seat auditorium located in the Schoenberg Music Building on the UCLA campus. All concerts are free of charge, and no reservations are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Lot 2 is the closest campus parking lot; visit here for full details on UCLA visitor parking, including campus parking maps and rates. This year’s Festival will be livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel and each concert recording will be available to watch for three weeks following the concert date. Please subscribe to our channel to be notified when the concerts go live. Grand Finale with Martin Chalifour Martin Chalifour, violin Ambroise Aubrun, violin Kate Hamilton, viola Cécilia Tsan, cello Steven Vanhauwaert, piano Martin Chalifour Martin Chalifour has been Principal Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1995. He graduated with honors from the Montreal Conservatory at the age of eighteen and then moved to the United States to continue studies at the famed Curtis Institute of Music. Chalifour received a Certificate of Honor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and is also a laureate of the prestigious Montreal International Competition. Apart from his LA Phil duties, he has maintained an active solo career, playing a diverse repertoire of more than sixty concertos. Chalifour has appeared as soloist with conductors Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Neville Marriner, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Outside the US, he has played solos with the Auckland Philharmonia, the Montreal Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Malaysian Philharmonic, among others. Chalifour began his orchestral career with the late Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, playing as Associate Concertmaster for six years. Subsequently, for five years he occupied the same position in the Cleveland Orchestra, where he also served as Acting Concertmaster under Christoph von Dohnányi. While in Cleveland, Chalifour taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a founding member of the Cleveland Orchestra Piano Trio. Chalifour is a frequent guest at summer music festivals, including the Mainly Mozart Festival and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival. Maintaining close ties with his native country, he has returned there often to teach and perform as soloist with various Canadian orchestras, most recently in Vancouver and in Hamilton. Martin Chalifour has recorded solo and chamber music for the Telarc, Northstar, and Yarlung labels. He teaches at Caltech and at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Ambroise Aubrun Hailed as a “marvelous violinist” (France Musique) with “sensitive tone” (Pizzicato Magazine) and “tremendous ease, suppleness, and beauty of sound” (Nice-Matin) , violinist Ambroise Aubrun enjoys a career as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. He has performed extensively on three continents and has conducted master classes in North America (Québec, California, Oregon, New York, Wisconsin, Nevada, Utah, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico) , France, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand. His albums for Editions Hortus and Navona Records have embraced a wide range of repertoire from J. S. Bach to Eric Tanguy (b. 1968) , and received praise of the highest caliber (five stars in Pizzicato Magazine, “coup de coeur” by France Musique, and a nomination for the 2021 International Classical Music Awards) . His performances and albums have been broadcast on CBS, ABC, WFMT Chicago, France Musique, 3MBS Melbourne (Australia) , Klara Radio (Belgium) , KPFK Los Angeles, KNCJ Nevada, WTUL New-Orleans, and KUSC Los Angeles. He has served as guest concertmaster of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, and is a regular guest of the Los Angeles Philharmonic violin sections. Aubrun graduated at age nineteen from the Paris National Superior Conservatory, and then studied at UCLA (DMA) and at the Colburn Conservatory of Music (Artist Diploma) . He is a winner of the Charles Oulmont Prize of the Fondation de France, a laureate of the Langart Foundation in Switzerland, and a recipient of the UNLV Barrick Scholar Award for outstanding achievement in Creative Activities and a CSUN Faculty Achievement Award. Currently Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Dr. Aubrun previously taught at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and UC Santa Barbara. He is the artistic director of the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival at UCLA. Dr. Aubrun plays a Matteo Goffriller violin, on generous loan from the Langart Foundation. More information at www.ambroiseaubrun.com. Kate Hamilton Kate Hamilton, violist, is described by Minnesota Public Radio as “hot viola playing, she uses her bow to draw out a rich stew of colors . . . and has a sound like liquid gold.” Additionally, a 2025 review by LA Opus describes her “gorgeous sound.” She enjoys an international career as Associate Professor of Viola at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and serves as Co-Director of the International Chamber Music Festival in João Pessoa, Brazil. Since 2019, she has been performing in the viola section of the Berlin Philharmonic (Germany) at the Berlin Philharmonie Concert Hall under Sir Simon Rattle, Herbert Blomsteadt, Paavo Jarvi, and the final performances of Bernard Haitink with the Berlin Philharmonic. As a viola soloist, Kate has been featured with the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra (China) performing works of Max Bruch at the Qintai Concert Hall, the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, Central Oregon Symphony, and the Chamber Orchestra of San José (Costa Rica) . Recent chamber music performances include viola quintets with members of the Berlin Philharmonic in Leipzig, a Duo Novae tour of New Zealand and Australia, and the Musica Maestri Series at the Milan Conservatory (Italy) . In August 2025, Duo Novae were featured as soloists with the Festival Orchestra at the International Chamber Music Festival in João Pessoa, Brazil. Kate’s viola is a copy of the baroque “viola d’amore” style built by luthier Hiroshi Iizuka of Philadelphia. Cécilia Tsan Born in France, Cécilia Tsan began playing the cello with the same teacher as her childhood friend Yo-Yo Ma. After majoring in Philosophy and Chinese, she was awarded the First Prize for Cello at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris under André Navarra. She is a prizewinner at the Barcelona, the Florence, and the Paris International Competitions. Ms. Tsan toured throughout the world as a soloist and also as an avid chamber musician with Rudolf Firkusny, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Bruno Rigutto, Pascal Rogé, Pierre Amoyal, Augustin Dumay, Ivry Gitlis, Martin Chalifour, Hatto Beyerle, Gérard Caussé, Bruno Pasquier, Paul Neubauer, Heiichiro Ohyama, and others. Since she moved to Los Angeles, she has been recording hundreds of movie soundtracks with many composers such as John Williams, James Horner, Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, David Newman, Jerry Goldsmith, Alan Silvestri, Alexandre Desplat, James Newton-Howard, and John Debney, to name a few. She recorded the CD Eleven pieces for Cello and Piano (Cybelia) and two CDs of chamber music by Weber and Ropartz (Timpani) . More recently, Warner Classics released John Williams Reimagined, the double album she recorded with Sara Andon (flute) and Simone Pedroni (piano) . She currently plays as Principal Cellist with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. She also served in that position at the Academy Awards, the Emmys, American Idol, and America’s Got Talent. Besides many chamber music performances, her recent concerts include Memoirs of a Geisha by John Williams, the Elgar and Dvořák Cello Concerti, as well as Strauss’s Don Quixote and Brahms’s Double Concerto. Since 2017, she has been the Artistic Director of the music series, Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome at Mount Wilson Observatory. Steven Vanhauwaert Hailed by the Los Angeles Times for his “impressive clarity, sense of structure, and monster technique,” pianist Steven Vanhauwaert has garnered a wide array of accolades, including the First Prize at the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition. Mr. Vanhauwaert has appeared as a soloist at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Concertgebouw Brugge, the Great Hall of the Budapest Liszt Conservatory, the Forbidden City Theatre in Beijing, Segerstrom Hall, and the National Philharmonic Hall in Kiev. He has appeared with orchestras including the Pacific Symphony, the Lviv Philharmonic, the Sofia Sinfonietta, the Reno Chamber Orchestra, the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, the Flemish Symphony, and the Kyiv Camerata. Mr. Vanhauwaert serves as co-director for the Unbound Chamber Music Festival in Mammoth Lakes, a three-week-long summer festival featuring guest artists from around the world. He is also the Artistic Director for the Second Sundays at Two concert series in Rolling Hills, CA. His discography, on the Hortus, Sonarti, ECM, and Bridge labels, covers a wide range of composers, from Joseph Woelfl to Stravinsky and Tigran Mansurian. His recordings have been awarded 5 Diapasons, a nomination for the International Classical Music Awards, France Musique’s Editor’s Choice, and five stars in Pizzicato Magazine. Mr. Vanhauwaert serves on the faculty at the University of Utah’s School of Music and he is a Steinway Artist. More information at www.stevenpiano.com. About The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival Ambroise Aubrun, D. M. A., Artistic Director The festival was founded in 1988 by Professor Henry J. Bruman (1913–2005) , who sought to introduce new audiences to chamber music at informal concerts on the UCLA campus. The festival is made possible by the Henry J. Bruman Trust, Professors Wendell E. Jeffrey and Bernice M. Wenzel, by a gift in memory of Raymond E. Johnson, and with the support of the UCLA Center for 17th-& 18th-Century Studies. Photo courtesy of the artists.